In order to address farmers’ distress,the entire agricultural chain needs a reboot Last week, tens of thousands of farmers reached Delhi for a two-day Kisan Mukti Morcha and held the country’s attention. They sought a special 21-day Parliament session to discuss the crisis in India’s agrarian economy. Their key demands …

He Jiankui, who claims to have made the world’s firstgene-edited babies, deserves to be rapped but not condemned In November, Chinese researcher He Jiankui set off a storm when he claimed that he had created the world’s first babies, a pair of twin girls, genetically edited with CRISPR-cas9. He said …

Indian politics today reminds one of the first decade of the existence of Pakistan India is literally at the crossroads with the very future of its secular democracy at stake. With five important State Assembly elections in various stages of completion and the general election around the corner, the political …

Make planning fashionable again Extract: The withdrawal of the Indian state from economic decision-making has had consequences on industry Economic planning is not considered fashionable today. Nevertheless, contemporary economic debates will have much to gain by revisiting the ideas on planning, championed in particular by Jawaharlal Nehru. As is well …

India-Pakistan rapprochement and the South Asian future require subnational engagement, starting with Punjab For a flickering moment in the last week of November, it seemed as if Congress provocateur and Punjab Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu might set the geopolitical agenda, when he unabashedly spoke of the need for India and …

“Goa is a spiritual destination and I want to show to the world how unique its architecture is,” said heritage photographer Payal Kakkar, whose exhibition of photographs of 16th and 17th Century churches of Goa is set to open on Wednesday. The self-taught photographer is gearing up for her maiden …

‘The word God is for me nothing but the expression of and product of human weaknesses’ If it were written now as a series of tweets, they would surely go viral. Think of it: One of the most famous people in the world is panning religion. “The word God is …

Three astronauts will spend the next six-and-a-half months on the space station A Soyuz rocket carrying Russian, American and Canadian astronauts took off from Kazakhstan and reached orbit on Monday, in the first manned mission since a failed launch in October. Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko, Anne McClain of NASA and …

Envoy to Yemen lands in capital Sana’a ahead of talks Wounded rebels were flown out of the Yemeni capital Sana’a on Monday for medical treatment, a critical step towards bringing warring parties to planned UN-brokered negotiations in Sweden. The UN-chartered flight had taken off at 6.00 p.m. (1500 GMT) for …

Proposes talks with Xi and Putin to halt the ‘uncontrollable’ arms race U.S. President Donald Trump boasted on Monday that U.S. relations with China have taken a “BIG leap forward” following his meeting in Argentina with President Xi Jinping. “Very good things will happen. We are dealing from great strength, …