President Ram Nath Kovind administered the oath of office to Justice Dipak Misra who was sworn in as the 45th Chief Justice of India. Misra, whose career as an advocate began in 1977, will hold office as the Chief Justice until his retirement on October 2, 2018. He is known for leading the Supreme Court bench on the landmark judgement confirming death penalty to the four convicts in the Nirbhaya […]
In many states, lottery winners must do a bit of publicity work before they can plop down some cash for their own water park or go on a decades-long shopping spree so epic that the public nicknames them “Spend, Spend, Spend.” By law, many must have their names publicized or do mandatory news conferences – a convention that serves to both silence whispers that the lottery system is fixed and […]
It will now be called Justice K S Puttaswamy (Retd) vs Union of India. A case that will go down in Indian legal history — the landmark judgment of the Supreme Court establishing privacy as a fundamental right. For the 91-year-old Justice Puttaswamy, however, it isn’t so dramatic. “Correct and beneficial,” is his verdict. Speaking to The Indian Express at his home in south Bengaluru, Puttaswamy, a former Karnataka high […]
If this were an episode off the Nat Geo show, we would have to say: Adult Female, Rare Sighting, Ineffectual Prowess! The mahila pradhan is a curious creature in rural India. She is of a species borne out of the system, very much a part of the reservations quota introduced at the village level and yet – or perhaps because of it – she remains pradhan only in name. Because […]
How many of us follow weather updates everyday? They seem like a mundane feature of the news – a vestigial organ. What if I told you that there is an amateur weatherman – yes, a weatherman – with an almost cult-like following, whose forecasts people follow every day? And what if you learnt that he is not even formally trained, but receives thousands of questions every day about the weather? […]
When 20-year old Rupa Yadav who was married off when she was just eight cracked the National Entrance-cum-Eligibility Test (NEET) this year, she not only hit the headlines for her inspiring feat but was also assured of financial help from various quarters. A month on, while Rupa has secured admission in Sardar Patel Medical College, Bikaner, the funds for her education remain inadequate. Rupa’s husband Shankar Lal Yadav, who claimed […]
“A flag is a necessity for all nations. Millions have died for it. It is no doubt a kind of idolatry which would be a sin to destroy. For, a flag represents an Ideal. The unfurling of the Union Jack evokes in the English breast sentiments whose strength it is difficult to measure. The Stars and Stripes mean a world to the Americans. The Star and the Crescent will call […]
“Go and stand in the economy class queue. This line is for business class travellers,” a well-heeled lady told Sudha Murty at the International Heathrow airport in London. The chairperson of Infosys Foundation was at the airport wearing a salwar kameez, which perhaps made her a misfit in the queue in question. But, what eventually got Murty’s goat was when she was called a “cattle-class person”. That was when the […]
The memoir of an Indian woman who was born a so-called untouchable and now works as a conductor on the New York City Subway has been hailed by critics for its unflinching account of caste and family in India. Journalist Sudha G Tilak spoke to Sujatha Gidla about her life story and how it became Ants Among Elephants. In Sanskrit, the main language used by scholars in ancient India and […]
When Dorothy Eady arrived to Egypt for the first time, it was obvious to her that she had been there before. But her last visit near the Nile may have taken place thousands of years earlier. Dorothy was born on January 16, 1904 in the London suburb of Blackhearth. Doctors believed that she would not survive a terrible fall when she was three years old. However, it seems that the […]
