Subscribe and track India like never before..

Get full online access to
Civil Society magazine.

Already a subscriber? Login

  • Going beyond home

    Going beyond home

    I began working in Mumbai (then Bombay) as a young woman of 20. My workplace was safe, but I had ...

    Read More
  • Land grab on the banks

    Land grab on the banks

    OVER the past two years, I have had the opportunity to meet with district magistrates (DMs) and chief development officers ...

    Read More
  • Rise of individualism

    Rise of individualism

    MANY claim that we are entering an era which marks the end of ideologies and the death of “isms”. Communism ...

    Read More
  • Marking territory

    Marking territory

    Dogs do it. Mark territory. So do humans. The methods differ. The objective is the same. To protect one’s turf by ...

    Read More
  • Broken bridges of governance

    Broken bridges of governance

    AT the recent Conference of Governors, Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged governors to serve as “an effective bridge between the ...

    Read More
  • Railways on the wrong track

    Railways on the wrong track

    THERE seems to be something seriously wrong with Indian Railways. In a two-month period ending July 2024 there were three ...

    Read More
  • Floodplains belong to rivers

    Floodplains belong to rivers

    A river requires sufficient space to carry out its diverse functions. This space is delineated by the river itself, carving ...

    Read More
  • Not easy to find a Yunus

    Not easy to find a Yunus

    DEMOCRATIC institutions ensure that a State renews its legitimacy within civil society. When those who take control of the State subvert ...

    Read More
  • Skills survived many odds

    Skills survived many odds

    AS we  celebrate our 78th Independence Day, there’s no better time to honour the rich tapestry of handcrafted textiles that ...

    Read More
  • Boost that birthrate

    Boost that birthrate

    A previous article (‘Demographic Dangers’, Civil Society, June 2024) discussed some implications of the latest fertility figures for India and ...

    Read More
  • On a weak foundation

    On a weak foundation

    WHEN Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presents her sixth annual Financial Statement and Budget speech in Parliament, she will equal ...

    Read More
  • Small media with big impact

    Small media with big impact

    AMONG the many institutions of Indian democracy that earned disrepute in recent years the so-called ‘mainstream’ media stands out. Becoming ...

    Read More
  • The voter doesn’t have a choice

    The voter doesn’t have a choice

    INDIAN political parties have honed the art of winning elections by holding the voter to ransom. Such is the decline ...

    Read More
  • The power of the collective

    The power of the collective

    THE excitement and fervour surrounding the general election in India has been palpable, with heated discussions and loud campaigns dominating ...

    Read More
  • Demographic dangers

    Demographic dangers

    DEMOGRAPHY is in the news, thanks to the Lok Sabha elections and the latest projections of population growth. The former ...

    Read More
  • In Kafka’s universe

    In Kafka’s universe

    IN June every year the media publishes articles recollecting the imposition of Emergency by Indira Gandhi’s government in June 1975. ...

    Read More
  • 2024: Two narratives

    2024: Two narratives

    RESPONDING to the 2024 election manifesto of the Congress party, titled Nyay Patra, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said it bears ...

    Read More
  • Growing the rural start-up

    Growing the rural start-up

    STARTING an independent  for-profit social enterprise in rural India is not just a venture — it’s a courageous step towards ...

    Read More
  • Cruising on troubled waters

    Cruising on troubled waters

    THE world’s longest river cruise, Ganga Vilas, that was flagged off in 2023, covers five states in India and Bangladesh ...

    Read More
  • Innovation is the buzzword

    Innovation is the buzzword

    INVENTION is the holy grail of researchers: to create something that does not exist and may not even have been ...

    Read More
  • Have money, will spend

    Have money, will spend

    THE Ambani family’s over-the-top partying at Jamnagar has been widely commented upon at home and abroad. Only the socially unaware ...

    Read More
  • Armed with a fearless pen

    Armed with a fearless pen

    BE Fearless is a compelling, timeless but difficult call. When you are confronted by a hostile mob that is determined ...

    Read More
  • Exercising the right to die

    Exercising the right to die

    AS medical science progresses and economic development leads to cleaner environments that transmit smaller infection loads, people are living longer ...

    Read More
  • Bringing back wildlife

    Bringing back wildlife

    SANCTUARIES inside rivers? Yes. There are several stretches of rivers that have been declared protected areas under the Wildlife Protection ...

    Read More
  • A chip for your thoughts

    A chip for your thoughts

    OVER the centuries, humans have constantly sought to increase their muscle power. Bullocks for ploughing, water currents for milling, and ...

    Read More
  • Money power and politics

    Money power and politics

    A quarter-century ago, in a different era, a very different kind of politician from very different political parties sat together ...

    Read More
  • Pollution the internal enemy

    Pollution the internal enemy

    First, let’s get this straight. There are no safe levels of air pollution. Experts speak in one voice when they ...

    Read More
  • A force for the river

    A force for the river

    THE Ganga Task Force (GTF) was stationed along the banks of the Ganga with the objective of preventing pollution from ...

    Read More
  • The status economy

    The status economy

    WHERE do you live? This question, asked by a fellow guest at a Delhi party, can determine the flow of ...

    Read More
  • Business rules, everywhere

    Business rules, everywhere

    THE Covid pandemic which struck in February 2020 shattered the livelihoods of billions around the world and hundreds of thousands ...

    Read More
  • A river has the right to life

    A river has the right to life

    DESPITE our professed love for rivers and water bodies, our actions have inflicted deeper injuries on their wholesome existence. The ...

    Read More
  • Two compelling symbols

    Two compelling symbols

    WE live in an age of many firsts. We are the first humans to have a ‘Doomsday Clock’ as well ...

    Read More
  • The leisure economy

    The leisure economy

    ARE you free? This oft-asked question is prone to multiple interpretations. Human rights activists will understand it in the context ...

    Read More
  • Banga at the Bank

    Banga at the Bank

    AJAY Banga made headlines when he was named president of the World Bank by US President Joe Biden. Indian born ...

    Read More
  • Space for peace

    Space for peace

    ISRO’s successful soft landing of Chandrayaan is a joyous moment that can inspire us to dwell on a big question. ...

    Read More
  • Delhi’s water footprint

    Delhi’s water footprint

    MOST of the water consumed in Delhi is not of its own. Delhi’s water reflects a strange mix of power, ...

    Read More
  • India’s diamond

    India’s diamond

    THE headline may lead you to think that this is about the diamond jubilee last year of India’s independence, or ...

    Read More
  • People and summits

    People and summits

    A summit, by definition, is for summiteers. Sherpas are needed and so are all the camp staff. Ordinary people are ...

    Read More
  • Fight back with a kiss

    Fight back with a kiss

    IT is ten years since the annals of nonviolent civil disobedience were enlivened by the ‘kissing protest’ in Turkey. In ...

    Read More
  • Wrecked rivers hit back

    Wrecked rivers hit back

    OVER the past two months, there has been a series of natural disasters including flash floods, thunderstorms, cloudbursts, landslides, and ...

    Read More
  • Those left behind

    Those left behind

    DESPITE the ambiguity that the heading might lead to, this is not about the Communist or other Leftist parties as ...

    Read More
  • A debate of bytes

    A debate of bytes

    WE have all heard television journalists implore whoever they are seeking to interview, “Give me a byte”. In the age ...

    Read More
  • A laughing matter

    A laughing matter

    Non-violent civil disobedience is usually associated with images of a lone, unarmed and grim-faced person standing defiantly in the path ...

    Read More
  • Highways vs rivers

    Highways vs rivers

    When highways get built, they traverse many water bodies which feed rivers and streams and may in fact be more ...

    Read More
  • Diversity is strength

    Diversity is strength

    On occasion, most recently in the US, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has spoken with pride about the diversity of India. ...

    Read More
  • Down the drain

    Down the drain

    During the year I was at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore the then Lt Governor ...

    Read More
  • Raising the hand of peace

    Raising the hand of peace

    AN impassioned procession of protesters was marching towards Gandhi Maidan in Patna. The year was 1974 and that procession was ...

    Read More
  • Yamuna is a little bit cleaner

    Yamuna is a little bit cleaner

    THE Yamuna river is showing some signs of improvement in its water quality. The levels of biological oxygen demand (BOD) ...

    Read More
  • Diplomacy, society and business

    Diplomacy, society and business

    For over two years the United States political and administrative system found it difficult to appoint an ambassador to India. ...

    Read More
  • Not an exclusive heaven

    Not an exclusive heaven

    ONE morning, at a school assembly, the principal urged students and teachers to make their school a ‘heaven on earth’. ...

    Read More
  • Riverfronts kill rivers

    Riverfronts kill rivers

    RECENTLY, over 2,000 citizens participated in a unique protest along the banks of the Mula-Mutha river in Pune by hugging ...

    Read More
  • The pain of one

    The pain of one

    THERE is a new affliction across much of the world, especially in the West. Unlike Covid or other viruses, it ...

    Read More
  • Mobilizing civil society

    Mobilizing civil society

    CIVIL society groups have always been engaged in mainstream politics in one way or another, albeit at its margins. Rarely ...

    Read More
  • Map and save water bodies

    Map and save water bodies

    A few months ago, I travelled to Bahraich district in Uttar Pradesh to carry out a mapping and surveying project ...

    Read More
  • With AI, a zero-sum game?

    With AI, a zero-sum game?

    TECHNOLOGICAL singularity, an idea first advanced by mathematician John van Neumann, is when technological growth becomes self-sustaining, irreversible, and practically ...

    Read More
  • Censorship and self-censorship

    Censorship and self-censorship

    THE problems for democracies, observed an editorial in the inaugural issue of the national newsmagazine India Today (December 1975), “is ...

    Read More
  • Will India seize the moment?

    Will India seize the moment?

    The tagline of the rap song "Apna time aayega" (My time will come) from the recent Hindi film, The Gully ...

    Read More
  • How cities swallow rivers

    How cities swallow rivers

    While working on the older Corona satellite pictures of Lucknow, I was impressed by the number of rivers that the city ...

    Read More
  • Kanyashree is the answer

    Kanyashree is the answer

    The Assam government’s recent drive against child marriage, which has led to several thousand arrests, has created a turmoil in a ...

    Read More
  • For a ban on polygamy

    For a ban on polygamy

    Inequality between man and woman is one of the key features of an unfair male- dominated world order. Although India ...

    Read More
  • Foreign funds, Indian minds

    Foreign funds, Indian minds

    A few years ago I had written in these very pages of Civil Society a column titled “Funding the Indian ...

    Read More
  • Floods now on climate agenda

    Floods now on climate agenda

    MORE and more towns and cities across the world are facing the threat of extreme flooding. Climate change is increasingly ...

    Read More
  • Food fashions and the future

    Food fashions and the future

    A much-used slogan is roti, kapda, makaan. Of these, food is a survival necessity, and has long been on top ...

    Read More
  • End the plan holiday

    End the plan holiday

    WE have had ‘plan holidays’, that is, a break from five-year plans, many times before. In the late 1960s, the ...

    Read More
  • Bring back wild and scenic rivers

    Bring back wild and scenic rivers

    IN my city I often search for a spot by the side of the Gomti river which looks somewhat wild ...

    Read More
  • What stole my job?

    What stole my job?

    LAY-OFFS, unemployment, moonlighting and gig work, shortage of talent; amidst issues and contradictions, what is happening to jobs? People around ...

    Read More
  • Quantifying reality

    Quantifying reality

    THE Global Hunger Index (GHI), published by two European non-government organizations, has been universally slammed in India both by government ...

    Read More
  • A change of heart is welcome

    A change of heart is welcome

    THE significance of recent initiatives for Hindu-Muslim dialogue, reported in the media, cannot be under-valued in our highly polarized times. ...

    Read More
  • Dense city, dense flooding

    Dense city, dense flooding

    THE rain in September and October with unexpected, powerful cloudbursts, and the phasing out of the monsoon was unusual on ...

    Read More
  • Name or number?

    Name or number?

    WHO am I? is a deep philosophical question, one which can take a lifetime of pondering. Humans are prone to ...

    Read More
  • Among the people

    Among the people

    ON the eve of Rahul Gandhi’s padayatra political commentator Neerja Chaudhuri made a pertinent observation in a televised discussion. Almost ...

    Read More
  • Decentralize or drown

    Decentralize or drown

    THE recent flooding in Bengaluru, the IT capital of India and amongst the most important global hubs for the tech ...

    Read More
  • Uncertainty complex

    Uncertainty complex

    A new ‘uncertainty complex’ is unsettling lives and has already reversed the gains of five years of human development at ...

    Read More
  • On a digital high

    On a digital high

    Economies around the world are going through a major transition. In some, this has been slow and incremental, evolving over ...

    Read More
  • India at 75

    India at 75

    In quick succession, between 1896 and 1906, Swami Vivekananda, Jamsetji Tata, Rabindranath Tagore and the engineer, Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya, who founded the ...

    Read More
  • War and the economy

    War and the economy

    WAR has direct human and economic consequences. Often, such consequences impact not just the countries at war but many others, ...

    Read More
  • Mobility matters

    Mobility matters

    CRUCIAL meeting to get to, and stuck in a traffic jam? That is when you realize how much mobility matters. ...

    Read More
  • River as a person with rights

    River as a person with rights

      THE idea of endowing legal rights on non-humans and entities with constitutional protections is not new. Local grassroots movements ...

    Read More
  • Rivers need groundwater

    Rivers need groundwater

    THE Ganga basin, the world’s most densely irrigated area, is a global hotspot of groundwater depletion. The five states through ...

    Read More
  • Creating urban harmony

    Creating urban harmony

    THEFTS. Street crime. Dacoities. Drugs. Gang wars. No, this is not the ad blurb for a new Bollywood potboiler; rather, ...

    Read More
  • Gyanvapi and Nupur Sharma

    Gyanvapi and Nupur Sharma

    POLITICIANS thrive on staying in the news. No publicity is bad publicity for them, as the old saying goes. For ...

    Read More
  • The federal political cycle

    The federal political cycle

    ECONOMISTS are familiar with the concept of a business cycle and some even with the idea of a political business ...

    Read More
  • Hindi and cow belt politics

    Hindi and cow belt politics

    AMERICAN journalist Robert Lane Greene’s much appreciated book, You Are What You Speak: Grammar Grouches, Language Laws, and the Politics ...

    Read More
  • Demography-driven migration

    Demography-driven migration

    DEMOGRAPHY has, for some years now, been recognized as a driver of various key parameters of a nation. A country ...

    Read More
  • The other divide

    The other divide

    AMITAVA Ghosh’s recently published book, The Nutmeg’s Curse, exploring the historical roots of global warming and ecological destruction, tracing them ...

    Read More
  • Counting daisies?

    Counting daisies?

    IT takes a child to tell an emperor that he is not wearing any clothes. My seven-year-old grandson made me ...

    Read More
  • The future wars

    The future wars

    THE war in Ukraine has busted many a myth. Most have felt, for some years now, that the days of ...

    Read More
  • Atmanirbharata redux

    Atmanirbharata redux

    WHEN Prime Minister Narendra Modi first spoke about the concept of atmanirbharata, many mainstream economists criticized him for reverting to ...

    Read More
  • Putting the powerless first

    Putting the powerless first

    THE COVID-19 pandemic has put the global economy through a severe stress test. As accelerated stress tests do in medicine ...

    Read More
  • Reason to wonder and worry

    Reason to wonder and worry

    IN the years ahead, technology will affect and change our lives even more than it has in the past. Last ...

    Read More
  • IOU: A 2022 message for 2024

    IOU: A 2022 message for 2024

    INDIA is a psephologist’s and electoral data miner’s delight. Not only does the country generate an enormous amount of electoral ...

    Read More
  • 2030 can be India’s techade

    2030 can be India’s techade

    ELECTIONS in many states this year and for the Lok Sabha in 2024; the 75th anniversary of Independence and of ...

    Read More
  • The decline of debate

    The decline of debate

    ON August 5, 2019, I met Arun Jaitley, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader, for the last time at his ...

    Read More
  • Children of a lesser God

    Children of a lesser God

    Mahdi Basheer Hasan al Badri is barely 30 years old and the product of three wars as well as a ...

    Read More
  • The outward bound

    The outward bound

    When news of business billionaire MukeshAmbani acquiring a massive 300-acre estate in England was flashed in the media, it was ...

    Read More
  • What did Afghan NGOs achieve?

    What did Afghan NGOs achieve?

    I worked in Afghanistan from 2004 till 2016 on short assignments with the UN system and national and international CSOs ...

    Read More
  • Bombay House and Delhi

    Bombay House and Delhi

    WHEN the Narendra Modi government announced its decision to hand over Air India back to the House of Tatas, a ...

    Read More
  • Bad bill, good policy in UP

    Bad bill, good policy in UP

    THE population issue has been a predominant political and electoral subject of speculation for decades. With one of the oldest ...

    Read More
  • Koizumi’s question

    Koizumi’s question

    ON his first visit to India in 2005, Japan’s Prime Minister, Junichiro Koizumi, asked his host, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, ...

    Read More
  • Towards holistic care

    Towards holistic care

    In the world of music today it would be considered weird, perhaps sacrilegious, for any group of professional musicians or ...

    Read More