INDIA
Rajan Anandan, not Sam Altman, holds the answer to his question
Until a culture of risk-reward equation — which OpenAI CEO Sam Altman probably referred to when quizzed by former Google CEO and angel investor Rajan Anandan — percolates into the Indian startup ecosystem, breakthrough ideas will continue to remain underfunded.
INDIA
What's ailing Indian railways
The challenge has been to yank this vast network spanning a running track length of over 1,00,000 kilometers into the modern era, leaving behind the colonial legacy of overcrowded trains and poor facilities.
TRENDS
Raj Reddy, the AI pioneer from India
TRENDS
Salman Rushdie's latest comeback is inspirational and uplifting
Some remarkable examples of people who have fought back from crippling injuries.
TRENDS
Happy birthday, Clint Eastwood
Born on May 31, 1930, Clint Eastwood went on to vanquish all kinds of movie villains - except power cuts in 1970s Kolkata.
CRICKET
How Indian Premier League is starting to resemble the English Premier League
Sachin Tendulkar emerged as the Player of the Tournament in 2010, and Virat Kohli in 2016. Both are perfect examples of how fundamentally solid batsmen, groomed to play in the V, adapt to any format.
HEALTH-AND-FITNESS
Employee ill-health is a key factor of India’s low productivity levels
Diseases, particularly preventable and treatable ones, or other episodes of physical and mental injury, add up to a huge loss of creative and productive capabilities the world over.
TRENDS
German magazine's cartoon on India is actually a tribute to the country's uniqueness
Far from belittling India, the cartoon is a celebration of the hubbub of India’s democracy. It also sums up where China finds itself today, thanks to the draconian One Child rule of the 1980s.
BUSINESS
Recent uptrend shows crypto isn’t going anywhere
But to conclude from this that crypto’s existential problems are over would be an oversimplification.
TRENDS
Bournvita controversy a wake-up call for Big Food
With its ham-handed response, which does nothing to debunk the issue that was raised — ‘high level of added sugar’ — Cadbury only gave fresh legs to the controversy around Bournvita being a possible health hazard
TRENDS
India’s unsung startup heroes need a leg up
Real innovation has been taking place for years in India, in a world of entrepreneurship away from the limelight but where need-based products and technologies are being created.
TRENDS
Soaring airfare, skyrocketing room tariffs: Why I junked that exciting holiday plan
Massive discounts during the pandemic months fuelled dreams of budget holidays. But then as travel restrictions lifted, rates spiked and tore up those carefully budgeted plans.
CRICKET
What the boys of IPL could learn from the Women’s Premier League
There are so many things that the men's game could pick up from the WPL, none more important than the current favourite call of the millennials: calm down uncle!
TRENDS
Naatu Naatu’s win at the Oscars and Golden Globes is sweet, but it is still about power
It's not just India's rising soft power, but also our growing "hard power" that is making the world sit up and take notice.
TRENDS
Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse continues a long tradition of banking busts
How did banks go from being custodians of people’s money to the kind of reckless institutions that are now looked upon with suspicion? Perhaps, there never was a reason for the blind faith in banks.
WORLD
What happened in Iraq after the US invasion is a pointer to Ukraine’s looming challenges
The Russia Ukraine war could end by summer this year. Ukraine must be careful with what it wishes for in terms of help from outsiders to rebuild the nation and its economy.
BUSINESS
As Rohit Jawa moves to head the India business HUL’s gain could be Unilever’s loss
Jawa, a 35-year veteran of Unilever, has turned things around in challenging markets like China and Philippines. That should stand him in good stead, as he moves in to replace Sanjiv Mehta.
TRENDS
Waiting for the definitive COVID fiction
Fiction gives voice to the marginal, the peripheral, and the subaltern in ways that history doesn’t or can’t. None of the books, in the last couple of years, with COVID as the backdrop, seems to adequately convey the pain and the agony of those nightmarish days.
TRENDS
Remembering Jamsetji Tata on his 184th birth anniversary
Born on March 3, 1839, in “one of the tiny bylanes in Dasturwad (in Navsari, Gujarat)”, Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata, was at once a visionary and a builder, a rare combination.
WORLD
Chinese balloons stoke American paranoia with extraterrestrials
Surveys reveal that more than 90 percent of all Americans have at least heard or read something about UFOs, and 55 percent of them believe they are for real.
TRENDS
Why do we love lists so much?
Psychologists say the human brain processes information better if it is placed in a hierarchical pattern, which probably explains why we have a list for just about everything.
TRENDS
Hindenburg and the relevance of company names
Hindenburg Research's website says it is so named after what it considers one of the world’s worst man-made and avoidable accidents.
TRENDS
Hockey debacle highlights Indian sports teams’ tendency to choke
Burden of expectation - from being favourites to win or playing at home - can sometimes make athletes forget years of training and thousands of hours of practice.
TRENDS
Harish Chandra, and the semisimple Lie in mathematics
Born 100 years ago in Kanpur, Harish Chandra (1923-83) trained to be a physicist and ended up being one of the greatest mathematicians of his age.
