Author: Bina Biswas

A Traveller’s Guide to Money, Motors and Mayhem Some countries welcome travellers with immigration stamps and polite airport signs. Vietnam makes them millionaires. One ordinary ATM withdrawal produces several million dong, and for a few glorious seconds the visitor feels like a financial genius. Then comes the first bánh mì (Vietnamese baguette sandwich). The millionaire soon discovers that this fortune buys lunch, coffee and, if one is feeling reckless, a taxi ride. Every purchase becomes an accounting exam: was that 25,000 or 250,000? How many zeroes were there? Why does buying bread now require the solemn concentration usually reserved for…

The Civilisational Vision of NEP 2020 India’s education policies have never been merely administrative documents. They reveal what kind of citizens the nation wishes to nurture and what kind of knowledge it chooses to honour. The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 marks a significant departure from earlier frameworks because it does not treat education simply as literacy, employability or examination success. Instead, it seeks to restore education to its larger civilisational purpose: rootedness, enquiry, ethical reflection, creativity and confidence. The education policies of 1968 and 1986 played important roles in expanding access, strengthening national integration, promoting science education, supporting Indian…

Politics has produced many reluctant heirs, but few have inherited a legacy as heavy as Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s. Before she entered Parliament, addressed rallies or watched television cameras search her face for traces of Indira Gandhi, she had already encountered the darkest side of public life. At the age of twelve, she lost her grandmother, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, to an assassin’s bullets. At nineteen, she lost her father, Rajiv Gandhi, to a suicide bomber. For Priyanka, politics arrived not with applause but with grief. The privileges of political dynasties are rightly questioned, but their private burdens are sometimes overlooked.…

A man who refuses food for a public cause creates a spectacle that no civilised society can watch without unease. With each passing day, his frailty becomes an accusation. The government is portrayed as callous, the public as indifferent, and anyone questioning his demands risks being seen as morally suspect. This is the power of a hunger strike. It is also its peril. Sonam Wangchuk began his indefinite fast at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar on June 28, 2026, in support of the youth-led Cockroach Janta Party’s agitation over examination irregularities and paper leaks. Among other demands, the protesters are seeking the…

There was a time when banning a film actually meant banning it. A government could deny certification, theatres would refuse to screen it, television channels would not broadcast it, and physical copies would disappear from circulation. The state controlled distribution and, with it, public access. That monopoly no longer exists. The controversy surrounding Satluj has exposed this new reality. The film’s release on an OTT platform was reportedly halted over national security concerns. Yet, within hours, clips and alleged copies were circulating across social media and other unofficial channels. Whether every version is genuine is almost beside the point. The…