How and why Japan wants its youth to booze more
Should five per cent appear too small/ Be thankful I don’t take it all… said the taxman in the famous Beatles number. But then there is...
All Writings
- Aug 5
- 3 min
The diplomat as scholar
Time was when Indian diplomats, having done with decades of writing policy notes, cables and speeches, would settle down in their...
- Jul 10
- 3 min
Importance of a few good men in US
A select committee of the US house of representatives has been conducting televised hearings on the January 6, 2021, attack on the...
- Jun 12
- 3 min
The transfer of 2 officers to Ladakh, Arunachal
A Chekhovian drama was recently played out in Delhi. Media reports front-paged flagrant abuse of power by a senior IAS couple right in...
- May 15
- 3 min
Platinum Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II and The Big Jubilee Read
A year-long celebration is under way to mark the Platinum Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II, as she becomes the first British monarch to...
- Apr 11
- 3 min
Surviving Global Warming | The move away from fossil fuels is not happening fast
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, in a stark statement this week, sheared the jargon off the latest report of the Intergovernmental...
- Apr 10
- 3 min
Seeking reparations from British royals no longer a fringe demand
As royals go, the duke and duchess of Cambridge are near perfect. Good-looking, assured and alluringly attired, they waft through crowds...
- Dec 26, 2021
- 3 min
The land of the five rivers is on the verge of desertification
Arvind Kejriwal was recently interviewed by three anchors on a discussion platform regarding his party’s political aspirations in Punjab....
- Nov 28, 2021
- 3 min
Inaccuracies abound in ‘Sardar Udham’
The recent movie Sardar Udham can evoke mixed reactions. On the one hand, Udham Singh’s story needs to be told. In an act of determined...
- Oct 31, 2021
- 3 min
Biden's approval ratings are sliding steeply south
It was only this January that Donald Trump’s trapeze act through the White House came to an undignified end, as if someone had snipped...
- Sep 25, 2021
- 3 min
Shame China without naming it?
Quadrilaterals are generally irregular; the only regular quadrilateral, a square, has all its sides, and all its angles, equal. As in...
- Sep 6, 2021
- 6 min
Taliban’s return is the next act of an unending Afghan tragedy
THE NEW GREAT GAME “Now I shall go far and far into the north, playing the Great Game….” —Rudyard Kipling (Kim, 1901) THE EPITHET OF the...
- Sep 5, 2021
- 3 min
The many moods of Krishna Menon
Aldwych Street sits like an old-fashioned geometry D on London’s Strand. Down this crescent, the Indian tricolour flutters from its...
- Aug 8, 2021
- 3 min
Destroy space to save the earth?
Boys, it is said, will be boys. Not so long ago, Donald Trump boasted to Kim Jong-un that his nuclear button was bigger and more powerful...
- Jul 3, 2021
- 3 min
We have no uniform system of public library administration
Development, as it is sometimes interpreted, took a hit in Patna recently. The planned route of a flyover was changed to avoid...
- Jun 4, 2021
- 3 min
Time lost and opportunities missed do not come back
From where I sit, the summer afternoon is worthy of a Wordsworth. The dappled sunshine spells laziness; the buzzing of a bee heightens...
- May 16, 2021
- 3 min
Vaccine nationalism is shameless
The question at the cold heart of this debate is simple: Should money be made out of human misery? Should the worst health tragedy in a...
- Apr 18, 2021
- 3 min
Navtej Sarna on two men and their legendary bookstores
It was the fall of 1983. On my first visit to Paris, short on money but high on romance, I idled over a coffee in a wayside cafe in the...
- Mar 16, 2021
- 3 min
A vaccine for all reasons
The Golan Heights hide their tensions well. The road sweeps languidly through lightly wooded hills past wetlands that attract millions of...
- Feb 20, 2021
- 3 min
Guess who’s coming to dinner
Call it a diplomat’s lucky day: in Washington in the spring of 2017, I found myself seated next to Jeff Bezos at the Gridiron dinner. The...