Dr R K Chadha Discussions these days invariably converge on the free fall of the Indian rupee (INR) that breached 90 marks against 1 USD in 2025. While India’s real GDP grew by a strong 8.2% in the second quarter (Q2) of the fiscal year 2025-26 (July-September 2025), the INR depreciated against the USD from 85+ to…
Jawaharlal Nehru and Narendra Modi, two Prime Ministers of different era, are as different as chalk and cheese, the former being naïve and docile and the latter bold, pragmatic, and practical. While Nehru’s contributions in modernizing Indian agriculture, dairy, core industries, and education cannot be denied, his non-alignment and foreign policy proved a damp squib…
In the last seven decades, Indian Railways has been synonymous with slowness, ticketless travel, poor value for money, dirty environment, security problems, and corruption. Introduction of the first indigenous state-of-the-art Vande Bharat train in 2019 marked the completion of Modi’s mantra cycle of Reform, Perform, and Transform in land transportation. In the last half-decade,164 Vande…
Come September, people in Delhi dread the worsening of the air quality they breathe. Media gets hyperactive at prime time with experts debating and spokespersons of political parties pointing fingers at each other on the high values of AQI (Air Quality Index) and the people of Delhi and NCR are left to the mercy of…
The Indigo fiasco that unfolded on 2 December 2025 was inevitable as it became an aviation whale enjoying a monopoly on Indian airspace with 64% of the market share in terms of passenger traffic. Lakhs of passengers were left stranded due to the cancellation of thousands of flights. Tempers flared, the media went berserk, asking…
Some stray dogs are fortunate enough to be rescued by VVIPs and have a free tour of India’s most guarded place and the seat of power, like the Indian Parliament. Kudos to Madam Renuka Choudhary, a Congress Rajya Sabha MP in rescuing a stray dog in the streets of Delhi and giving it an intended…
The idiosyncratic talent that binds two highly ambitious individuals, Prashant Kishor and Arvind Kejriwal, is their tactical shrewdness, an essential qualification to enter politics in India. Arvind Kejriwal used this talent and rode on Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption movement and formed the Aam Aadmi Party in 2012, promising clean politics and good governance free from illegitimate…
A BBC report last week published with a heading “The Indian messaging app that wants to take on WhatsApp” opened with a cryptic remark, Can an Indian-made messaging app compete with the behemoth that is WhatsApp? This remark relates to an indigenously developed Indian messaging app called Arattai that saw 7.5 million downloads in a…
There are years when nothing happens, and then there are days when years happen. The cloudbursts in Dehradun in Uttarakhand and Mandi in Himachal Pradesh in September 2025 close on the heels of similar events in these states earlier in July and August elucidate and echo this sentiment. Similarly, the city of Hyderabad witnessed cloudbursts…
Energy is crucial for our country’s growth as it powers all sectors of the economy, from industrial production and agriculture to transportation and households, leading to improved living standards, job creation, and access to essential services. Nature provides us with abundant, constantly replenishing energy sources like solar from the Sun, wind from moving air, hydropower…
