News & Politics

The scene in Srinagar, in Indian-administered Kashmir, after an Aug. 10, 2021, grenade attack by militants that wounded at least nine civilians. Kashmir has experienced sporadic violence for more than seven decades, including three wars. Yawar Nazir/Getty Images Bulbul Ahmed, Bangladesh University of Professionals An armed conflict in Kashmir has thwarted all attempts to solve it for three quarters of ...

Ishita Chatterjee, University of Melbourne | The Conversation Informal settlements are experiencing a greater surge in COVID-19 cases than other urban neighbourhoods in Mumbai, India. Their high density, narrow streets, tight internal spaces, poor access to water and sanitation leave residents highly vulnerable to the spread of coronavirus. One of Mumbai’s poorest and most underdeveloped neighbourhoods, Shivaji Nagar, is one of three ...

By Col N N Bhatia(Retd) Both politicians and the nappies need to be changed often and for the same reason! Margret Thatcher The world’s largest democracy has just finished the polling for the general elections lasting over 2 months. The entire country of India’s size and diversity, the election mania had a vice like grip over the world’s other events. ...

Most exit polls forecast a saffron Holi in Uttar Pradesh and a close fight between the Congress seeking to return to power in Punjab and AAP, a debutant in Punjab elections. Stay with us for LIVE updates on Assembly Elections 2017.

[By Sarah Lonsdale] Sixteen-year-old Rudyard Kipling returned to India after a miserable childhood, and slightly less miserable adolescence in England, to take up the perfect job for a precociously gifted but possibly unemployable son of empire. He was to be 50% of the editorial staff – as he describes in his memoir Something of Myself – of the Civil and ...

[By Shashi Tharoor] NEW DELHI – Indian politics continues to amaze and appall. The surge in cow vigilantism – a uniquely Indian phenomenon that has lately begun to flourish under the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government – is no exception. Many orthodox Hindus, particularly in the northern Indian states that comprise the so-called Cow Belt, worship the cow as gau ...

[By Mari Marcel Thekaekara| New Internationalist] Mob throws police jeep into river. One cop dead. My first reaction was, another US story about the eruption of violence post-the Black Lives Matter protests. But no. This was the morning’s headlines in a Bangalore newspaper and the cop killed by the mob was in Kashmir. Ironically, yesterday’s headlines were about an historic new ...

|By Shashi Tharoor| NEW DELHI – India’s Solicitor-General, Ranjit Kumar, recently declared that India would not seek the return of the Kohinoor diamond – one of the world’s oldest and most valuable – from the British, to whom India had “gifted” it. The statement shocked India and unleashed passionate debate – so passionate, in fact, that the government scrambled to ...

[By Mari Marcel Thekaekara|New Internationalist] Once upon a time, possibly around two, definitely three decades ago, Bangalore was a charming little town. It was known as the pensioners’ paradise because it was a tiny town with quaint cottages and pretty bungalows surrounded by lovely gardens. And the weather was perfect. Everyone knew everyone else on their street and in their ...

[By Mari Marcel Thekaekara|New Internationalist] Kerala has long been held up as an example of a model state. India’s most educated piece of paradise. But people who live there, in general, and women who live there in particular, know only too well, that the hype is merely that – hot air. The fact that this is a state with the highest ...