A wider world
Immense though the threat of war between India and Pakistan is right now, it’s not the only thing happening in the world. This is The Wire‘s lead story right now: No better way to give peace…
February 2019
Significance of China’s moon mission
I wrote the following analysis for chinaindiadialogue.com and China Pictorial. A big thank you to Mithila Phadke for the opportunity and for working on the text to make it sharper and more readable. Beyond the…
Six concerns over India’s plan to join Coalition S
On February 12, K. VijayRaghavan, the principal scientific advisor to the Government of India, announced that India would join a global consortium of countries that is attempting to standardise the way their scientists publish their…
Are we obsessed with nominal identities?
In an interview to The Wire Science last month, Venki Ramakrishnan, the molecular biologist, acknowledged that Indians had a bizarre relationship with the fact that he was a Nobel laureate: … the business from India…
Research funds gridlock: who wants what
On January 30, the Union ministry of finance announced a 24-25% hike in the junior (JRF) and senior research fellowships (SRF) amounts effective from January 1, 2019. The decision had been prompted by a longstanding…
The history, culture and science of ‘cardiac coherence breathing’
A recent article in Scientific American on the benefits of “proper breathing” for overall health has ignited anger across social media, with many in India accusing the magazine of rebranding or even appropriating the ancient…
Which supercollider will be built?
After CERN announced the plans for its new supercollider, I was surprised no one wanted to address the elephant in the room: the supercollider’s similarity to one announced by China a few months ago. The…