Shekhar Maramraju In the modern hyper-connected era, internet folklore has an uncanny ability to morph into widely accepted alternative reality. Few subjects demonstrate this phenomenon better than the legend of the TR-3B “Black Manta”—a persistent aerospace rumour and unverified conspiracy theory that completely lacks official military proof, documentation, or physical evidence. The myth recently saw…
India’s recent patenting of BAM-H24, a boron-rich energetic compound developed by scientists associated with ACRHEM, now DIA-CoE, at the University of Hyderabad under DRDO, has understandably attracted attention. But the significance of the development lies not in the broad claim that India has “cracked boron rocket fuel”, but in something more specific: an Indian team…
The drone never reached Mecca. The message did. On September 15, Saudi Arabia said its air defences intercepted and destroyed a Houthi drone south of Mecca before it entered the holy city’s restricted airspace. The Houthis denied that they had targeted Mecca. Yet the incident immediately became a powerful geopolitical story because the mere possibility…
For decades, Bharat was conditioned to believe that certain technologies were simply beyond its reach. High-end precision manufacturing was one of them. Whenever the country aspired to build sophisticated machines, the conventional wisdom was predictable: Why take the risk when Germany, Japan, or other advanced manufacturing nations could supply them? The result was not merely…
When we use the word “sine” in a mathematics classroom today, few of us pause to consider the extraordinary journey hidden behind that seemingly simple term. Its history stretches across three major intellectual worlds—India, the Islamic civilisation and medieval Europe—and illustrates how mathematical knowledge travelled across languages, cultures and centuries. The story begins in ancient…
Hardly anyone outside India’s deep-tech ecosystem may have heard of NoPo Nanotechnologies. Yet, in a modest facility in Bengaluru’s Electronic City, a company born from an improbable dream is attempting to solve one of the most consequential problems in advanced manufacturing — producing carbon nanotubes at industrial scale. And it all began with Mars. Gadhadar…
Can you guess what a 2,008x multiplier represents? It is not a cryptocurrency return. It is not the kind of eye-popping multiple promised by a high-risk venture fund. It is something far more consequential: the expansion of BharatNet’s optical-fibre footprint across rural India over the past decade. And unlike a financial multiplier, this one can…
It is with considerable restraint that I chose the subject for this column, following a request from the Editor to express my views on how I assess Bharat’s achievements as we celebrate its 80th Independence Day. Much has already been said by Prime Minister Narendra Modi about the nation’s journey, achievements and aspirations. Yet, as…
Shekhar Maramgarju History often acquires meaning in hindsight. Political observers, historians and even strategists frequently look for patterns that may have gone unnoticed in real time. One such intriguing pattern emerging over the past decade is the apparent significance of the month of August in the governance journey of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It may…
Shekhar Maramraju Infrastructure is not built overnight. It is the product of vision, policy, execution and sustained political commitment. While roads, railways, ports and power projects invariably take years to complete, there are certain periods in a nation’s history when the pace of development accelerates dramatically. India’s infrastructure story since 2014 is one such chapter….
