Opinion

Melvin Durai The International Gymnastics Federation has criticised Russian athlete Ivan Kuliak for wearing a ‘Z’ on his chest at a gymnastics World Cup event in Doha, Qatar. The 20-year-old gymnast had taped the ‘Z’ symbol to his leotard and wore it on the podium...

Melvin Durai Two middle-aged American men, Steve and Ralph, were discussing the Russian invasion of Ukraine and all the sanctions that had been imposed on Russia. The United States and its allies, for example, had frozen the bank accounts of many wealthy Russians. The European...

Nikunja Bihari Sahu The National Science Day is celebrated in India to reminisce the landmark discovery of the Raman Effect by eminent physicist Sir CV Raman February 28, 1928 and his subsequent felicitation of the Nobel Prize as the first Asian in Physics. The life...

Anwesh Satpathy In a review of Satyajit Ray’s ‘Apur Sansar’ (The World of Apu), the critic Dwight MacDonald castigated Ray for being “self-conscious.” MacDonald, along with many western critics of that time, didn’t consider Ray capable of handling the complexities of city life. This was...

Melvin Durai I haven’t stepped on a plane in almost a decade and I’m not eager to fly again anytime soon, largely because of all the animals I might encounter on a plane—and I’m not just referring to rude passengers. I’m mainly referring to other...

Bikash Narayan Mishra The global banking sector remained resilient and robust during the once-in-a-lifetime pandemic period of two years. High capital buffers and lower leverage enabled the global banks to carry out normal banking operations. The asset quality, however, has suffered marginally in some parts...

Bhaskar Nath Biswal Like other countries during the pandemic, India also faced the challenge to sustain the learning outcomes in schools and colleges, building skills and reskilling population, providing employment and continuity of livelihood to one of the largest labour forces in the world. The...

Melvin Durai I’m grateful to my mother for a lot of things, but one of the most important is that she urged me not to drink. Actually, ‘urged’ is not the right word. It was more like ‘forbade.’ My mother forbade me from drinking alcohol....

Santosh Kumar Mohapatra The Union Budget presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman for 2022-23 has evoked mixed reactions. A Budget is not evaluated in terms of schemes or some allocations only as revenues and outlay increase every year and any finance minister can have some...

Sarbeswar Padhan Odisha has lately made remarkable progress on the economic front as its growth rate has surpassed the national average in the last couple of decades. It has witnessed gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate of 7.1 per cent against the national average of...