Opinions and Editorials

Impartial administration of justice is the hallmark of a democratic society based on the rule of law.

China's shadow "China has promoted security and stability in Afghanistan and Pakistan".

In the light of the rebellion in the Karnataka BJP waged by the mining barons of Bellary, CPM General Secretary Prakash Karat talks about the larger issue of the invasion of business into the sphere of politics and the need for checking the trend, in the latest issue of party mouthpiece People's Democracy.

Sometime ago we asked if Barack Obama was black or white. Now we are wondering how green he is, going by the way the US establishment has already given up on a legally binding global agreement on climate change at Copenhagen.

Parliament meets on Thursday for the Winter Session. The government has moved forward on several issues listed in its 100-day agenda. Expectations on legislative action are high in two fields: judicial reforms and higher education.

For ever so long, India's call centres have been portrayed as glamorous workplaces where fashionable young men and women work crazy schedules and lead fast-paced lives.

Now that the opposition is seeing the ruling Left Front in West Bengal eye-to-eye — in fact, brow-beating it — nobody needs to underscore the changed political equation in the state.

The proposed reforms in India's premier university, Delhi University, shed interesting light on the institutional challenges of reform in India and offer wider lessons.

It eventually fell upon US President Barack Obama to be the messenger of what has for a while now appeared to be the inevitable.

It seems that the Monsoon Session of Parliament was over only yesterday, and already preparations for the Winter Session have begun.

There was something royal about Chief Minister Ashok Chavan's gesture to bestow Rs 5 lakh on the three villages in his constituency that gave him the maximum votes in the recent Maharashtra assembly elections.

Last week, Aaj Tak declared that God would descend to earth. Wrong: he is already in our midst. Short with bright eyes, curly hair, an ever-ready smile, he uses a bat to bless all comers. You know he is the chosen one because the normally reticent DD News described him as a "sensation" and Sharad Pawar compared him to Lord Krishna. That would be Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar, the "God of cricket".

The Mandor Express mishap and other recent accidents have caused great concern about the safety of Indian Railways.

Manu Sharma's parole has, understandably, triggered great outrage. He was granted parole by the Delhi government, despite valid objections raised by Delhi Police. He had applied for three months' parole because he wanted to attend the religious rites of his grandmother, take care of his ailing mother and look after the family's business interests.

No matter how Orientalist, condescending and opinionated Max Mueller sounds today, which Indian can resist savouring the German indologist's oft-cited statement of faith in India as the land where "the human mind has most fully developed some of its choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered over the greatest problems of life, and has found solutions of some of them"? But where is the Indian who wou

The Samajwadi Party and Mulayam Singh Yadav are paying a price for their failure to evolve their politics and positioning.

Even as Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee enters his tenth year as chief minister of West Bengal, the CPM leader is confronted with a big question mark on his legitimacy in power.

Professor Sheldon Pollock has just announced scholarships for Dalit students who wish to study Sanskrit at Columbia University.

There was a half-page advertisement celebrating Rahul Gandhi's success in UP (a specific reference to Firozabad, where Raj Babbar defeated Mulayam's daughter-in-law) about the "future" being "more than just about caste and community", and about "development and progress." There are no regulation stamp-size pictures of the Congress president or PM alongside Rahul's dimpled smile.

On his way to Shanghai and Beijing this week, US President Barack Obama has declared that America has no desire to contain China and is ready to welcome its efforts to play a larger role in the world.