Blogs

I don’t write about politics. Not the daily noise of it. Not the scorekeeping. Not the endless churn of statements and counter-statements. I write when something shifts… Like when politics stops performing for a second and something real shows up. When geopolitics isn’t a map anymore, but a room where you can read people in…

The world is ageing and heating—a defining challenge of this century. Today, 703 million people globally are 65 or older, projected to reach 1.5 billion by 2050. By the late 2070s, the elderly will likely outnumber children under 18 worldwide. Simultaneously, the climate crisis deepens: 2024 is confirmed as the warmest year on record, about…

For the past few days, Noida, UP, has been rocked by industrial workers’ protests large enough to disrupt industrial functioning and civic life. The UP govt has already agreed to one of the main demands of the protesting and striking workers — an increase in the minimum wage rates. Like all stories, this too will…

Among the four states and one Union Territory that have voted or are voting this month, Tamil Nadu is probably the most difficult to assess. The competition in other states is between familiar players, but the entry of actor Vijay’s Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) adds a big unknown to the equation. OUTSIDER APPEAL: Vijay’s non-ideological…

Sometimes, an innocent self-recommendation becomes a recommendation or marketing. I had passed Matriculation in 1966 from a remote village government school in Charkhi Dadri district of Haryana. At that time, there was an acute shortage of science teachers in that area. Our headmaster temporarily employed an FSc (12th Pass) as a science teacher on the…

In door-to-door sales, a representative visits homes or businesses in person to promote the product or service and make a sale. This is as traditional as the sales process can go. Can AI, which is a new-age technology, help with this process? Can traditionalism and modernity work together? We will explore the answer to this…

Manifolds are the manifestations of caste: There are untouchables and unapproachable, those whose sight itself is a damnation, and those who do not mix in marriage or even in eating food…” These lines from Duravastha (The Tragic Plight), the 1922 poem by Kumaran Asan, exposed the rigid caste discrimination of his era. A century later,…

How meaning slips from lyric imagination to power and code in the post-Enlightenment age Christopher Caudwell foresaw the eclipse of poetry by reason. In the post-Enlightenment age of politics and artificial intelligence, his wager looks less like cultural pessimism than historical diagnosis. When “Illusion and Reality” appeared in 1937, it read like an obituary written…

Guru is the greatest blessing of the Divine. One astrologer once told me, “Now a guru will enter your life.” I was sceptical, as I had not been exposed to spiritual gurus earlier, since my parents were atheists.  Yet, during one of the lowest phases of my life, grace unfolded in an unexpected way. I happened to hear…

In the timeless corridors of statecraft, moral values, ethics, and personal conduct have always stood as the bedrock of credible governance. The ancient wisdom encapsulated in the saying “Caesar’s wife should be above suspicion” resonates even today. It was not merely a Roman ideal just before the Christian era; even in our own cultural heritage,…