It began in September 2001. It’s eight years since. But has the US-driven “global war on terrorism” made the world a safer place? The US aside, the short answer that anyone reading newspapers or watching news channels the world over knows is: No. Ask the afflicted — count the deaths in Mumbai, Madrid, London, Bali, Sinai, Amman… Read more

I wrote a rather long piece on the Irish economy last week. Titled Desperate in Dublin, it looked at the impact of the global slowdown, banker-builder greed and opportunistic politicians through the eyes of data as well as people. Today, I want to show you the beautiful people of Ireland — strikers, musicians, beggars. And the future of this country — its young. Read more

Browsing through the various shops of life that the sculpted modern civilisation presents every day — school, work, conference, columns, stories, managing, meeting and so on — finding peace has become elusive.

So elusive, in fact, that the business of providing it through books, CDs and other mediums run by self-appointed gurus has become a full fledged multi-billion-dollar industry. Read more

In October 1990, as part of a young band, we gave our last rock concert at Siri Fort auditorium in New Delhi. We didn’t know that then, of course, and were planning a life of music. But within no time, pressures of subsistence and the financial insecurity around music pushed down hard and within months, the band split up. Read more

Why do celebrations mean noise? What is this need in the urban Indian that makes him want to show that he’s having a good time? Can a good time be had in silence? Read more

Behold, a new era of state enterpreneurism. Labour pains have begun but even before the baby has been born, a new paper dissects an emerging phenomenon that’s been staring us in the face ever since September 15, when Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy and the world fell of an economic cliff. Read more

And eight core values, 10 broad directions, 50 semi-specifics, 67 clauses of intent, 23 pages and 9,254 words later, what we have from the world’s biggest ever clubbing exercise of the world’s 19 most powerful countries and EU is a score of 5.3 out of 10. This score at the Pittsburgh Summit of the Group of 20 (G20) got on its September 25 communique is lesser than the 6.4 the same group got in the London Summit. Read more

We are getting used to violence and, as a result, it is becoming a blind spot of the world around us. We wake up with a shock when we experience it. And I’m not merely talking about news and media.

Violence today hides behind non-violence. That is, rarely do we go around and get involved with physical acts of violence — and that’s a relief. Read more

A year ago the world fell of a cliff. Lehman Brothers filing for bankruptcy was only the last straw in the long-drawn credit crisis that began a few years earlier. In this post, I present some papers that have analysed this crisis and ushered in a new world order. What is this new world order? Read more

Change-the-world junkies have a new primer at hand. Also known as activists, entrepreneurs, leaders, transformers, advocates, these are a group of people who invariably are wedded to the idea of bringing change.

“Whether liberal or conservative, religious or secular, individualistic or communitarian, these are the thinkers, organisers, agitators, doers, dreamers and professional troublemakers who keep America stirred up by spending their days (and, too often, their nights) working to advance their favoured causes,” writes Roger L Conner, a professor of law at Vanderbilt University Law School and director of The Advocacy Project. Read more