Blogs

By Sumit Paul Why should we believe in god? Should a thinking mind believe in god? This is a fallacy of the majority. In the worldwide belief in god, two fallacies play a vital role: The Fallacy of Majority and Fallacy of Duration. Our belief in god stems from the majoritarian belief, which is as…

A few days ago, I stepped into my neighbourhood vegetable market. Almost every seller had a QR code. These days, very few people pay in cash. Out of curiosity, I asked one of the vendors, “Do you pay income tax?” He burst into laughter while handing me a seasonal mango. “Woh kya hota hai, didi ji?” I…

I was faced with an impassable problem. It was an OTP, a one-time password, which was acting not like a password but as a stop word, which was stopping me from getting the mandatory PUC for my car, which was up for renewal on that very day. I was on a visit to London and…

The announcement of China’s construction of the Yarlung Tsangpo Mega-Dam in Tibet has generated intense discussion across South Asia. Projected to become the world’s largest hydroelectric power station, the dam is expected to produce nearly 300 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually, almost three times the output of the Three Gorges Dam. While its scale alone is remarkable, a recent geological…

This week, we are tracking Delimitation debate: BJP gets warm with Sharad Pawar’s party India’s ‘invisible army’ in the Hormuz Strait Xi’s Pakistan, the field marshal of Trump Chip, Chip, Hooray and the China issue 48 to 2: The perfect World Cup finale? Argentina vs Spain The 850-seat question: Why Supriya Sule’s delimitation hint has…

For more than three decades, DNA has been considered the gold standard of forensic science. It has transformed criminal investigations, identified disaster victims, exonerated the innocent, and solved decades-old cold cases. But what happens when DNA is too damaged to analyze? Imagine a crime scene after a fire. The victim’s body is severely burned, the…

This week’s edition spans finance, fame, theatre and a Queens high school corridor at 7 in the morning. The Federal Reserve has tapped three Indian-origin leaders to help rethink its policies. A Bay Area son of Indian immigrants is now the world’s second-highest earning content creator. And a British Indian theatre company is giving Cinderella…

Isro needs stronger gravitational pull, not sealed doors, to address problem of staff attrition Attrition is not a new problem for Isro. In 2006, it lost 187 newly trained scientists. Mainly due to better pay in the private sector. Now, about 100 have quit in the past few months, TOI reported on Thursday. Can we shrug it…

Dr Sanjay K Srivastava Dr Sanjay K Srivastava is the S Radhakrishnan Chair Professor at National Institute of Advanced Studies, Indian Institute of Science Campus, Bengaluru. With over 25 years in disaster risk reduction and climate adaptation across India and Asia-Pacific, he previously served as Chief of Disaster Risk Reduction at UN Economic and Social Commission…

Why have a policy for a third language? Leave it to schools to decide The Supreme Court has spoken up for students, parents and teachers, voicing deep concern over introduction of a third language in Class 9 in CBSE schools. A bench of Justices BV Nagarathna and R Mahadevan orally asked Centre to not have…