The hardships bugging the residents of cities and towns across the country, as they have emerged so far, are being talked about in different circles of citizens who have to bear themselves the charge of creating the irksome urban situation. The hard times that the rural residents are currently experiencing are more prominently due to…

The world has witnessed many leaders featured in the chronicles of various countries, including India. Some of them have steadily climbed the rungs of life’s ladder to earn the distinction of being recognised and respected as leaders. While a select few among them retained their perch at the top not only during their lifetime but…

Biologists favour the view that every living species is marked by the feature of sustaining its own progeny by the process of reproduction, either sexual or asexual. Human beings, unarguably, do so consciously for reasons far different from the rest of the species on planet Earth, the latter mass resorting to proliferation by instinct of…

World Women’s Day was observed, nay celebrated this week witnessing spirited calls in the cause of welfare of the girl child as well as women by people in high posts in the government and others who counted in society at large across the country. The air has already been abuzz in many regions of the…

By way of a disclaimer, the various issues appearing in this column, remarks made and points raised do not include in their ambit any or all of the idols, figures, statues, images and figurines of divinities worshipped by devotees of various faiths, taking care not to hurt their sentiments and beliefs. The monolithic figure of…

The idiom Better late than never, attributed to Geoffrey Chaucer (1343-1400), considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages achieving fame as an author, philosopher, astronomer and bureaucrat, who also composed a scientific treatise on the astrolabe (an instrument used by astronomers to study celestial bodies), is often used to acknowledge (perhaps begrudgingly) that…

Archaeologists are said to have discovered in 1920s an ancient civilisation in the erstwhile Indian subcontinent, which the historians called Indus Valley Civilisation or Harappan Civilisation. Also described as a Bronze Age Civilisation, the period lasting for 2000 years (3300-1300 BC). Evidence of religious practices in present Northwest India, according to scholars, date back to…

Leading lights in society of the past, both near and far on time scale, are more to be found in the sleepy pages of the land’s recorded history than remembered by present generation. Even the few among them whose life and exemplary deeds are recalled by some public speakers would have got erased from memory…

Economists have defined money as a medium of exchange in daily life and have also described it in many words. The maxim “Money is what money does,” described with utmost brevity, is attributed to Prof. Francis Amasa Walker (1840-1897), American economist, statistician, journalist, educator, academic administrator and military officer. The idiom ‘money makes the mare…

The land’s people were informed, although belatedly, about a vision to be achieved. The Union Ministry of Urban Development launched Swachh Bharat Mission on Oct. 2, 2014 to bring about 4,000 towns and cities under the mission’s ambit. Essentially, the vision is to clean up the streets, roads, infrastructure of India’s cities, not to forget…