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Members of the All India Confederation of Commercial Taxes Association protesting in New Delhi against the Central government taking away a major share of revenue from States under the GST Act.

Economic Perspectives

How the Modi government is dismantling India’s federalism, politically and fiscally

States’ access to resources is seemingly conditional on having a “double-engine sarkar”, even as governments’ space for economic policy is shrinking.

C.P. Chandrasekhar

Villagers travelling on a country boat along with their motorbikes at Kharinasi ghat in Kendrapara district, Odisha.

India, This Side

India cannot be reduced to one narrative, one order, one analysis

The country’s diversity and plurality means such an attempt is likely to end in the realisation that the opposite is as much valid.

Counter Culture

Shah Rukh Khan’s ‘Jawan’ is all fandom, no film

In a brave departure from traditional filmmaking, Jawan pushes the boundaries of art and audience.

Prathyush Parasuraman

Economic Perspectives

Why India is unable to curb inflation

The “business friendly” government appears unwilling to come down heavily on footloose speculators garnering quick gains.

C.P. Chandrasekhar

Counter Culture

Gadar 2: Regressive on morals, insured on mass culture

Unlike films like The Kerala Story, where the ideology is embedded in the drama, in Gadar 2, the ideology floats one layer above, focussed on adrenali

Prathyush Parasuraman

India, This Side

How India as a civilisation is defined by its engagement with music

The nation’s vast ocean of songs belongs to everyone and is transferred from one generation to another.

Counter Culture

Why we must bring more voices into the making of art

Most often in art and representation, identity is defined by the violations people endure, by their victimhood.

Prathyush Parasuraman

More stories from Columns

Employees working in an information technology firm at Rushikonda in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh.

Is India booming at 76? GDP’s failure to recover fully indicates otherwise

The perception of rating agencies discounts the fundamental and structural weaknesses that have plagued the Indian economy for long.

C.P. Chandrasekhar

Historians Romila Thapar and Harbans Mukhia (centre, sitting) delivering a lecture on nationalism at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University campus in March 2016. When life in the country becomes chaotic as a consequence of the decisions taken by its leaders, teachers must give up their impartiality and tell students why such actions are harmful to the nation.

Should teachers share their political opinions with students?

With Prof. Sabyasachi Das resigning from Ashoka University and Karan Sangwan being dismissed from UnAcademy, the debate has reached a boiling point.

At a foreign currency exchange market in Islamabad on July 11. Pakistan’s desperately low forex reserves have been boosted after the IMF loan and flows from Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

IMF’s urgent loan to Pakistan driven by the West’s paranoia over China

The Fund’s urgency to extend a short-term loan is aimed at stemming Chinese influence in the strategically important country.

C.P. Chandrasekhar

Ananda Coomaraswamy (1877–1947).

How androgyny and ambivalence outdid other methods of resistance in India

One gets the optics of union between the feminine and the masculine very many times throughout India’s cultural history.

A poster for Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani.

How ‘Rocky aur Rani’ encapsulates the world between real and make-believe

Karan Johar’s films are filled with candied stories of love and characters whose lives evoke both escapism and aspiration.

Prathyush Parasuraman

Tribes of Nagaland at the annual Hornbill Festival, also known as the “Festival of Festivals”, in Kohima.

How marginalisation threatens the survival of indigenous communities

To be indigenous is to be severely marginalised in economy, politics, institutionalised knowledge, and institutionalised religion.

At an Essar Oil oil refinery in Vadinar, Gujarat. Oil product exports revenue has boomed in the past few years only as a result of global volatility in crude prices and cannot be a substitute for growth in exports of other goods.

On oil’s slippery slope: India’s goods exports struggle to stem decline

Exports in June dropped to $33 billion, the seventh monthly year-on-year decline, reversing what appeared to be a remarkable post-COVID recovery.

C.P. Chandrasekhar

A still from Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi which, according to its director, Sudhir Mishra, still resonates because he was not caught up with the ideology.

Speak, don’t shriek: Why do some progressive films tell us how to think?

These films are as dull as propaganda films such as The Kashmir Files and The Kerala Story, which are dripping with communal acid.

Prathyush Parasuraman

A man with a body painting of Bhagat Singh during the Rath Yatra festival of Lord Jagannath in Ahmedabad.

India’s selective outrage: Celebrate rebel heroes, suppress protests

The aversion of many Indians to social justice movements exposes a hypocrisy of social consciousness.

Outside a petrol pump in Colombo on April 12, 2022. Sri Lanka’s economic woes show no sign of easing even as the government has announced a plan to restructure its domestic debt.

Sri Lankan debt crisis to get worse if IMF prescription is heeded

The IMF’s insistence that Sri Lanka reduce its domestic debt will only end up reducing the value of citizens’ savings tied up in retirement funds.

C.P. Chandrasekhar

A still from the movie adaptation of Andre Aciman’s Call Me By Your Name.

The queerness I crave

To read queer literature is to be confronted by the bizarre buzz of your interiority being transcribed by someone else.

Prathyush Parasuraman

A statue of Lord Hanuman at the Pampa Sarovar in Dangs district, Gujarat. A file picture.

Putting the useless to use: The divisive politics of the word ‘Hindutva’

People in India have been known to put to imaginative use things that for them do not serve their intended purpose.

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