What seems to be keeping the vilification of Muslims afire on social media and on the ground is the coverage of the pandemic, from a communal angle, by many news media outlets.
As Basanti Puja passed off quietly in the state, it left many in Bengal, like everywhere else, in a state of daze and disbelief. Could this be the last spring and celebration?
As the coronavirus is new, it is not surprising that there are no drugs against it. At present, the treatment for COVID-19 is primarily supportive care, including ventilation if necessary.
Cinema often reflects society but some filmmakers have gone the other way and projected an imagined future. Based partly on science and partly on fiction, these films remain just films until an imagined scenario becomes real.
With COVID-19 lockdown forcing people to work from home, a hidden sexism has been exposed, thanks to the lack of domestic helps, which leaves women in the house to be expected to do all household chores and also her office work.
On the afternoon of March 31, retired bank employee Sudip Dasgupta hopped into his neighbourhood sweet shop in South Kolkata’s Jadavpur area as the state government allowed a four-hour window to tickle the taste buds of sweet-toothed Bengalis.
Armed with a face mask and a jhola, the 67-year-old rushed to get his favourite dessert — mishti doi (...
Government will have to generate employment like beedi rolling, incense stick manufacturing, tailoring, among others to keep the informal settlers engaged, according to experts.
Unfortunately for the poor, the Coronavirus continues to chase them as barriers have come up in their own villages, which wish to safeguard them against the impending disease.
Even as the country enters the 15th day of the nationwide lockdown imposed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to curb the spread of highly contagious coronavirus, several studies suggest that the next few days are very crucial for India to battle against the pandemic.
What seems to be keeping the vilification of Muslims afire on social media and on the ground is the coverage of the pandemic, from a communal angle, by many news media outlets.
As on March 26, 2020, the novel coronavirus pandemic (COVID19) has killed 18,589, and infected 4,16,686. Every minute, the virus is claiming more lives.
Before we are convinced of the savagery of the novel coronavirus pandemic, let us look in comparison, say, the deaths caused by road accidents. The epicentre of the novel coronavirus, China, has...
A pandemic is not a public health issue alone — but economic and social as well. Incorporating cultural and social aspects into the scientific efforts by public health authorities coupled with people’s support can go a long way in fighting coronavirus.
Du Fengyan, 35, a Chinese from Beijing arrived in Mumbai, India on January 29, a day before India reported its first coronavirus case in Kerala. The airport authorities had screened him for the virus and had cleared him.
As Fengyan toured the maximum city for a week, staying out of a hostel, little did he know what was in store for him, as the n...
Like seasonal flu, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus is a respiratory disease. About 80% of infected persons will recover on their own, not even needing a visit to a doctor.
The COVID-19 crisis is attracting the best expertise from around the world to find solutions. But India has many other problems of its own, and will have more in the future, which require all the homegrown expertise we can get.
Dressed in chiffons, eyes highlighted with kohl and a long bindi on the forehead, she is often scheming about how to bring down the other woman — the female protagonist, who is angelic and sacrificial. If you have already guessed that this is the antagonist of popular Hindi soap operas from the stables of Ekta Kapoor and her spawns, you won’t be di...
By analysing the public genome sequence data from SARS-CoV-2, researchers have convincingly concluded that "SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus", putting to rest all suspicions of bio-weapon gone astray.
For Siva Kumar, 28, a management professional working for a China-based cross-border e-commerce firm, seeing his fellow Chinese colleagues flying down to Bengaluru every month was a routine.
They visited Bengaluru for the company’s monthly review meetings. But since January, the travel restrictions placed across countries due to the novel corona...
Dhaka, like its ethnic cousin Kolkata, is known for street protests and agitations. But even going by its own track records, the large-scale mass demonstrations Bangladesh’s capital witnessed earlier this month were unprecedented.
The Islamists, as well as the secularists, were on the streets, for once, over the same cause — to oppose participat...
It is not often that one gets to act in a Hollywood movie, or for that matter, any movie anywhere. Today, in 2020 CE, the entire world appears to be “acting” in a classic Hollywood blockbuster where entire cities and even countries are in varying degrees of a lockdown marked by deserted streets, empty malls and humans dressed in white, moving, as i...
Cryptocurrency experts say the government does not see technology as disruptive but perceive it as a threat to the banking culture and so seek to ban it.
Considering that the BJP leaders themselves engage in hate speeches, spreading misinformation and rumours continuously, the act of not condemning the posts on these party-monitored groups comes as no surprise. They let such content flow freely without any technological possibility of moderating them.
Acclaimed director Anjali Menon says not informing actress Rekha, who was a minor then, about the kiss (with Kamal Haasan in Punnagai Mannan) meant transgression of body rights.
In the wake of the recent violence in Meghalaya triggered by the anti-CAA protests, the fact remains that the perceived threat to tribal rights in Meghalaya is often amplified, as their interests are well protected by job reservation and land rights.
The French Institute of Pondicherry has over 1.7 lakh archived photographs of idols and temple art, recorded over a 60-year period since 1955, which has come to the help of police tracing missing or stolen idols in several Tamil Nadu temples.
If, say, WhatsApp makes one pause for 30 seconds to check whether the information is unverified or asks the user to exercise caution while forwarding messages or while posting inflammatory speeches, the hatred one spreads can be reduced, feel experts.
Writers, including the Jnanpith awardee, have been treated mercilessly by filmmakers who promise to adapt novels and books, only to give them the slip.
Only the politically very naïve would have thought that the American President’s visit to India would have set either the Potomac or the Indian Ocean on fire. But from the time Donald Trump and his delegation set foot in Ahmedabad, there was no doubt that the 45th President of the United States and his family that included the First Lady, Daughter ...
Waste management is beyond just data and adherence to the rules and regulations. It has to be supported by appropriate education, training, commitment of healthcare staff at the grassroots level.
Look-alikes of Hindu deities have burgeoned across Arunachal Pradesh as efforts are being made to formalise the indigenous religions of various tribes of the state in a bid to thwart the growing influence of Christianity, which emerged as the largest religion of the state, as per the 2011 Census
The Tamil Nadu government's noon meal scheme is surrounded by a controversy in the state over its decision to tie up with Akshaya Patra, which removed onion and garlic from the ingredients.
On a February Friday, in an unassuming alley outside a marriage hall in Madurai, two kids break into a jig in tune with the beating of the drums. Inside the hall, the coy bride is waiting for her groom, her heart beating hard. As guests start crowding the venue, both her heartbeats and the sound of the drums grow louder. By now, even passersby coul...
Despite POSH Act in place to deal with and deter sexual harassment at workplaces, crimes continue to take place in offices with impunity due to the lack of effective implementation of the law on the ground.
“Machine Bias”, screamed the headlines. The tagline said, "There's software used across the country to predict future criminals. And it's biased against blacks."
In a revealing exposé in 2016, ProPublica, a US-based Pulitzer Prize-winning non-profit news organisation, analysed the software known as COMPAS used by US courts and police to forecast...
Actor Vijay's connections to politics go beyond the recent IT raids, as is evident in his films and actions outside them whereas actor Ajith has kept away from politics.
At first glance, Manohar Mhatre’s appearance belies his vast artistic legacy. At 89, he is the last standing Progressive, but is unlike any of his contemporaries. Not for him the flamboyance of MF Husain, the brooding mysteriousness of VS Gaitonde, or the defiance of Akbar Padamsee.
Mhatre’s personality, like his art, is distinctive in subtle, ...
By branding and constantly calling Kallars thieves, over a period of time, these people themselves started to believe that their ancestry was into robbing.
For most of the residents in slum sites in Chennai, relocation to resettlement sites far from their original homes means a shortage of facilities in addition to the risk of losing livelihood options.
Specialised in prior election work, the thousands of RSS workers are given talk material and punchlines that helped take the narrative set by top leaders such as Narendra Modi and Amit Shah, to the doorsteps of lakhs of Delhiites.
On a complaint from people in the high-rises about the presence of illegal Bangladeshis, around a 100 slum dwellings were razed in Bengaluru in January, without any verification by the police.
When Radhika Vemula decided to withdraw from all forms of protests and stay-put in Guntur around mid-2018, it seemed unlikely we’d meet again in a political program.
It had been more than two years since the suicide of her son Rohith Vemula in which union minister Smriti Irani, as well as her senior BJP colleagues Badaru Dattatreya and Ramachand...
The folklore goes that schoolboy William Webb Ellis picked up the ball during a game of football in 1823 and ran with it, introducing the world to a new sport — rugby. Predominantly popular in England, France and New Zealand, the sport has been embraced by Asian countries in the last few decades.
But India, from where the Calcutta Cup — the olde...
The world around Chandrashekhar Azad Ravan appears to be spinning very fast, like he is at the centre of a vortex. Pressure is growing from his supporters to turn the Bhim Army into a political party.
According to many in his inner circle, he could launch a new national party as early as in March 2020. But given that his inner circle is very lar...
India has been witnessing an unusual trend wherein the political temperature has remained high since the last six years. This may impact not only domestic productivity and investment but also global opportunities.
Almost 1,000 years later, the Brihadeeshwara temple and many other temples in Tamil Nadu are caught in a controversy over which language should be used to conduct the consecration — Tamil or Sanskrit.
In 2014, when Bengaluru-based Hemalatha Jain set out to revive Patteda Anchu, a handloom weave from North Karnataka, in Gajendragarh in Gadag, she was also set for the challenges that would come with the revival of the 19th-century saree.
The drape was popular among the lower and middle-class families of North Karnataka and was given as a father...
A thermometer reading around 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit (37 degrees Celsius) usually means the body temperature is normal. Not any more, says Julie Parsonnet and her colleagues at Stanford University, School of Medicine.
Ombudspersons are potentially a low-cost, time-effective accountability institution. They can substantially improve the quality of MGNREGA implementation by plugging leakages and suggesting improvements.
Catholics belonging to the politically influential Vokkaliga and Golla castes have ruled Harobele village in Karnataka’s Kanakapura with an iron hand for centuries. They’ve enforced a strict caste-code ever since the first parish was established here in the year 1675.
When this writer visited the village first in January 2015, a tense situation ...
In a global system designed and controlled by the US using various means including the dollar as the sought after currency of exchange, state of the art military equipment and a huge consumer appetite to consume what the rest of the world manufactures, it seems unlikely that any country can challenge Washington’s hegemony, at least at this time.
India is set to launch its first manned mission to space, Gaganyaan. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has already set the process in motion. But ISRO needs to be ready on 10 vital aspects before the Gaganyaan can take off.
The Ramakrishna Mission and Math in Belur expressed displeasure the perceived attempt by BJP's Prime Minister Narendra Modi to politicise and homogenise the pluralistic ideas of the organisation.
The Bharatiya Janata Party led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has ordered a complete revamp of Central Vista area as per their vision for a ‘new India’ and make it a “world-class tourist destination”.
Blindfolded, they shouted, "The oppressive state is a rapist." "This is rape, the rapist is you". A group of women marched in coordinated rhythm, challenging what they called "hyper-masculine attitude of the state".
On January 4, the busy streets of Kolkata’s Esplanade, and later Jadavpur, erupted in a fresh wave of resistance — Dhorshok Tumi-i ...
To save vultures, cattle owners are encouraged not to use Diclofenac or its variants, and sell ghee made from such milk through an NGO called Arulagam.
The Congress is trying to usurp the local Hindutva legacy, even as the original proponent of Ram-politics, the BJP has promised to build a sky-kissing temple of Lord Rama in Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh.
In the 17th-18th century, hairstyling was a traditional profession taken up mostly by a community, called Ambattans, who also acted as healers following the Siddha practice.
Though the BJP government wished to do away with the scheme, the sheer scale of it is stopping them. In fact, the budgetary allocation and expenditure for the scheme increased year on year.
When he was 12, Kittan often fantasised sitting outside the tea stall at his village square after a hard day’s work, holding a glass tumbler full of piping hot tea and a cigarette hanging from his lips. He had just started working — assisting his father, a manual scavenger. But it didn’t take long for Kittan’s fantasy to come crashing down.
“I h...
Protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the proposed nationwide National Register of Citizens (NRC), which began in December of the year gone by, have now taken a pan-India shape, bringing droves of people to the streets.
Although the protesters have raised different concerns and demands, the exclusion of Muslims from the CAA ha...
The late Pakistani dictator General Zia ul-Haq would be so proud of Indians. All his life he wanted to ban Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s poetry, calling it anti-national, anti-Islamic, and almost anti-everything.
General Zia failed miserably. But he would be ecstatic his ideological scions in India have taken up the challenge of banning the poet's work, bra...
The Shahbagh Spring definitely emboldened the minorities to come out and express their opinion. The Shaheen Bagh protest, much as Shahbagh, has also given voice to the minorities, but can they reclaim the lost space in Indian politics is something that the New Year will wait to see.
It’s January again. The entire world is in 2020. But Kashmir is not.
As tens of thousands of people around the globe gathered along the embankments of rivers and near famous city squares to burst firecrackers to ring in the New Year, people in Kashmir kept looking at their smart mobile phones rather curiously. Of course they wanted to send New Y...
It happened in an instant. One second, Gunajit Barua and his friends were wobbling down a somewhat placid stretch of River Brahmaputra (Siang) in the remote village of Tuting in East Arunachal Pradesh. The next, a huge wave crashed into their raft, tossing the young men in their 20s into a whirlpool of white water, leaving them hanging on for dear ...
Forty-year-old Latha*, who was admitted to the Institute of Mental Health (IMH), a psychiatric facility run by the Tamil Nadu government, had a tough time returning home after treatment. Initially, she was being treated for psychotic issues and after repeated questioning, her family admitted that she was addicted to alcohol. After treatment, her hu...
The police crackdown on journalists covering the anti-CAA protests across the country has made one thing clear. The press card, a powerful tool in the hands of every journalist, offers little protection if the name on it is that of a Muslim.
Dozens of journalists were hounded by the police across the country during the protests in the last few w...
The tsunami of 2004, that wrought devastation along the coast of the Indian Ocean, swallowing villages, destroying farmlands and causing huge fatalities in the coastal districts of Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and Kerala, left an indelible mark on the lives of people who witnessed its fury and survived its consequences.
For the farmers...
In a school in Bengaluru, every student from class one to 10 sits around in a circle for at least 40 minutes every week. The students have teachers sitting amid them, voicing their views and thoughts on any given topic. The talking points range from the idea of friendship to the students’ understanding of the concept of betrayal. But the discussion...
In the history of every nation, there are events that continue to shape its destiny. For Germany it is Nazism, for America it is the Civil War, for Russia it is the Russian Revolution and for India it is Partition.
A major event that shaped the destiny of post-Partition India was the Nehru-Liaquat pact, signed nearly 70 years ago by former India...
The opening lines of the letter were startling. Dated February 27, 1913, it was addressed to Godfrey Harold Hardy, the most prominent mathematician in England at that time. It had come from afar India and was written by a humble Indian clerk. There were about 10 sheets of papers filled with 120 incredible and what appeared to be improbable mathemat...
Armed with the Citizenship Amendment Act, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) has found a fertile ground for its 'Hindu rashtra project' in people living in government rehabilitation camps for Bangladeshi refugees in Karnataka's Sindhanur village.
Banning a practice such as devadasi system is ineffective. One can only hope that after nearly a century since they were first banned, devadasis can finally break free and live a life of dignity and freedom.
What constitutes Arunachal Pradesh’s border with China is an undemarcated line that locals or troops on either side have little understanding of. Apart from militaries of both the countries, even ordinary villagers frequently criss-cross the unfenced boundary called Line of Actual Control.
Tamil Nadu's cradle baby scheme, aimed at rescuing female babies who would otherwise have been killed by encouraging parents to give them up for adoption by leaving them in cradles, has seen a gradual fall over the years, with some districts even recording zero.
While it comes with a number of advantages, Fastags also have issues, as people have little awareness about the latest digital move of the government. It raises the question as to whether the Fastags will be seamless and hassle-free as promised.
Translations are sacred. In Bong Joon-ho's Okja, the Korean director buried an in-joke not just by way of filmmaking and dialogue, but also through its English subtitles.
It's when the Korean American 'K', played by Steven Yeun, mistranslates (as the ALF or Animal Liberation Front's translator) something that Mija says in Korean, and then has a ...
No one community or creed can claim absolute dominance over any part of this multi-ethnic, multi-religious country, whose demography as well as boundary is a construct of several historical events.
Tamil cinema never had an aversion to make depressing films, especially of life struggles involving siblings. Such films made viewers melt and shed copious amounts of tears. Pasamalar (Flower of Love) in 1961, starring Sivaji Ganesan, Gemini Ganesan and Savithri, drew a large female audience to cinemas, following which many began to consider Sivaji...
Far away from the music of Margazhi in good old Madras (now Chennai), Nadaswaram makers, like the family of Ranganatha Aasaari, quietly toil away in a nondescript Tamil Nadu village called Narasingapettai.
Early on November 29, seven-year-old Akshaya slid her hand into her mother’s and walked as fast as her little legs could carry her. Akshaya was worried she would be late for school that’s barely 100 metres away from her home at Nadur village in Tamil Nadu’s Coimbatore district.
Akshaya was considered one of the smartest kids in her class, and th...
Countless rulers of all faiths across the sub-continent have done the same. Hindu kings too destroyed Hindu temples, and more often than not, Jain and Buddhist sites as well. If each religious group asked for their heritage to be reinstated, the Jains and the Buddhists may have a lot to ask of the Hindus.
If Albert Einstein had been alive today, he would have certainly worked out a plan to visit India, where his equations have found a new explanation, not once but twice — once by a fictional character and later by a godman.
From a prevalence rate of 0.83 per cent in Tamil Nadu in 2003, HIV/AIDS has come down to 0.27 per cent, with 1.42 lakh people living with the disease in the state.
Like any other day, Silmani Purty, a tribal woman, is busy collecting firewood from a forest near her village in Jharkhand’s Khunti district.
Of the 38 houses in Udburu village which has a population of 200, she is one of the lucky few to have electricity connection in her home, though there is no gas connection.
Apart from successive governm...
Back in 1984, Australian gastroenterologist Barry J Marshall willingly drank an infectious concoction of live H pylori culture and gave himself an ulcer to prove that bacteria — and not stress — is the cause of gastritis and peptic ulcer.
In a fete comparable, health researchers in India are proposing to intentionally infect volunteers with dead...
C Gilbert, 57, can still feel the sting of the wind whipping his face, the angry sea leaping up to swallow his brother C Josebath. The fisherman from Tamil Nadu’s Kanyakumari district lost his brother to Cyclone Ockhi that struck the country’s southern coast two years ago in November, killing more than 250 people and ripping apart several homes and...
As a sequel is being released on Friday, The Federal revisits Balu Mahendra's 1979 film Azhiyaatha Kolangal.
The year 1979 was truly golden for Tamil cinema. Then-superstar Sivaji Ganesan’s 200th film Thrisulam (Trident) had just been released. Sivakumar’s 100th film Rosa Poo Ravikkaikkaari (A woman wearing rose coloured blouse) and Kamal Haasan...
“I had to once tell my boss that I deal with the ‘tail of China’ just to get his attention,” a former foreign service official, who looked after Myanmar affairs in the External Affairs ministry’s Bangladesh-Myanmar division, said at a recent private gathering in Kolkata.
As witty as it sounds, there, however, was no hint of a jest on his stoic f...
On a sunny November day, M Muthu (name changed) is busy tying haystacks on a piece of farmland owned by his caste Hindu employer. Exhausted after hours of back-breaking work since 7 in the morning, Muthu approaches a nearby house for a glass of water.
When the woman of the house comes out with a pot of water, Muthu's thirst gets the better of hi...
Govina haadu (Song of the Cow) is a popular Kannada folk ballad that has touched the hearts of generations. A pious cow, Punyakoti, is accosted by Arbudha, a tiger in the forest. The cow says she has to feed her calf and would return to the tiger to become her prey. The tiger lets her go and as promised, she returns to the tiger. Struck by the cow’...
In less than a month from now, Chennai will usher in yet another year of its famous music season also known as Margazhi music festival. Held in the Tamil month of Margazhi, which runs from mid-December to mid-January, the relatively cooler and balmy weather of the city is welcomed with strains of Carnatic music. Enthusiasts are seen sabha (music ha...
A spooky night. A cold-blooded murder. A hard-boiled detective peeling off a revenge plot. A long chase and finally a climax with a moral. Add to this, a fleetingly appearing ghost and a dash of romance and sleaze — and you have a crime novel in your hands.
It was all that one needed to while away a hot summer vacation or to survive a ...
An eerie silence pervades the sprawling forests of Attappadi hills in Kerala's Palakkad district. In nearby Mele Manjikkandi, fear seems to have gripped the tribal villagers following the contentious “encounter killing” of four suspected Maoists here on October 28.
“Three men and a woman were killed less than 2 km away from our village,” says Si...
On the evening of November 9, villagers of Arthanaripalayam—located close to the buffer zone of Annamalai Forest range in Pollachi district in Tamil Nadu—had to face the wrath of a wild elephant that went rogue and entered the human settlement.
The elephant, nicknamed the tusker ‘Arisi Raja’, or rice king in Tamil as it was fond of devouring ric...
Just around the time Prime Minister Narendra Modi was busy making the claim of developing Northeast India as a gateway to Southeast Asia in Bangkok earlier this month, a few incidents that took place in Myanmar and Manipur once again laid bare an inherent flaw in the idea.
Five Indian nationals, engaged in building the Kaladan road project in My...
The year 2018 was a landmark of sorts for the 85-year-old Kannada film industry, popularly known as Sandalwood. Yash-starrer 'KGF: Chapter 1', made on a budget of ₹80 crore and was released last year, made history by becoming the first Kannada movie to mint over ₹200 crore worldwide, and to make ₹100 crore in Karnataka alone.
Another highly-anti...
That Jawaharlal Nehru’s life has been narrated through a huge body of apocryphal stories isn’t a big surprise. For, the story of his life began with a tale that sounds more like a myth, a metaphorical argument meant to lend a certain aura to his personality.
The story goes that his father Motilal once visited a yogi in Rishikesh to find out if h...
"I was murdered today. Yesterday. Day before... I get murdered every day. I will be murdered tomorrow."
Khoka cries out loud. He speaks to the audience and tries to tell the same to a police officer. But his screams fall on deaf ears. The principal character in theatre-great Badal Sarkar's Michhil (Rally, in Bengali), Khoka, has been the epitome...
The once bright coral pink paint on the walls of her house has faded to a paler shade, peeling at places, giving the one-room concrete abode a bleak look.
Inside the house, R Kala in her late 30s sits and recalls her life story brick by brick — memories of a grim past that she fears will never fade.
Kala was in her early 20s, a young bride, m...
The oral tradition of storytelling which is entwined with culture has several applications — corporates are banking on them to convey messages to their workforce, while counsellors are finding ways to help clients speak their mind or help overcome addictions when others’ stories mirror their lives.
While the efficiency of the police force — or the lack of it — remains debatable, the common man was at his wit's end when the Delhi police personnel took to the streets on November 5 seeking protection.
For his millions of fans across the world, Kamal Haasan is a man of few words. But once he starts to talk, he is certainly not afraid to speak the ugly truth. So much so that in the recent past, especially after his plunge into active politics, his words have become a little too much for many to digest.
But for the past six decades, the actor ta...
A number of top universities in country are witnessing an increase in communalisation of campuses, loss of autonomy among teachers, students, panels, and recently, a distortion of and demand to change history.
From a ginger farmer to a business tycoon to a founder of a 'government-in-exile', Narengbam Samarjit is an enigma that Manipur is trying to come to terms with.
The bespectacled man in his late forties with a penchant for flamboyant black attires with traditional regalia shocked and awed the state in equal measures when he and his lesser-known com...
Rajini K, a 63-year-old homemaker, barely steps out of her house. She is so caught up with taking care of her ailing mother-in-law (87) that there is with no time left for herself. Rajini's life revolves largely around her mother-in-law — from ensuring she is fed on time to getting her to change her clothes after she is given a bath and making her...
With Virat Kohli & Co. steamrolling South Africa 3-0 in the recent three-match Test series and the BCCI having established itself as one of the important members of ICC, India is on top of the world, like never.
For decades, many indigenous groups have been struggling to protect their identity, land, culture and resources, which they feel are threatened by insensitive and unsustainable development. And songs have become a medium to express their angst.
The special connection between Tamil cinema and farming has remained strong through the ages even as it dealt with other issues such as dowry, caste atrocities, female foeticide and water scarcity.
At one point of time, the bursting of tens of thousands of firecrackers during Dussehra and Diwali turned several cities in the country into virtual “gas chambers”. It’s time that changed now, with the use of green crackers.
Once upon a time in Kollywood, high profile face-offs was the norm during Deepavalis that included clashes between films of MGR and Sivaji Ganesan, and Rajinikanth and Kamal Haasan. Cut to the present day, the buzz has fizzled out over the years.
In September 2019, a group of men’s rights activists conducted a special puja at 50 different locations across the country to end the ‘cancer’ of feminism in India. Organised by Save India Family Foundation, which works on promoting ‘gender equality and family harmony’, the puja was called Feminism Pishachini Mukti Puja.
According to the men’s r...
At 5 o'clock on an October morning, a scrawny man in his late 30s hops onto a bus. Behind him, a young woman carrying a tiffin box calls out to wait for her. She is just in time before the bus hurtles past tiny lanes with rain puddles left by the previous night's downpour — the air reeking of a sour odour of sulphur and sadness.
As the bus stops...
While his political opponents have lost out because of their own doing, making it easy for him, Maharashtra Chief Minister Fadnavis has made it difficult for anyone to point fingers at him.
Several years ago, a puny little man, who was fond of wearing round black caps and perfumed jackets, thundered at the princes of India: “But anyone who might have actively betrayed the trust of the people, disowned his fathers, and debased his blood by arraying himself against his Mother — he shall be crushed to dust and ashes, and shall be looked ...
For a teacher and Sanskrit scholar in Tamil Nadu of 1970s, talking about sexualities that resist social definitions was not quite the norm. Nor was the temple town of Kumbakonam — otherwise also known as the hub of modern Tamil literature — used to such 'digressions'. Yet homosexuality found a voice in Karichan Kunju's writing.
Like his celebrat...
India’s population of 1.3 billion, when last counted and certainly already much higher, and its economy, despite the recent slowdown across industry, are just too tempting for any global operation to ignore.
When her two-year-old son was diagnosed with autism, Radhika was in a state of shock and denial. "Why me?" she kept asking herself.
After several rounds of consultation with child psychiatrists and neurologists, she decided that brooding over the situation wouldn’t help. Instead, she began meeting parents of other children with autism. After enr...
Seventy years ago, India and China stood at the crossroads of change. Freed from the shackles of imperialism — British and Chinese — India in 1947 went the secular democracy way, while China in 1949 embarked on the road to Communism "with Chinese characteristics". Now, China is a veritable superpower and has lifted a humongous 850 million people ou...
For the past several years, China has maintained a high rate of growth in their GDP. From around 400 billion dollars in the 1990s, its GDP has grown to over 13.6 trillion dollars. Compare that to India, from around 320 billion back then, it has grown to only about 2.7 trillion.
Despite having similar populations, China has galloped on the dollar...
The Chinese are learning Tamil and imbibing the culture, especially by giving themselves adopted Tamil names. That they speak the language as fluently as natives here is no secret.
On the banks of Burhi Dihing river, a tributary of Brahmaputra in eastern Assam, resides a group of tribals called Phakials. Originally from south China, a small section of the tribe had in 1775 crossed the Pat Kai hills of Myanmar and settled in Assam. More than two hundred years later, there are just about 150 families left of the community in th...
A sense of anxiety and déjà vu hung like a dark cloud over Cooper’s Camp, one of the oldest refugee settlements in India.
Hunched over a rickety table on the verandah of a small brick house, overlooking the marshland, stretching east towards the 2,216-km Bangladesh border, Ashok Chakraborty was busy rummaging through old documents.
A paltry g...
It is a case that brings back memories of the embers of Partition fire, the whiff of deviousness of the retreating Raj and of the last Nizam of Hyderabad, profiled by the Time magazine in 1937 as the world’s richest man who wanted to remain independent or join Pakistan.
What has come to be known as the 'Hyderabad Fund Case' is a heady cocktail of ...
Experts too blame the ‘anti-vaccination movement’ for the huge drop in immunisation. WHO, earlier this year, too has pointed out that the anti-vaccine movement is one of the worst health threats in 2019.
Attempts to ride piggyback on Durga to make inroads into the Bengali hearts have a long history. From rulers during the Mughal times to the British after the Battle of Plassey to freedom fighters during the independence struggle, Durga could morph with élan from Queen Victoria to 'Mother India' and to Balakot airstrike and NRC.
We all love a little bit of chaos in the lives we lead and the movies we watch. Why wouldn’t we love the Joker then? He’s everything you shouldn’t be – a megalomaniac, a destroyer of world peace, and a sociopath. He isn’t good at maintaining relationships, and, on top of that, he kills people for fun.
While his presence in the comic books — he f...
Dalavai Kulayappa, a fourth-generation leather puppet maker from Nimmalakunta village in Anantapur district, is unsure about the future of the craft. Clearly, the Geographical Indication (GI) tag has not helped a lot of artistes in India, who keep centuries-old tradition alive, market their products.
With each passing day, Chinnathai — a third-generation tea plantation worker of Tamil origin in Munnar — is reminded of her approaching retirement in two months. And with that, the fear of becoming homeless.
Six principal banks, including Canara Bank, Syndicate Bank, Corporation Bank, originated from the South Canara region which was called 'The Cradle of Banking in India'. According to reports, between 1880 and 1935, 22 banking companies were established in this region.
“That side of the road is Bangladesh, this side is India. We don't go there and they don't come here,” says Jamaal Hassan (43), sounding panicky. “The police should go after them, not us. We are Indians, it’s our birthright to live and work here.”
Hassan is one of the 5,000 Bengali-speaking Muslim labourers who live in a confusing maze of tarpau...
When 50-year-old Chandra from Chennai was diagnosed with a cyst in one of her kidneys, she expected her nephrologist to give her a detailed account of the prognosis or the likely course of her treatment. But her doctor only suggested dietary changes and told her to take it easy.
"I learnt from friends that it could lead to dialysis. However, my ...
A famous Tamil folktale speaks about a prince who is able to draw a life-like portrait of a princess based on a lock of her hair. Keeladi — an archaeological site in Tamil Nadu's Sivaganga district — today is like the princess of the folktale. Recent findings about artefacts from the site have thrown up several 'princes' vying with each other to dr...
Xubo Liu of Beijing University of Chemical Technology and Thomas Russell of the University of Massachusetts Amherst made a new material that is liquid and magnetic.
On the morning of September 9, residents of Kakati village in Karnataka's Belagavi district woke up to murmurs about a cold-blooded murder of a 61-year-old retired policeman.
Early in the morning, a neighbour heard screams coming from the house of Shekarappa Kumbar and called the police. But by the time the cops reached, Shekarappa was dead -- h...
Perched on the middle of an open field in Theni district in Tamil Nadu, an elderly man wearing a white shirt and dhoti, readies a patch of land to cook a Christmas special dish. With a camera focused on him, 62-year-old Arumugam wishes his viewers and starts skinning a turkey. He then seasons it liberally with a paste of butter and chopped coriande...
When Girish (name changed) and his partner approached a gynaecologist for abortion at a renowned multi-specialty hospital in Chennai, he was horrified at the reaction.
“She asked if we were married. When we said no, she said she won't perform without a husband or parents of the woman being there.”
While gynaecologist clinics should be space...
This August, Bijoy Harpal, a resident of Bolangir, Odisha, received a call from Chennai’s Little Hearts Home with news about his long-lost aunt. Maya (45), a distant relative, had gone missing from her home in Jharkhand's Jamshedpur almost 13 years ago.
“She was living with her father and brother in Jamshedpur in 2006 when she went missing. We h...
On August 14, 1947, a day before India made her tryst with destiny, the Naga National Council (NNC), then an omnipotent political organisation of the Naga people headed by Angami Zapu Phizo, declared Independence for the Nagas.
However, the world outside did not immediately get to know about the development as the NNC’s telegram addressed to lea...
Back in the 1980s, every August 15 and January 26, residents of Anini, a small town in Arunachal Pradesh, would wake up to the call of "jaagte raho" by T Mello, a kotoki (government-appointed interpreter).
Although the words "jaagte raho" in Hindi is used as a command of sorts, asking people to stay awake and alert, in kotoki Mello's limited Hin...
Various studies project possible linkages of global warming with the change in frequency and intensity of weather. Frequency of heavy rainfall events (rainfall exceeding 15 cm in 24 hours) has increased over parts of central India at the rate of 6% per decade.
On September 1, when M Muthupandi, an IT employee working in Chennai, reached his nondescript village of Old Silukkuvarpatti, for a moment he thought he lost his way in a maze of saffron flags and pandals.
“The place looked like a sea of saffron — the village entrance festooned with saffron flags, pandals in saffron hue and devotional film songs...
At Indira's Nagar's Doff pub, a group of four young men are conspicuous by their presence. Dressed in co-ordinated outfits — stonewashed denims and bright red Manchester United jerseys — they are among the regular customers frequenting the popular sports bar in Bengaluru every time there is an English Premier League (EPL) match on TV.
One of the...
From the launch to the landing attempt on the moon, Chandrayaan-2 took 48 days. While the Soviet and the US seemed to have taken a jet plane to travel to the moon, we were doing so on a bullock cart.
When 21-year-old Rifat Wani (name changed) arrived in Bengaluru from Srinagar in July to study management at a private university, she expected to have a regular college life. Instead, she was greeted by classmates who sometimes called her an ‘anti-national’, sometimes a ‘Pakistani’. But the worst was yet to come. On August 5, when the BJP governme...
Imagine this scenario: a woman wakes up naked in an abandoned building and eventually goes to the nearest dumpster to find something to cover herself with. But a pack of ferocious stray dogs get territorial and one chases the woman across the street, into a parking lot, where there’s a building, and sits outside the toilet that she manages to lock ...
For a millennial growing up in Bengaluru, one of the earliest exposures to the creative arts was perhaps watching a play at Ranga Shankara, attending a concert at Chowdiah Memorial Hall or going for an exhibition at Chitrakala Parishath. These are some of the city’s most iconic cultural spaces.
Today, the city’s theatre culture has evolved subst...
Imagine that you are a kid sitting with your friends on the ground having a good time talking. Then everyone decides to go and play a game of hide-and-seek. You find yourself struggling to get up and your legs are not able to lift you. When you finally do slowly stand up, you find yourself struggling to keep up with the others and you are constantl...
At the crack of dawn, on September 1, Shehnaz Begum, 27, held her six-year-old daughter Soniyara's hand and trudged along the muddy lanes of Batarbari village in Assam's Barpeta district. The mother and daughter then got inside the autorickshaw of a family friend, Soyeb, and set out on a journey to the Public Health Centre in nearby Daulasal in Nal...
Twenty one-year-old Bhavin Kotwani is a professional athlete who starts training at 8 in the morning and continues till 10 at night. The intense regime begins with three hours of individual training, and moves on to team training and strategising to play in international tournaments. He gets one day off — Sunday.
However, in India, Kotwani isn’t...
It is around 11 am on a weekday when a group of youngsters walk into a room. After a minor argument, the nine boys, all aged between 14 and 18, sit down for a game of carrom. One of them hits the coin arrangement with clinical precision and jumps with excitement as a white piece slips into a pocket.
The de-addiction centre meant for boys below t...
Narayanapuram, Vellore: The block paved lane that leads to the Dalit colony in Tamil Nadu's Narayanapuram village is dotted with shabby mud huts. In one of those huts, where S Chinnathai lives alone, there is a small patch of dry land — all of 64 square feet — which the 55-year-old widow likes to call her courtyard. It is in this courtyard where Chinnathai's husband and f...
Every year, as the searing summer starts giving way to fall, the music scene in India begins to heat up. With more than 20 music festivals — both indoor and outdoor — taking place every year, these events are not just about popular bands and some great music. While cavorting sweatily to some rip-roaring, toe-tapping and head-banging music, fans als...
Madurai: At 10 pm, men dressed in black coats and saffron dhotis, with saffron turbans resting on their heads, walk into a village burial ground. Carrying cloth sacks filled with their bread and butter — cowrie shells, a mat, damaru, picture of their deity — they pray there till midnight, before walking the streets of the village telling fortunes.
They s...
Much before India attained Independence, Madras Presidency was a large swathe of land that included the present-day states of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and parts of Karnataka and Kerala (the Malabar region). It, however, excluded the princely states of Puducottai, Banganapalle and Sandur.
The capital of this diverse and rich presidency was...
In 2003, when Pokémon was first aired in India, it flooded classrooms with trading cards and tazos of Pikachus, Charizards, and Bulbasaurs. Surprisingly, even an anime as innocuous as Pokémon bucks gender norms as we are taught to understand them.
Vinay, a 25-year-old photographer, remembers how anime shaped his thoughts on gender and queerness ...
The Mer community of Gujarat has a proverb that says even if one is deprived of all things in the world, no one can take away their tattoos. And this, and not materialistic wealth, is what they take with them to the afterlife.
Traditional Mer tattoos are done using a single stick and pigment made from soot and tannin from the bark of trees. Howe...
Why do we spend millions of rupees on space explorations, say for example mission Chandrayaan-2? What is the urgency to know how and when the Moon was formed when a sizeable chunk of the Indian population struggles to get clean drinking water and enough food to eat? There are many of the view that astronomy and space exploration have no direct rela...
In 1968, Tamil actor and political satirist Cho Ramaswamy directed a satirical play ‘Muhammad bin Tughlaq’ and played the title character. The play was a parody of India’s political situation at the time. It remains as one of his best works to date. Buoyed by its success, Ramaswamy went on to start a Tamil weekly magazine by the same name in the 19...
In the early 1980s, if you lived in Bhopal, the capital of Madhya Pradesh, and wanted to commute within the city using public transport, it would have taken hours to negotiate a few kilometres. The city buses would halt at designated stops and continue to stall endlessly until they found enough passengers to fill the seats. They wouldn’t move until...
August 15, 1947. At the stroke of midnight, when the world was sleeping and India awoke to life and freedom, 28-year-old Harohalli Srinivasaiah Doreswamy, like many of his fellow Indians, dreamt of a country free from the shackles of poverty and inequality — a great nation built by its 'honest', 'hardworking' and 'compassionate' citizens. Seven dec...
Why exactly should we celebrate a day earmarked as a country’s Independence Day?
You’ll argue it’s a celebration of freedom. But, freedom has nothing to do with countries, societies or cultures. It is primarily a private pursuit based on man-made constructs and individual philosophies that aim to extend the boundaries of human will.
There isn...
Security measures beefed up across the country ahead of the 73rd Independence Day celebrations, read some of the headlines. But does every part of the country celebrate freedom in equal measure?
Many would like to avoid answering that question since such deliberations may invite action under a more stringent Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act,...
‘Chor Bt nahin, hakkache Bt (Not by stealth, Bt by right).’
‘Tantragyan swatantra amchya hakkachi, nahin kunyacha bapache (Technology freedom is our right, not anyone’s father’s).’
These are a couple of slogans farmers in Maharashtra have been raising as they fight for the right to use genetically modified (GM) crops. Unhappy with the slow pa...
Namitha, a mother in her 20s, has been donating her milk to the human milk bank at the Kanchi Kamakoti Childs Trust Hospital, Chennai, ever since the birth of her daughter. Her daughter, a preemie, is in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) of the hospital. Namitha pumps milk to feed her daughter, and the excess milk expressed by her is stored a...
"It is a matter of great concern that the federal structure of our Republic has come under increasing strain, contrary to the spirit of our Constitution, merely to suit the whims and fancies of the rulers in Delhi." — Narendra Modi
That was 2012. The Indian Republic, according to the then Gujarat CM, was being run in the form of a "family-run co...
Zodingliani, 35, grew up listening to horror stories of the 1960s in Aizawl, the capital of now picture-perfect state of Mizoram. Stories told by scarred souls, ageing relatives, of lost parents, orphaned children, burnt limbs and rice fields, of screaming jet fighters raining bullets and bombs, gutting hopes and homes.
Back in 1966, the Indian ...
Early last year, Tamil movie 'En Maghan Maghizhvan' (My Son is Gay) was in the film festival circuit and won the Best Film Award at the Second Indian World Film Festival. With a U/A certificate from the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), compelling performances from its talented cast and positive reviews right from its premiere, the film w...
When Chennai-based banker Aparna Bera was growing up in her hometown Kolkata, there were many small booths painted in bright yellow that randomly dotted the lane leading to her house. She had often seen people cramming the booths as they waited for their turn. There also used to be one 'lucky' caller inside a tiny cabin, almost always lost in a dee...
When American actor Leona Chalmers invented the menstrual cup in the 1920s, most Indian women hadn’t even heard of disposable sanitary napkins, let alone used them. Almost a century later, more than 336 million girls, women, transgender and intersex people in India are still trying to come to terms with the idea of inserting a budget- and eco-frien...
A rare industrialist who let his creation do the talking, Siddhartha has ensured that we can never again talk of coffee without remembering him, even if fleetingly.
Dr S Saravanan, a general physician in North Chennai, doesn't look like any of those cool doctors from the medical dramas on Netflix. He rather resembles doctors from old Bollywood movies — the ones who would come rushing to a patient, even on a stormy night wearing a white coat and the stethoscope hanging around the neck. Of course, the brown leat...
A few months after sandalwood smuggler Veerappan's long reign of terror ended in 2004 with his killing in a police encounter, Chinnalu Chinnegowda began his tryst with the trees famous for their fragrance. Unlike Veerappan, however, Chinnegowda was on the right side of the law.
The farmer from Kiragavalu village in the old Mysore region purchase...
Toit brewpub in Bengaluru is not an easy place to enter on a weekend. With walk-in reservations only, the waiting time at the microbrewery is 30-45 minutes on an average. The popular pub is one among the 50-odd microbreweries in the city that offer a variety of craft beers.
Microbreweries, which popped up in cities like Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Mum...
As you enter PCKG Government Higher Secondary School in Chennai, you feel like you’ve stepped back in time, about 75 years ago to be more precise. Look at it from the outside, its narrow verandas and towering blocks, and one might mistake the grey buildings for another old school frozen in time. But looks are deceiving.
The school is part of the...
On a searing summer afternoon in April, DMK president MK Stalin passionately defended his party's stand on god and religion. "The DMK is not anti-Hindu or against any religion, caste and god," a visibly upset Stalin told a motley crowd in Tirunelveli, where he was addressing an election rally. The reason behind Stalin's anger was the BJP's "deliber...
The gushing waters from an overflowing Brahmaputra had slithered up into Tajuddin Ahmed's house in 2014 while he and his family were asleep. Ahmed, a resident of Digirpam char (sandbar) in Barpeta district, was not new to the annual ritual when the raging waters would swamp his house year after year. But that year was different and particularly bru...
Located at the heart of the city, Cubbon Park in Bengaluru attracts many visitors on the weekends. It is the perfect place to sit on the concrete benches beneath a thicket of evergreen trees or on lush green lawns and read. While most bring their own books, a few walk over to the mobile library parked nearby and borrow an interesting read.
A bus...
Two years ago, on a cool July night, head constable Senthilkumar found himself chasing a thief at the Coimbatore Junction railway station. The policeman shouted to civilians at the station to help him nab the culprit but none were willing to lend a hand. Thankfully, four auto drivers decided to help him and caught hold of the culprit. They were rewarded and lauded for their act of bravery. We see heroes on screen frequently. We know there are heroes guarding our borders. But it’s not often that we get to see such overt acts of bravery in our daily life. While it goes right at times, there are instances where these heroes have paid with their lives. What, then, happens to their dependents? Click to read more.
A few days after losing power in the 2004 Assembly elections in undivided Andhra Pradesh, Telugu Desam Party (TDP) supremo N Chandrababu Naidu was in an introspective mood during an informal chat with a group of senior journalists at his residence in Hyderabad.
“What should I make of this verdict? Despite earning a nationwide reputation for deve...
Voices from Kashmir valley echo the same narrative when asked about delimitation. The mood is of marginalisation and upholding the spirit of Kashmir’s centuries-old spirit of indigenous secularism, better known as Kashmiriyat.
“What difference does it make for us? We only hope for a better tomorrow. This has to be done with the people’s will; de...
One evening more than five decades ago, K Kamaraj — the third chief minister of Tamil Nadu — was touring the countryside. As was his habit, he got down from his car and walked up to a group of agricultural labourers in a paddy field.
He noticed a few children working alongside the group of men and women. When he asked why were the children not i...
“I’ve never been sexually attracted to or aroused by anyone. When I was in school, I thought it was normal, that I’m still young. But when my feelings didn’t change in college, I thought there was something wrong with me,” says 24-year-old Shravya (name changed). In our hypersexualised world, it is unsurprising that Shravya felt out of place when s...
The problem of hunger, they say, is not because of the shortage of food, but because of the inequality that manipulates food distribution.
India, like many countries across the world, subsidises consumption of certain food and non-food items for its poor through a network of ration shops across the country. For the purpose, ration cards are prov...
Exactly a century after his great-grandfather Motilal Nehru took over the reins of the Congress party, it’s ironic that Rahul Gandhi, the fifth generation leader of the Gandhi-Nehru family, has stepped down as the president of the Grand Old Party.
Being Rahul isn’t enviable and being in his boots in 2019 is something most, even inside the Congre...
India unfortunately doesn’t have a privacy protection law as many democracies do. Digital technologies are double-edged swords. It is more likely that the design and use of data and digital technologies can potentially be intrusive and erode human rights.
Traditional police watch-towers and other surveillance methods had only a limited reach and...
“Whatever budget they table, it will only benefit the corporates. Small shopkeepers like us won't get anything out of it,” says Selvakumar, a provision store owner in Chennai. Similar sentiments hang in the air as the economic growth sank to a five-year low of 6.8 per cent the previous year.
As Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman gets ready to p...
In 2014, 38-year-old Devaraj KJ from Mandya, a town about 100 km from Bengaluru, joined Ola. When he quit his job at a small travel company to join the giant ride aggregator, he thought a bright future lay ahead.
Buoyed by the earnings of his peers, who had earlier moved to the fleet, Devaraj decided to take a chance on the tech start-up. It was...
It’s a Saturday, when many children are out playing on their day off. Six-year-old Kajal (name changed), from Odisha’s Koraput district, is revising her language lessons in Odia with her teacher Gulnaar at a small work site centre in Perumbakkam, Chennai. She isn’t the only one in the small room. Uday (name changed) from Nellore in Andhra Pradesh i...
“Time is precious. I look at time (combined with my passion for what I do) as an investment, and it’s the only kind of investment I plan to make,” says 27-year-old Ramesh Thuthan, an artist at Cuckoo Forest School in Singarapettai, Tamil Nadu. For the past six years he has lived in a small, one-room mud hut on the grounds of the school, painting, c...
Bengaluru, one of the first cities in India to have an urban development plan, has grown into an unwieldy, badly planned mess. Once the ‘garden city’ and ‘pensioner’s paradise’, it has acquired labels like ‘garbage city’ and is the butt of all jokes on traffic jams. What happened to Bengaluru’s urban development plans?
The city notified a green ...
The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO)’s GSLV Mk-III rocket will carry Chandrayaan-2, weighing 3.8 tonnes, towards the moon, in the wee hours of July 15, and mark the beginning of a new era in the history of Indian space exploration. When the lander, named Vikram (short for Vikram Sarabhai, the father of the Indian space programme), and Prag...
A resident of Medavakkam in Chennai, Jaya’s daily routine begins at 5 am — she quickly gets ready to travel almost 16 km to reach her workplace in Thyagaraya Nagar. Until two months ago, her biggest concern was getting on the bus at the right time to reach her workplace on time. Now, she has a more pressing issue to worry about — making sure she ha...
Tamil Nadu, along with the other southern states, is known for its focus on the education sector. Aside from stereotypes of churning out software engineers, it is one of the best performing states in elementary education and its schools are known for being accessible to children, especially those from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. However...
He smiled, she nodded. It was Abha Das's first day at B.Barooah college in Assam's Guwahati. The pair of hazel eyes that smiled at Abha belonged to Nayan Sarmah, her senior in political science department. The year was 1998. As a group of 'seniors' waited for the 'freshers' to get 'introduced' to, a so-called ritual about which Abha was warned of b...
When tech giant Facebook was getting popular over a decade ago, the online virtual farming game FarmVille kept internet users across the world hooked to the social networking platform. The game allowed users own a piece of virtual land and cultivate crops. Millions of Facebook users logged on to the platform to sow seeds and water their crops daily...
Exactly two years ago, Muzaffarpur made national headlines after finding a place in the exalted Smart City list. The much-touted Smart City Mission was launched by Prime Minister Modi in 2015 with the promise of changing urban lives and living experience in 100 Indian cities within five years. Of course, the original deadline was later extended to ...
In February 2017, then finance minister Arun Jaitley said in the budget that the government planned to float an initial public offering of Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), among other state-run companies, in the financial year 2017-18. Two years hence, the online rail-ticket booking company may finally hit the market in comi...
Nearly four decades ago, Arjun Singh went for his first job interview. A village bumpkin, Singh had cleared his intermediate (Class 12) exams and was looking for a job in the city of dreams Mumbai. When the interviewer asked him about his qualifications, Singh proudly said he was a village topper. The manager then asked if he spoke any English sinc...
Bengaluru: Until two years ago, Mahaboob Shaik (name changed) owned a garment factory that employed 53 people. But the government’s shock banknote ban in November 2016 and the July 2017 implementation of the Goods and Services Tax wrecked his business. In late 2017, Shaik shut his factory in Bengaluru’s Peenya industrial area and laid off all the workers. The...
In 2008, the then Tamil Nadu CM M Karunanidhi recalled an incident that had happened when he used to live in Chennai's Thyagaraya Nagar (T Nagar) decades ago. His son Stalin, then a young child, had swallowed a safety pin one day. The agonised parents — Karunanidhi and wife Dayalu Ammal — could not rush him to the doctor in nearby Kodambakkam as th...
In a country of 1.3 billion people, it is estimated that when India's national cricket side plays a big game, such as India versus Pakistan, around 400 million people watch the game on television. And that was according to a survey in 2014. That figure is higher than the current population of the United States at 329 million. If we add the populati...
Coimbatore: Located on the foothills of the Western Ghats, Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu is a pensioner's paradise. It is the first city in the country to have a ‘retirement community’ set up way back in the late 1990s. Today it has numerous senior citizen homes run by private players.
There is a difference between ‘old age homes’ and ‘senior citizen homes’. Whi...
45-year-old Ganesh Kumar, founder of a restaurant called Just Orient in Chennai, was mercilessly bullied by friends for his poor Hindi. But that turned out to be a blessing in disguise. He says, “That is why today I am able to hire staff from Bihar and Jharkhand at my restaurant and I am able to work with them well, speaking a language they underst...
The idea to link peninsular rivers dates back to the late 19th century, when the acclaimed British-era engineer Arthur Cotton drew up plans to connect them
On a busy Monday morning on April 1, S Thangavelu, a youth in his 20s, tried to download a movie at Katpadi railway station in Tamil Nadu. Waiting for his next train to Bengaluru, Thangavelu connected to the ‘free’ Wi-Fi network and tried downloading the movie on his 4G (fourth-generation)-enabled smartphone. In the first half hour, he couldn’t eve...
Chennai: A baby's HIV status can change until it is 18 months old, as new research has found. Seven-month-old Kalai, who tested +ve, could see a different result.
The Federal visited the IMH and found that the institute has many patients with criminal records, including murder charges, and no one wants to take them.
Kanchana says she has completed all her duties, and that she has gotten both her sons married. But the weight of debt hangs heavy over her head. “In our narikurava community, dowry is not given by girls. It is the boy's family that should give money. That's how I ended up with a debt of ₹4 lakh,” she says.
At 45, she runs a household of five mem...
Most engineers his age have settled down at mid-level positions in companies. Tabrez Ahmed of Chennai quit his job eight years ago and initiated a startup. His company is a one-man show and its aim is not to make money. It seeks to disprove the second law of thermodynamics.
It’s a project that engineering students sometimes imagine in the second...
For Dr Pramila (name changed), a psychiatrist with nearly 15 years of experience, a counselling session with her friend once a month is a must. But it is a session with a difference — Pramila is the client here, and she just seeks company to vent her emotions or talk about professional problems.
Mental health professionals deal with emotional ex...
Despite the rout of the BJP in Tamil Nadu, the last holdout for the party in the country, BJP leaders feel there is a space for the party in the state. Quoting nationalism and Indian pride, the BJP decimated CPM in Tripura and put Mamata’s TMC on the backfoot in West Bengal. The party might repeat and implement similar political strategies for Tam...
The Adanjiamman temple had been closed for several years. In 2013, a group of Leftist and dalit activists forced it open to ensure that dalits be granted entry. Things were smooth for nearly a year before the temple at Nathanallur near Wallajahbad, in Kancheepuram district of Tamil Nadu, shut again.
In the villages of Tamil Nadu, it is common to...
Chennai: As reports of the Left’s near-total decimation in the elections came, a Leftist intellectual muttered, “You have to give it to Tamil Nadu. Must be Periyar and his innate rebelliousness…” and trailed off.
Also read: Why Tamil Nadu remains a tough nut to crack for the BJP
Leftists from Kerala used to poke fun at Dravidianism. They called it a f...
Chennai: The results of various exit polls that were released on May 19 left the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) elated, the Opposition squirming and the general public confused.
Chennai: Unlike opinion polls, which are conducted after the last ballot has been cast and before the counting of votes, exit polls are done on election day outside the polling station.
Lok Sabha 2019 has witnessed an aggressive Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) trying to stay in power for a second term. Even as the Congress has attempted to fight it, the saffron party’s most bitter opponent this time around has been a woman from the east. West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress (TMC) Chief Mamata Banerjee has matched the BJP...
Pulwama: While Jammu and Kashmir as a whole recorded 45 per cent voter turnout (lowest in the country) in the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections, three Lok Sabha constituencies — Baramulla, Srinagar and Anantnag — recorded 34.29 per cent, 14.08 per cent and 8.78 per cent respectively.
Recent news that former Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor Raghuram Rajan is one of the top contenders for the Bank of England (BoE) chief caught the attention of top economists, RBI officials and general citizens alike. Pundits in the world of business, finance and economics are closely following the developments to see if Rajan, ranked second i...
Chennai: As internet penetration in India swells — to 627 million users, or nearly 50 per cent of the population by the end of 2019, according to market research agency Kantar IMRB — an increasing number of people are relying on online sources for news. This translates to a better relationship between the internet and politics, which is constantly finding w...
During elections, big parties try to ally with smaller parties who can push them past the first past the post system. Muslim parties are favourite pickings for those scounting for alliances since it is believed Muslims vote en bloc for parties claiming to represent their community. Booth level data of three Assembly constituencies (Ambur, Nagapatti...
We’ve all interacted with people who suffer from mental illnesses, whether it’s that friend who’s struggling with depression or that ‘crazy’ person who wanders the streets everyone avoids. Yet, as a society, we hem and haw when it comes to addressing the issue of mental healthcare. The stigma around mental illness remains severe, thereby creating a...
At Varanasi’s Dashashwamedh Ghat, a middle-aged man covered in sandalwood paste is gazing at the Ganga, unmindful of the goings on around him. The world-famous 'aarti', the ritual of offering prayer to the river, has just ended. The people, largely tourists, have begun to empty out, but the man stands still. He isn’t wonderstruck by the beauty of t...
Chennai: In Karaikudi, where BJP's national secretary H Raja is contesting as the AIADMK alliance candidate, an auto stand sports a saffron flag with the BJP lotus on it. In Tamil Nadu, where auto unions are typically affiliated to the CPM’s CITU, DMK’s LPF or even the AIADMK, a RSS-affiliated Bharatiya Janata Mazdoor Mahasangh (BJMM) auto stand is certainl...
Pulwama: There’s a chill in the air as midnight descends on Kangan village in Pulwama district of South Kashmir on April 29. Two youngsters — 21-year-old Danish Ashraf Dar and his 14-year-old cousin, Shahnawaz Ashraf Dar — are fast asleep in their home. Fourteen others, including two children, are also curled up in the house.
Anantnag: the economic h...
A few years ago, a day like Monday, April 29, would have been a busy day in Namakkal, Tamil Nadu. The state board Class 10 exam results had been released and that would have meant frantic phone calls and personal inquiries at the schools here. But this year, Namakkal streets showed little traces of any buzz and the schools wore a deserted look.
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The Parsa coal block, one of 30 in Chhattisgarh’s Hasdeo Arand region, is a step closer from getting environmental clearance. This will be the third mine to open, after Chotia and Parsa East and Kete Basan (PEKB), in what was once a ‘No Go’ area for coal mining in the state. Opening another mine in the core forest area could have deleterious conseq...
The Hyderabadis started with big dreams in the 1990s. They had a mascot in Chandrababu Naidu who claimed a tech-savvy image for himself when most politicians thought the mouse was an animal. They had a generation of friends and relatives working in the IT industry in the US, which meant all the spinoff could possibly come to them. But the hard real...
During elections, river pollution is not a serious issue for Indian politicians, especially when there are bigger problems to milk such as joblessness and farmer distress. But for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who began his 2014 campaign with “Mujhe toh Ma Ganga ne bulaya hai (Mother Ganga has called me),” the very same river may prove to be his un...
While the international dimensions of the Sri Lankan blasts – ISIS link, Christchurch revenge – are being probed, a purely local angle may hold the key to understanding the terror surge on the day of Easter in the island.
As Sri Lankan security forces launch an operation to flush out terror groups and neutralize them, several videos have emerged...
Chennai: The fine print in the opening credits of the movie, 'Gangs of Wasseypur 1' contains a reference to 'Subramaniapuram' — a landmark Tamil film that showed the rootedness of gangsters in southern Tamil Nadu and the sense of kinship that spurred their violence. 'Subramaniapuram' was a period film. Released in 2008, it captured the era of Madurai, and b...
Pune: Sunil Pawale and his family were all over the media in March. Newspaper headlines screamed at how he was made to eat faeces by his employer because he had argued with him. Pawale and his family did not have a healthy employee-employer relationship with their tormentor. They were modern-day slaves earning ₹100 a day at a brick kiln near Pune. More t...
Chennai: Data can often look strange. For instance, the Central Marine Fisheries Institute (CMFRI) estimates that the export component of the fish catch from Tamil Nadu’s 13 coastal districts fetched a total of nearly ₹30,000 crore as foreign exchange to the country in 2017. This means each fisherman generates ₹25,000 worth of export catch a month, and this...
Chennai: Only a few from India such as CV Raman and Venkatesh Ramakrishnan have been awarded the Nobel Prize for physical sciences. For long, India did not have a highly developed science system to truly merit a greater claim to the prizes. But with economic progress the science system has improved in the country.
India is now at a point when cutting edg...
Chennai: In Tamil Nadu, Vijayakanth is an actor-turned politician whose electoral performance has dipped considerably in recent years. He has been practically written off as a contender for power. Seeman, who heads the Tamil Nationalist Naam Tamilar Katchi (NTK), attracts impressionable youth with oratory but his pro-LTTE stance and extreme positions make h...
New Delhi: India’s earliest sanitation systems date back to 2600 BC, during the Indus Valley Civilisation as excavations have shown. Yet the country and its citizens knowingly or unknowingly propagate the ideologies of British India when it comes to eradicating open defecation. That is, until recently.
Sacrosanct in ancient India
From the time of the I...
Hyderabad: When the NDA government unveiled in its last budget the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi — an investment support scheme for farmers — the ruling Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) lost no time in taking credit for pioneering the idea in the country. A flurry of statements followed highlighting how the central government ‘copied’ the Rythu Bandhu sche...
Chennai: It is 9 am, the busiest time of the day, and Munuswamy is busy sharpening his knife at the Pernambut slaughterhouse. It is one of the four licenced slaughterhouses in Vellore where cattle (excluding cows) are killed for meat. Forty-five-year old Munuswamy is one among the many dalits in the district who eke out a livelihood by skinning cattle at th...
Ambedkar, whose 128th birth centenary was observed on Sunday, April 14, has become the elephant in a game of blind men and the elephant. Hindutvavadis see in his virulent criticism of Islam and the role of Muslims in Indian history a vindication of their own political agenda. Dalit intellectuals and politicians see in his political activity and int...
On the Tamil Nadu vs Kerala Lottery Guessing Group on Facebook, 28-year-old Vijay from Coimbatore goes by the name ‘Vijay Loki KL.’ He doles out the last three digits of the 6-digit Kerala lottery numbers on WhatsApp, guaranteeing a bumper prize. “I am an agent and I will help you win,” he says on the group, displaying his number and the picture of...
Back in 1996, when a rumour of a miracle led millions of Hindus in India to believe that idols of Ganesha were drinking milk, a temple on a hilltop in a small town of Arunachal Pradesh too witnessed an overnight rush of devotees.
Many in the picturesque town of Ziro in Lower Subansiri district rushed to witness the miracle and started claiming t...
Bengaluru: It’s 2.30 in the afternoon on April 4. A political rally by Karnataka Chief Minister’s son Nikhil Kumaraswamy is about to take place in Mandya’s Thimmakoppalu, a village about 120 km from the state capital.
Sitting outside the house with his grandmother and a dog in tow, 22-year-old Abhishek TD, a farmer’s son, browses videos on his smartphone. ...
Coimbatore/Tirupur: Two huge life size banners of Jayalalithaa overlook the AIADMK headquarters at Royapettah in Chennai. A woman in her 50s staring at the banners with folded hands mumbled: “Amma, en dheivame … ivanga aatatha ellam paakringala?” (Amma, My God… Are you watching them play the game?)
“Who are playing the game?” I asked.
“Who else, the two who are ...
At 11 pm, on a routine day in the early 2000s, the land phone at the residence of the chief medical officer of Capital Hospital rang. It was a call from the chief minister. On a lonely stretch of the Khurda-Bhubaneswar highway, the CM’s convoy had come across two men dragging a young woman along.
Seeing the fleet of cars, the men had fled, leavi...
When Indian Air Force fighter pilot Abhinandan Vardhaman was held hostage by Pakistan a month back, support for his release and pride over his nativity swelled in equal measure in his home State of Tamil Nadu. Abhinandan didn't quite sound like a Tamil name. Was he from Kerala? they wondered.
Abhinandan Vardhaman comes from the community of Tami...
In the run up to the Lok Sabha elections 2019, the Indian National Congress has announced a flagship scheme to uplift the economically weaker sections (EWS). Under the Nyuntam Aay Yojana (NYAY), the Congress has promised to give ₹72,000 annually to the poorest 20% of Indian families.
The announcement has triggered a discussion on whether such sc...
The Dravidian movement owes much to history, or to a particular reading of history, as some critics would say it. It has constructed an identity politics based on the premise that Tamils are historically an ethnic group quite apart from Hindu India.
Since then, it has become a practice for groups and parties to invoke history — real, hazy, writt...
As electioneering picks up and campaigning goes on in full swing, protecting the leaders becomes a key issue for the nation’s security establishment. The four most protected people are Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra. Of them three are candidates in the Lok Sabha election.
Modi’s security ha...
The door was ajar. When this reporter was about to knock, a family member ushered him in. A man was sitting shirtless on the sofa with his sacred thread visible across his chest, poring over some papers through a watchmaker’s lens. His ash-smeared forehead glistened as he stood up to wear a shirt before talking to this correspondent.
It was a re...
On a balmy afternoon in early February, as a bunch of middle-aged men engaged in a discussion about the coming elections and the foreigners’ issue in Assam at a roadside tea stall in Guwahati, the conversation suddenly veered to the “badly made” cup of saah (Assamese for tea). One said it was too sugary. Another complained it was totally xereka (to...
For the first time in nearly three decades, there was no change of government after the 2016 elections in Tamil Nadu. There were clear signs of anti-incumbency across Tamil Nadu under the AIADMK regime but the DMK seemed just unable to take advantage. The DMK-Congress alliance lost the election narrowly and the vote difference was just two percenta...
Chennai/Hyderabad/Bengaluru: The iconic Gandhi glasses were etched on the door of what looked like a wardrobe — a two feet by two feet enclosure. It had no running water although it was a toilet — among the 54 constructed recently as part of the Swachh Bharat Mission at the narikkurava (gypsy tribe) settlement, near Poonamallee, of Thiruvallur district near Chennai. “It is too...
It was a conclave attended by more than a lakh women drawn from among the poorest sections of Kendrapara and Cuttack districts of Odisha. The speaker read out from an Odia text written in English. His accent, though foreign, was familiar to the crowd and did not hamper his ability to connect with them. Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik told the women b...
Parimala, a resident of North Chennai, has been running a wholesale medicine business for over a decade. Unable to come up with collateral that would satisfy bankers, she couldn’t raise money to expand her business. Two years ago, however, she got what she wanted: ₹25 lakh as soft loan under the Mudra scheme.
Sivaramasubramanian, a milk vendor o...
