Opinion

Blog: 20 Years On, My LSR Memories Of Harassment Have Not Faded

If our answer to unsafe streets is to ask women to stop using them, we haven't solved the safety problem.

Opinion | Bihar Assault, Hisar Marriage Ban: Who'll Stop The Guardians Of Indian 'Culture'?

Why exactly does the sight of a young couple seeking a bit of alone time somewhere tend to particularly provoke a certain kind of Indian men?

Opinion: LSR, Astha Kunj And The Unfinished Fight For Women's Right To Public Spaces

Last year, five young women from the Cities for Youth Programme in Ajmer decided to set up Apno Thiyo, pop-up chai stops, not just to serve tea, but to create a safe, open, and public space for women to gather and chat. "It was a case of making women visible over something as simple and basic as hanging out over a cup of tea, an image we usually...

Opinion | The Trump-Xi Summit, And India's Many Worries Of Its Own

Washington and Beijing may have chosen coexistence over confrontation. For India, that could be both a relief and a warning.

Opinion | IIT Suicide Case, And Why India's Brightest Students Feel So Trapped

Every tragedy produces an instinct to act, and the quickest action is almost always the most visible one. When a young person dies on a campus, administrators reach for what can be removed, locked or punished. Fixtures come out of hostel rooms. Terraces are sealed. Disciplinary committees convene. These steps answer the question of how a student di...

Opinion | China Claims It Has Cut Troops At The Indian Border. But The Math Doesn't Add Up

The reduction likely has more to do with the deployment along the LAC than the total strength active in the region

Opinion | China Is No Longer Waiting For Trump To Set The Rules. And He Knows It

America's old diplomatic tricks with China won't work any longer. Because China has changed, and so has its ambitions.

Opinion | The AI Revolution: Why Humanity Should Not Be Afraid to Move Forward

There is growing unease about the speed at which artificial intelligence is developing. Some of the world's most influential technology leaders and thinkers, from Bill Gates and Elon Musk to Yuval Noah Harari and leading figures in the AI industry, have warned that humanity needs greater caution, stronger safeguards and, in some circumstances, a pa...

The Conversation India Is Starting To Have About Childhood

Indian preschoolers average 2.7 hours of screen time - far above paediatric guidelines. The Bachpan Manao campaign calls for a simple shift: less screen, more play

Opinion | As UN Interviews Its Next Chief, The Interviewers Have Some Explaining To Do

On the panel sit governments whose wars, vetoes, and unpaid dues have helped make the organisation ineffective.

Opinion | Trump-Xi Meet: What China Can Give America, And What India Could Lose

If Trump can secure some of what he wants directly from Beijing, India's immediate value to Washington could change in particular areas.

Opinion | National Or Regional Parties - Who Really Stands To Gain From Simultaneous Polls?

The idea of holding Lok Sabha and state Assembly elections together - popularly called "One Nation, One Election" (ONOE) - is back at the centre of India's political agenda. The Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) examining the Constitution (129th Amendment) Bill, 2024, has been holding consultations across states, with its chairman PP Chaudhary cl...

Opinion | 'Blackmail' Diplomacy: Why India Can't Be A Pawn In US' War On Russia

The new sanctions bill is both blackmail and hypocritical: blackmail because it seeks to change India's principled stand, and hypocritical because the US has provided exemptions to others, and itself.

Blog | Katrina Kaif, And The Very Indian Problem Of Too Much 'Audacity'

The remarkable thing about many Indian trolls is not that they have opinions, but that they expect - get this, Katrina Kaif, no less - to care about them.

The Big Screen's Second Act: Why The Premature Obituary Of Television Misses The Bigger Story

For more than a decade, television has been living under a death sentence. Smartphones have become ubiquitous, streaming has moved into the mainstream, audiences have fragmented, and advertising expenditure has migrated towards digital media. More recently, 'cord-cutting' has appeared to provide the final nail in television's coffin. There is on...

Opinion: Whoever Wins In Court, Tata Has Already Lost Something

Two stories are being told about what Tata stands for, and only one of them can survive.

Rahul Gandhi's Chhatron Ki Goonj Meets Reality At Delhi University Students Union Polls

Until four days prior, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) had been fighting its toughest student union election since 2012 across both the North and South campuses

Narendra Modi@25: Disrupt, Deliver, Dominate

There is a trend of sorts in Indian families to celebrate milestone birthdays, anniversaries, and occasions. The 25th straight year in public life as an administrator is something certainly worth celebrating for Prime Minister Narendra Modi. But sometimes these milestone moments are also an occasion for us to trace back the journey to where it star...

Modi@25: Building The Foundations Of A New India

It was October 2001, and Narendra Modi had just been sworn in as the Chief Minister of Gujarat. One of the first questions that he put to his team was whether bureaucrats knew how a sewing machine was procured by rural women. A key reform he brought in was to launch a large-scale cattle inoculation campaign that actually took cattle care to the doo...

Blog | I Lost My Entire Family In Kanishka Bombing. 41 Years Later, Canada Wants The Case Closed

We made the trek through tragedy to search for people in Cork, where I spent 25 days sifting through bodies and body parts in a makeshift morgue to identify our loved ones.