Indian Ministry of Defence orders a high-level inquiry into the accidental firing of a missile that breached Pakistani airspace on March 9
Telangana Chief Minister Chandrashekar Rao in Ranchi, meets Hemant Soren as part of efforts to form a federal front
Jun 10, 2016 Topsy-turvy journalismThe Marxist concept of the free press, as enunciated forcefully and at length by Marx himself, is not to be confused with the vitiated role of a nomin
Mar 02, 2018 Threats to Constitution THE anticlimax would be hilarious if it was not preposterous. The rabble, which goes by the name of Karni Sena, withdrew its agitation against
Feb 02, 2018 The freedom and the right IN 18th century England, the book would have invited dire punitive action under the
Jan 19, 2018 Perceptions and verdictsAS 2017 comes to a close in political disarray, there are signals that bode an interesting, more competitive, year ahead. The elections in Gujarat con
May 17, 2013 Melting the potTHE melting pot may have ceased to be an apposite, or politically proper, metaphor for the integration of diverse immigrant communities into the way o
May 03, 2013 Tamil cinema’s double actIn Tamil cinema, a band of directors has been quietly making films grounded in local realities and away from big-star formulas but working within t
Apr 18, 2014 The act of killingIMAGINE a documentary set against the backdrop of the violence unleashed against Muslims in Gujarat in 2002, in which those who killed, maimed, raped,
Feb 07, 2014 A potted history of national televisionONCE upon a time, when it was still a good word, “development” was Indian television’s single most important agenda. An experiment in the 1970s,
Mar 17, 2017 Post-Trump press-pectiveWHEN the most powerful person in the world, before and after he became that, has been making a series of atrocious comments and charges, many of them
Dec 08, 2017 The fiction of nonfiction IN his Charles Eliot Norton lectures delivered in the early 1990s at Harvard University, subsequently compiled as
Nov 24, 2017 Wah Taj!FIRST it was operation appropriation. With abstruse, contrived and convoluted reasoning, citing examples that varied from the ridiculous to the fantas
Oct 27, 2017 Where is the mind without fear?These eleven inspiring lines of Tagore, conjuring a freshly minted idea of a free India, are of course utopian and aspirational, as the best of poetry
Sep 29, 2017 Mahabali in the time of BaahubaliLONG, long ago, when the sky stretched to meet the earth on the distant horizon so that the gods could step down from their clouds on to terra firma a
Aug 18, 2017 Deja vu in ColomboWELL over 30 years later the glare of the July mid-morning sun on the Galle sea face in Colombo was as unchangingly harsh. The blare of the traffic al
Aug 04, 2017 On the scam trailWHEN John Maynard Keynes, in the context of the crisis of the Great Depression of the 1930s, suggested that the government should actually pay people
Jun 23, 2017 Arnab’s RepublicTHE launch of a missile and the launch of a TV news channel were entirely different things until now. Until, that is, the supremos of the Democratic P
May 12, 2017 No news is bad newsSOME adages turn on themselves. Or maybe that should read, adages sometimes turn on themselves. The one we see doing this with such frequency nowadays
Apr 28, 2017 The sting and the stungIT was a sting all right. A sting that exposed a devious conspiracy by a new Malayalam TV news channel to ensnare a Minister. This is how the conspira
Mar 31, 2017 Born to blush unseenThere was a shortlist of 10 Malayalam films made in 2016 before the three members of the jury for the John Abraham award this year. As a jury member I
Jan 06, 2017 Anecdotal recapsIT may be both stretching a metaphor and mixing metaphors, but one is nevertheless tempted to vest the cyclone Vardah, which lashed coastal Tamil Nadu
Nov 25, 2016 Nationalism cannot be a TV seasonARTHUR MILLER characterised a good newspaper as a nation talking to itself. That was in the early 1960s. It was easier and less complicated then to re
Oct 28, 2016 When rumour has itTHE German philosopher Gotthold Lessing, who was a precursor of existentialism, had observed: “If God set forth before me the Eternal, unchangeable
Freebie phobia: The BJP’s concerted attack on redistributive transfers Although the BJP is against ‘freebies’ in principle, in practice it has been forced to use a version of concessions and transfers to counter the o
SlideshowLiving on the edgeThey are river people, whose lives ebb and flow with the waters of the Brahmaputra in a timeless rhythm. But now, hydroelectric projects and homogenis