Darryl D’Monte reviews Indira Gandhi – A Life in Nature , a new book focussing on Indira Gandhi as a naturalist.

It’s not the crop burning, stupid. It’s vehicles that create smog and the media should educate the public. Anup Kumar explains.

Concluding article of the series on "What ails our public services?" adapted from the book Holding the State to Account by Samuel Paul of the Public Affairs Center, Bangalore.

Beginning a series of articles on Civil society and governance, Jayaprakash Narayan connects the dots that brought activism into the Indian state in 1947, the results of which we are feeling even today.

Quick identification of the London bombers of 7/7 and early success in making an arrest testifies to an excellent investigation by Scotland Yard. In contrast, getting photographs, fingerprints and other records from government departments are far more difficult for India's police detectives, says Arvind Verma.

As the Prime Minister launches his vision for cities in the country, it is pertinent to ask what his record has been in the largest city of the state where he was Chief Minister before becoming PM. A recent study finds many pluses, and some minuses. Darryl D'Monte reports.

Last month the government announced the list of 9 new Smart Cities, taking the total of Smart Cities to 99.  Prachee Mishra of PRS legislative takes a look at the Smart Cities Mission and a few issues with it.

The trend of traditional consumer goods companies buying newer cosmetic brands is only increasing, and skin care specifically is experiencing an exceptionally lucrative boom. But analysts suggest that some of the more recent acquisitions in the beauty industry are the first signs a skin-care bubble may pop.

This year's CES tech show in Las Vegas might not have had an overarching theme, but it certainly was high on invention. WSJ's Katherine Bindley tries out the most interesting contraptions on display, from Segway's new personal transporter and Samsung's rotating TV to a pair of huge robotic arms and, yes, motion-tracking pajamas. Photo/Video: Emily Prapuolenis

While it is true that the overall situation worsened and the state got deeper into the quagmire of backwardness during the RJD regime, yet the party bags many credits for bringing about a fundamental change in Bihar's society and politics as well.

The aggressive stance of Bihar CM Nitish Kumar in exiting the NDA is not really a big surprise, but whether that can lead to the formation of a viable government by an United Third Front at the Centre leaves room for scepticism, says B.S. Nagaraj.

The choice for the last remaining Communist party on this planet is clear. It either reinvents itself, as its brethren around the world have repeatedly done. Or it walks off into the JNU sunset.

Narendra Modi of 2002 couldn't change Hindustan into Modistan; it is Hindustan which has changed Modi of 2002 into Modi of 2012, notes Sajid Bhombal.

The Treasury and Democrats say they are close on a new rescue deal for small businesses, debate over lockdowns ramps up as the U.S. coronavirus death toll tops 40,000, and what to expect from earnings this week. WSJ’s Jason Bellini has the latest on the pandemic. Photo: David Poller/Zuma Press

With a focus on attaining self-sufficiency in the production of food grain, Tripura has embarked on an ambitious programme to bring large swathes of cultivable land in the state under the System of Rice Intensification. The results are promising, writes Ratna Bharali Talukdar.

Twenty years after the Brundtland report, it is self-evident that economic growth which consumes resources without regenerating them is, by very definition, unsustainable. But despite taking the moral high ground early, India's record on this front has been at best a mixed one, writes Darryl D'Monte.

What should a town-planning engineer in a district or taluk headquarters know of the Energy Conservation Building Code to get it successfully implemented, without complicating things? Chandrashekar Hariharan provides some answers.

Both the Ministry of Renewable Energy and the Ministry of Environment and Forests appear loath to pay attention to the potential environmental impact of small hydel power projects in the country. Parineeta Dandekar underlines the shortcomings in the official stance towards such projects.

Towering pylons and high tension wires seem to discourage any idea of resistance to environmental destruction in Tehri Garhwal, but the villagers persist. Bharat Dogra reports.

In the past few hundred years, every revolution has caused much more harm than the evil it sought to eradicate. Perhaps the conservative is on to something after all, writes Rajesh Kasturirangan.

Is it at all possible to be an Indian nationalist without losing sight of our common humanity? Can nationalism ever be an emancipatory principle, asks Rajesh Kasturirangan.

A number of barbs have been flung at Anna Hazare and the India Against Corruption campaign, amidst the rising popularity of the effort. Are these justified, wonders Rajesh Kasturirangan.

Blank Noise, begun as Jasmeen Patheja's personal reaction to street sexual harassment, has grown to record women's experiences in creative ways. The latest of these is a clothes collection effort to tackle the misconception that women's attire invites harassment. Vasudha V reports.

Our deities can't be bullied into becoming soulless robotic creatures that yield to every new wave of political fashion. Madhu Purnima Kishwar wants protection from the new missionaries of uniformity.

Dr C S Lakshmi, the eminent Tamil feminist writer, who writes under the pen name Ambai, has been a researcher in women’s studies for the last several decades, and is also the Founder Trustee of Sound & Picture Archives for Research on Women (SPARROW), that has undertaken several oral history projects. She speaks to Pratibha Umashankar about issues concerning women.

The entire weight of technical opinion has been to proceed with caution on the Interlinking of Rivers. An extract of Jairam Ramesh's speech in the Rajya Sabha debate on the working of Ministry of Water Resources on 20 April 2005.

With small coir manufacturers in Kerala unable to modernise their processes, their loss has become Tamilnadu's gain, reports P N Venugopal.

The vendors and hawkers of the Chingrajpara slum in Bilaspur are the lynchpin of the slum’s homespun economy. In this seventh article in our SLUM DIARIES series, Ashima Sood notes that operating on small capital outlays, these petty retailers offer a humbling portrait of entrepreneurship in action.

For over two decades now, agriculture has suffered overall neglect as successive governments, led by World-Bank prescribed growth models, have issued disproportionate doles to industry. While the present allocations do not spell much hope, Devinder Sharma suggests what the Modi government may still do to reverse the trend.

The thrust on ‘smart cities’ by PM Narendra Modi has been impossible to miss since he took over the reins. Sujaya Rathi and Shrimoyee Bhattacharya look at critical considerations to be made at the pilot stage of the evolutionary journey towards such urban centres.

The ruling government has allocated 7,060 crores of rupees for development of smart cities, but do our realities allow for westernised ICT-driven smart cities? Darryl D’Monte dwells on what would really make our cities smart, based on deliberations at the second Urban Age conference.

PM Modi's vision of smart cities will remain unrealised till we have environmentally-smart urban centres, equipped to mitigate the severe chronic air pollution levels. But what will it entail? Sarath Guttikunda analyses.

The security establishment would like India to project its power more forcefully abroad. But to position this as an exercise in protecting the nation's internal unity stretches the imagination, writes Firdaus Ahmed.

Venu Govindu reviews Globalization and its Discontents, by Joseph Stiglitz, the winner of the 2001 Nobel prize for economics.

More than a year after the application for recognising Basmati as a GI was filed, there is still no way to be certain if the grain on our plates is the real thing. As a result, a lot of the rice packed and sold in Haryana is called basmati, and traders in other countries too freely use the name. Varupi Jain reports.

Last year, Reliance Industries Ltd. had filed a geographical indications (GI) application for its Krishna-Godavari gas and Jamnagar petroleum products, despite the fact that the products are not characteristically attributable to geography. Varupi Jain finds that if RIL is granted the GI, it will gain exclusive benefits that it has no rightful claim over.

The Beautiful People whose next-door neighbours never vote are back, teaching the masses - who do vote - how to go about it in the civic elections in Mumbai. This is the upper middle class trying to preen itself in the one process where they matter less, writes P Sainath.

The Commonwealth Games were no showcase, but a mirror of India 2010. If they presented anything, it was Indian crony, casino capitalism at its most vigorous, writes P Sainath.

Dilip D'Souza comments on the climate for investigative reporting and public expectations of it.

Years since the adoption of the environment impact assessment law, systemic weaknesses and a token approach to public hearings are defeating its purpose. Kanchi Kohli does a review.

The government has introduced the Microfinance Bill in Parliament, empowering RBI to oversee small lenders as well. The law will take MFIs outside the jurisdiction of state-level laws, and bring them under federal regulation.

What does state sovereignty really stand for? Does it downplay the role and status of the individual by making him a 'subject' of the state? Watch Usha Ramanathan, as she deconstructs the complex entity of the state in the Daksh Constitutional Day Lecture.

Sir Mark Tully spoke recently in Bangalore on How certain should we be? The problem of religious pluralism. Revathi Siva Kumar caught up with him for this exclusive interview.

Delhi's High Capacity Bus System promises enormous gains, but has been a long time coming. Dr. Geetam Tiwari of the IIT-Delhi sheds some light on the project and the difficulties in the making it happen.

Debates on a paradigm shift in Indian politics have primarily seen arguments around the feasibility of change, even as they took its desirability as given. Shankar Jaganathan celebrates the developments which promise a triumph for idealism and show its potential of being translated into reality.

Every year the Knight fellowships program at Stanford University awards eight international fellowships for journalism innovation. This year, one of the eight is your own newsmagazine’s co-founder.

While stonewalling their demand to broadcast news, the I&B Ministry has said CR stations can air AIR bulletins instead. Geeta Seshu reports.

Launched after a successful international pledge campaign in 2007, the Bakul children's library in Bhubaneshwar is slowly turning into a node for various kinds of volunteering. Professors, young artists, students, organisers and others have started chipping in. Sailen Routray has more.

The media is partisan and the government corrupt. In this environment, the committed reporter has no choice but to go out and investigate with a hidden camera. But such sting operations are not a substitute for investigative reporting; as a result even serious revelations are quickly forgotten, says Arun Sadhu.

As the spectre of communal violence raises its ugly head yet again in the build-up towards elections, India Together talks to Ramachandra Guha to explore the threats to the secular imagination in India and the hopes for religious pluralism in the democracy.