View Articles

Refusal of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) of Saudi Arabia to meet a delegation led by Pakistan’s Chief of Army Qamar Javed Bajwa indicates the expansion of cleavage in the Islamic world whose rock-like solidarity no more exists. Although the schism is mainly over the issue of Jammu and Kashmir, the new reality is a hitherto unthinkable New Delhi-Washington-Islamabad of a new order.

New Delhi: A stadium named after one of country's best footballers Bhaichung Bhutia will be inaugurated in Namchi — twenty-five kilometres away from the maestro's birthplace, Tinkitam in the district of South Sikkim, after Covid-19 subsides.

New Delhi: Women's Hockey Team Defender Gurjit Kaur on Monday opined that learning the art of drag-flicking properly has been the turning point of her career.

It is indeed a significant political development in Jammu and Kashmir, where prominent mainstream political parties have joined hands to demand the restoration of Article 370 and statehood. It was on August 5 last year that the Centre after beefing up army presence, detaining leaders of Kashmir’s major political parties revoked Articles 370 and 35A of the Constitution and bifurcated the state into two Union Territories. There are multiple petitions are before the Supreme Court about its constitutionality.

The problem which an authoritarian regime faces in a democracy is that it cannot keep a lid on dissent indefinitely. It isn’t only that the assertions before the judiciary that criticism of the government is not an anti-national activity become public knowledge in an open society, thereby raising doubts about official crackdowns on critics, those in detention also cannot be kept behind bars for long.

Few can really explain India’s unusual economic trends where markets — from retail consumer to share market — prices are shooting up despite massive depression in the job market, heavy contraction in industrial production and consumption, near absence of large parts of the services sector, comprising travel and entertainment, and big loss of general public income. The pandemic has impacted the world economy. Markets are down almost everywhere, except probably India. Few have enough money to spend even on daily dire necessities.

Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) have great potential but remains untapped in most developing countries including India. Most Indian SMEs having a lower share of foreign goods and services to produced exports, have been facing greater export and import barriers, and certain risks in global value chain (CVC) participation due to weaker bargaining power vis-à-vis larger firms. In the COVID-19 era, when both demand and supply chains are disrupted, they need robust policies to address these and the other issues, rather than a mere package of their revival in form of loans to them, as has been announced by the Narendra Modi government.

The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare the fragile threads holding together the way labour and industries function within the country. The relationship between workmen and management are notoriously lopsided in the manner in which the latter can wield power over the former. While it is indisputable that production of goods cannot be done without labour, industrialists are the ones vested with all the bargaining power in any interaction with workers, often leading to exploitative and inhumane working conditions for workers.

If it is viewed as a duel, activist lawyer Prashant Bhushan has won hands down. Even as a contempt of court case, where he is awaiting sentence, he has not done too badly.

Nobody wants to court death. And only few would willingly agree to go to jail. Not when the crime’s neither stealing nor thieving. Or murder! And if the person, whose conduct and behaviour you have questioned, is in a position to be judge, jury and executioner combined, he could charge you with a crime, try you in his head and sentence you to an Indian-style toilet for six months. That’s when, if you refuse to apologise, you’ll become Mahatma or Nelson.