Blogs

The genesis of Vietnam’s multilateral diplomacy can be traced back to the era of Ho Chi Minh, who viewed multilateral institutions as critical assets for amplifying Vietnam’s voice and mobilising international support to advance national interests. In the post–Cold War period, and particularly since the 13th National Party Congress, Hanoi has pursued this approach with…

Over the past few decades, India’s healthcare industry has undergone a remarkable transformation. The country has made significant strides in building better infrastructure, expanding access to essential medical services and strengthening public health policies. All these have laid the foundation for a more inclusive health system. However, this progress faces a formidable challenge with the…

This week, we begin with a troubling death in Canada that has shaken Indian-origin communities and raised urgent questions about emergency healthcare abroad. We also track a familiar arc of migrant nostalgia after an NRI’s emotional video about life back home went viral, and take a cultural detour into how a Bollywood blockbuster unexpectedly revived…

Recently, the world saw so many things happen in South Asia in quick succession. From uprisings to protests, all against governments. It is an uncanny truth what went wrong and what is unfolding, and why so many fail to even see all that coming until it explodes. Sample this: Bangladesh achieved an average GDP growth…

Santosh Agarwal Santosh Agarwal is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Paisabazaar. Santosh possesses a strong entrepreneurial drive and under her leadership, Paisabazaar aims to not just scale its market leadership in credit, but also drive holistic financial wellness for India. Before taking over the reins at Paisabazaar, Santosh was the Chief Business Officer at Policybazaar, where she…

In this intellectual age, besides knowledge as IQ and information, we need the philosophy of stoicism to appreciate the necessity of developing our reasoning capacity. The word stoic means a mental attitude of indifference or unaffected by emotional experiences of pain or pleasure, fortitude, patience, or resignation. However, Stoicism was a living philosophy followed by…

“When someone betrays Allāh in secret, Allāh will expose his true self to everyone,” said the influential 9th-century Persian Sufi master Hazrat Yahya ibn Mu’adh al-Razi (830–871). Sufi philosophy teaches us that a man can transform his inner being only through constant remembrance of God the Almighty. If he outwardly pretends to be highly noble…

There is little doubt that the MAGA crowd in America that goes into raptures every time their patron saint, Donald Trump, makes an outrageous claim, would be aware of the name Angus Maddison. He is an economic historian who has argued convincingly that India & China accounted for almost 50% of the global GDP in…

No humans, no. It’s just a large language model throwing words at you, based on cold calculations  Predictions seldom come true, but the 2013 film Her has turned out to be a fair simulation of life in 2025. Like Theodore Twombly, who loses his heart to Samantha, an AI chatbot, millions are now besotted with…

Centre’s assurance on limited mining in Aravalis leaves several key questions unanswered  GOI’s statement that more areas across the Aravali range will be protected from mining misses the point. Across Haryana and Rajasthan, the degradation of the 3.2bn years old mountain range is painfully evident. It’s taken just 30 years for Supreme Court, Centre and…