BIMSTEC leaders

BIMSTEC’s Strategic Challenge to Pakistan: Geopolitical Recasting or Regional Fracture?

Pakistan’s absence is not without costs. Diplomatic exclusion is only one facet of the spectre that looms over the country: limited transit access, reduced prospects for integration into Bay-centric supply networks and weakened soft-power influences across the Indian Ocean littoral.

Proxy Village Governance: The Pradhan Pati Problem in India's Democracy

It has been formally recognised in the Report of the Advisory Committee on Women Pradhans, Transforming Women’s Representation and Role in Panchayati Raj Institutions: Efforts to Eliminate Proxy Participation, which recorded that elected women representatives are often “represented by their husbands or male relatives” and recommended the imposition of stringent and exemplary penalties to curb such practices.

Students Must Study; But They Must Also Ask Questions and not Ignore Injustice

When the university community itself has not succeeded in resolving many serious problems confronting higher education, on what moral basis should students simply be asked to remain silent and trust the system?

The Ganga Water Treaty Needs More Than Renewal: It Needs Reinvention

The treaty that once symbolized diplomatic success should now become a model for climate-resilient hydro-diplomacy. The river has changed, the climate has changed, and the needs of both nations have changed. The treaty must change with them.

More on Education and Gen Z Voices

'India is your introduction': Recalling the legend of Don Bosco

The COVID 19 lockdown recall continues. In 1990 I was sitting pondering at my misfortune of having landed the job of looking after the material requirements of a large naval dockyard when in breezed the pint-sized ex gunnery officer of a missile corvette we had commissioned together in the (former) USSR  in the late seventies

Nature's retribution

Not as pretty as a flower

We are in this for the long haul: WHO Regional Office

Amid rising cases of COVID-19 and as countries in WHO South-East Asia Region ease lockdowns in a graded manner, WHO today said careful assessment of local epidemiology should guide future actions to combat the virus

Reckoning or redemption: Travails of our planet caused by COVID-19

In a world when COVID-19 has brought humanity to its knees and exposed the haughty posturing of many nation-states the lesson of its interconnectedness  in combating the pandemic is in stark contrast to the situation four months ago

First comprehensive estimates of district-level trends of child mortality and child growth failure in India: 2000 to 2017

This initiative  was launched in 2015 as a collaborative effort between the Indian Council of Medical Research, Public Health Foundation of India, Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, and a number of other key stakeholders in India, including academic experts and institutions, government agencies and other organizations, under the aegis of the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare

India-Gulf ties in need of repair and restoration

India’s ties with the Gulf countries that have been robust in the past have come under strain owing to a number of factors

Lockdown musings: Life simplified but is there gender equality at home?

I slept a lot, but I was doing that in any case before the lockdown.  I read some but it is becoming increasingly difficult to focus for long with my failing eyesight

India needs to be realistic, should lift lockdown

Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared lockdown all over India around 40 days back, which caught the countrymen by surprise and led to a feeling of uncertainty

Ominous are the portents today

If I could swim the meadows and walk the rivers

COVID-19 will leave a temporary scar; world economy will bounce back

In living memory, the worst disaster and miseries took place during the World War II. A large number of manufacturing units, airports, and seaports were destroyed and buildings demolished. Japan suffered the worst when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, causing the death of millions of innocent people

India's response to coronavirus is based on fear, not planning

There are indications/allegations that COVID-19 or coronavirus was accidentally released from a Wuhan lab

Expand Ehsaas, Extend Lockdown

Pakistan’s health crisis could explode, gravely crippling the economy and national security, if the lockdown is lifted prematurely. The whole world is grappling with the lives vs. livelihoods debate

India can shape the new world order

At a time when America’s role is tragically missing and as the world steps up its scrutiny of China, global leadership is suffering from a crisis. It is India that can step in to fill this void in leadership

Institute a global social contract to defeat pandemics

As the world is under the grip of coronavirus, there appears to be a universal breach of social contract. World leaders in democracies, autocracies or monarchies have grossly failed to give birth to a clear roadmap to mitigate the despair and desolation amid the COVID-19 outbreak

Indian Armed Forces at the forefront of COVID-19 war

India’s Armed Forces and Defence Ministry production units continue their countrywide assistance in combating the effects of COVID-19, a dirty and deadly biological 'weapon', which allegedly emanated from a laboratory in Wuhan, China and spread infection worldwide, though there has been no authoritative corroboration of this so far