Instant triple talaq – which the supreme court banned recently, while asking the government to legislate against the decadent practice – is something Muslim women had no doubt wanted to speak up against but couldn’t muster strength to bring about progressive change. It took five Muslim women, who received little if any support from the community and were opposed by religious l
In a candid conversation with diplomats from 50-odd countries recently, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat is learnt to have drawn a distinction between Hinduism and Hindu-ness. Bhagwat`s considered view, according to reports, was that while Hinduism can be guided by certain rigidities, codes and dogmas, Hindu-ness is a liberated concept, free from such limitations. Here`s what he is report
How did you get the idea to go for ISO certification? What did you want to achieve when you mooted this idea? It is my firm belief that work must be accomplished in an organised manner and give a sense of satisfaction. But one cannot evaluate their shortcomings. Evaluation can only be done by others. When you go for ISO compliance, others evaluate you. Many ti
We are already in an age where some people have a job, some have work and a lucky few have both. ‘Job’ and ‘work’ are used interchangeably. Within a fast changing urban context, however, there is a fundamental distinction between the two. A job is a product of a classical urbanism whose end state is a city. It’s a city that’s always powered by a large scale u
Journalist Gauri Lankesh`s murder in Bengaluru on Tuesday has quickly turned into a war of ideologies with intelligentsia and media jumping the gun to blame the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the RSS for the murder even before the investigating agencies have had the time to open a case file. That reminds me of this passage from Fyodor Dostoevsky`s classic, "Crime and Puni
India pays an income penalty of 9 to 10 percent as the workforce was stunted during their childhood, showed the National Nutrition Strategy released by NITI Aayog. The government think-tank says that with a benefit to cost ratio of 16:1 for 40 low and middle-income countries, there is a well-recognized rationale, globally, for investing in nutrition. The recently published
Privacy is now a fundamental right! But are you baffled by the supreme court’s ruling on Right to Privacy? Centre for Internet and Society’s executive director Sunil Abraham decodes the judgment for us. What does the SC judgment on privacy mean for the common man? Cit
The supreme court has held the practice of triple talaq as unconstitutional. This takes us back to the Shah Bano case and the question of reforming the Muslim personal law. Had it not been overturned by Rajiv Gandhi in 1986, how would it have impacted the Muslim society? The year 1986 played a very important role as the issue of triple talaq became
L`affaire Antrix Devas no longer makes newspaper headlines, but little snippets about it keep surfacing periodically. It has a strange history, starting from 2003, has seen three PMOs and two enquiries, first by former cabinet secretary BK Chaturvedi, then by former chief vigilance commisioner Pratyush Sinha, and then a CBI enquiry. Strangely again, as newspaper reports say, the CBI`s pre
Bimal Roy – synonymous with the aesthetics of cinema… evolved into a legend in his lifetime, writes Shoma A Chatterji in her book which is an in-depth account of the great filmmaker’s work in Indian cinema. She chooses to use the word ‘cinema’ because it “encompasses an entire socio-cultural history” and so did Roy’s movies. His career span from
In 2007, Shyamlal Yadav, then a senior journalist with India Today magazine, decided to use the RTI law, enacted only two years ago, to find out the details of foreign trips made by union ministers. Foreign travel is expensive, time consuming and, more often than not, does not serve any real purpose. Yadav wanted to know which minister travelled how much. It took him 59 applications and appeals
Central Electronics Limited (CEL) was established in 1974 – when the world of electronics was a rarefied field. This public sector enterprise made continuos losses for many years, but for the past four years it has been making profits. Its CMD, Dr Nalin Shinghal, speaks with Praggya Guptaa about this transformation and future plans. How
Pakistani leaders must be feeling frustrated after US president Donald Trump warned Islamabad that America would not remain a silent spectator if Pakistan continued to be a safe haven for terrorists. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson also said Pakistan could lose the privilege of being a US ally if it “failed to change their posture”. These two statements mirrored New Delhi’s l
Gone are the days of Lal Bahadur Shastri, Madhav Rao Scindia and Nitish Kumar who hogged the limelight and even moral space by resigning after train accidents that claimed human lives. Railway minister Suresh Prabhu is made of a different stuff. Despite a series of accidents under his watch, he is content to punish officials, forcing a member of the railway board and senior officials to go on
To get to a point where anything quantum must move from a theoretical possibility to an applied end state requires the use of bizarre props where every leap of logic is also a leap of faith. It stands steadfast even when the intent is to prove the sheer absurdity of it all. Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger used an imagined cat for a thought experiment with an intent to prove that quant
Dr Kenneth E Thorpe, a professor of health policy and management at Emory University in the US and also the chairman of Partnership to Fight Chronic Diseases (PFCD), says that the government alone cannot do everything. “They don’t have the resources and capacity. So we have to find ways to engage private sector,” Dr Thorpe told Governance Now during his visit to India wher
It has been a year since you took charge of the new ministry. What is your biggest worry as in charge of education in India? My first priority – and that reflects my worry as well – is to improve the quality of government schools. It’s a tough job. Unfortunately, government schools which were much better earlier have deteriorated in two decades. That h
India and China are not prepared for a war over Doklam plateau in Bhutan, assessed JNU professor Srikanth Kondapalli, a well-known China expert who is back from Beijing and Shanghai after spending two months there. In a telephonic interview with Shankar Kumar, Kondapalli said both countries will not opt for war as it will be catastrophic and millions would die.
India began her tryst with destiny almost seventy years ago, in the midnight intervening 14th and 15th August 1947. The country the British left behind was but a collection of over 600 native states and principalities, driven by internal differences, caste prejudices and severe social infirmities. The idea of India was yet to emerge. The literacy rate was 18% and the average life expectancy was
Only that exceptional logician and philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein could have brought forth the limitations of human intellect in such a pithy and matter of fact manner: the limits of my language are the limits of my world. ‘What is quantum urbanism?’ is a question that has the same quality as Wittgenstein’s deep reading of the human condition. In exploring that question, we w
