Opinions and Editorials

Agenbite of inwit. Four years in Dublin, but never once for Bloomsday. Shameful. But Bloom's spirit lives on, all pervasive. His footprint is everywhere, regally hosting the contemporary pedestrian: golden plaques have been sown into the pavement, immortalising the wanderings of the modern hero.

The text of a speech the prime minister should give on Jammu and Kashmir, addressing the people of the state.

Remember those halcyon days when pundits were declaring that the world is witnessing an end of history with liberal democracy and freemarket capitalism emerging triumphant after the collapse of the Soviet Union? How distant those days seem and how out of touch with reality those pronouncements.

A job that was always important but scored somewhat low on the buzz-metre is today even more important, and establishment Delhi is abuzz about it.

The year 2005 was recorded as the hottest year in over a century and experts predict that if current trends prevail the earth shall soon witness feral warming, cataclysmic floods, tyrannical cyclones and so on.

The United States is set for a historic presidential election. If the Democrats win, it will mean a black American in the White House. If the Republicans do, the US gets its first female vice-President. The election of Barack Obama would be the far more momentous development.

Thomas AbrahamManaging Director, Sage Software India Over the years, I have been reading several books on business, life, and various 'mantras'. I have also had the opportunity to meet up with several management and spiritual gurus.

Especially when times are tough, beware of companies that cut their spending on research and development.

Globalisation is a much punched bag; the xenophobic traits that all humans possess in some measure actually encourage such punching.

Chanda NarangCEO, Frazer and Haws Variety is in society! London is the right place for the business women/men of multiple interests.

Some of my best friends are homophobes. They are the type of guys who see other guys lurking in corners and throwing a knowing smile screech-bang in the middle of an otherwise perfectly asexual conversation just before making a lunge.

The moment I saw that TV bite of Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee attacking the bandhs organised by his own party, I thought back to my early reactions soon after I had moved to Calcutta over two decades ago.

It was Somerset Maugham who observed that American women expect to find in their husbands a perfection that English women only look for in their butlers. Little wonder then that the British memsahibs of Munnar expected much of their Indian butlers.

Since Zia grabbed power from Bhutto in 1975, this is perhaps the sixth time that there is a serious effort at "civilianising" the power structure.

The response to the PML-N withdrawal from the ruling coalition was not one of great surprise.

The immediate crisis over Marathi signboards for all shops in Mumbai might have subsided with the intervention of the Bombay High Court and the state government's firmness, but several larger issues remain unresolved.

At an Independence Day ceremony for Indian nationals in Abu Dhabi, Talmiz Ahmad, Indian ambassador to the U.A.E., praised bilateral relations between the two countries.

This column has been arguing that the 1977 poverty line, prepared by a task force I had chaired, which set down a calorific intake standard made sense when more than two-fifths of the population reported that they did not get two square meals a day, but is a travesty now.

It has been 14 years since India first announced its 'Look East' policy. However, other than joining an alphabet soup of Asian regional fora, New Delhi has had little concrete to show for all its talk of joining the Indian growth story to the world's most dynamic economic region. New Delhi's entire Asia-Pacific outlook was half-jokingly called 'Look East, then look away.

'I hope this will send a message of peace to my country after 30 years of war,' said Rohullah Nikpai, Afghanistan's first-ever medal winner at the Olympic Games after winning a bronze in taekwondo.