India’s external position is becoming more fragile, even though the country still has important sources of strength. Rising energy costs, a weaker rupee, portfolio outflows, and record gold imports are widening the gap between the foreign exchange India earns and the foreign exchange it spends. At the same time, services exports and remittances—India’s two most…
History is not merely a collection of dates and names. It is also a record of how knowledge is transmitted, challenged and, sometimes, distorted. That is why the story of a Wikipedia editor known as Jagged_85 deserves attention. The controversy does not establish that the scientific achievements of the medieval Islamic world were fictitious. They…
For generations, Indian traditions such as homas and yajnas have often been dismissed in some quarters as superstition, blind faith or meaningless ritual. But what happens when something embedded in an ancient tradition is subjected to a scientific experiment and produces a measurable result? That is precisely where the conversation about havan smoke becomes interesting….
History has a curious way of leaving clues in places historians sometimes overlook. One such clue may be standing quietly in our fields: the Indian humped cattle, or zebu. For more than a century, the idea that a nomadic race of “Aryans” invaded India around 1500 BCE, destroyed the Indus Valley Civilisation (IVC), and introduced…
For nearly 460 years, generations have looked at a map of the world without necessarily realising that they were looking at a mathematical compromise. The familiar world map was never designed to show the true size of countries and continents. It was created primarily to help sailors navigate. Yet a navigational tool gradually became something…
Rajarao Pochiraju 2026 may well go down as a landmark year in Bharat’s technology journey—not merely because of another breakthrough in space, digital technology or artificial intelligence, but because a young Indian private company has ventured into one of the most difficult frontiers of modern science: nuclear fusion. Bengaluru-based Pranos Fusion’s PRAGYA, described as India’s…
There are some infrastructure projects whose importance goes far beyond the concrete, steel and wires that go into building them. They change the destiny of an entire region. The Srinagar–Alusteng–Drass–Kargil–Khaltsi–Leh 220 kV Transmission Line is one such project. On February 3, 2019, Prime Minister Narendra Modi formally dedicated this remarkable piece of high-altitude infrastructure to…
For decades, the India-China dispute has been described primarily as a territorial and strategic contest. But a new dimension is becoming impossible to ignore: water. As Beijing intensifies its activities on the upper reaches of the Brahmaputra, the river is emerging as an increasingly important component of the geopolitical contest between New Delhi and Beijing….
The claim that “Dalits were denied education and only Brahmins had access to schools” is repeated so frequently that it has acquired the appearance of historical fact. But history is rarely so simple. The educational landscape of pre-colonial and early colonial India was considerably more diverse, and surviving records provide important evidence that challenges sweeping…
As Bharat prepares to celebrate its 80th Independence Day, I find myself looking at the nation’s technological journey not merely as a journalist, but as a former IITian who had the opportunity to work with institutions such as Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL). The transformation I have witnessed over the decades is extraordinary. What was once…
