Worldcrunch
The author’s native country, India, is both a burgeoning world power and part of the Global South. And yet, its ambitious Prime Minister Narendra Modi hasn’t dared to say a single word against Israel’s actions in Gaza and the West Bank, even when countries in South America and Africa have severed their diplomatic relationships with Israel.
Op-Ed INDIA — I don’t watch many Netflix programs, but a series recommended by my cousin has struck me like a bolt of lightning. Called How to Become a Tyrant, it presents what it calls “a playbook for absolute power.” Much of it is tongue-in-cheek, yet it’s based on the actual tactics and strategies used by Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Mao Zedong, Muammar Gaddafi, Kim Il-sung, Idi Amin and Saddam Hussein. So if you take it seriously, it tells you what you must do if you aspire to be India’s tanashah. And the remarkable thing is it feels uncannily like […]
From Malaysia, where she now lives, writer Mythily Nair laments the cold attitutes of some fellow diaspora members toward the catastrophic second wave washing over India right now.
Is this a movement of women from India’s liberal campuses against a new citizenship law targeting the country’s Muslim minority? Or does it run much deeper?
NEW DELHI — While growing up we were subjected, like most school-going children in this country, to rather boring texts in class. The texts were taught by teachers who were even less interested in the excruciatingly painful narratives than we were. The results of such exchanges were obvious: we remember little of what we were taught. Amid all our vagrant behavior, when we were trying our level best to – in the words of Mark Twain – not allow school to interfere with our education, there were things that were somehow imbibed and some of them have remained embedded in […]
NEW DELHI — The great Indian electoral war of 2019 ended with Narendra Modi securing a historic mandate to rule India for another five years. The divided opposition should not have expected anything better as it had no national narrative, no credible agenda and no alternative leadership to contain a colossal opponent like Modi. It is ironic that in a parliamentary democracy like India, people have voted for the “leader” Modi, rather than members of parliament. No doubt, the president of his BJP party, Amit Shah displayed a shrewd strategy that helped secure this victory. Yet he still has a […]
Two centuries ago, widows were sometimes strapped to the funeral pyres of their husbands and burned alive, historian Tanika Sarkar explains.
Indian authorities are prepared to spruce up the world famous monument and restore its ancient hue — provided they can figure out just which shade of pale it really was.
NEW DELHI — A recent photo posted on Facebook by the Secretary of the Department of Science and Technology, Ashutosh Sharma, featured 41 heads of Indian educational and research institutions. It didn’t take long for Shobana Narasimhan, a professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research, Bengaluru, to point out that not a single one was a woman. Only 20% of tenured faculty positions in Indian educational and research institutions are held by women. Other numbers are even more skewed: only 12 women are Fellows of the Indian Academy of Sciences (there are 197 men); only 3 women […]
HINDUSTAN TIMES, FIRST POST (India), BBC (UK) Worldcrunch MUMBAI – As many as 40 people were killed, including 11 children, in the collapse of a building illegally under construction near Mumbai, police said Friday. Dozens of people were injured in the disaster late Thursday night, The Hindustan Times reported, as authorities continued searching for others […]
LA STAMPA (Italy) Worldcrunch PARIS – These are not the sorts of “islands” where you’d plan your next tropical vacation. Located in vast areas of the world’s Oceans, by some accounts comprising an area twice as big as Texas, they are home to neither human nor animal life. Instead these islands are instead simply monstrious […]
HINDUSTAN TIMES, ECONOMIC TIMES (India) NEW YORK TIMES (USA) Worldcrunch NEW DELHI — In a landmark decision on Monday, India’s Supreme Court rejected a application by pharmaceutical giant Novartis for a major cancer drug patent, a ruling that could clear the way for cheaper generic versions of medicines to continue to be distributed around the […]
HINDUSTAN TIMES, TELEGRAPH INDIA, TIMES OF INDIA (India) Worldcrunch CALCUTTA- Author Salman Rushdie’s visit to Calcutta to promote the film adapted from his novel “Midnight’s Children” has been cancelled, due to security issues. Salman Rushdie by futureshape Rushdie, who spent years in hiding after his 1988 novel The Satanic Verses earned him a fatwa death […]
GURGAON – Shoes are not allowed on the foam mat. We are surrounded by the noise of fists hitting the leather of the punching bags, the high-paced breathing of two fighters training one-on-one. We are in Gurgao, in the suburbs southwest of New Delhi, a snapshot of the fast-developing India with its shiny new buildings. […]
LA PAZ – Indigenous people armed with slings and wearing traditional ch’ullu headgear surround President Evo Morales. Soldiers pivot a cannon. A sergeant comes to present arms… If the scene wasn’t taking place on a red carpet in front of La Paz“s biggest mall, it would have been easy to mistake Bolivia for a country […]
RIO DE JANEIRO – She carries the weight of her people on her shoulders and that makes her beautiful. With her seashell and pearl necklace around the neck, her tanned tattooed skin, her feathers of different sizes and her bright and vividly colored skeins, Vangri Kaingang is a proud native and she’s not afraid to […]