January 2021
Making Indian Cities Habitable – The Legacy of Patrick Geddes, India Forum
‘India lives in her villages’, said Mahatma Gandhi, and that maxim of his has been resolutely followed by Indian environmentalists. From celebrated popular struggles like the Chipko Andolan and the Narmada Bachao Andolan to quieter, [...]
September 2020
Lessons in Leadership from Satish Dhawan, The Telegraph
The late A. P. J. Abdul Kalam liked to tell stories with morals. A story he was particularly fond of related to the launch of a satellite by the Indian Space Research Organization in July [...]
August 2020
5 Reasons Why Rahul Gandhi Cannot Take on Modi for PM, NDTV.com
Those who oppose Hindutva seek to recover the founding principles of the freedom struggle, such as religious and linguistic pluralism, gender and caste equality, a critical attitude to state power, and an open-ness to other [...]
A Brief History of Cults of Personality, The Telegraph
The term ‘cult of personality’ is thought to have been first used with regard to the Soviet dictator Josef Stalin. Stalin died in 1953, after more than two decades in power; three years later, in [...]
June 2020
The Perilous State of Press Freedom in India Today, The Telegraph
In 1824, the Government of Bengal (which was then in the hands of the East India Company) issued an Ordinance placing strict curbs on the freedom of the press. This gave the government the powers [...]
Why Modi has Failed India, NDTV.com
Last week, the respected US rating agency Moody’s downgraded India’s sovereign rating to Baa3, the lowest grade. It thereby joined Standard and Poor and Fitch, which had already relegated India to the bottom rung in [...]