I arrived at Manikarnika as the sun was preparing to leave the sky. The evening light had begun to soften the hard outlines of Varanasi. As I walked through the city’s labyrinthine lanes, Kashi displayed all its familiar contradictions at once—pilgrims and shopkeepers, temple bells and motorcycle horns, saffron-clad ascetics and foreign visitors, all sharingContinue reading “Manikarnika: Where Fire Becomes Eternity”
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FIFTY YEARS LATER
There are reunions, and then there are IAS reunions. The former involve nostalgia. The latter too involve nostalgia; but also protocol, subtle comparison, and the quiet belief—held with touching sincerity by almost everyone present—that time has treated them with exceptional generosity, and that they have aged distinctly better than most others in the batch. TheContinue reading “FIFTY YEARS LATER”
Service at the Crossroads: Part II
The Test of Our Times—Integrity, Power, and the Demands of Viksit Bharat If Part I is a reflection on what India’s civil services have been, Part II must confront what they are in danger of becoming—and what they must yet strive to be. For all their history and institutional depth, the civil services today standContinue reading “Service at the Crossroads: Part II”
Service at the Crossroads: Part I
The Idea of the Civil Service—From Steel Frame to Living Institution There are institutions that merely administer a nation, and there are those that, in quieter and less visible ways, help shape its destiny. India’s civil services have at their best, belonged to the latter category—an enduring presence through upheaval and change, lending continuity toContinue reading “Service at the Crossroads: Part I”
A Voice for All Seasons: Asha Bhosle
There are some voices one grows up with, and others one has the rare fortune of encountering in person—voices that, even in conversation, seem to carry an echo of the worlds they have created. To have met Asha Bhosle a few times, in the course of official duty, was to experience precisely this quiet astonishment:Continue reading “A Voice for All Seasons: Asha Bhosle”
The End of The Red Corridor
Is India’s Maoist Insurgency Truly Near Its End? When redoubtable Amit Shah, the Home Minister, declared that India would soon be free of the world’s longest-running Maoist insurgency, it carried the cadence of closure—a decisive end to a conflict that has simmered, flared, and endured for nearly six decades. Yet, like many long wars foughtContinue reading “The End of The Red Corridor”
Power, Data, and the Orbiting Future
Rethinking Data Centres in an Age of Energy Uncertainty It may seem almost incongruous to speak of the future of data centres at a time when the world is engulfed in an energy crisis. With tensions simmering across Iran, Israel, and the United States, and oil markets facing serious disruption, the immediate instinct is toContinue reading “Power, Data, and the Orbiting Future”
A light-Hearted Reflection of An Average Man on International Women’s Day (IWD)
For the average man, International Women’s Day is observed with admiration, respect—and a certain degree of carefulness. Today, the world overflows with earnest declarations, serious reflections, glorious tributes, and passionate advocacy. All of it is necessary and welcome. Yet every once in a while, it may also help to step back and view the day with a littleContinue reading “A light-Hearted Reflection of An Average Man on International Women’s Day (IWD)”
An Evening that Spoke for the “Third World”
The gathering was not large. Yet it was the kind of gathering where numbers quietly surrender to thought. On that evening, we had assembled to release a collection of poems titled तीसरा जहाँ, written by Savita Jain ‘Savi’, herself a retired senior government functionary. The book explores the lives, pains, hopes, aspirations and quiet resilience ofContinue reading “An Evening that Spoke for the “Third World””
After the Applause: India’s AI Inflection Decade
The India AI Impact Summit concluded with declarations, endorsements and a clear normative articulation of human-centric artificial intelligence. But the true significance of the Summit lies not in what was said at Bharat Mandapam, but in what must now be done beyond it. Declarations create direction. Execution creates progress. If the Summit marked India’s arrivalContinue reading “After the Applause: India’s AI Inflection Decade”
