Office hours
Dear Chief Justice Surya Kant: I commend you for your discovery this week that time is finite. On Wednesday, when a petitioner confronted you with video evidence of police brutality on July 20 against the…
Op-eds
Against the idea of building loyal subscribers
I’ve always found that a somewhat strange thing to aim for. I understand there are several thousand people worldwide working to build a loyal subscriber base (“building loyal subscribers” makes one sound like Dr. Frankenstein).…
Find the dictionary
From ‘Measure for measure: On India’s courts and criticism’, The Hindu, May 21, 2026: In the Ali Khan Mahmudabad matter, the Court granted him relief from coercive action but also imposed a gag order. Then,…
The pleasures of rewatching
I’m afraid the answer is F.R.I.E.N.D.S. My sister and I watched it growing up, then rewatched it, the re-rewatched it, and now then have it playing in the background as I work. I have some…
Developing Tamil Nadu
“If the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) comes to power, it will ruin the developed State of Tamil Nadu” — Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin said this in his address to a local conference organised…
Is the war against science?
From ‘7 basic science discoveries that changed the world’, Nature, October 29, 2025: Basic research is easily mocked because it can seem impractical, but, in fact, it is a major driver of economic growth. “The…
A bad Nobel for Mokyr
The American-Israeli economic historian Joel Mokyr has been awarded one half of the 2025 special Nobel Prize for economics “for having identified the prerequisites for sustained growth through technological progress”. Now, by rewarding particular achievements…
Time for proof is now, Mr. Gandhi
Rahul Gandhi is free to voice himself but on the question of the Election Commission “stealing votes”, as he has been claiming to the press, he needs to offer the proof he claims he has…
Watch the celebrations, on mute
Right now, Shubhanshu Shukla is on his way back to Earth from the International Space Station. Am I proud he’s been the first Indian up there? I don’t know. It’s not clear. The whole thing…
India’s next man in space
NASA/SpaceX/Axiom will make their next attempt to launch the Axiom-4 mission to the International Space Station on June 11. Axiom Space’s tagline for the mission is “Realizing the Return”, alluding to three of the mission’s…
On the BDS movements against Russia and Israel
Russia began its full scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. On March 8, a poll conducted by independent survey organisations in Russia among a randomly selected cohort of 1,640 people reported around 46% supported…
Harken to the fish
From ‘Meghalaya’s new cave-dwelling fish adapts to streams overground’, The Hindu, May 25, 2025: An underground cave in Meghalaya, in focus for a conflict over a Shivalinga-like stone formation, has yielded a new-to-science fish that…