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The BJP government went into 2019 with a lot of energy and momentum. The electoral victory in May that year was decisive and rewarded the Prime Minister with more seats than he had secured in 2014. With the confidence of that mandate, and the idea...

The premature repatriation of P Amudha from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) to her parent Tamil Nadu cadre last month went relatively unnoticed despite her high profile as the additional secretary. What’s intriguing about the episode is that Amudha, considered one of the brightest IAS...

The Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana famously warned that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” But sometimes even those who can recall the past have a selective memory and draw the wrong conclusions. This is how the global policy response to...

The world population has just reached the eight billion mark prompting the United Nations to warn of more hardships coming, especially in regions already plagued by resource scarcity due to climate change. In the words of John Wilmoth, Director of the UN’s Population Division, the...

The COP27 climate summit in Egypt has shown signs of hope amid frustration among scientists that the developed countries are not really serious about efforts to bring down the level of carbon emissions and the temperature. A happy development is the breakthrough agreement to provide...

The world can breathe a little more easily now since the two great powers – the US and China – have decided to call a truce and give up the path of brinkmanship. At least an illusion has been created to this effect. The optimists...

A newspaper earlier this year reported that print media advertising had grown to Rs.16,000 crore in 2021, rising from Rs. 12,000 crore in 2020. This year, it would be Rs. 18,000 crore, the report said, with newspapers and magazines getting a share of 20% of...

The Uttarakhand government has moved swiftly to revoke the recent ban announced by Uttarakhand Ayurveda and Unani Licensing Authority on the production of five products of yoga guru Baba Ramdev. A fresh order issued by Uttarakhand drug regulator Dr GCN Jangapangi now states that the...

Just as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has highlighted Europe’s dangerous dependence on fossil fuels, increasingly frequent and intense climate-driven weather events are highlighting the death and destruction that fossil-fuel dependence has wrought. Understandably, political and public pressure to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, move away from insecure...

The misplaced confidence of RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das may have made him gloat over the INR strengthening because it went up 63 paise against the dollar one fine day recently. But then it crashed again the very next day. It is obvious India’s economy is...