Rajarao Pochiraju Japan has long been admired as an economic miracle. From the ashes of the Second World War, it built one of the world’s most technologically advanced and prosperous economies. For decades, Japanese manufacturing, innovation and financial discipline became benchmarks for the rest of the world. Yet today, the world’s third-largest economy finds itself…
Political criticism is intrinsic to parliamentary democracy. So is the Opposition’s right to question the government of the day. But when political rhetoric begins to overshadow facts, particularly while discussing individuals whose professional accomplishments are a matter of public record, it deserves closer scrutiny. The controversy erupted during the parliamentary debate on the Public Examinations…
If there is one image that captures the sheer complexity of quantum computing, it is perhaps this: Google’s quantum computer operates at temperatures close to -273°C—colder than outer space itself. Layer upon layer of refrigeration technology is needed merely to keep it alive before it can perform computations. Now imagine a quantum computer that sits…
By all conventional measures of success, Professor Ashoke Sen should have spent his life in the world’s most celebrated scientific institutions. He had studied at some of the finest centres of learning, worked at America’s premier physics laboratories, won one of the richest prizes in science worth $3 million—nearly three times the Nobel Prize money—and…
Raja Rao Pochiraju Indian archaeology may have just unearthed one of the most consequential clues in the long-running debate on the antiquity of metallurgy in the subcontinent. A newly analysed and directly dated weapon from the Ochre Coloured Pottery (OCP) Copper Hoard culture, dated to around 2000 BCE and reportedly containing nearly 30 per cent…
Rajarao Pochiraju For more than a decade, some of the world’s biggest automobile manufacturers have pursued what seemed like the holy grail of electric mobility—a high-performance electric motor that does not depend on rare earth magnets. Billions of dollars have been invested, research teams assembled and futuristic concepts unveiled. Yet, commercial success has remained elusive….
Pochiraju Raja Rao Bharateeyan politics has never lacked strange alliances. Yesterday’s bitter rivals have often become today’s indispensable partners, only to part ways again when political convenience changes course. Yet, not every political realignment strengthens democracy or enhances a party’s credibility. Some alliances come at a price too high to justify the arithmetic. The latest…
Pochiraju Raja Rao The Uttar Pradesh government’s swift action against those accused of allegedly embezzling donations from the Ram Temple at Ayodhya has effectively demolished one of the Opposition’s favourite political narratives—that the Bharatiya Janata Party protects its own while selectively targeting others. Within days of the scam surfacing, the Yogi Adityanath government ordered a…
Raja Rao Pochiraju For nearly three centuries, Great Britain proudly wore the crown of the world’s foremost imperial power. The sun famously never set on the British Empire, which governed nearly one-fourth of humanity and influenced administrative systems from Bharat to Africa, from the Middle East to the Caribbean. British institutions, parliamentary democracy, civil services,…
Raja Rao Pochiraju Today, January 12, India bows in reverence to one of its greatest sons—Swami Vivekananda, born in 1863 as Narendranath Datta. While the nation commemorates his birth anniversary, the relevance of Vivekananda today is so profound that his ideas feel not 162 years old, but urgently contemporary. Swami Vivekananda was not merely a…
