Blogs

Before he wrote his Booker-nominated Animal’s People, my friend Indra Sinha penned a smart translation of Kama Sutra, where his great corrective was that it was not merely a manual of ecstasy – as Sir Richard Burton might have you believe – but a text about how to live with other people: a spouse, a…

President Donald Trump’s remark that “without America there is no Israel, and without him there is no Israel” was unusually blunt. Yet it highlighted a strategic reality so far, and that may be shifting, with far-reaching consequences for West Asia’s geopolitical order. Israel’s military, diplomatic and financial strength has long rested on unwavering American support….

Read the global university rankings in toto: India is walking forward while others are sprinting Sometimes, we celebrate too quickly. When an IIT was ranked 118th in the QS World University Rankings 2027, many people cheered. It’s good that Indian universities are improving. But being 118th in the world is not the same as being…

Read the global university rankings in toto: India is walking forward while others are sprinting Sometimes, in India, we celebrate without much sense of proportion. Cheering an IIT for getting ranked 118 in the QS World University Rankings 2027, and some other Indian universities also moving up, definitely has frog-in-the-well feel. It’s like saying chalo…

Once Iran is out of America’s bad books, India shouldn’t waste opportunities to invest in, and trade with, it People look for omens in hard times. That US and Iran signed their MoU for peace two days early – Wednesday rather than Friday – seems like one. Does it mean peace is inevitable? One hopes…

If the United States and Iran finally make peace, India should be ready to work more closely with Iran When times are difficult, people often look for signs that things are getting better. The US and Iran signed their peace agreement two days earlier than expected. Is that a sign that peace will last? Maybe….

Let me ask this directly: are large language models making us less intelligent? The honest answer is more nuanced than a simple yes or no. On one hand, the shift is undeniable. We are increasingly operating within systems we do not fully understand. The world has become a deeper black box than it used to…

Political rivalry has its own grammar, and no politician misses an opportunity to attack an opponent. This is natural because every political party has its own ideology and electoral strategies, and the public evaluates them on that basis. However, when a ruler rises above partisan boundaries and stands for the larger interests of society, he…

Simi Aunty is Simian Uncle in Delhi zoo The capital is always a hunting ground for ‘poli-trimonial’ alliances. Now also in the fray is its National Zoological Park. As openly as TMC MPs wanting to jump into bed with NDA, its director Sanjeet Kumar has sent out mating calls  for 16 of his wards. Some…

Sir, India’s KYC (Know Your Customer) architecture is often presented as one of the quieter success stories of modern financial regulation. Identity verification today is certainly formidable: Aadhaar linkage, PAN mapping, video-KYC, and digital onboarding have made creating fake accounts an increasingly unrewarding hobby. And yet, somewhat inconveniently, fraud losses continue to rise, and money…