Here are a few fun games for TN politicians to unwind after poll campaign April 5, 2021, 9:52 AM IST
If Indian politics is a theatre, Tamil Nadu is a multiplex. Where cigarette flicks and dark glasses are the perennial symbols of style and substance, sycophancy does a tandava over psephology. And with the players ensconced in the ministerial thrones in Delhi, it is no longer just a southern delight. Arun Ram, Resident Editor, The Times of India, Tamil Nadu, who alternates between the balcony and the front row, says it incites as much as it excites. During the intervals, he chews on a bit of science and such saner things. LESS. MORE
Tom WilliamsGetty Images
When we first traced the rise of shamelessness as a superpower in American politics, we tried to give Mitch McConnell his due. At the time, we primarily focused on the then-Senate Majority Leader s procedural shamelessness: his abuse of arcane rules and mechanisms to block popular legislation, or indeed, to block President Barack Obama from exercising his constitutional prerogative to appoint judges to the federal bench. Through sheer brassness of balls, McConnell ground the federal government into a dramatic slowdown, which happened to be in the interests of many of the people who pay his campaign bills. If the system is already working for you, you might not want government doing much of anything. The Kentucky senator was thus a loyal servant to the most powerful corporate interests and the billionaires whose fortunes were intertwined with them.
Mantra, Mantri, and Gotra
Anoop Kohli is a senior consultant neurologist at the Indraprastha Apollo Hospital, New Delhi. His interests go far beyond his chosen profession. For him, it s just one game of life so interesting to study for all its themes and aberrations. He also dabbles in script-writing and recently got a membership of the Bombay Film Writers Association. In this blog, Masquerader, expect from him anything from H1N1 to Heena. LESS. MORE
Just as well, that vocabulary from ancient Sanskrit scripts has found an appropriate place in today’s management interactions, whether that be formal, or lay jargon. Language is ever in search for a more appropriate word, as you have from Latin, Greek, French. Coming to some more from Sanskrit, the word “Guru” is more commensurate with today’s management, than “Boss”, more suited to the underworld dons. Thanks to the interaction over years of bright Indian students in Ivy League universities, you have the word “Pandit�
Getty
It may seem early to start critiquing the Biden administration’s approach to the incessant problem posed by North Korea. But it hasn’t been too early for Biden to make his presidential rite of passage in another part of the world
bombing Syria and according to Jeffrey Lewis, an arms control specialist and professor at The Middlebury Institute of International Studies, Biden’s people have already made a significant misstep in their dealings with Kim Jong-un and his hermit kingdom. It’s never too early to start keeping an eye on who’s got nukes and how they intend to use ‘em. In fact, Lewis says, every administration gravely overestimates how much time they have to ramp up and implement a strategy, and that can cost you dearly.
Kerala model of growth and its Irrational discontents April 1, 2021, 3:44 PM IST
Senior Advocate, Supreme Court of India. Author of `Choosing Hammurabi: Debates on Judicial Appointments’ (LexisNexis), `Appointing our Judges: Forging Independence and Accountability’ (LexisNexis) and `The Maoist Movement in India: Perspectives and Counter Perspectives’ (Routledge). LESS. MORE
It was the mid 1970s. The wage rate for labour in Coimbatore Tamil Nadu was Rs. 2 per day. Across the border, in Kerala it was five times at Rs. 10 per day. As industries migrated to Tamil Nadu, doomsday was declared for Kerala’s industry and its population. That was not to be.
There was something remarkable which was happening in the state of Kerala which was defying conventional economics. The all India average for life expectancy in 1976 – 1980 was just 52 years. Kerala during this period had leapfrogged to 66 years. This phenomenon of high life expectancy at birth, low deat