Rewind

By Pramod K Nayar In 2017, the digital humanities research group, Fondazione Bruno Kessler at Trento, Italy, set up the Linked Open Data (LOD) Navigator to trace the Italian victims of the Shoah. Rachele Sprugnoli, Giovanni Moretti, Sara Tonelli mapped date and place of birth, death, dates and routes of deportation, place of detention, in […]

The Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party government at the Centre is facing a huge diplomatic outrage from Gulf countries after its spokesperson and leader made derogatory references to Islam and Prophet Muhammad. New Delhi is struggling to contain the damaging fallout. Arab nations lodged official protests against India. Pakistan and Afghanistan also reacted strongly to […]

By V Thiagarajan Nobel laureate Paul Romer writes that “For more than three decades, macroeconomics has gone backwards.” He sees economists no longer being concerned with whether or not their predictive models have any practical relevance and says we have entered an era of “post-real” macroeconomics.  He has been proved right beyond any doubt. According to most […]

By Dr Ramesh Chenamaneni In recent years, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) has been issuing long-range rainfall forecasts for four divisions, namely: North Eastern India, Central India, North Western India and Peninsular India. Given the large spatial variation of rainfall and soils within these divisions, farmers in different sub-regions are unable to utilise these higher […]

By Amitava Mukherjee There are quite a few reasons why Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the President of Sri Lanka, appointed Ranil Wickremesinghe as the Prime Minister of the country. First, Ranil Wickremesinghe is known to be close to the Rajapaksa family and it is more than likely that he will try to save both Gotabaya and Mahinda […]

By B Sambamurthy Real GDP hit a decadal high of 8.2% during 2016-17. Since then, it has been on a downward slide and declined to about 4% during 2019-20. Covid-19 inflicted significant damage to economic growth and growth hurtled to a negative 6.5% in FY 2021. Keeping the impact of Covid-19 aside, the deceleration of […]

The Telangana government last month signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), or more broadly a Mini-Free Trade Agreement, with the government of Thailand to explore trade and investment in key sectors. This is the first time that an agreement has been signed between the Ministry of Commerce of Thailand and a State government in India. […]

By V Thiagarajan  The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently slashed its forecast for global economic growth by nearly a full percentage point citing Russia’s war in Ukraine, and warned that the world must brace itself for an economic slowdown as well as a burst in inflation. The IMF expects inflation to remain elevated throughout the […]

By Vijay Kumar You can think about this as an embodied internet operated by many different players in a decentralised way. You’re inside of rather than just looking at. We believe that it is going to be the successor to the mobile internet — Mark Zuckerberg, 2021 Euphoric Verse The rapid speed and scale of […]

By Dhananjay Tripathi  Imran Khan, Pakistan’s hero of the 1992 World Cup cricket team, who till late appeared to bat well in politics too, suddenly got himself into a difficult situation. In the last few months, he was under mounting political pressure on his government by the opposition parties. Khan, after making all kinds of […]

By V Thiagarajan Most marriages in an Indian family or mergers in Indian corporate groups normally evolve in three phases — Early Hesitancy, Intermediate Exuberance and Final Realisation. The merger of HDFC-HDFC Bank, which hogged the headlines last week, has followed the script of the first two phases so far. In the first Hesitancy Phase, […]

By Pramod K Nayar What does a nuclear landscape look like? First, obviously, it looks like a city smashed to smithereens. Hiroshima-Nagasaki devastated, and buildings razed to the ground. A man’s shadow imprinted into the concrete when he was vaporised during the explosion. Flash of Light, Wall of Fire and Rain of Ruin, the two […]

Rising debt, shrinking foreign reserves, dismal fiscal and the pandemic are sinking the island nation Sri Lanka needs to make nearly $7 billion in payments on foreign loans this year. And its foreign reserves are dwindling fast. It faces huge debt obligations and is grappling with its worst economic meltdown since independence in 1948. The […]

By Sanskrithi Thakur Creation of forest as its lap has been Mother Nature’s greatest act of benevolence towards its children – be a tiny little insect or a ‘thinking and evolving’ human. In a perfect setting that could never be matched by the most creative set designer, a loving mother laid down everything from the […]

By Amitava Mukherjee While holding ‘Lenin and his associates’ responsible for the birth of Ukraine as a separate geographical identity, Vladimir Putin, the incumbent Russian President, has certainly failed to grasp the real message of history. Putin thinks that ‘Lenin and his associates did it in the sloppiest way in relation to Russia —  by […]

By PS Dileep, M Srinivas, B Krishna Mohan Success stories have been many — from the world’s largest multi-stage lift irrigation project to hosting the world’s biggest businesses’ ‘only office’ outside their headquarters, to farm revolution. The State’s focus on 3Is — innovation, infrastructure and inclusivity — is spearheading growth across sectors. Up, Ahead The […]

By Dhananjay Tripathi Europe is considered a central region, both in theoretical and practical terms, when it comes to world politics. The history of Europe in this regard is quite intriguing. In fact, it will not be wrong to say that majority of the present day international system was initially shaped in Europe and later […]

Electricity cannot be viewed in isolation but as part of a broader programme dealing with the States' social and economic development

It rides on rhetoric and has little substance to combat either inflation or facilitate growth

By B Yerram Raju  Urban Cooperative Banks (UCBs) form an important part of Indian banking and occupy about 7.5% of the financial sector space. Despite the failure of a few UCBs like Krushi, Charminar, and the PMC Bank lately, recognising the need for reforms in them as part of mainstream banking, the Reserve Bank of […]

The star Prime Minister of Hyderabad State, whose 193rd birth anniversary was on January 21, brought English education, customs and etiquettes to Hyderabad

By Marcia Rieke The world’s largest and most powerful space telescope rocketed away on December 25 on a high-stakes quest to behold light from the first stars and galaxies and scour the universe for hints of life. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) soared from French Guiana on South America’s northeastern coast, riding a European […]

By Dr Chennamaneni Ramesh Farmers’ protest against the farm laws and subsequently their rollback by the government reflect the culpability of the market in the mess that the agricultural profession is in today, and is also evidence on whether, and how, the state and market have responded to the agrarian crisis that germinated over six […]

By Pramod K Nayar  “Not a spot is to be left without some marks of blood and carnage”.  The 20th century poet Wilfred Owen, who had encountered war as a soldier, said that his subject is not poetry but war and the pity of war. The poetry, he said, is in the pity. How best to […]