Can India Lead the Way
in the Next Century
by Dr. Manmohan Singh 
People seek well-being and sustainable livelihoods, but they also seek fundamental freedoms. People want jobs, people want education, people want housing and health care. But people also want open societies and open economies. People seek freedom from tyranny in all its manifestations. They wish to be governed by the rule of law. This has been the human endeavour and will remain so. Read On

Victims of Broken Marriages
by VK Joshi
Indian society believes that marriages are made in heaven. The society is contemporarily facing such a crisis of marital discords that one is tempted to change the belief about marriages to 'marriages made be made in the heaven but they are broken on this earth only'. Yes the very concepts of happy marriage seem to be facing rough weather Read On

Future of National Parties by Rajinder Puri
India’s lack of governance has become a subject of growing concern. All branches of government -- executive, legislature and judiciary -- are visibly tottering. The cause of weak governance is obvious. India’s political system rests upon the existence of vibrant political parties. And a sub continental, multilingual, multi-ethnic nation requires vibrant national parties. We have none.
We do have parties that qualify the Election Commission’s criteria to be called national. In real terms that means little. Read On

Buddhism Has to Evolve
to Remain Socially Relevant in Asia
by Madhusree Chatterjee
"Buddhism is an institution which is highly centralized and it does not have a socio-religious structure. Most of its rituals are monastic because monks live in communities. In India, especially with regard to Hinduism, rituals give religion social relevance," says Chandra in response to the query why Buddhism, which was born in India, has been reduced to ...Read On

Malegaon Arrests: Elephant in the Drawing Room? by C. Uday Bhaskar 
Malegaon has entered the tangled lexicon of the Indian narrative on terrorism but with some distinctive and disturbing features about it. This is the first time that a serving officer of the Indian Army has been arrested along with eight others alleged to have links with Hindu militant groups. This has caused predictable anxiety across the country and the spotlight has been turned on the secular credentials of the army. Read On

The Saffron Brotherhood Becomes a
Hydra-headed Monster? by Amulya Ganguli
Even as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) swings between the conflicting positions of the present and former party presidents, Rajnath Singh and L.K. Advani, on the issue of "Hindu terrorism", the party cannot be unaware that it is dealing with perhaps the most explosive issue in its 28-year life. Read On

Celebrities as Brand Ambassadors:
The 'Hang in There' Mantra by Sanjiv Kataria
As a young management student I was taught that using a celebrity to promote a brand was a risky proposition. The risks, I can recall, included questions like "What if the celebrity's ratings were to drop? What if you could not handle a celebrity's tantrums? What if the celebrity was to become a super celebrity and dump your brand?"  I had forgotten this lesson until one winter morning in 1997 when I was getting ready to meet the Indian chess prodigy Viswanathan Anand and his wife, Aruna, for a cup of coffee. I did not share my apprehensions with my boss. But I did get two of my colleagues to join me to reinforce my decision if I were to overrule the lesson I had learnt years ago. Read On

India Deeply Divided after Sixty Years of “Political Secularism” by Dr. Subhash Kapila
India after sixty years of 'political secularism' practiced by the Congress Party and its regional casteist political allies today stands dismally divided because of a fundamental flaw that these political parties did not accord importance to incorporating Hinduism as the majority religion its due political space in their scheme of 'political secularism'. It stands pointed out in this Columnist’s earlier Columns that 'existential secularism' for centuries prevailed in India before 1947 and there was no need to invent a new breed of ‘political secularism' by Nehru and the Congress Party. Read On

Kashmir Elections: Vote Against Separatism
by Col. Rahul K. Bhonsle
Jammu and Kashmir goes to elections on 17 November. This would be a seminal third round of hustings after militancy broke out in the state in 1989. Elections in 1996 and 2002 were regarded as free and fair and there is no reason to believe that the current ones under the watchful eye of the Election Commission in India would not be so. Elections are proposed to be held in seven phases keeping in view the need for deployment of election staff and security personnel. Read On

The Hari Putar Dialogues: 31
by Rajesh Talwar
Fears of global warming are haunting the Maldives with its new president indicating that the Indian Ocean island country will not shy away from buying 'land somewhere' that could act as an 'insurance' against global warming that could submerge some of the world's lowest-lying islands.  Read On

Women Seek Romance in A Lonely Planet by Barbara Lewis
Romance travelers, seekers of tenderness in the tropics or even Canadian secretaries - euphemisms abound for what in plain terms are female sex tourists. Their activity dates to the 19th century and shows no sign of going away. Provided global economic turmoil leaves the world's lovelorn with spare cash for holidays, it might even get a lift from the latest artistic work to tackle the issue of women ready to employ prostitutes, Read On

Securing Live-in Relationships by Ramesh Menon
Archana Baxi loves Delhi. Living in the big city gives her the anonymity she did not enjoy in her village in Punjab where she grew up. In Delhi, no one asks her prying questions like why she isn't married yet or what she does with her huge salary or why she lives in with her boyfriend ... Read On

Acting Out Gender Violence To Fight It by Ila Mehrotra
Students of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in New Delhi recently took to the streets of their campus to spread the word on gender sensitization. Members of the university's Gender Sensitization Committee Against Sexual Harassment (GSCASH) collaborated with students and presented a satirical street play, 'Chod Naa Yaar' ('Forget It'). Read On

What India Should Expect
from Barack Obama, What it Shouldn't
by Dr. Girish Bhaskar
As president-elect Barack Obama waits to take over the administration of the US, he faces daunting challenges on both the domestic and foreign fronts. The expectations both within and outside the country are very high. In his post-victory speech, Obama cautioned that change will take time. Some of his efforts may prove anti-climactic. People all over the world are expecting big things...Read On  

Michelle Obama: America's Next First Lady
by Elayne Clift 
Depending on the source, Michelle Obama has been called a "glamour-wife," the "Mum-in-Chief," "our next Jackie Kennedy," and "The Closer". Statuesque, devoted to her children and notably elegant, she earned the last moniker among her husband's campaign staff for the critical role she played in the long run-up to Barack Obama's historic win on November 4 when American voters elected him the country's first African-American president. Read On

Mary-Anne Makes Her Moves and Captures a Lost World
by Aparna Sharma   
Composed and agile in body and manner - it is not hard to guess that Mary-Anne Roberts is a performance artist. In fact, Roberts embodies a truly intercultural spirit. Hailing from Trinidad her performance oeuvre spans European ballet, western contemporary dance, theatre and folk music. But there's more to her art. For over two decades now she has worked at the grassroots in the Caribbean and in Britain to preserve folk arts, crafts and events like the carnival, which represent skills and philosophies that are steadily being lost to the modern world. Read On

Child Journalists Make the Yamuna Flow by Shobha S.V.  
Mahatma Gandhi once said that: "The sole aim of journalism should be service. The newspaper is a great power, but just as an unchained torrent of water submerges the whole countryside and devastates crops, so an uncontrolled pen serves, but, to destroy. If the control is from without, it proves more poisonous than want of control. It can be profitable only when exercised from within." Going by this line of reasoning, how many publications in the world today would be able to measure up? Read On 

Widows - The World's Forgotten Women by Amoo Arvind 
"The greatest of all miseries, the culmination of the enormities of custom, is the forcible shaving of a Brahmana and other high caste widows. The cruel and pernicious custom is horrid beyond conception. (The widow) is simply helpless; she must submit to that cruel inhuman operation. She often faints, she is dumb-founded, tears flow in a flood... but nobody cares..." Read On

Saintific Harvest
by J. Ajithkumar
The overzealous secular media in India is doing a great disservice to Christianity by harping on mythology that Christianity in India is two thousand years old. Even Vatican has not made such a claim because there is absolutely no historical evidence about it. Read On