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Public or private sector? Where is the grass greener? In these enlightened times, apparently on both sides. Sources have informed DKB that the Centre is actively considering hiring a private sector executive for the top post at the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC). The...

In an interesting recent article in the Times Literary Supplement, the Ukrainian novelist, essayist, and poet Oksana Zabuzhko took Western readers to task for not recognising Russia’s barbarism. Too many people, Zabuzhko argued, believe that the great Russian writers, such as Fyodor Dostoevsky, expressed humanistic...

It is disconcerting, indeed, the way Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has fuelled the ambitions of autocratic rulers who seem to be too tempted to take a leaf out of the book of an autocrat like President Vladimir Putin. It is an open secret how China’s...

When war combines with a pandemic, it is, indeed, a recipe for disaster. Almost every country is having a taste of it, but Singapore is paying the worst price as its staple diet – chicken-rice – is faced with the threat of disappearing from the...

It is incredible to hear that the Emirate of Qatar has demanded a public apology from the Government of India. The Indian ambassador to Qatar, Deepak Mittal, had been summoned to the foreign office where he was reportedly given a note in which Qatar had...

My initial column writing for many years was for newspapers in Pakistan. I have visited it many times, have spoken at its universities and its literature festivals often and know the place intimately also through study over the last three decades. What is striking to...

There are plenty of babus who have switched to politics and have enjoyed a good run. But not all babus who had a meteoric rise to political stardom can maintain that streak. The case of Janata Dal (U)’s RCP Singh seems to be headed that...

The world order is at risk of a lasting split, with the United States and its allies on one side, and China and its partners on the other. As US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen noted at an Atlantic Council event last month, this outcome is...

Food shortages are beginning to cast a shadow over the world. One long-term factor is the warming of our planet, which has slowly destroyed agricultural land. But the proximate cause of greatest concern is the war in Ukraine and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Black Sea...

It is not often that a novel winning a coveted international prize becomes a binding force seeking to bridge gaps between communities, nations, religions, genders and even languages. When it does, it sends into raptures lovers of literature as much as political-religious-linguistic activists who are...