Editorials

The president of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Amit Shah, while addressing a national executive meet in New Delhi in September said that the party would continue to remain in power for the next 50 years if it won the 2019 general election. From ruling seven States in 2014, the …

The sight of flaming barricades and upturned cars in Paris usually sends journalists scurrying to their cliché cupboard. For historically literate commentators, current events in France evoke the storming of the Bastille and the Paris Commune. For the politically minded, they seem more akin to the Popular Front of 1936 …

The author acknowledges in his new book, Modern South India: A History from the 17th Century to Our Times , that part of the pull to write a history of the region was the “South Indianness” of his mother, Lakshmi Devadas Gandhi. In his four-centuries-long story, from 1600 to modern …

The Reserve Bank of India has left the key interest rate, or the repo rate, unchanged at 6.5% in its fifth bimonthly monetary policy review for the year on Wednesday. It also maintained its stance of ‘calibrated tightening’, despite lowering inflation projections. All six members of the monetary policy committee …

Only 10 States have notified rules under Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act A study conducted by the Disability Rights India Foundation (DRIF) on the implementation of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (RPWD) Act, across 24 States, has revealed that more than half have not notified the State rules, …

Miss Ajitha, said to be a top commander of the Naxalite group which attacked the Pulpalli wireless station recently, was apprehended along with eight others in the Kottiyur forest early this morning [December 3] and taken to the Mananthody police station. The police are reported to have seized from Ajitha …

The Prime Ministers of Ceylon and India have agreed that discussions on the sovereignty over Kachchativu and connected matters in the Palk Strait and Gulf of Mannar should continue. They exchanged views on a number of issues, including territorial waters, delineation of median line and fishing rights. A joint communiqué …

Mob violence in the nameof cow protection is shredding civic order The violence in Uttar Pradesh’s Bulandshahr district is yet another notice of the toll being taken on civic order on account of the failure to crack down on vigilante mobs. Two persons, including a police inspector, lost their lives …

The national framework to improve nutrition for children must be upgraded on priority The health, longevity and well-being of Indians has improved since Independence, and the high levels of economic growth over the past two-and-half-decades have made more funds available to spend on the social sector. Yet, the reality is …

The Principal Economic Adviser to the Ministry of Finance on rural distress, the GDP back series data, NPAs, and slow GDP growth in the second quarter of this FY The government has come under a lot of criticism over its estimates for economic growth during the United Progressive Alliance years …

Practical interventions exist to tackle the issue of stubble burning Incidents of stubble burning — following the harvest of paddy crop in Punjab and Haryana — cannot be averted by imposing fines, or giving notice or giving farmers capital subsidy. Instead, the issue requires long-term vision and strategic policy interventions. …

How a business friendly government has failed to arrest the slide in private investment It may appear that the recent hullabaloo over GDP (gross domestic product) growth in the past decade has cast a shadow over assessment of the economy’s progress since 2014, but it is not so. There exists …

It is getting impossible for reporters to understand voters’ choices My first encounter with fake news was so mundane that it is a blur. It happened during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. I was in Bihar’s Vaishali constituency waiting for a campaign rally to start and struck up a conversation …

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 …

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 …

Says onus on Odisha, Chhattisgarh governments to hold public consultation In a turnaround, the Centre pulled back from its undertaking in the Supreme Court to appoint an independent agency to conduct public hearings of people in Odisha and Chhattisgarh affected by the Polavaram Multi-purpose Project. The Centre filed an eight-page …