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By Pramod K Nayar Girish Karnad, one of our most significant playwrights, pondered on the intricacies of transposed heads in Hayavadana. From a different context, Thomas Mann’s ‘The Transposed Heads’ (1940), set in India, was a precursor text. Mann and Karnad’s exploration of identity and belonging are not simply myth reworked, at least not since […]
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By Adrianus Harsawaskita If the ancient Greeks are to be believed, the rivalry between the current great powers, America and China, will lead to war. American political scientist, Graham Allison popularised the situation as ‘Thucydides’s Trap’. In a 2013 article for the New York Times, he lamented the “dynamic inherent when a rising power becomes […]
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By Jabin T Jacob The Ukraine invasion might not quite be Russia’s last hurrah, but the frailties of a declining power are becoming ever more apparent. The failure of the Russians to achieve a swift victory only confirms a trend for superpowers: even with determination and military superiority, victory, if at all, is a hard […]
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By Siddiq Wahid The world is at an inflection point. The war in Ukraine shows no signs of abating, and the principals in the ‘new’ cold war, are asking other states to choose a side. The challenges for India are daunting. How can it contribute to world events in proportion to its demographic bulk, its […]
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By Dr Oruganty Prasada Rao The buzzword the world over nowadays is ‘phase-out coal’. The idea is to limit the rise in global temperature to 2 degrees Celsius, preferably 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared with pre-industrial levels, as per the Paris agreement on climate change. What is wrong with coal Coal is a fossil fuel like […]
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By Deepak Ray Rising competition for many of the world’s important crops is sending increasing amounts toward uses other than directly feeding people. These competing uses include making biofuels; converting crops into processing ingredients, such as livestock meal, hydrogenated oils and starches; and selling them on global markets to countries that can afford to pay […]
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By Pramod K Nayar Media are conduits for communication between A and B. The very idea of a conduit for communication presupposes not just the possibility of a connection but a prior disconnection. Thus, A communicates with B, because A and B are disconnected, individual and separate. One of the uses that media forms like […]
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By Seela Subba Rao The Centre in June 2021 approved an increase in Minimum Support Price (MSP) for all mandated kharif crops for the marketing season 2021-22. The highest absolute increase in MSP over the previous year was recommended for sesamum (Rs 452 per quintal) followed by tur and urad Rs 300 per quintal each. […]
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By Santhi Kumari A tree with strong roots can withstand the most violent storm, but the tree can’t grow roots just as the storm appears on the horizon – Dalai Lama A golden chapter has opened in the greening initiative of Telangana; with lakhs of people from various sections of society – from people’s representatives […]
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By Arun Sinha Prashant Kishor, who won great fame as an election strategist in the past eight years, has sprung a surprise on the nation: he would no longer be an election strategist but a ‘political activist’. That is a significant turn in his career, but whether that will mark a significant turn in Indian […]
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By Gavin Brown, Richard Whittle, Stuart Mills If you had invested £100 ($122) in the cryptocurrency Luna a month ago, you might have been quietly confident you’d made a sensible bet. But Luna’s value has since fallen drastically – on May 13 almost turning zero. Luna was by no means the only victim in a […]
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By Dr Vanishree Joseph, Dr NV Madhuri The French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir, who laid the foundation for the modern feminist movement, said ‘Representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with the absolute truth”. Also, history is […]
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By Cecilia Rikap, Bengt-Åke Lundvall Big Tech companies and the Chinese and US governments are embroiled in a complex relationship of harmony and conflict. We are all at the mercy of the outcome. “Simply put, they have too much power,” US Congressman David Cicilline said of American Big Tech in a 2020 congressional hearing. That […]
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By Mansi Goyal, Dr Moitrayee Das You must have heard about the mid-life crisis that people experience in their 40s, 50s and 60s, but did you hear about an early-life crisis that young students in their 20s experience? No, there is no such term like ‘early-life crisis’ because according to society, your youth should be […]
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By Stefan Wolff, Tatyana Malyarenko Russians gathered on May 9 for the annual Victory Day celebrations, a hugely symbolic commemoration of Nazism’s defeat in the second world war. Elsewhere in the world, there is general agreement that Russia’s military has so far failed to achieve the strategic territorial gains that would have allowed Vladimir Putin […]
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By Dr K Srinivasa Rao The geopolitical storm due to the war between Russia and Ukraine overwhelmed the revival of the economy from the pandemic. Some early signs of data on high-frequency indicators provide the comfort of reaching the pre-pandemic levels except in the high contact industry. However, the loss of productivity has been immense […]
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By Dr Vanishree Joseph, Dr N V Madhuri The number of people forcibly displaced as a result of conflict, humanitarian crises, persecution, violence and human rights violations touched 82.4 million by the end of 2020, according to UN Security Council data. This is the highest number on record and more than double the level of […]
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By Alexander Gillespie There could be no better example of the United Nations’ failure to live up to its founding ideals than the recent visit by Secretary-General António Guterres to Russia. Attempting to calm the dangerous war in Ukraine, he obtained nothing of significance. No peace deal, no blue helmeted peacekeepers in the warzone keeping […]
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By B Yerram Raju Several economists, in the wake of the Russia-Ukraine war and the rise in global inflation index, have been talking of recession. It is important to understand the meaning of recession. It occurs when there is a contraction of demand for goods and services consecutively for two quarters; employment falls precipitously; consumption […]
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By Jennifer Ellen Good There is something unprecedented and important in the recent Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC): degrowth. Two of the IPCC’s working groups — those focused on climate change impacts and on mitigation — use the economic term to discuss policies that are key to reducing the impacts […]
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By Pramod K Nayar One of the most celebrated photographs that had the (mis)fortune to be withdrawn from official exhibits was Richard Drew’s “Falling Man”. Drew, entirely by accident, captured the man falling/leaping off the World Trade Centre (WTC) on 9/11. Drew’s photograph along with other photographs of people jumping/falling from the Towers, were later […]
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By Arun Sinha In a recent address at Bengaluru, Vice-President Venkaiah Naidu lamented that the anti-defection law had failed to check mass defections and suggested an amendment to the law to stop it. The lamentation and suggestion coming from someone who had been the BJP president sound bold, as several mass defections in recent years […]
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By Emma McClean, Aidan Hehir The day after Russian troops crossed the border to begin their invasion of Ukraine, the United Nations Security Council drafted a resolution condemning the invasion and calling on Russia to withdraw unconditionally. What happened next was predictable enough: Russia vetoed the resolution. As one of five permanent members of the […]
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By Seela Subba Rao Most of the federal governments are vested with powers to raise tax revenues while the States are responsible for undertaking a large part of the public expenditures. The allocation of taxation powers vis-à-vis responsibilities per se creates an imbalance known as vertical imbalance. Further, the existence of vast regional disparities contributes […]