Blogs

A walk for peace in America uses conceptual tools that originated in our land, but we have neglected In the din and clatter that engulfs Americans today, many of them are reporting an unusual moment of stillness. This is happening en route a 3700 km pilgrimage, taking a group of Buddhist monks from their vipassana…

Renamed places can make people wonder where they are In a movie I saw recently a teenaged daughter asks her father the name of the capital of Croatia. The father confesses he doesn’t know.   The admission made me wonder if the actor knows the answer. And then the thought struck me that I didn’t know what…

A series of recent police actions in Andhra Pradesh has stirred an unusually sharp debate. What began as isolated arrests linked to Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy’s birthday celebrations has grown into a wider discussion on how policing is being carried out and whether the law is being applied evenly. The contrast between the scale…

Over the last decade, India has seen an unprecedented rise in youth participation in public life. Young Indians have been mobilised, mentored, and drawn into the national conversation in ways that were simply not visible a generation ago. Political youth organisations have been at the centre of this shift, energising first-time voters, shaping opinion, and…

A flute can produce music that touches the deepest corners of the heart. Yet the flute itself does nothing. Music arises only when breath flows through it with care and awareness. Simply blowing air into a hollow bamboo creates noise, not melody. It is the understanding of when to restrain and when to allow that…

On 23rd January 2004, the Supreme Court of India ruled that citizens of India can fly the National Flag (NF) “respectfully” in observance of the law of the land. The Court pronounced “The right to fly the National Flag (as) a fundamental right”.  It has been only 22 years, in our 78 years of independence,…

In Indian politics, not all elections test the same muscle. Some examine a party’s ability to mobilise voters; others test whether it can reshape political cultures that have long resisted it . For the BJP, the 2026 Assembly contests in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu appear to belong to the latter category. Home Minister Amit Shah’s…

2025’s word of the year will do great in 2026 too Kamala was curious about the phrase that had been chosen as Oxford University Press’s word of 2025. “I can’t understand these new-fangled terms!” she declared. I smiled to myself at the irony of the situation. Rage baiting should be familiar to all older married…

To ease housing crisis, reduce costs of land and construction with some out-of-the-box ideas  One of Harvard’s most famous alums, the philosopher Thoreau, hand-built his famous cabin near Walden Pond, using wood from an abandoned shanty. You may not wish to be so modest, but with house prices soaring almost everywhere, you may have to….

Imphal & New Delhi failed her. And that failure is at the heart of why peace is so elusive in the state    A Manipuri woman whose case had become emblematic of sexual violence during the 2023 ethnic strife in the state, passed away, without a single perpetrator identified. She was 18 when she was abducted…