Blogs

Yes, the game is now a shiny product that’s marketed. Yes, following EPL teams shows colonisation of our imagination. But, when teams your heart beats for become champs, you feel something that can’t be bought. There is a specific type of joy experienced only by supporters of clubs that win something, after a very long…

Good that SC recognised voting as a constitutional right. But, for that to have meaning, ensuring inclusion in voter rolls must be EC’s positive duty. And the burden of justifying exclusion must shift to it. The judgment doesn’t address that. Supreme Court yesterday upheld EC’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar. The…

The stars whisper, why the heck are we killing each other? Our borders are invisible from space Growing up in a Manipur village, Ronaldo Laishram would spend nights looking up at the stars. Children have done this for a long time. Maybe even those who roamed African savannas where Homo sapiens evolved. Maybe even the…

India needs more FDIs from Chinese companies, while doing more for Indo-Pacific. Learn from Southeast Asia    ‘Speak softly and carry a big stick’ is an adage attributed to Theodore Roosevelt. With Quad foreign ministers meeting in New Delhi this week, the India-US-Japan-Australia grouping appears to be channelling the spirit of the former US president. The…

How do cockroaches feel about CJP fuss? In 1916, columnist Don Marquis created ‘archy’ the cockroach. A free-verse poet in its past life, it clambered on the newspaper’s typewriter at night to write about surviving New York with mehitabel, an alley cat who fancied herself to be Cleopatra reincarnated. He couldn’t master the shift key,…

Arnab Goswami and Barkha Dutt, journalists who occupy opposite ends of India’s media and political spectrum found themselves asking versions of the same horrendous question after a woman was violently murdered after sustained abuse and torture in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh. It gives some solace to witness such consensus driven by morality and humanity. NCRB reports…

Old teachers often narrate a humorous yet deeply pathetic tale about the condition and working  of teachers in India. It is said that during the great Churning of the Ocean (Samudra Manthan), the gods and demons realized the need for an honest, hardworking, and trustworthy person who could safeguard the precious objects emerging from the…

Elite clubs serve a networking purpose. But not when what it means to be elite doesn’t change with times There are dozens of Raj-era exclusive clubs in India. That, by itself, isn’t a problem. It is human nature to draw lines. Home, neighbourhood, nation are all lines with different degrees of exclusion. So, Delhi Gymkhana…

Hello and welcome to the 93rd edition of the Weekly Vine. This week we run the rule over the three Cs in the news: clubs, cockroaches, and CBSE answer-sheet mismatches. We also explain why the Pope is worried about Artificial Intelligence, why Tulsi Gabbard had to leave the Trump administration, and make an impassioned defence of…

Another digitised exam process brings grief. Why is change rolled out without stress-testing systems? Onscreen marking, offscreen trauma. Several Class 12 students, teenagers all, have exposed more than just the botch-up of mismatched answer sheets. This year, CBSE adopted an onscreen marking system. This entailed that paper-pen answer sheets were scanned; examiners marked digitised answer…