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National Herald |
The three democratic tools available to us are vote, court and protest. The only one on which Indians have true agency is protest. Voting is...
In a referendum held in 2016, Britain voted by a small margin to exit the European Union. As expected, the move lowered trade growth and trade...
The continued silence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah on Manipur has baffled everyone. Both Meitei and Kukis feel...
More than six decades ago, when I was a schoolboy at Pathanamthitta in Kerala, an elderly man had made protest a part of his daily routine. Every...
Rahul Gandhi’s emergence as the great new hope of Indian politics is often misrepresented as the arrival of ‘a new Rahul Gandhi’. That...
The October protests in Delhi began as a demand for electoral accountability. But they have since become inseparable from the not-so-sudden but rather...
I sit by my window at that hour when darkness yields to the certainty of the sun. My knees and back hurt as I answer what I hope is my last distress...
The Chief Justice of India refused to meet the Leader of the Opposition on the 12th of this month and hear his grievances, even though one of his...
Ukraine’s Starshield disruption highlights the security risks of relying on foreign-controlled satellite communications. Ukraine’s Starshield...
Over the last two years, we have felt the ground shift beneath our feet in higher education. AI has transformed what we do in college classrooms. The...
Saudi Arabia’s decision on 5 October to activate the Makkah defence pact reveals how precarious its security has become. In the Houthis, it faces an...
As I find it a little more difficult to get out of bed each succeeding autumn morning, my mind (what’s left of it, that is) inevitably wanders to...
On 5 March 2021, the Press Information Bureau of the Indian government put out a statement headlined: ‘Rebuttal to Freedom House report on India’s...
There is an interesting story about Amit Shah’s first election victory, narrated by journalist Rajdeep Sardesai in his book 2024: The Election That...
The 1960s were the decade of rage in Calcutta. Naxalite violence had reached the city. Not a day passed without multiple processions choking the...
Never before has the country seen public protests on Gandhi Jayanti the way we did this year. As a pithy social media meme put it, 2 October is the...
Can protests bring about change? I have faced this question again and again over the past three months, especially since July, when young Indians from...
Kerala has ordered a fresh Vigilance probe into allegations dating back to Gyanesh Kumar’s tenure as PWD secretary in 2006....
The report argues that opposition unity requires rallying around Rahul Gandhi and the Congress, which it describes as the only opposition force with a...
A new war is gathering momentum in Ethiopia, with repercussions far beyond its borders. Federal troops are fighting Tigrayan forces as a seven-member...
Ahead of Durga Puja, one of the most eagerly-awaited movements across the Bangladesh-India border has been stalled. Bangladesh has not authorised its...
The Satya Niketan incident raises uncomfortable questions for those in power (should they choose to face them). The collapse of the five-storey...
The recent death by suicide of Sahil Wakode, a second-year student at IIT Bombay, has raised questions around alleged caste-based discrimination in...
Former Kerala chief electoral officer Teeka Ram Meena should know chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar well — they were colleagues in the IAS...
While Gandhi Jayanti is still fresh on our minds and the right to peaceful assembly is in the news again, let’s look at a few things that may be...
For most of Punjab’s post-Independence history, the first question a voter asked about a politician was “Banda khandaani hai? (is he a man of...
In response to a recent blog of mine about unregulated construction in Himachal, a discerning reader commented that he had done an online search for...
At the time of writing on 2 October, Gandhi Jayanti, India was enacting a new civil disobedience movement. It couldn’t have chosen a better day. The...
Sukhbir Singh Badal calls Waris Punjab De (heirs of Punjab) ‘virus Punjab de’. The intensity of his attacks, coming months before the Assembly...
The Houthis’ dramatic advance along the Red Sea, their control of areas around the Bab al-Mandab strait and their renewed missile and drone attacks...
Every year, as 2 October approaches, Gandhi returns to our midst. He appears in official ceremonies, school functions, speeches and the seemingly...
Corruption and bribery are two words that are often used interchangeably. Or are they? Bribery, in the way we use the word today, dates to the 16th...
In 2025, it was a problem of too much rain. Rain and flood fury in southeast and central Maharashtra ravaged thousands of hectares of crops, flattened...
If you were to judge the SIR and the conduct of the Election Commission of India and its chief Gyanesh Kumar by any reasonable yardstick of...
All the signs of the Second Coming, as foretold in the Bible, are visible: wars and conflicts, natural disasters, lawlessness and the moral decay of...
The demolition of a mosque inside the Saharanpur Collectorate and the emergence of disputes over mosques in Moradabad and Sambhal have brought...
Of course the lion has to be replaced. You cannot have Durga ride a fierce carnivore and ask worshippers to be strict herbivores. And why should Ma...
The stretch of the Himalaya along the Tibet-Nepal border where the 26 August disaster originated is exceptionally fragile. Only last year, on 8 July,...
The just-concluded BRICS summit in Delhi may not be remembered for a particularly muscular declaration. But to focus on that may miss its import for...
Trump’s dominance of the Republican Party and his political resilience are central to his claim to historical significance. Trump’s dominance of...
Retired teacher K.K. Surendran did not go to Chief Minister V.D. Satheesan for a favour. After 23 years of fighting the State, he went to say:...
Only a fool learns from his own mistakes, said Otto von Bismarck, the wise man learns from the mistakes of others. It is now time for policymakers in...
Sensing that geopolitical winds may once again be changing direction, the Modi government executed some nifty U-turns at the New Delhi BRICS summit on...
After spending 87 days in detention and custody on suspicion of being a Bangladeshi national, 70-year-old Jalil Akhtar is finally free. The question...
Six years ago, on 13 September 2020, former Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) student leader Umar Khalid was arrested in connection with the larger...
The Ganga Water Treaty between India and Bangladesh, signed in 1996, is up for renewal in December 2026. It was signed in an atmosphere of goodwill...
In early September, Dhirendra Krishna Shastri, a.k.a. Bageshwar Baba, the 30-year-old priest who presides over the Bageshwar Dham in Chhatarpur,...
'Attendance at the hearing is mandatory. Please treat this as urgent and make the necessary arrangements to attend without fail.' I had...
The United Nations General Assembly has taken a long-overdue step towards geographical honesty. On 4 September, 164 countries voted for a resolution...
The crucial Assembly election barely five months from now will decide whether the jhaadu sweeps Punjab a second time or gets swept out of the state....
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