MORE THAN 2,000 YEARS ago, Huangdi Neijing, a classic Chinese medical text, identified obesity as a disease caused by eating too much “fatty meats and polished grains”. Until a generation ago, such a diet was an extravagance beyond imagination for all but the elite. But the Chinese waistline has since expanded, and at an alarming […]
GERMANY, AUSTRIA AND German-speaking Switzerland have an education tradition that sets them apart from most other countries.
Children tend to get out of school at mid-day instead of late afternoon. Secondary schools are divided into three types. The basic one prepares for technical apprenticeships and vocational training. The middle one teaches skills such as book-keeping. And […]
MANY PARENTS who picked up their children from Park View School, Birmingham on June 9 took home something else too: an official report excoriating the school. Ofsted, England’s schools inspector, had downgraded the largely Muslim institution to “inadequate”, saying it has failed to protect children from extremism.
A few months ago, Birmingham City Council received a […]
IT SEEMS AS THOUGH popular American actor Jim Carrey, star of the 2003 American religious comedy film Bruce Almighty, isn’t the only mortal to have been endowed with godly powers. In the movie Carrey plays the character of Bruce Nolan, a down-on-his-luck television reporter who complains to God (Morgan Freeman) that He isn’t doing a […]
Capital in the Twenty-first Century by Thomas Piketty;Harvard Business Publishing; Price: Rs.1,495; Pages 577
THE OUTSTANDING characteristic of this extraordinary outcome of 15 years of intensive research and scholarship is that although ex facie Capital in the Twenty-First Century is an economics text which brings great clarity to the increasingly divisive and confusing issue of wealth […]
THE TAKEOVER OF MEDIA conglomerate Network 18 Media & Investments Ltd (NMIL) by Mukesh Ambani, executive chairman of the yarn-to-oil and retail giant Reliance Industries Ltd — India’s largest private sector company (annual revenue: Rs.401,302 crore) — for a reported consideration of Rs.2,692 crore in early July, has sent shivers down the spines of media […]
Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata) [caption id="attachment_122753" align="aligncenter" width="723"] Mamata Banerjee (centre) at BGBS 2025[/caption] After 34 years of industrial stagnation under communist rule (1977-2011) and during .....Read More
