Editorial

A Backpack of Reforms

ALL EYES WERE on Finance Minister P. Chidambaram when he presented the Budget 2013-2014 on February 28, 2013. There have been issues which have been in the foreground in the past year, and the FM and his team had issues that they could take credit for—allowing FDI in retail and civil aviation, and...

Cover Story

The Kite Runner

Former Finance Minister and BJP politician Yashwant Sinha talks of his journey into the world of administrative services, politics, inspiration and his mentor Here is a small story. It starts in a place called Kadamkuan in Patna in the 1940s. For those who are from the eastern part of India, they m...

Up-To-Date

Sri Lankan Army faces flak after photographs surface

Slain LTTE Chief’s Son Allegedly Murdered ALLEGATION \\ A series of photographs showing Balachandran Prabhakaran, son of Villupillai Prabhakaran, head of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), shot and dead were revealed recently leading to allegations that the boy’s death may have been s...

Hyderabad Blast Kills 16

BLASTS\\ Twin bomb blasts rocked Hyderabad on February 21, 2013, killing at least 16 people and injuring over 100 others. In the first terror strike in the city since 2007, the blasts triggered by Improvised Explosive Devices (IED) tied to two bicycles took place in Dilsukhnagar area, south of Musi ...

Meteorite Shoots Across the Russian Sky

400 People Injured in the ‘Fireball Shower’ METEORITE \\ Around 400 people were injured when a meteorite shot across the sky in central Russia in mid-February sending fireballs crashing to Earth, smashing windows and setting off car alarms. Residents on their way to work in Chelyabinsk heard wh...

ICC Women’s World Cup; Aussies Win

CRICKET\\ In this edition of the ICC Women’s Cricket World, the Indian team got eliminated as early as the group stages for the first time in eight editions. The team lost to Sri Lanka. Runs overflowed from the opponents’ bats, while the Indian side saw some wayward bowling. When it came to scor...

After Coalgate, its Choppergate

AK Antony denies resignation rumours SCAM\\ The Choppergate controversy began after Italian agencies arrested Finmeccanica CEO Giuseppe Orsi for suspected corruption to seal a deal made with Indian officials. A CBI team and defence ministry officials left for Italy to get more information on the al...

Afzal Guru Hanged

Guru Labelled as ‘Martyr’ in the Valley HUNG\\ Afzal Guru, 43, was hanged inside the Tihar Jail on the morning of February 9, 2013, for plotting an attack on Parliament on December 13, 2001. He was buried inside the jail complex in accordance with the jail manual. The death triggered protests a...

Foreign Despatches

Are Indian B-schools in a bubble, as US colleges are?

ARE INDIAN B-schools in a bubble, as some experts are claiming that American colleges are? Joseph Schumpeter, in a recent article in The Economist entitled The Latest Bubble? argues the American higher education bubble is already beginning to burst. He quotes PayPal cofounder, Peter Thiel, “Higher...

Social Agenda

Go Ahead And Make A Scene

An online six second video app is taking the world by storm Six seconds. That’s the sort of time it takes for a luxury sedan to hit 100 kmph, or how long most recruiters look at the average resume before making a ‘fit or no-fit’ decision. Of late though, six seconds has assumed a whole new me...

Platform 1

Sources of the Indian Self

Excavating India’s Political Foundations WHILE WATCHING Daniel Day-Lewis’ riveting performance as Abraham Lincoln in Steven Spielberg’s biopic Lincoln, many viewers were struck by how effectively the film captures the complexity of debates surrounding the meanings of words like “freedom” ...

Looking Back

THE PATHFINDERS

Father-son duo looks back at the process of pioneering digital maps of 5,79,000 towns and villages, street level maps of over 4,000 cities and 1.8 million kilometres of road network, and how MapmyIndia got to know India, inside out Rakesh Verma: By 2004, we realised digital maps would be a crowded ...

Platform 2

Cricket in India doesn’t operate in a vacuum

It is part of a society that discourages women from excelling in ‘male bastions’ SIFT THROUGH THE reports from the recent Women’s World Cup held in India—which Australia won—and words like ‘sexism’, ‘apathy’, ‘discriminatory’ and ‘insult’ pop out. The two-week long tournam...

Issue

Is Small, Simpler?

In the year 1956 the Centre, under the leadership of the then PM Jawaharlal Nehru, initiated a process of territorial re-demarcation of the country. The State Reorganisation Commission (SRC) was formed to oversee the ‘redrawing’ of the Indian map on linguistic lines. As a result, the states of T...

Good Karma

THE ‘FARMGURU’ OF INDIA

Rikin Gandhi is teaching the farmers of the country the keys to a better produce As part of the Mahindra Rise Project, set out to pick 20 innovators from different fields, the July issue of Tehelka featured Rikin Gandhi, a 30-yearold. The article contains a shot of the geeky, Indian lad, who looks ...

Reading Room

India Means Business

A look at the economic history of India and how it has shaped the way we do business here MOST WITH an interest in economics are rather put off by the thought of reading economic history. Given the 15-page bibliography, a casual reader intrigued by the title may well feel tempted to put India Means...

The City of Devi

Emotional and surprising, quite a page-turner this Manil Suri’s The City of Devi is the final installment in a trilogy which began with The Death of Vishnu in 2001. The second book in the series was The Age of Shiva, which although not as acclaimed as the first novel, received good reviews all ar...

Hitchhiker's Guide

City of the Arts and Sciences

A bit of both, with loads of fun, that’s Valencia for you My journey from freezing Madrid, where the weather forecast kept predicting snow, to warm, sunny Valencia took exactly two hours, but it was like going to another country altogether. The skies in Valencia resolutely remained fiercely blue,...

Garnish

Bite-sized China in Tandoori India

Chef Liu Zhijun brings a bit of his homeland here Food brings everyone together, and Chinese cuisine is a favourite for many people. From kids to grown ups, everyone is delighted at the mention of spring rolls, hakka noodles, chilly chicken, Schezwan chicken, prawn curry, American choupsey or chic...