Indian-origin, Mumbai-born economist Abhijit Banerjee has won this year’s Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work in alleviating poverty, making him the second Indian after Amartya Sen to receive the honour. An authority on global poverty, Abhijit Banerjee carried out his research emphasising the human condition in his home country, and in the … Continue reading Economics Nobel for Kolkata Boy, Alumnus of JNU, Presidency College
WHAT STRIKES YOU first about this book is author Shuja Nawaz’s extensive global network and his access to people and documents—those that matter both in the US and Pakistan, countries he calls his two homelands. He started writing The Battle for Pakistan: The Bitter US Friendship and a Tough Neighbourhood (Vintage; 400 pages; Rs 799) in 2008 … Continue reading An Insider’s Perspective on Strained US-Pakistan ties and Challenges for India’s Hostile Neighbour
ABOUT FIVE YEARS ago, the Indian Government was busy looking for a pool of teenaged hackers to fight off cyber offensives targeted at its strategic installations, including the national power grid, gas pipelines and other public utilities. The reason that Richard Jeffrey Danzig, cyber security adviser to former US President Barack Obama, offered to Open about the … Continue reading How India Ranked Among Countries that Use ‘Cyber Troops’ to Influence Opinion
FOR SOMEONE RENOWNED FOR HIS crisp and brief speeches, Mahatma Gandhi was destined to make one of his relatively long speeches, by his standards of course, at the Sivagiri Mutt in Varkala, which was then home to Sree Narayana Guru, one of Kerala’s foremost social reformers, on March 13th, 1925. Guru, a life-long proponent of … Continue reading On the 1925 Dialogue Between Mahatma Gandhi and Sree Narayana Guru
AT THE HEIGHT of the General Election campaign in March this year, crowds in the Tribal village of Baranti in Raghunathpur area of Purulia district, West Bengal, were upbeat because they no longer had to answer the call of nature behind sal trees or even far away where they risked being bitten by venomous snakes. … Continue reading Open Defecation: Quitting the Habit
An alumnus of the University of Cambridge, Dr Radha Kumar’s specialisations include ethnic conflicts, peace studies and conflict resolution. She had served as an interlocutor appointed by the Government for Jammu and Kashmir from 2010 to 2011, and has worked in various parts of the world to bring peace to troubled areas. The 66-year-old author, feminist and academic has … Continue reading ‘We Will See Redoubled Efforts at Infiltration, Recruitment and Weaponisation of Militants’
When I met him in the afternoon of April 17th last year at his office, 801 Cheng Yu Tung Tower, Hong Kong University, Benny Tai, Associate Professor of Law at the prestigious institution, was already a hero to thousands of pro-democracy activists in the semi-autonomous Chinese city that was under British control until 1997. He … Continue reading Benny Tai on Hong Kong’s Special Role in ‘Withstanding the Global Rise of Authoritarianism’
THE DAY IS overcast and, in his quiet Ahmedabad office, Tridip Suhrud is busy at work, occasionally puffing at a roll-your-own cigarette and sipping tea. The light music in the background seems to add to the charm of his literary pursuit: demystifying Mahatma Gandhi. Suhrud, India’s foremost Gandhi scholar and former director of Sabarmati Ashram—where … Continue reading ‘On His Sexual Experiments, Gandhi Refused to be Swayed by Disapproving Associates’
Noted historian Ayesha Jalal, an expert on global jihadist trends, India’s Partition, Kashmir and Pakistan, has hit out at New Delhi over its latest legislative manoeuvres on Jammu Kashmir that she emphasised have destabilised the subcontinent. In a brief chat with Open, the Mary Richardson Professor of History at Tufts University, said that the Narendra Modi-led … Continue reading India’s Move on Kashmir Undemocratic, Provocative: Ayesha Jalal
Amid deep uncertainty and a massive security build-up that threw life out of gear in the Valley, the Union government on Monday scrapped Article 370 that offered special status to Jammu and Kashmir. It was this “temporary” provision that ensured the then princely state’s accession to India in 1947 when the country was partitioned and … Continue reading In a Stroke, J&K Loses Statehood, Special Status
