Opinion

Sudarshan Iyengar The New Education Policy announced after 34 years claims to make way for large scale transformational reforms in education on the foundational pillars of access, equity, quality, affordability and accountability. The announcement needs to be welcomed. The three outstanding features of the NEP...

Moin Qazi Digital finance finds itself at an inflection point as the world continues to tackle the socio-economic fallout of the Covid-19 crisis. The pandemic could be a game changer for digital financial services. It seems as if digital financial services may become and remain...

Bharat Jhunjhunwala Prime Minister Narendra Modi had promised to make Varanasi the Global Spiritual Capital, during his 2014 electoral campaign. The same can be done better for Ayodhya which is now at the centre of global attention with the construction of the Ram Temple. The...

Ramdas Roy Do students learn to respect the time of the teacher? Are they obedient and disciplined when it comes to actions such as spending their allotted time on the laptop as is now the case?  Do we, as parents, help the teachers with our...

Vali Nasr and Ariane Tabatabai Iran says it is negotiating a 25-years’ agreement with China encompassing trade, energy, infrastructure, telecommunications, and even military cooperation. For Teheran, the prospect of a strategic partnership with China comes at a critical time. The Iranian government has been confronting...

S Saraswathi Raj Bhavans became the venues for protests by members of the Congress party in many states on 27 July “to highlight the gravity of the issue and draw people’s attention to violations of the Constitution” in Rajasthan. The question of determining defection from...

Kevin Watkins “The beautiful thing about learning,” the great blues guitarist BB King once wrote, “is that no one can take it away from you.” Born and raised in poverty, King understood the value of education as a force for change. If only political leaders...

Melvin Durai What a year this has been. So many things seem to have gone wrong, mostly because of the coronavirus pandemic. If I were a scientist, I’d be hard at work, seeking a cure of some sort. But as a writer, there’s not much...

Dhurjati Mukherjee The MSMEs sector, regarded as the growth engine of the Indian economy, is contributing 5 per cent of the GDP. But due to the prolonged slowdown and the pandemic, most of the small and micro enterprises are struggling, given the recession in demand....

Shivaji Sarkar Indian agriculture is a complex mix. It has myriad problems and the solutions suggested are often not practical. Interestingly, the largest beneficiaries of the food dole to the 80 crore poor are the producers of the food grains! It is a dichotomy. Often,...