The Bihar results were out even before polling began: Bihar has lost, whoever the victor in the Assembly elections. With well over one crore women being paid Rs 10,000 crore by the incumbent government, supposedly for self-employment ventures, and promises of future fiscal support for such enterprises, the political economy of state handouts had been entrenched before polling began.
The rich make competitive noise, pollute the air, switch on their air purifiers and air conditioners, and leave the less well-off to choke, wheeze and sicken
Diwali is no longer the gentle festival of lamps, gifting, good food and shared celebration. Diwali is a now a raging battleground of class aggression, in which the rich compete to show they are one up on their neighbours, bursting more copious amounts of crackers and setting off ever more spectacular fireworks. They have their hours of fun, and withdraw indoors to feast and party in rooms where air purifiers and air conditioners do double duty to scrub the air of the filth they have just injected into it.
It was excellent journalism on the part of Pranshu Verma and Ravi Nair to do the Washington Post story on the government having persuaded LIC to invest in Adani at a time when global investors were hesitant in the wake of an American case against Adani for having bribed officials in India and for having raised funds from American investors on false pretences. Kudos to the two, and to WaPo for publishing the story that Indian publications would have been reluctant to.
Two years and two days after the terrorist attack by Hamas fighters from the Gaza Strip that killed around 1,200 Israelis, and the beginning of Israel’s brutal retaliation, that leading genocide scholars and a UN Commission have labelled genocide, a ceasefire plan appears to be taking hold.
Tk Arun The government should mandate traceability of every ingredient used in the pharma industry by deploying tokenisation facilities of the blockchain. iStock.com We see US President Donald Trump as an enemy of Indian exports, including of our prized pharma products. But a bigger…
Few things are as certain as death, taxes, and massive, rising demand for power from the climate compulsion to electrify transport, heating and cooking, and from data centres that store and process data for AI and other software services. It’s foolish to believe it is enough to increase renewable and nuclear capacity.