Representational Photo

Where the World Drifts into a Grey Twilight

Conflicts today often lack clearly stated aims, making end states difficult to define. The ongoing engagements involving Russia, Israel, and the United States illustrate this ambiguity. In such situations, conflicts risk being driven more by national ego than by achievable objectives, prolonging destruction and human suffering.

Ethanol as Cooking Fuel: India can Become Self-Sufficient

Nevertheless, ethanol is a homegrown, renewable fuel which can being great advantage to the country, increase the remuneration to the farmers and help in expanding industrial crop production base in India.

Empowering Women of South Asia: India Can Play a Generous Role

India, for one, can offer to create - if required - segregated facilities for education, IT services and upskilling training centres in those communities as there are both kinds of establishments in the country and the economic capacity to be generous to neighbours in need without expectation of a quid pro quo.
 

Security for Whom? Needed a Human-Centred Approach to ‘National Security’

If “security” is to have real meaning, it must be grounded in the lived experiences of those it is intended to protect. This requires a shift from state‑centred metrics to civilian‑centred measures of stability; where continuity of daily life, equitable protection, and psychological well‑being are integral to how we define security.

More on Perspective

Will the Ukraine war be a major inflection point for India?

In Washington, Price acknowledged Monday at a briefing that India developed defence ties with Russia because the US was not ready for such a relationship when the Soviet Union and India drew close

US showing some understanding of India's delicate balancing act

The Biden administration and India are evolving a delicate balance at the centre of which is China on how New Delhi reacts to the Russia invasion of Ukraine

A film on Kashmir reignites old wounds

Beyond the number of deaths and whether to define the Pandits’ barbaric displacement as genocide, this is a chapter of contemporary Indian history that has received woefully inadequate media and scholarly attention, writes Mayank Chhaya for South Asia Monitor

The medicalisation of death: Isolation of the dying is cruel

"The unbalanced and contradictory picture of death and dying,” tells the tale of a society lost in modern medicine and unmindful of where this is taking us, write M.R. Rajagopal and Jagdish Rattanani for South Asia Monitor

Rahul Bajaj was a visionary, an industrialist who promoted Gandhian values

He used his annual presence in Davos to make a convincing tour de horizon of the great strengths and resilience of the Indian economy, writes Amb Bhaswati Mukherjee (retd) for South Asia Monitor

Cooked meals for the poor in India: An idea whose time has come

If the rural poor can be given a basic ‘thali’ at subsidized price, they will not only get proper food but do away with the drudgery of cooking, writes Anil K. Rajvanshi for South Asia Monitor

Film on Godse’s killing of Gandhi: Falsehoods galore

The real motive behind murdering Gandhi was that he was for inclusive nationalism, the dream of revolutionaries, and for his attempts to work against untouchability and caste inequality, writes Ram Puniyani for South Asia Monitor

'Learning from Ghalib about the world we live in': Cross-border collaboration around shared couplets

This unique India-Pakistan collaboration developed into this latest venture, “Thinking with Ghalib: Poetry for a New Generation”, a collection of 30 couplets with translation and commentary, write Anjum Altaf and Amit Basole for South Asia Monitor

Can the subcontinental deadlock be broken?

If the meeting of Indian and Pakistani officials—expected to take place next week as per a report in The Hindu– comes through, it will be a departure from the recent past as formal dialogue has remained frozen for almost two years, writes Shraddha Nand Bhatnagar for South Asia Monitor

Historic changes at India Gate and their significance

The Amar Jawan Jyoti -- an upturned rifle with a helmet customarily marking a battlefield grave -- amounted to nothing short of a poor apology for a war memorial at India Gate 

South Asia's divisive politics: Modi election speech stirs up an 'artificial' boundary issue between India and Nepal

India’s position on the boundary issue is “well known, consistent and unambiguous”, the Indian Embassy in Kathmandu said, days after political parties in Nepal stoked a simmering territorial dispute in Lipulekh, Limpiyadhura and Kalapani, especially after Prime Minister Narendra Modi mentioned road construction in Lipulekh at an election rally in Uttarakhand state

No travel ban; instead India offers vaccines, life-saving drugs to Africa

Even as most countries began slapping travel bans on African countries, India has offered support for Africa to combat the newly-emerged Omicron variant of the Covid-19 pandemic, including through supply of vaccines, life-saving drugs, PPE kits, gloves and ventilators

Cross red lines at your own peril in Pakistan: Message to opposition and media

The Asma Jahangir Conference in Pakistan last week sparked a somewhat balanced and much-needed discussion on the issues concerning the country

Rising above hate, a Hindu businessman and a Sikh gurdwara offer prayer space to Muslims

In a country known for its traditional inter-faith tolerance and harmony, one of the headline news for the last few months has been how groups of right-wing Hindus, supported by local leaders of India's ruling BJP of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, have been obstructing and protesting against the offering of namaz in public places by Muslim citizens in Gurugram, a satellite city of capital New Delhi

Decoding Pakistan NSA Moeed Yusuf's refusal to attend India-hosted regional conference on Afghanistan

On 15 August 2021, the day the Taliban seized power militarily in Kabul, the world watched with trepidation the scenes of an ignominious end to the twenty-year-long efforts of the US to prop up a democratic government there