Blogs

There is a particular kind of loneliness that lives inside a marriage, not the loneliness of an empty room, but the loneliness of being unseen while doing everything. Many people, particularly in Indian households, do not walk into a coaching session describing dramatic cruelty or betrayal. They describe exhaustion. They describe an unequal partnership in…

How a Lakshadweep nurse prevented a premature delivery mid-air and went on to receive the National Florence Nightingale Award In 2004, a 19-year-old nursing student fled the burns unit of Rajiv Gandhi School of Nursing in Hubli, North Karnataka. The screams of severely burnt patients were too much to bear. Aysha Beebi K walked out,…

There are men who believe beds make themselves & fresh parathas appear by magic at midnight. They woo passionately, but afterwards the woman plays second fiddle to MIL, cricket, and PlayStation Last week, a neighbour asked me for love advice. Because of my recent, very recent, divorce, I was surprised. “Isn’t it a terrible idea…

Xi dealt with Trump as his equal, pitting Beijing’s grand strategic concerns against Washington’s transactionalism. Yes, both sides outwardly agreed on some issues. But Beijing is playing a long game When Xi Jinping and Donald Trump met in Beijing on Thursday, they walked away with two very different stories. The US readout emphasised market access…

Thirty years ago, while teaching a robotics lab course at the University of Illinois, my senior colleagues gave me a piece of advice that stayed with me: quit AI and robotics, because the breakthroughs were always “twenty years away.” Decades later, looking at the massive wave of hype surrounding programs like ChatGPT, I wondered if…

Every time a new jobs report drops and AI is mentioned in the same breath, the conversation follows a familiar script. How many roles are at risk. Which sectors will recover. Whether universal basic income is the answer. Whether reskilling pipelines can move fast enough. The debate is urgent, well-funded, and organized around a single…

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s appeal to citizens to conserve petrol, diesel, defer buying gold for at least a year and avoid foreign travel etc. reminds one of a dormant provision in the constitution under article 360 for financial emergency. There is however no indication whatsoever from the government to declare such an emergency. The provision…

New India doesn’t know what it means. Price signals are a better way to influence its consumption choices “Austerity” is a word people are using a lot this week. It means living carefully, spending less, and avoiding waste. But most Indians today have never really lived through a time of austerity. That’s because two out…

Today’s edition looks at three very different faces of the Indian diaspora: the long legal limbo of America’s immigration system, the spectacular fall of an Indian-origin CEO in a $212 million fraud case, and a Texas teen who turned prom night into a tribute to the grandmothers who raised him. Let’s go. THE BIG STORY…

It’s hard to understand why the education ministry still hasn’t properly fixed the National Testing Agency (NTA). NTA is the group that conducts big exams like NEET, but it has many weaknesses. It is not created by a law passed in Parliament, so its accountability is unclear. It depends a lot on temporary workers, and…