The colonial government took a liberal view of the merciless lampooning that it received at the hands of cartoonists in the Indian press A cartoon is a written expression of the comic impulse, and the cartoonist is an artisan of nib and brush who puts down complex processes of reason and argument in drawings and pictures. His impact is that readers sit up, smile, frown, or simply laugh. In short, cartoons...

Parliament is now a body of fragile selves. They won’t draw a sword for liberty Is the controversy over the Ambedkar cartoon in the NCERT textbook a sign of a deeper intellectual and cultural malaise? The plot line is eerily familiar. One set of politicians raises, in this case falsely, the apprehension that a cartoon is offensive. There is a high-pitched debate. Members of an offended community accuse others of insensitivity...

-The United Nations The number of people with high blood pressure and diabetes is drastically increasing in both developed and developing countries, according to a United Nations report released today. “This report is further evidence of the dramatic increase in the conditions that trigger heart disease and other chronic illnesses, particularly in low- and Middle-income countries,” said the Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), Margaret Chan. “In some African countries, as...

Justice Markandey Katju's prescription for a regulated media regime is a misplaced step that can actually de-democratise the fourth estate. IT is open season on the political class and the news media. But then, again, it's more like a chase of one's own tail. A self-righteous, delusional, Anna-Baba NGO-ised fringe sets out to stigmatise politics and Members of Parliament; the news media salivate at the prospect and rush to provide...

A universal pension scheme for social protection must be part of a broader strategy of economic expansion different from the present neoliberal order. INDIA must be one of the worst countries in the world in terms of not providing even minimal social security for most of its people. This is not just a major failure of the development project in the country – it is also a significant cause of...