Opinion

Nikunja Bihari Sahu After the Vikram Lander of Chandrayaan-2 crash landed while making a soft descent on Moon, ISRO bounced back to demonstrate its capability with the success of Cartosat-3, November 27. The satellite is India’s most advanced Earth imaging satellite built so far; it...

RK Pattnaik The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) in its resolution December 5, 2019, kept the policy repo rate unchanged at 5.15 per cent with a unanimous decision. This is in sharp variance with the market expectation of a 25 basis points reduction. On the face...

DC Pathak Uddhav Thackeray’s roller-coaster ride to chief ministership of Maharashtra reaffirms the supremacy of the democratic principle in electoral politics that a party or a coalition commanding majority in the legislative house alone should be constitutionally allowed to assume power. But, the Maharashtra episode...

Saeed Naqvi Ellen Barry of the ‘New York Times’ walked into my study and, wasting no time, came straight to the point. What did I know about the last “Begum of Oudh”? She had a quizzical, amused look like she knew what the answer would...

Manoj Das Safety is a highly subjective condition. What might appear safe to someone, might not be perceived as safe by someone else. Nonetheless, every sentient being on this planet craves safety. Public safety as a construct in modern day India needs to be examined...

Sudha Devi Nayak Salman Rushdie, the internationally acclaimed writer, won the Booker Prize for ‘Midnight’s Children’ in 1981, the Booker of Bookers in 1993 for the same novel and again the Best of the Booker in 2008. His novels have also been shortlisted for the...

Santosh Kumar Mohapatra Utkal University, an institution with a distinguished history, celebrated its platinum jubilee recently. A suggestion that came up at the celebration was that the institution should be made into a world class university. However, the characteristics that distinguish a university as a...

SN Misra The decision of the Supreme Court to order a floor test in the Maharashtra Assembly could not have come on a more apt day; it was the 70th birthday of the Constitution. Justice Marshall had observed: “A constitution is framed for ages to...

Santosh Kumar Mohapatra Though the government is yet to acknowledge the severity of economic downturn, the Indian economy is facing a perfect storm, beset by a combination of cyclical and structural factors that make recovery doubly difficult. Damp consumer demand and private investment, decline of...

SN Misra In the long festering dispute between two religious communities over a piece of land measuring 1,500 square yards at Ayodhya, the Supreme Court was to decide whether the spiritual belief of Hindus would prevail over the temporal reality of a mosque built in...