After Trump’s Stupid Acts, Can the US and Iran Avoid a Disastrous Collision?

WITH the US walking out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—more commonly known as the Iran accord—we all enter into a heightened zone of danger. Trump is threatening a war on Iran through … Read more

Airbus 320neo problems: DGCA playing with fire

Indian passenger carriers flying the highly troubled Airbus 320/321 neo (new engine option) family of aircraft with US major Pratt & Whitney 1100G engines have been given a reprieve by the Director General of Civil … Read more

Pax Americana and the Threat of Nuclear Armageddon

THE decade ends with two major threats to humanity: global warming and the threat of a nuclear war extinguishing our civilisation. We have dealt earlier with global warming and the refusal of advanced countries, particularly … Read more

Modi Claims His Government is Digital; Why is He Shutting Down the Internet?

MODI has been claiming that his government has become transparent with all its data and services now being on the internet. If this is true, why is his government shutting down the internet? In 2018, … Read more

Government Lying on NPR being Different from NRC

The BJP and the Modi government claim the National Register of Citizens (NRC) process is yet to start. The Minister of State for Home Affairs, G. Kishan Reddy, has said: “A countrywide NRC had not … Read more

New Data Protection Bill: From Protecting our Data to Creating a Surveillance State

THE government has come out with a Draft Personal Data Protection Bill, 2019 which differs significantly from its earlier version drafted by Justice BN Sri Krishna in 2018. Justice Sri Krishna has called these changes … Read more

Another COP-Out: This Time Madrid

COP 25 or the 25th Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has been underway in the Spanish capital, Madrid, for the past week and is currently mid-way through its … Read more

Telecom: From License-Permit Raj to License-to-Loot Raj

THE major private operators, along with the State run operators in the telecom sector, are currently reeling under a three year price war with Reliance Jio. This has hit their profitability, with Jio buying its … Read more

Electricity Sector’s Continuing Crisis and Crony Capitalism

THE problems of the electricity sector have grown with the neoliberal reforms of the sector that started from the 90’s. The Enron style reforms introduced high cost private power into the grid in the 90’s, … Read more

Ministers Playing Hide and Seek in Parliament on Pegasus

THE two sets of questions in the Parliament to two different ministries on the Israeli software Pegasus being used to hack smartphones of Indian activists have drawn different replies.  It makes clear that the government … Read more

Air Pollution Time… Yet Again!

IT would be humorous if it was not so tragic, but it is another winter in Delhi and North India as a whole, and has brought with it, yet again, another prolonged spell of terrible … Read more

What is Ravishankar Prasad Hiding on WhatsApp Hack?

AS many as 1,400 smartphones worldwide – including 140 of Indians – have been hacked. This hack used Pegasus, the software tools from the notorious hacker-for-hire Israeli company NSO or Q Cyber Technologies. The fundamental … Read more