Latest Articles :

Can't axe those roots
by Gautam Chikermane
We may be Muslims, saab, but we cannot cut this peepal tree. His name is Rahim and his band of workers sound Muslim too. The carpenter - Maulana saab. The painters - Abdul and Ismail. The plumber - Yaqub. I didn't hire him because of who he was (or who he thinks he is) but because he's a competent contractor. And among the many other jobs that a house needs, cutting the peepal tree on the terrace of our landlord's apartment was one. ......

Will illegal migrants outnumber the people of North East in 20 years?
by Oken Jeet Sandham
If Assam Governor Lt Gen (Retd) Ajay Singh's statement that about 6000 illegal Bangladeshis are entering Assam daily is correct, then the fate of the north-east people are terribly at stake. ......

Will loan Waiver lead to corruption among farmers?
by M. V. Kamath

If a man enters a government office and pays a clerk a hundred rupees to move some papers he will be accused of corrupting the petty official through bribery. What shall we call Finance Minister P. Chidambaram who is willing to underwrite farmers' debts to the tune of Rs. 60,000 crores, a little ahead of the time for the next general elections? .......

Will the Sethu channel be a security risk?
by Priyanka P. Narain
Out of the 116 pages of a government report devoted to the controversial Adam's Bridge, just one dwells on the national security implications of dredging the coral walkway between India and Sri Lanka. .......

China's crackdown in Lhasa resurrects ghost of Tiananmen
by Saibal Dasgupta
If there's one thing China would have wanted to avoid in an Olympics year, it's memories of Tiananmen Square. But those very images were reignited on the streets of Lhasa as Red Army tanks rolled out to crush Tibetan protesters on Saturday. While the official Chinese media claimed only ten people had died in Friday's violence, Tibetan activists said the toll could be anywhere between 30 and 100. ......

Senior Pakistani Newspaper Editor: We Should Not Hesitate To Use Nuclear Weapons to Take Kashmir from India
by The Middle East Media Research Institute
In an interview on the Waqt television channel, that was published by the mainstream Urdu daily Roznama Nawa-i-Waqt, senior Pakistani newspaper editor Majeed Nizami discussed Kashmir's importance to Pakistan, called it "the jugular vein" of Pakistan, and added that Pakistan should not hesitate to use nuclear weapons to take it from India. ......

Caught out!
by The Economic Times
Hurray! The Rs 60,000 crore loan waiver mystery has finally been solved. When FM P Chidambaram in his budget speech mentioned the scheme would cost the taxpayer all of Rs 60,000 crore, no one could figure out how he'd arrived at that figure. All kinds of conjectures were made: the waiver was a last-minute afterthought and since there was no provision for it in the budget, it was a number the FM had pulled out of his hat. It was the result of meticulous calculations and so on and so forth. But none of these made sense. ......