DNA

Politicians from mainland India, bogged down by their own mainstream and patronising narrative of what development or nationalism ought to mean, hardly ever get the ground situation right as far as the Northeast is concerned. All the more so with Assam, an anthropologist’s dream-come-true and a demagogue’s proverbial nightmare. This was amply evident from the cavalier way in which Prime Minister Narendra Modi kicked off the election campaign for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in Kokrajhar on...

The advantage with hindsight is that even the proverbial fool, after the event, gets the chance of a lifetime to become wise. No, the event one is alluding to here is not the Chennai cataclysm, but the one that had ravaged Mumbai ten monsoons back. There had been a lesson in urban planning for all and sundry there; for coastal city Chennai, especially so. The Mumbai floods had been as much about unbridled concretisation and unabated corruption, as it had been about frenetic altering of land...

The heat and dust generated by the hateful and acrimonious exchanges over the Karnataka government's decision to celebrate the birth anniversary of Tipu Sultan will settle down sooner or later. As in all other debates, there are merits and demerits in the arguments being put forward by both proponents and detractors; but what has been missing from most contentions is the role of the man central to the conflagration – the state's chief minister, S Siddaramaiah. Before one delves into the...

In the first week of October, what was hitherto only looming large over the trade horizon became a disturbing reality. Twelve countries announced the inking of the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) after years of clandestine negotiations. Though the partnership has not yet been ratified by lawmakers from the member countries of the Pacific Rim that constitute the bloc, it is likely to cause a flutter in global trade equations. And affect India’s already-declining exports, too...

The accord between the Government of India and the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (Isak-Muivah) is definitely not an accord by any measure; what has been announced, if anything at all, is only a statement of intent. Most of the ongoing discourse has either bordered on "whataboutery" or been academic speculation. Neither is off the mark, and yet neither is fair. For, the history of Naga insurrection is a history of failed accords, one of repeated acts of treachery and skulduggery by the...

The ancient Romans had a widely-used adage: Ovem lupo committere. Translated into English, the Latin expression would mean: to set a wolf to guard the sheep. The construct has had many variations and mutations over time and across geographies, but the essence remains the same. This thought would cross one’s mind many times over while going through the report of the High-Level Committee (HLC) that was constituted to review Acts administered by the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate...

On January 10, 1929, a memorandum signed by 20 members of the Naga Club was submitted to the Indian Statutory Commission, also known as the Simon Commission, demanding exclusion of the Naga Hills from the Province of Assam. The underlying fear was that the Nagas would be lost in a sea of Indians if they came to be administered by the latter. John Hutton, an anthropologist who was the Deputy Commissioner of the Naga Hills, even suggested to the commission that a separate North-Eastern Frontier...

In a milieu where bedlam and mutual suspicion hold discourse to ransom, it is difficult not only to find voices of sanity, it is as challenging to remain circumspect oneself. One invariably ends up believing not the truth, but what suits one’s own predilections and narratives. It is this unsettling milieu that reigns supreme in the country today, and in such a frenzied backdrop comes a shoddily-drafted document that unabashedly spins a conspiracy yarn so fantastic that one would gleefully accept...

At a time when an increasing number of decisions made by consumers are being based on recommendations that gush forth from social media, hospitals cannot remain untouched, or for that matter shy away. Hospitals en masse are not really getting there as yet, but some have started taking small, furtive steps into a realm that where a hospital needs to take measured steps. One institution that has a sizable presence is Manipal Hospitals. Certainly sizable if one goes by the 1.5 lakh likes that it...

It’s almost always a given that when development for the greater good of the greater number is unleashed on a nation, the first casualty is environment. Against the backdrop of this inconvenient truth, when a political party storms to power having canvassed on the plank of development, it is a cause for anxiety. This, in turn, needs to be seen in the light of the hapless condition that the Congress-led government left the country in. The economy is in a shambles, and the ecology has been...