Opinion

Arup Kumar Dutta Let me begin this piece by reiterating a personal experience. Some years back, in an interactive session with students of a Delhi school, a youngster asked me: “Why do some of the young people in your books have such funny sounding names?”...

Gokul Patnaik The whole country has been in turmoil for the last few weeks because the farmers are agitated. Lakhs of farmers are on the streets and Delhi, the national capital, is under siege. The bone of contention has been three farm laws which the...

Melvin Durai Akshay Kumar is not just a Bollywood star — he’s an “international megastar,” according to a press release sent out recently by a UK-based public relations firm. This reminds me of all the press releases I’ve seen about professors or scientists who are...

Shivaji Sarkar The farmers’ issue is getting both interesting and intriguing. With the new farm laws, foreign investors are bringing in more money and funding for warehousing is also increasing, though the farmer gets low returns. In the talks between the Government and farmer representatives,...

The BJP has distanced itself from the remarks by the Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant that India has been “too much of a democracy” to allow for reforms, which he career bureaucrat categorised as “bold”. Officers trying to keep the ruling party in good humour,...

Josef Joffe German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) has ruled the 71-year-old Federal Republic for a total of 50 years. When she steps down next fall after 16 years in office, it is safe to assume that another Christian Democrat will succeed her....

Bharat Jhunjhunwala A report by McKinsey Global Institute says that there is a shortage of 8.5 crore skilled workers having higher secondary education and above in the developed countries; while there is an excess of 9.5 crore unskilled workers having primary education in the developed...

Dhanada K Mishra Odisha made news recently for an unusual final test to choose vice-chancellors for several universities in the state. The shortlisted candidates - all presumably highly qualified, experienced and senior academicians - were handed over a question paper as they were waiting presumably...

Sudha Devi Nayak ‘La Peste’ or The Plague is the story of Oran, a French prefecture in the Algerian coast, told through the lens of the doctor narrator, Bernard Rieux, an unbeautiful place, “Treeless, glamourless, soulless” where people are chiefly interested in matters mercenary, living...

Melvin Durai I was happy to hear that Ranjitsinh Disale, a primary school teacher in Maharashtra, has been awarded the 2020 Global Teacher Prize. The prize, sponsored by the Varkey Foundation in partnership with UNESCO, comes with enough money to change a teacher’s life: Rs...