Editorial

The Gentleman Governor

THE HEAT, as they say, is on, especially in the capital. The resentment building up against the government, and police, is once again leading to bitter protests in the capital, yet again. Incidents—more rapes—are leading to dissent across the state. The governance, and its mouthpieces, are comin...

Cover Story

A Son of the on Emerging

How does one even start to explain what Bimal Jalan is? He is one of the most important political economists that India has seen. He may be fiercely concerned about nationalism but he is not anchored in any particular ideology. He is eminently practical in his approach to issues and crises and excee...

UP-TO-DATE

UPtoDATE

Delhi Reels From Rape Reports More Cases Taint the Capital’s Reputation PROTESTS\\ India’s capital continued to struggle with the label of being called the “rape capital” of the nation in May 2013 when two more prominent cases were brought to the forefront. One of them, the torture of a fiv...

Foriegn Despatches

...Expansion can continue, if public and private sectors work together”

THE INDIAN HIGHER education is in a major crisis—or, in fact, facing several crises at the same time. Over the past decade, there has been a large expansion of private providers, who now take care of about 60 per cent of the total provision. This has unbalanced higher education—by making the pro...

Social Agenda

Stay Safe on Social Sites

How to Protect your Privacy on the Social Web It’s the anachronism of our times, privacy on the social web. Everywhere you look, someone’s checking in their location and pictures of lunch!—each and every one leading the charge in the sharing revolution that the social web has brought upon us....

Platform1

Silent pictures

When a paint stroke speaks a thousand words WHAT PEOPLE ARE willing to consider literary—or even literate—is highly variable. For instance, I hear someone casually say, “This massmarket novel is not literature”, a statement that, in addition to being inaccurate at a purely definitionbased l...

Looking Back

A GENEALOGY OF SUCCESS

Anu Acharya, Founder of Hyderabad-based Ocimum Biosolutions, a genomics software and services company, delves deep into her past experiences to put out her formula for success When we began Ocimum about 12 to 13 years ago, I was a Physics graduate who had started a company in biomedics. Of course, ...

Issue1

Between A Rock And A Hard Place

The Land Acquisition Bill is especially controversial because of its centrality to a majority of Indians’ means of livelihood – agriculture. Moreover the Bill tries to address the undeniably complex question of who holds the right to access and profit from natural resources, including water, for...

Issue2

GM Crops:A Leap Ahead?

The debate on the introduction of genetically modified (GM) crops in India revolves around some of the fundamental concerns of our era: human and ecological health, food security, scientific freedom, governmental regulation and political incorruptibility. Moreover, the debate hits home our apprehens...

Platform2

Youth Matters

Evolving strategies to channel India’s ‘demographic dividend’ THE PAST YEARS have seen a spurt in the levels of activism on streets, in social media and public forums. A feature of these mobilisations is how many young faces are at the centre of the action. It is as though the sensibilities c...

Good Karma

Ekla Chalo Re

Aabid Surti, with his one man brigade called Drop Dead, is fixing every leaky tap which comes his way In a very Shah Rukh Khan movie-like moment, writer, painter, cartoonist and environmentalist, Aabid Surti declares: “When you work for the benefit of others, saari kayanath tumhe apani manzil se ...

Reading room

Lost Men

It is a hauntingly beautiful book written by one of the finest Indian writers of our times and is not the one to be missed Lost Men, I was—time and again— reminded of Enrique Vila Matas’ Bartleby & Co. The novel based on “writers of No” talks of authors who abandoned flourishing caree...

Reel life

Art of Life and Cinema

A tete-a-tete with 1980s Bollywood darling, Deepti Naval, on painting, priorities and tranquility There is a small sculpture of Durga that hangs on a wall of my home; it was gifted to us by someone I have no memory of. That remarkable face of the Goddess, with those big haunting eyes, stares at us ...

Hitchhikers Guide

The Spirit of Jaisalmer

A town that’s yet to turn into a tourist circus, Jaisalmer offers an idyllic refuge The best part about Jaisalmer is that it does not have its own airport as yet. Once it does, plane-loads of exotica-seeking tourists will swarm its golden deserts and yet another destination will have turned into ...