Special Reports
Girja Shankar Dixit Vaman Viswanath Kumar, widely known as VV Kumar, was born on June 22, 1935, in Chennai (then Madras). His journey into leg-spin began during his school days, sparked by a simple curiosity—how a golf ball spun off a wall. This fascination soon led him to experiment with cricket balls, and before long,…
During my tenure as Director of NIPER, I observed a deeply troubling trend — senior professors exercising exclusive control over costly scientific instruments, purchased with public money, for personal academic gain. My proposal to centralize all such equipment under a single Central Instrumentation Laboratory (CIL) met stiff resistance from within the institute. The reason? Control…
Two similar tragedies. Two different states. Two vastly different responses. One common denominator — the Congress party. In Telangana, Telugu superstar Allu Arjun paid a surprise visit to a cinema hall screening his blockbuster Pushpa 2. The massive crowd surged uncontrollably. But instead of taking responsibility for crowd control failure, the state police swooped in…
“When your heart opens up, you cannot but serve,” says global spiritual master and humanitarian Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. By transforming hearts and bringing peace to the minds of millions of volunteers, Gurudev has inspired a global climate movement—one rooted not in fear, but in compassion. The results have been both miraculous and deeply…
Every election season, we proudly proclaim India as the world’s largest democracy. But democracy is not defined by how many can vote — it is defined by how many do. In recent elections, only 60–67% of eligible voters turned up at polling booths. The rest — tens of millions — chose silence over participation. That…
Girja Shankar Dixit The rapid evolution of drone technology has fundamentally transformed modern warfare. Once limited to reconnaissance missions, drones—also known as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)—now play a central role in surveillance, precision strikes, logistics, and electronic warfare. Their ability to operate without risking human lives, combined with advancements in artificial intelligence and autonomous navigation,…
MS Shanker By now, even those who only watch cricket for the memes know that this year’s IPL has been less of a predictable tournament and more of a Netflix thriller with plot twists every episode — some enjoyable, others purely sponsored by rainclouds and DLS calculations. From rank outsiders to points table climbers, this…
The state of Telangana has done it again—this time, not in information technology, agriculture, or even cinema, but on the global ramp of beauty pageants. The newly crowned Miss World is being proudly claimed as one of Telangana’s own. Social media handles, especially from the state’s PR machinery, are ablaze with congratulatory messages: “Daughter of…
It has been over four decades since Mohinder Amarnath famously called the national selectors a “pack of jokers.” And yet, those stinging words continue to echo with startling relevance in Indian cricket today. If consistency was ever the defining characteristic of the Indian selection committee, it’s been in its inconsistency. Shreyas Iyer’s latest omission from…
This phenomenon was foreseen many years ago, though many dismissed it then as a mere joke. Fast forward to today, and it has undeniably become a reality. Several factors contribute to this shift in the filmmaking landscape. In the past, films were often seen as edutainment—an engaging way to learn while being entertained. However, the…
