Opinion

By Sudarshan Iyengar The Election Commission of India is not an ordinary government department. It is a constitutional institution entrusted with something more fundamental than conducting elections: protecting the citizen’s right to choose. Article 324 vests the Commission with superintendence, direction and control over electoral...

By Shivaji Sarkar Two giants meet. Since 1962, in a first, a US President welcomes a country head at air base in person – a rare moment indeed for a short truce till January 2027 – about three months. Perhaps, the world should rejoice. But...

By Kaushik Basu Over the past decade, scholars and journalists have been writing about what the march of digital technology means for humanity with a mixture of hope and anxiety: hope because of the rise in living standards that the digital revolution has made possible,...

By Ansuman Das & Pranaya Kumar Swain For decades, nuclear energy sat uneasily at the margins of the climate debate: valued for its low emissions, distrusted for its cost and history of accidents. That is changing, as demand rises and countries race to decarbonise power...

By Lee Jong-Wha AI is advancing at a breathtaking pace, and so are fears about its impact on jobs, especially for young people entering the labour market. The tasks generative AI can increasingly perform—writing computer code, summarising documents, analysing data, and handling customer inquiries—are precisely...

By Bhabani Shankar Nayak The demonisation of Marx, Marxism, and its emancipatory logic on an everyday basis is not new. All emancipatory philosophies, philosophers and their radical projects of social, cultural, political, and economic change face similar roadblocks. Despite all propaganda against the emancipatory praxis...

I remember the day PM Modi completed 12 continuous years in office as India’s first elected PM (even surpassing Nehru’s record of 17 years!) a senior politician of the ruling party had visited my house surrounded by his cronies demanding that I give a soundbite...

On 5 September 1906, at Hotel Ples in Duino near Trieste, Ludwig Boltzmann withdrew to his room while his wife, Henriette, and daughter, Elsa, went swimming. When Elsa returned, she was horrified to find that her father had taken his life. No suicide note was...

Anyone old enough to remember the Cold War will also remember an imagined place called the “free world.” It was where Westerners believed they lived, while Eastern Europeans, Russians, and Chinese lived behind barbed wire. The description was partly true, insofar as there was barbed...

Melvin Durai US President Donald Trump recently issued an executive order instructing US federal agencies to refer to Lake Ontario, which sits between America and Canada, as “Lake America.” He did this following a trade dispute with Canada, his way of antagonising Canadians. They should...