Blogs

Indians are dazed at Japan’s football fans tidying the stadium before leaving. This kind of civic sense comes from learning from childhood that public spaces are a shared responsibility, not someone else’s headache A heartbreaking 1-2 defeat to Brazil in Houston, brought Japan’s World Cup journey to an end. But what did the Japanese fans…

You might have heard a vast collective sigh of relief this week, when US’s Supreme Court upheld birthright citizenship by a vote of 5 to 4. But that they even agreed to take up the case was an outrage, since our constitution’s 14th Amendment clearly states that any person born on American soil is a…

Every Indian friend group has an uncle like this. One Sunday, he decided to “fix” the ceiling fan. This involved three trips to the hardware shop, a call to his college roommate who “knows about electrical things,” forty minutes of YouTube tutorials at normal speed with ad breaks, and a lunchtime monologue on how “they…

As social attitudes shift, more women are choosing to leave unhappy marriages For more than two decades, Beena V lived with the hope that things would change. The 44-year-old endured years of verbal abuse, physical assault, character assassination, neglect and her husband’s alcoholism, believing patience would salvage her marriage. The change she waited for never…

Many things come to mind when asked to describe the essence of America – its energy and innovation, the freedoms that Americans enjoy, the racial and ethnic mix of its people. But perhaps the most fundamental is the concept of the American Dream. It has captured the imagination of people from all corners of the…

Kerala Celebrates Its Achievements In Women’s Empowerment, But Rising Reports Of Spousal Violence Reveal A Far More Uncomfortable Reality Kerala takes pride in projecting itself as a model of women’s empowerment, a state where women are more educated than men, often enjoy greater financial inclusion, possess property in their own name and increasingly contribute to…

That’s what a prominent tech critic believes Last year, Big Tech’s AI capital expenditure touched $400bn. This year, it’s likely to top $700bn. How long can this cash burn last without a revenue spurt? NYU professor Gary Marcus has described the unending AI buildout as the “greatest capital misallocation in history”. Tech critic Cory Doctorow…

Speaking Up Is Part of Democracy A democracy is a country where people have the right to disagree with the government. This right is not something people get only once every five years when they vote. Citizens should be able to question government decisions at any time. But simply complaining at home doesn’t change anything….

Inspiring stories of Venezuela quake survivors A woman who sat up on a stretcher, waving, rescued 70 hours after devastating back-to-back earthquakes in Venezuela on June 24. A dog’s head peering up, through a crack in the concrete, five days on. A dust-coated father and son, rescued six days since the quake. A security guard…

As India celebrated GST Day on July 1, public attention rightly focused on one of independent India’s most transformative economic reforms. Since its launch on 1 July 2017, the Goods and Services Tax has unified fragmented markets, widened the formal tax base, accelerated digitisation through e-invoicing and e-way bills, strengthened AI-driven compliance, and evolved into…