Blogs

Hello and welcome to TOI Bharat Abroad. This week’s edition follows three very different Indian-origin stories linked by one common thread: influence. From the boardroom of one of the world’s biggest technology companies to the shifting politics of New York and a classroom where an everyday kitchen ingredient became an award-winning climate innovation, these are…

Under the binary gender system followed by India, where Hindi is most widely spoken, gender norms and roles play a key role in determining how people function in society. Being Transgender or part of the LGBTQ+ Community in Indian society comes with its own set of struggles. Indian conservative society at its root is not…

I arrived in Boulder, Colorado, as a student in the late 1960s. The Vietnam War was raging, and body bags were returning home. America was deeply unpopular in many parts of the world.  It was one of the most turbulent decades in the nation’s history. A president had been assassinated. His brother, widely seen as…

Babus should pay attention to cabinet secy’s note on need for gradual and regular improvement India’s top civil servant has sterling advice for officers on lower branches. To summarise: when they look back on their careers, at the end of their service, they should see 30 years of learning and improvement, not one year’s experience…

Yes, passports alone don’t prove citizenship. But govt must understand why there’s general anxiety An MEA official’s response that an Indian passport is not proof of citizenship, to a question on a passport-holder’s exclusion from SIR, has created both uncertainty and anxiety. Understandably so – there’s been a lot of chatter about the citizenship issue….

Halfway through the FIFA World Cup, the tournament has already delivered what football’s greatest spectacle invariably promises: drama, surprises, heartbreaks and a revealing glimpse into the state of the world beyond sport. The scorelines may dominate headlines, but World Cups have always been political and cultural mirrors, as much as sporting contests. The good news…

In his football career, Mikel Oyarzabal (born in the Basque town of Eibar) has worn only two shirts: that of Real Sociedad of Donostia-San Sebastián, and that of the Spanish national team. Until last summer, his LaLiga career ran in parallel with that of Imanol Alguacil, who coached him in Real Sociedad B, popularly known as…

Israel is living as a sentinel state, swamped​ in the very anxieties it was created to escape from Reading some of the rhetoric emerging from Israel today, one is reminded not so much of military campaigns or diplomatic manoeuvres, as of a deeper historical irony. Israel’s founders didn’t set out merely tobuild a state. After centuries…

Many people felt worried when a government official said that having an Indian passport does not automatically prove that someone is an Indian citizen. This sounds surprising because most of us think a passport is the strongest proof of being Indian. The official was technically correct. A passport is mainly a document that lets people…

India’s top government officer has given some useful advice to other civil servants. He says that when officers retire after 30 years of work, they should be able to look back and see 30 years of learning and improvement—not the same one year repeated 30 times. This is an important reminder. Civil servants help run…