The land’s legendary monk Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902) is regularly cited for his inspirational prescription to the youth in particular and the world in general with the words, “Arise, awake; stop not until the goal is reached.” Two other quotes attributed to him may be appropriate for this column’s topic: “Every thing is easy, when you…

A regular tendency or practice that is hard to give up, briefly defining the term habit, invariably either draws people close to one another or drives them apart. People of different countries and also those of different regions within a country, such as in India, are not only marked by but also stereotyped on the…

The time-honoured distinction between urban and rural profiles of a given geographical area such as India appears to be getting hazy on many counts, except the lifestyle of their residents and also their density for now. Given the steadily changing ratio between the populations of these two territories, we may witness the 50:50 point sooner…

Indian democracy has tended to gravitate to a five-years-once expectations of its masses and disappointments as mirrored by the current goings on across the land, Karnataka figuring along with other States. The eligibility to seek votes as part of the process of getting elected before wearing the badge of the country’s ruling class, with or…

The land’s people are being reminded about the imperatives of keeping their living spaces spic and span. The message being blared on the small screen, using popular film personalities and also through dailies in various languages, currently toilet-centric, appears to have been oversimplified, given the parting shot in the campaign saying ‘Keeping the toilet door…

The section of the land’s population, fortunate to be engaged on white-collar jobs, doesn’t seem to realise the plight of the aforementioned workforce bugged by serious threat to their health, short span of work life, low wages, lack of education and living in insanitary environs. Although governments are expected to comply with worker-friendly laws through…

The elected members of India’s Parliament, the supreme legislative body of the nation, are figuring in the media prominently for all bad reasons over  the past two weeks. The daily routine of its two houses namely Rajya Sabha (Council of States) and Lok Sabha (House of the people) starting with the members trooping in and…

Figures of (a) number of towns and cities in the country and (b) number of residents in each of these steadily expanding territories and head counts have emerged as the most talked about, saying that cities are larger geographical areas than towns and also more densely populated amounts to spelling out the difference between the…

To decide which of a number of different jobs or tasks are most important or urgent and dealing with them first mandates to have a good grasp of the issues and knowing how to prioritise the choice of those tasks in the descending order of their importance is all about prioritising priorities. The powers that…

After allowing a few years to pass following the formal declaration proclaiming India as a sovereign democratic republic, the powers that be qualified the nation’s status by adding the term secular to the script of the preamble to the country’s Constitution. That landmark action, seen in many circles among the literati as suspect, has also…