Opinion

Devdutt Pattanaik As a child in Mumbai, I watched Rajan Uncle perform Chakyar koothu. My parents were economic migrants from Odisha. My neighbours were from Maharashtra, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. And we got to see cultural performances that no one in Odisha, or Maharashtra, would...

Dhanada K Mishra The late Prof Al Bartlett, a nuclear physicist and professor emeritus of University of Colorado at Boulder, once said: “The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.” The coronavirus crisis provides the best case to...

Priya Ranjan Sahu Finally, the nation has heaved a collective sigh of relief. The four men convicted in the 2012 gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old Delhi girl, widely known as ‘Nirbhaya’, were hanged to death March 20. In the recent times, no crime...

Santosh Kumar Mohapatra CoVID-19 threatens to destroy many lives and the world economy as such. The World Economic Forum (WEF) has termed it a pandemic in the age of inequality. India has declared it a ‘national disaster’. Many states, including Odisha, have declared it as...

Devdutt Pattanaik Harappan civilisation, which thrived over 4,000 years ago, had seals of as-yet-unidentified goddesses emerging from trees, and goddesses riding tigers. Vedic religion that thrived 3,000 years ago, however, was primarily a masculine religion dominated by worship of Indra, Varuna, Agni and Soma, even...

Piyush Ranjan Rout In 1948, Bhubaneswar became the modern capital of Odisha. It was the first planned capital city of independent India. Its plan kept in mind the convenience of women who would reside in it. Every facility, be it healthcare centre or market, was...

Sabyasachee Dash & Bejon Kumar Misra US President Donald J Trump’s recent India visit could not have been timed better. It was speculated that the main agenda of discussion during the visit would be strategic partnership, terrorism and means to counter the rapid rise of...

Nikunja Bihari Sahu Holi, the festival of colours, is also a playground of chemistry. The colours people playing Holi use are industrial dyes mixed with different inorganic bases that can have detrimental effects on our body and the environment. Four types of Holi colours are...

Guru Prasad Mohanta The World Health Organisation (WHO) recently raised the global risk assessment of the China’s new coronavirus (CoVID-19) to the highest level because of increasing incidences and increasing number of affected countries. The virus has killed more than 3,200 people and infected more...

Santosh Kumar Mohapatra Equal rights for men and women is a fundamental principle in the United Nations Charter, and it was adopted in 1945 by world leaders. Women’s rights in particular include the right to live free from violence, slavery, discrimination and privileges to be...