BEING A career woman keeps me on my toes most days, but just occasionally, I manage to take out the time for my close group of friends. In these sessions, we revert to our teenage selves as we begin the goodold arguments about politics, society and inevitably, the role and status of women. With Marc...
Foreword IT WAS A typical wintry morning in Delhi as, armed with a set of questions, I waited for Mrinal Pande to arrive. I knew the well-documented facts, of course—she was the chairperson of Prasar Bharati, had been a journalist, editor and television anchor in a career spanning decades, and w...
Blast outside Israeli Embassy Leaves Four Injured
TERROR ATTACK\\ In a suspected coordinated attack, an Israeli embassy car exploded in front of the embassy in New Delhi. This incident took place right after a bomb was defused in an Israeli embassy vehicle in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia. An Israeli diplomat, who was inside the car at the ti...
The Politics of Literature & Salman Rushdie: Mass protests make the author skip the festival
LITERATURE \\ The Jaipur Literature Festival 2012 began on a low note this year due to raging protests within the country by Islamic fundamentalists. They were agitating against celebrated author Salman Rushdie in a bid to stop his arrival in the country. Despite this, Rushdie was committed to atten...
INTERNATIONAL\\ Maldives president Mohamed Nasheed resigned from office as tension escalated amidst mass protest, in the otherwise peaceful archipelago. Vice President Mohamed Waheed has been sworn in to rule the nation till the presidential elections next year. Nasheed had ordered the arrest of cri...
SPORTS\\ Novak Djokovic was the last man standing in the clash for the title between Rafael Nadal and himself, at the singles final of the Australian Open, in what turned out to be the longest grand slam match ever. Djokovic won the match, which lasted for 5 hours and 53 minutes, 5-7, 6-4, 6-2, 6-7 ...
Supreme Court gives verdict on the 2G Spectrum Scam Cancels all distributed licences
LAW\\ The Supreme Court finally gave its verdict on 2G spectrum scam in February. The apex court ordered the government to revoke all the 122 telecom licences that were distributed under the tainted sale of 2008, by telecom minister at the time, A. Raja. This decision, while praised in most quarters...
Femininity and Feminism–do we misuse the two F-words?
SWETA SRIVASTAVA VIKRAM: A few months ago, as part of my status update, I posted a quote on Facebook: “For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.” The words, written by Virginia Wolf, seemed apt to share along with my radio interview and video clips of a reading, in New York City (NYC), where I...
Instagram shows that pictures are worth a thousand words, as photo streaming becomes a phenomenon About a year ago, someone suggested I write about a little photo app that went by the not-veryinteresting name of Instagram. Something inspired by telegrams, I gather. It was an iPhone camera app and a...
When aid recipients become donors, should the helping hand be pulled back? IN JANUARY 2012, India took the first steps towards setting up an international aid agency, to be located within the Ministry of External Affairs. In February, there was a controversy in Britain over the government’s deci...
It took Sanjeev Bikhchandani seven years of struggle to put together the jobs portal, Naukri.com. But today Info Edge is a hugely successful internet business leader in the country I come from a family of working professionals, but I always knew that I would run my own business. I had been working...
a closer look at Nuclear Energy Monster or Messiah?
At the 2009 Copenhagen Summit, a major point of contention between nations was ‘climate change’. Today, almost all countries are trying to put a cap on their own and others’ carbon emissions. In a scenario where our energy demands are increasing exponentially, going nuclear seems like the only...
The role of women in humanising civil society I THINK it was at a United Nations’ Seminar on Women’s Development and Empowerment where I first heard a statement which left quite a mark on me. A speaker, after making a strong case for women’s rights and equality, said, “After all, we, the w...
Demanding citizens’ rights through societal participation—that’s Janaagraha Janaagraha’s defines “quality of life” in two ways: the quality of urban infrastructure and services(read: roads, drains, transport, water supply, etc.) and the quality of citizenship. For Janaagraha, the respo...
Stephen Hawking: An Unfettered Mind
This is a good second biography from the same author, but leaves one wanting more SCIENCE WRITER Kitty Ferguson has been working with Stephen Hawking for decades, and produced his bestselling biography, Stephen Hawking: A Quest for the Theory of Everything, in 1992. An Unfettered Mind is her lates...
The Eighth Guest and Other Muzaffar Jang Mysteries
Desi detective tales with a twist—Liddle’s sandook of criminals is a delight for both history buffs and mystery lovers MADHULIKA LIDDLE’S second book, The Eighth Guest and Other Muzaffar Jang Mysteries, is once again based around the Dilli Durbars of the 17th century, at a time when the Mugh...
Uncharted and mostly untouched Borneo is simply breathtaking In search of that elusive earthly paradise, uncharted by Google, unmapped by GPS and unchronicled by Lonely Planet, I had zeroed in on the jungles of Indonesian Borneo; inaccessible to all but the most persistent and hardy traveller. So...
Sunandini Banerjee makes the cover into a canvas with stunning visuals and digital creativity One is usually not advised to ‘judge a book by its cover’, but when it comes to the books and catalogues that Seagull Books bring out, that is exactly what one is tempted to do. The artist-designer-vi...