Fast Breeder Reactor

India Should Scale up its Fast Breeder Reactor Program to Meet Rising Energy Needs

The constraint on India’s expansion is fissile inventory, particularly between 2035-2045. At present, the breeder program depends on plutonium from a limited set of eight unsafeguarded reactors. Meanwhile, India has accumulated spent fuel from uranium imported for its safeguarded reactors. This significant plutonium is lying idle because we lack safeguarded reprocessing facilities. 

A Thousand Splendid Wounds: Afghanistan through Hosseini’s prophecy

India's engagement with the Taliban is strategic as much as it is humanitarian, a counterweight to Pakistani influence, a gateway to Central Asian connectivity. And the Taliban's continued erasure of women and minorities sits as a profound moral contradiction at the heart of any diplomatic embrace.

A Scientist’s Rebuttal to the "Hellhole" Rhetoric: Why the West Misjudges Global Happiness

The rhetoric targeting these nations ignores the fact that they steer the very firms—Google, Microsoft, Adobe—that sustain Western dominance. This wasn't "loophole" migration. It was strategic resource acquisition. During the Y2K crisis, the U.S. was desperate for Indian talent to prevent a digital infrastructure collapse. 

Where Will This Hate-Spreading End? Need to Curb Unchecked Propaganda Against India's Minorities

Authorities must ensure transparent and impartial investigations, free from political or communal bias. Corporations like TCS should proactively counter misinformation and reinstate employees found to be innocent. At the same time, the Indian media must uphold professional standards of verification and accountability.

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