Seismic costs
A mega dam in an earthquake zone could cause huge loss of life.
By: Imaduddin Ahmed WHEN considering investment in an infrastructure project, responsible investors or donors would ask: what is the need? What are the financial, social and environmental costs? What are the risks and the unknowns? Is the project likely to yield higher costs than benefits? Is the project the best option to address the need? […]
After the Nobel Peace Prize, it’s time to focus on the victims of rape
Nadia Murad and Denis Mukwege’s award should make us consider the impact on those who suffer sexual assaults
By: Winnie M Li Ten years ago, when I was raped, I never could have predicted a single six-character hashtag would come to symbolise — at least for the media — all the world’s survivors of sexual assault and misconduct. But #MeToo is apparently a trend, and news stories around rape are now “topical”, even […]
Portraits of Pakistan
By: Ghazi Salahuddin Who do you think are the most distinguished Pakistanis who inspire you and make you feel good about your country? This is one of the questions that I pose whenever I have an opportunity to interact with young people. Naturally, I get anxious to see if some of my choices – the […]
Charismatic Dr Ruveda salaam- the inspiration for many!
By: Rayees Masroor Hailing from a small border village of Farkin in one of the extreme corners of district Kupwara, the iconic Dr Ruveda Salam became the very first woman IPS officer from the state of Jammu and Kashmir in 2015. Before Ruveda cleared the UPSC (for the first time), she got into medical college, […]
Putin, Modi and psst… Pakistan
Russia's memorandum of co-operation to supply radar systems to Pakistan seems to have nudged India into standing up to the US
By: K.P. Nayar When Russian President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Narendra Modi stand together at Hyderabad House in New Delhi on Friday afternoon to witness the signing of several bilateral agreements, the elephant in the room will be Pakistan. In an atmosphere of bonhomie, partly contrived out of necessity on both sides, but mostly […]
The Uncovered Last Mile
Policymakers need to ask why programmes for farmers do not reach them.
By: Yoginder K. Alagh Two policy issues remain a flea in my ear and I keep reiterating them in my column. The first is: Does the money we aim to spend on farmers reach the intended beneficiaries? Alternately, do markets give them advantages on their harvest? The second is: Does the money we spend on […]
A Cure Called Inclusion
Their marginalisation affects the health of tribal communities.
BY: Shah Alam Khan A report in The Indian Express (‘Health to poverty: Tribals scrape bottom of barrel’, IE, September 15) drew our attention to the findings of an Expert Committee on Tribal Health appointed five years ago by the Ministries of Health and Family Welfare and Tribal Development. The report revealed that tribal communities […]
The voice that is great within us
BY: Ananya Vajpeyi Truth, Satya, was the central axis of the Gandhian system of thought and practice. For Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, everything turned on Truth — satyagraha, swaraj, ahimsa, ashram, brahmacharya, yajna, charkha, khadi, and finally, moksha itself. In a fine introduction to a new critical edition of the Mahatma’s An Autobiography or The Story […]
Justice and Dissent
The Supreme Court trial of the five activists.
By: KAMAL CHENOY It was clear to most activists that the Supreme Court, as it was constituted, would reject the case of five activists, accused of espousing Maoist causes, arguably linked to Maoist forces. Despite Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, who from the beginning questioned the Pune police, and criticised them for showing all their documents to […]
The Limits Of Rationality
The smarter we are, the more likely we are to re-affirm our political biases.
By: Sreejith Sugunan As part of the Cultural Cognition Project, which aims to study how individuals with preconceived group identities perceive their risk in society, law professor and psychologist Dan Kahan found that people generally engage in “identity protective cognition”. Kahan used this term to refer to our tendency to “selectively credit and discredit evidence” […]
