News & Politics

[By Mari Marcel Thekaekara|New Internationalist] It’s Indian Independence Day on Saturday 15 August. Although this raises many questions as to what Independence means to the poor and wretched of our country, I will desist from the usual gloom and doom. Everyone needs to celebrate. And there is always a good story to gladden the heart, if you look around. I ...

[By Shashi Tharoor] NEW DELHI – On July 30, Yakub Memon, a chartered accountant and the brother of a notorious gangster now living in self-imposed exile, was hanged for complicity in the planning and execution of serial bomb blasts that killed 257 people in Mumbai in 1993. The hanging, India’s first in three years, has prompted reactions ranging from dismay ...

[By Narendra Kaushik] New Delhi:  It was sometime in August 1998, around three months after Pokhran II, the series of five nuclear tests India conducted in the desert of Rajasthan.   Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen (popularly known as APJ) Abdul Kalam, then Chief Scientific Advisor to Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Director of Defence Research Development Organization (DRDO), had already ...

Dr. Abdul Kalaam known for his love for the student community, delivered this speech at Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad, where he outlined his visions for India. In 3000 years of our history, people from all over the world have come and invaded us, captured our lands, conquered our minds. From Alexander onwards, the Greeks, the Turks, the Moguls, the Portuguese, ...

[By Narendra Kaushik] New Delhi: It was sometime during the last monsoon before the 21st century that I landed at the door of Rajesh Khanna. He had asked me to come at around 3.30 p.m. But since work on another story brought me to Sarvpriya Vihar (South Delhi) at 2 p.m, I thought it may be a good idea to pre-pone ...

[By Mari Marcel Thekaekara] Most Indian newspapers have recently covered an unbelievably grotesque rape story about a 17-year-old girl who went on a date with a man she had met online, via Facebook. She must have gone to her assignation with Bollywood-like dreams of romance and love, like a million young girls before her. Like others before her, cruelly, her dreams ...

Good Samaritans or people who help road accident victims by taking them to the hospital had everything going against them from legal wrangles to harassment.Thanks to the Supreme Court directive, the Government has finally notified guidelines to protect good samaritans from any civil & criminal liability among other things. The disclosure of the name has also been made voluntary. Imagine ...

[By Mari Marcel Thekaekara | New Internationalist] Please take a moment to view this website. ‘100% genuine girls.Young. Innocent. And available…’ reads the intro. No, dear readers I haven’t lost it completely. The first I saw of this ad was when two editors sent it to me separately, asking me if I’d like to blog about it. I was predictably disgusted ...

[By Narendra Kaushik] New Delhi: Come 2016 and you may be able to zip off in your personal car or public transport for Yangon and Bangkok. Another year or so and you will have roads leading to Hanoi, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Cambodia and Laos. A few years more years down the line and trains and motorboats – containers and otherwise ...

[Iain Jackson,The Conversation] In a single week this June, the world of architecture lost two artists who celebrated modern India through buildings, landscape, sculpture and gardens. Charles Correa, India’s best known architect, died on June 16 in Mumbai. Nek Chand Saini, the creator of the Rock Garden in Chandigarh, died on June 12. A self-taught artist, he created art work ...