Betting on Farms

India is a land of plenty. It is also a land of plenty of waste. If you suffer Malthusian nightmares of the Great Unfed Billions,…

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Hello, Tomorrow

I had my epiphany on a Seoul subway in 2004. All around me, young men and women rode to work silently, mesmerised by television programmes…

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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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UNTIL DEATH DO US PART

No Amount of civilised debate can take away from the savagery of the traditional Indian marriage. In the last few weeks, eight women have died…

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FINGER ON THE PULES?

Two-third of indians depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. As our farm crisis deepens, the government is tinkering around the edges by pushing irrigation, rural…

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SUFFER THE CHILDREN

The other day, I watched this video of four-year-old Jackson Drew reciting Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 (Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?) and marvelled…

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VULTURE CULTURE

PSYCHOPATHY. VOYEURISM. SADISM.  Schadenfreude. Vicarious pleasure. Blood lust. You will find several terms to describe the human tendency to find a strange satisfaction, indeed fulfilment,…

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