Bankim da? Bankim babu! A small spat over a big name

Seems like even in the polished halls of the Lok Sabha, a slip of the tongue can stir up a mini cyclone. On Monday, while inaugurating the 150 year commemoration of Vande Mataram, the stirring composition penned by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, Narendra Modi addressed the great Bengali poet as “Bankim da”. The reaction was swift….

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Assam’s climate emergency and its forgotten workforce

Each year, Assam prepares itself for climate shocks, which can range from floods to breached embankments to sudden heat waves and erratic weather patterns. Floods remain the most visible face of climate change in the state; however, equally damaging shifts can be seen with respect to the prolonged heatwaves, extreme rainfall, and increasingly unpredictable seasons….

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Lambretta, Anyone?

Businesses die, brands don’t. Every abandoned trademark is a key to customers’ hearts and wallets Musk paid $44bn for Twitter and made it ‘X’, thinking it’s a cool name. But the rest of us have… Source link

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How to get India to shop more

Consumption inertia has weighed heavily on consumer-facing companies for nearly two years, as the “revenge spending” euphoria that followed the pandemic fizzled out after the 2023 festive season. For years, govt undertook aggressive capex, but while infra spending built the rails for the future, it required resources – partially raised through taxes. This, combined with…

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Right steps to boost growth

Based on signs of strong GDP growth and benign inflation, many economists and market experts anticipated a status quo on repo rates. Still, the RBI’s MPC unanimously decided to cut the repo rate by 25 basis points to 5.25 per cent. At the same time, RBI projected real GDP growth for FY26 at 7.3 per…

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The week that was in international affairs

Welcome back to another edition of My Take 5, your weekly round-up of top international news. This week we are covering Putin’s visit to New Delhi, Lithuania declares emergency over Belarussian balloons, Trump reiterates an America First National Security Strategy, fighting breaks out again between Thailand and Cambodia, and Sudan’s civil war sees another massive…

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