Diwali fireworks: A national fragility indicator
Defiant bursting of firecrackers by some sections, besides fanning debilitating pollution, is a way to fight what they say is curtailing Hindu customs.
TK Arun
TK Arun is a Senior Journalist and Columnist based in Delhi.
Global Impacts of The Killings in Gaza
The war will have an impact on societies worldwide with a rise in anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and generalized xenophobia, weakening democracy in general.
Around 10,000 Palestinian residents of Gaza have been killed, about 40 percent of them children, in Israeli attacks on Gaza so far. The slaughter continues. This will have an impact, less directly lethal but no less malign, on societies around the world, with a rise in anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and generalized xenophobia, strengthening conspiracy theorists and extreme right-wing parties, and weakening democracy, in general.
Managing fires without harming farmers
SENIOR officials of the government are certainly very different from quantum particles. Yet, both have a common quality: their state changes when they are observed — the very act of observation induces the change. Now that the Supreme Court has ordered the authorities of north Indian states to put an end to stubble burning, leaving it to them to figure out how, we can expect to see some action. Here are a few suggestions as to how to act on the court directive without creating a conflict with farmers, who need to clear their fields of the crop residue in order to plant the next crop.
China’s Manufacturing Resilience: Insights from Industrial Robots and AI
Many analysts would appear to be in a hurry to write off China as the world’s leading manufacturing powerhouse, based on the US desire to diversify supply chains away from China or, at least, adopt a China plus One strategy, the onset of population decline in China, the sharp rises in Chinese wages and the troubles that have, of late, pulled down China’s growth rate. It would be wise to hasten slowly, going by insights from the International Federation of Robotics’ World Robotics Report 2023, particularly, its volume devoted to industrial robots, and the global trend of arming robots with artificial intelligence of assorted kinds.
Influence of Sheikhs over Gaza
Like Israeli hardliners, Arab regimes don’t want a democratic Palestinian state. Such a state may well threaten govts defined by the kings-emirs-theocracy formula.
As Israel pounds the Gaza Strip, targeting Hamas after its terror strike against Israel that killed a reported 1,300 people, mostly civilians including children, and the stage is set for mass casualties in Gaza, where do the rights and wrongs of the Israel-Palestine conflict fall?
Some propositions of America’s Declaration of Independence are couched in universal terms that offer a framework to answer that question, one that resonates with Indian foreign policy as well. All peoples are entitled to separate and equal status, and, within a people, everyone is entitled to the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
The Persistence of India’s Angel Tax: A Menace to Startups and the Need for Reform
Angel and tax combine as naturally as do gold and rust, or, say, deer and hyena. That, of course, is in the real world. In the world of Indian taxation, things are a bit different. The so-called Angel Tax, introduced in 2012, has undergone various bits of cosmetic surgery, in order to make this grotesque mutant look less threatening, but it remains a menace to Indian startups. The latest attempt to soothe frayed nerves in the startup universe has been a clarification that bars the tax from haunting the premises of startups recognised by the department for promotion of industry and internal trade. Instead of pulling a fang or blunting a claw of this tax monster, what needs to be done is to slay it once and for all