-Open the Magazine It was good, it was brief There is a type of talented Indian who lives in the United States with his austere wife to whom he lost his virginity, and has two children who are good at spelling. He walks with a mild slouch. He is still intimidated by White waiters, but not Black waiters. In an elevator, chiefly in an elevator, he suspects he is probably small. He...

-The Hindu Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's decency and politics of reconciliation have been his undoing Last fortnight I had cloistered myself away in the hills for a spot of reflection and writing. I had chosen to deprive myself of blessings like newspapers, the television and internet; telephone connectivity was at best erratic and in any case it was turned off most of the time. During one occasional moment of connectedness I got...

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...

Veteran agricultural scientist and alumnus of Harvard and Berkeley Universities, Dr Peter Kenmore was in Mumbai for NABARD’s 30th anniversary lecture on ‘Future of Global Agriculture: Challenges and Opportunities for India.’ This United Nations Food & Agriculture Organization India representative spoke to Yogesh Pawar on the current scenario in agriculture. Some excerpts: There’s a lot of churn over GM technology in India. At a time when the country is grappling with...

Natives of Niyamgiri feel that the police is acting as an agent of the Vedanta group, playing dirty tricks to help the company go ahead with its plans to mine bauxite from the sacred hills ONE OF the world’s most controversial mines is back in the spotlight after hundreds protested against renewed efforts to mine Odisha’s Niyamgiri Hills. Dongria Kondh and Niyamgiri supporters held their own ‘public hearing’ in Odisha...