There is a fashionable argument in Bharat today that China is “far ahead” of us and that catching up with it may take decades. The first part is partly true; the second is largely a matter of perception. China is ahead of Bharat in manufacturing scale, infrastructure, urbanisation, exports, high-speed rail, shipbuilding and several strategic…
The reopening of the controversial Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) case involving granite industrialist R. Veeramani has predictably triggered a political confrontation in Tamil Nadu. The ruling Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) government, headed by Chief Minister C. Joseph Vijay, has ordered an intensified investigation after a Special POCSO Court rejected the earlier police…
Diplomacy is often conducted through words. Sometimes, however, a single photograph can speak louder than a thousand diplomatic communiqués. The photograph of US President Donald Trump personally receiving Chinese President Xi Jinping on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews is one such image. Trump did not merely receive Xi in Washington. He went to the…
The question confronting modern air defence is no longer merely whether an enemy drone can be shot down. It is whether a nation can afford to keep shooting down hundreds of inexpensive drones with enormously expensive missiles. That is precisely where the latest advances by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) assume strategic significance….
Enough is enough. There are moments when the judiciary has to look beyond the immediate humanitarian plea before it and consider the larger interests of the nation. The application by US national Matthew Aaron VanDyke seeking permission to travel to the United States to meet his family is one such moment. VanDyke is not an…
Former Vice-President Hamid Ansari has every democratic right to express his political and ideological views. But when a former occupant of one of Bharat’s highest Constitutional offices describes Hindu right-wing communalism as the greater danger to the nation, he cannot expect the statement to pass without scrutiny. At the A.G. Noorani Memorial Lecture, Ansari invoked…
The Bharat-Russia relationship is no longer merely about nostalgia, diplomacy or a Cold War-era friendship. It is increasingly being built around hard economics, energy security and strategic interests. And nowhere is this transformation more visible than in hydrocarbons. The commissioning of Russia’s massive Vostok Oil project and its first Arctic oil shipment mark a significant…
There must be something particularly irritating about numbers when they refuse to cooperate with a political narrative. Just when the chorus of economic doomsters was getting comfortable, Moody’s Ratings has delivered an inconvenient little message: Bharat’s economy is not only growing, it is showing enough resilience for the agency to raise its FY2026-27 growth forecast…
The latest American tariff threat may sound dramatic. It should not, however, be mistaken for an economic apocalypse for Bharat. The US House of Representatives has now passed legislation that could empower President Donald Trump to impose tariffs of up to 100 per cent on countries purchasing Russian oil, including Bharat and China. The measure…
The growing chorus for caution on artificial intelligence can no longer be dismissed as the anxiety of technology pessimists. Nor should it be interpreted as a call for the United States or China to surrender their race for technological leadership. The message from several of the world’s most influential technology leaders is much simpler: do…
