A TRIP TO THE interior tribal land of Attappadi in Kerala’s Palakkad district is a lesson in humility when Rajesh, a young shopkeeper, asks you to be paid for his ware via Paytm or Google Pay because he doesn’t have enough cash to return the balance. “Sir, you don’t have GPay?” he enquires with a … Continue reading The Network Nation: How Digitalisation is Driving Growth in India
Steven Pinker criticises the Pope over comments on NATO, warns India about majoritarianism
Steven Pinker is the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University (Photo courtesy: Rose Lincoln/Harvard University) Celebrity intellectual and Harvard Professor Steven Pinker has rebuked Pope Francis’s comments on NATO and the Patriarch of Rome’s ambiguous statement on western nations supplying Ukrainians with weapons and intelligence. In a recent interview to Corriere della Sera, the … Continue reading Steven Pinker criticises the Pope over comments on NATO, warns India about majoritarianism
The fall of the Rajapaksa brothers is a message for majoritarian nationalists
(Illustration: Saurabh Singh) "WORDS DO NOT put rice on the table,” avers Gordon Weiss, a long-time Sri Lanka watcher and author of The Cage: The Fight for Sri Lanka & the Last Days of the Tigers. He was the UN spokesman in Colombo in the war-ravaged period leading to the fall of the LTTE in … Continue reading The fall of the Rajapaksa brothers is a message for majoritarian nationalists
Shireen Akleh’s death: Israeli writer Yossi Melman demands international probe
Yossi Melman, veteran journalist and author, says such an inquiry must involve an organisation of the repute of Reporters Without Borders Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh who was shot dead on May 11 during an IDF raid in West Bank (Photo: Al Jazeera) Veteran Israeli journalist and author Yossi Melman, 71, has called for … Continue reading Shireen Akleh’s death: Israeli writer Yossi Melman demands international probe
A Trek To the Remote Tholung Monastery in North Sikkim
The pilgrimage to the sacred Buddhist site is a perilous walk to a higher plane Bungalows for visitors on the grounds of the Tholung Monastery in North Sikkim (Photo: Pangzor Lepcha) EVEN FOR THE LEPCHAS WHO LIVE IN THE PROTECTED REGION OF Dzongu in North Sikkim, Tholung is a sequestered spot, divine status notwithstanding. The … Continue reading A Trek To the Remote Tholung Monastery in North Sikkim
Laya Maria Jaison, transwoman in CPM’s youth body, calls for mindset change
Laya Maria Jaison (Photos: Instagram ) Laya Maria Jaison, who declared herself as a transwoman in 2016, is a model, an occasional actor, social activist and now a political leader with the youth arm of the CPM, an otherwise male-dominated party that has often come under attack over poor representation at its top-tier panels for … Continue reading Laya Maria Jaison, transwoman in CPM’s youth body, calls for mindset change
US mindful of mutual interests with India: Joseph Nye
The highly influential American foreign policy expert speaks about the Ukraine war, US, Mearsheimer, Xi and Putin Joseph S Nye Harvard University professor and acclaimed American political scientist Joseph S Nye, who is famous for coining the term ‘soft power’, states that the US understands New Delhi’s reasons for abstaining from international resolutions that condemn … Continue reading US mindful of mutual interests with India: Joseph Nye
A Resigned Sigh at the High-level Summit of Indian Marxists
A gathering at the 23rd CPM party congress in Kannur, on April 10, 2022 (Courtesy: G Pramod) THE TYPICALLY TRIENNIAL high-level meet of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM), held recently in a resplendent display of its organisational prowess in its north Kerala stronghold of Kannur, which was awash in huge red banners, blinding lights … Continue reading A Resigned Sigh at the High-level Summit of Indian Marxists
‘I have lived through a civil war, but I have never been this worried about the future,’ says T Shanaathanan
T Shanaathanan, who runs a history project of collecting objects and memories linked to the 1983-2009 civil war, says that the economic meltdown in Sri Lanka has been in the making for long and is the result of flawed policies. The Jaffna-based artist and educator tells Ullekh NP that the worst part of the current … Continue reading ‘I have lived through a civil war, but I have never been this worried about the future,’ says T Shanaathanan
Cracks in social foundations can break up democracies: book
THIS IS A book on democracy in India. It also examines how democracies potentially die. But this book—unlike other recent books, including the influential book by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt (titled How Democracies Die: What History Reveals About Our Future) doesn’t view the phenomenon from the contexts of the two typical causes of democratic eclipse … Continue reading Cracks in social foundations can break up democracies: book
Ullekh NP 