Garam hawa

India must construct an enlightened climate change policy ‘FOOD PRICES set to rise as floods ruin crops’. ‘Prime Minister promises aid to flood victims’. Does…

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CALCUTTA IS FOEVER

Thirty years ago, a dishevelled man leaned across and shouted at me in the smoke-filled, raucous Olympia bar on Calcutta’s Park Street: “Calcutta is forever!”…

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DESERTS – GREENING OF THAR

Lush vegetation in the Thar? Groves jamun trees? Mighty rivers the size of the Ganga and Indus? Seasons of monsoon-like rainfall? None of this is…

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MATHEMATICS OF RAGAS

When Frenchman Bernard Bel and American Jim Arnold met by chance in a Delhi hotel in September 1979, it turned out to be a momentous…

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Cheating The Hangman

Convicted killers Billa and Ranga were expected to make headlines last fortnight. Make news, they certainly did, but not the way everybody anticipated. Instead of…

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HANGING FIRE

The Quality of justice seemed to be under tremendous strain last fortnight. At issue was the vexatious question of capital punishment. As usual, the shock…

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KILLING ME SOFTLY

He took a deep breath of air. Once again he caught a strangeness on the wind, neither pleasant nor unpleasant, neither odour nor perfume—just strange,…

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APOCALYPSE NOW

Kanpur, Faridabad, Varanasi, Gaya, Patna, Delhi, Lucknow, Agra, Muzaffarpur. Nine of the world’s ten most polluted cities listed by the World Health Organization are in…

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Waterless World

Time was when ‘Glacial Speed’ used to mean ‘very, very slowly’. That has changed forever. We know that our planet is warming. New research shows…

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