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!”…

Read more

SCHOLARSHIPS- Political Compulsions

Two experts on Soviet studies, both lecturers in major universities, were in­formed late last month by the University Grants Commission (UGC) that their appli­cations for…

Read more

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…

Read more

A State Ravaged

It was beyond the ken of a civilised society, a blood­ spattered vindication of a heartless government’s sudden constitutional piety. The carnage began with a…

Read more

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…

Read more

POLITICAL COMPLUSIONS

Two experts on Soviet studies, both lecturers in major universities, were informed late last month by the University Grants Commission (UGC) that their applications for…

Read more