Opinion

By Srikumar Datta Children today step into the digital world as effortlessly as they learn to speak. In India, smartphones often enter a child’s life long before adulthood. As internet access spreads rapidly across urban and rural homes alike, the central question is no longer...

By P. Dalai Amongst many exotic cuisines that we have grafted into our urban culinary culture, there is a general taste for eating baby vegetables. This appears to be the most ostentatious appetite of modern gastronomes, driven by insatiable consumerism. As inevitable items of what...

By Ian Buruma When a white police officer in Minneapolis killed George Floyd, a Black man he was putting under arrest, by kneeling on his neck nearly six years ago, the political repercussions were serious, immediate, and felt nationwide. The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement,...

Melvin Durai It has been almost two years since Abubakar Tahiru, a Ghanaian forestry student, set a Guinness World Record for most trees hugged in an hour, and I have to admit that I have not hugged a single tree. I have admired many trees...

Michael Froman One issue dominated this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos: President Donald Trump’s threats to gain US control of Greenland. The announcement of a skeletal agreement between President Trump and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte was good news – even if it turns out...

By Santosh Kumar Mohapatra Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has made history by presenting her ninth consecutive Union Budget, drawing close to the record of ten Budgets presented by former Prime Minister Morarji Desai over different periods. While presenting the Budget, the Finance Minister outlined...

By Indira Hirway An important observation about the presentation of the Budget by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is that the speech was just too long and unilluminating, making it come across as a rather tired effort. The speech, despite its length, did not dive into...

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s 86-minute Budget speech for 2026–27 tried to project reform and restraint. The markets saw something else. Within hours, Dalal Street delivered its verdict. The Sensex and Nifty slid after the government raised the Securities Transaction Tax (STT) on derivatives, chilling trading...

Ajit Ranade India’s macro backdrop today looks unusually reassuring. Quarterly real growth has been firm, inflation is low, banks are reporting strong profits with low NPAs, and corporate balance sheets look healthier after years of deleveraging. That surface calm, however, is precisely why the Union...

By Piotr Opali ski Relations between Pakistan and Taliban-ruled Afghanistan are currently among the most unstable elements of South Asia’s security architecture. Increasing border incidents, escalating political tensions, and growing activity of extremist groups indicate that the Islamabad-Kabul conflict has transcended the framework of incidental...