Throw open India’s border areas, make it the tourist capital of the world

This Article First Appeared In The Print On June 1, 2023 Tourists are likely to be allowed into the “forbidden zones” of Ladakh in the near future. Ladakh was opened to tourists back in the 1970s, but even today they are allowed only up to Pangong Tso and Tso Moriri lakes in Eastern Ladakh. The number of roads they can use are also restricted. According to a Times of India report, as a first step, the Chang Chenmo Sector is likely to be opened for tourism in a gradual manner. To begin with, visitors will be allowed to go via Marsimik La (pass) to Tsogtsalu, 214 km from Leh. In Phase 2, the tourists will be allowed up to Hot Springs and Karam Singh Memorial.

Another Dhoni story, another lesson in leadership

This Article First Appeared In The Times Of India On May 31, 2023  He guided IPL winners CSK shrewdly, in his trademark style, and for all the love he got, the humility never left him: The most unsentimental cricketer India has produced somehow became an emotion that could be bottled and sold across the country. Mahendra Singh Dhoni, born in Ranchi, forged in the furnaces of Indian cricket, and smelted in the colours of the Chennai Super Kings, has emerged golden yet again.

Remembering the first major Carnatic music concert in the United States

This Article First Appeared In The Scroll On May 24, 2023 Since its opening in January 1921, the iconic Town Hall in Manhattan has hosted some of the world’s greatest musicians, such as Paul Robeson, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Billie Holliday, Nina Simone, Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. On a crisp October evening in 1962, it staged what was the first major Carnatic music concert ever held in the United States. “One of the oldest living musical traditions, with all its color, exoticism, and age-mellowed subtleties, was heard at Town Hall Saturday Night,” The New York Times wrote in its October 8, 1962 edition.

India is making its mark in the world

This Article First Appeared In The Hindustan Times On May 31, 2023 India is in a rare moment of equilibrium. It has begun to reap its demographic dividend. Remnants of red tape and corruption that slowed down its rise for decades are waning. The stark inequality that shackled the democracy of 1.4 billion people has started to thaw. The global recession that could torpedo India’s growth plans pre-2014, now face a more resilient economy that has learned to pivot, and spin them into opportunities for growth. India’s economy is no longer at the receiving end of the global order but is in the fray of the world’s most powerful future economies, with an unmatched growth rate. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) says India and China will account for 50% of the total world gross domestic product growth in 2023, against 10% for the United States (US) and the Euro Zone.

Will Rishi Sunak be a ‘living bridge’? Meet the many other world leaders of Indian origin

This Article First Appeared In The Hindu On Nov 02, 2022

While Indian origin leaders around the world — from U.K. and Portugal to Suriname — are helping strengthen diplomatic ties, they also bring attention to India’s current politics of division

“I hate Indians, they are beastly people with beastly religion,” Winston Churchill, the wartime British prime minister, once said about his country’s colonial subjects. Both the world and Britain have changed such a great deal since the Churchill era that a man of Indian origin, a devout Hindu, was elected as his latest successor in 10 Downing Street. Rishi Sunak was born in 1980, 15 years after Churchill died, and grew up in a country that was a pale shadow of what used to be the mighty British Empire.

India can be a world leader in science: Hindustan Times

(This Article First Appeared In Hindustan Times on May 28, 2023) At the India Science Festival (ISF) in Hyderabad earlier this year, we asked an audacious question: What should be the goal of Indian science? One of our co-panellists, Thomas Barlow, a global innovation expert, set the stage for this discussion when he remarked: “This century is for India to take. Its ambition should be nothing less"...