News and Views

How are we to judge the invitation to be the guest of honour at the recent plenary of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Council of Foreign Ministers (CFM) summit, held in Abu Dhabi on 1-2 March? What the OIC says and does, matters little. But in today’s information age, its positions shape perceptions, which, in turn, influence policy. So, we got an invite that we have thirsted for sin...

पढ़ें आज की बड़ी खबरें- -आज गुजरात से कांग्रेस का चुनावी अभियान शुरू,सेना को तोहफा -दिल्ली में कांग्रेस-आप गठबंधन के कयासों पर पूर्णविराम -DRDO का नया इजाद 'कॉम्बैट कैजुअलटी ड्रग' -बोइंग 737 मैक्स-8 विमानों को उड़ाने के नए नियम -तेजस्वी यादव की विपक्षी नेताओं से अपील Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Now the best thing about a thriller is that it should keep you guessing till the end. Engage you! Challenge you ! Pull the rug from under your feet right when you think you have it all sorted. Badla has all these elements thanks to Sujoy Ghosh’s efficient direction and adapted screenplay from the Spanish original The Invisible Guest. But The Invisible Guest is on Netflix and if you have already se...

Prime Minister Imran Khan is the winner today. His decision to ‘return’ the IAF pilot anoints him as an indisputable monarch of magnanimity, a prophet of peace. No matter what India does, diplomatically or militarily, it can never deliver comeuppance to Pakistan. Pakistan will never lose this game of one-upmanship, for it has mastered the strategy, once employed by North Korea: Crazy Fearsome Crip...

In his acceptance speech for the Seoul Peace Prize on 22 February, Prime Minister Narendra Modi quoted the popular Korean saying Shichagi Bhanida, meaning, “A good beginning is half the battle”. Although he referred to this in the context of the peace process in the Korean Peninsula, his security establishment would be restating this in a completely different context. But more importantly, as the...

A pre-dawn strike by the Indian Air Force on Tuesday, 26 February, against terror camps of the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), has resulted in a propaganda war on both sides. While India caught Pakistan unawares 12 days after the Pulwama suicide bombing that killed over 40 CRPF personnel in Kashmir, Islamabad, in embarrassment, pledged retaliation at a place and time of their choosing. For more podcasts f...

The Chinese know a thing or two about face. Therefore they clearly understood the message put out by India in the aftermath of the air strike on Balakot in Pakistan on Tuesday, 26 February. This was aimed at making it easy for Islamabad to walk away from confrontation. The official statement put out by South Block invoked the doctrine of self-defence, enshrined in Article 51 of the UN Charter. It...

India has served Pakistan the proverbial dish of ‘badla’ (revenge) – how cold it was, and how accurately aimed, are still being debated. Pakistan also took its ‘badla’ by retaliating. But where do we go from here? After the savage terror attack by a suicide bomber belonging to Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed on a CRPF convoy at Pulwama in Kashmir on 14 February, in which 40 jawans were martyred, t...

In the face of a gravely provocative and hostile act of aggression – such as the terrorist attack on a CRPF convoy in Pulwama in Jammu and Kashmir on Thursday, 14 February, – a mature nation should display five qualities. Unity. Fearlessness. A steely resolve to punish the aggressors. A complete lack of hatred, revengefulness and triumphalism. And readiness to understand and address the root cause...

The IAF’s recent run of ill luck hit a new low on 19 February 2019, when two Hawk AJTs from the Surya Kiran Aerobatics Team (SKAT) crashed at Yelahanka after a mid-air collision during rehearsal. It’s blue skies (RIP) for one of the pilots while two other pilots ejected safely, albeit with injuries. A Mirage 2000 crash on 1 February at neighbouring HAL Airport claimed two young test pilots from AS...

The phrase ‘mindless comedy’ is bandied around a lot these days. It’s a convenient term to defend a lot of films where the collective IQ of its characters is at times as low as room temperature. Leave your brains at home! Don’t go looking for sense everywhere! Why can’t you just have a good time? These are some remarks that greet those of us who rarely manage even a chuckle or two while watching s...

From Sholay and Bandit Queen to the more recent Pan Singh Tomar , dacoits and their daredevilry have found a haloed space in Bollywood. In Sonchiriya, director Abhishek Chaubey and writer Sudip Sharma, at the outset, seem to be conjuring up another familiar universe about outlaws and their collision with authority. But a few minutes into the film one knows that there’s more than meets the eye that...

Pakistani Field Marshal Ayub Khan had offered General KM Cariappa the release of his son, Air Marshal KC Cariappa, a downed pilot in the 1965 Indo-Pak war, within a day, but that General Cariappa refused saying he didn't want a special favour. The Quint spoke to Former Air Marshal KC Cariappa about his time as a prisoner of war(POW) to find out if this was true.  Listen in. Learn more about your a...

The suicide bomb attack that killed around 40 CRPF jawans in Pulwama is easily one of the most serious attacks the security forces have faced in Jammu & Kashmir since the beginning of insurgency in 1990. Comparisons are being made with the J&K Legislative Assembly attack in 2001 that led to the killing of 38 people. Both attacks seem to have used the same modus operandi – having a suicide bomber r...

The media has given saturated coverage to the Pulwama terrorist attack. This is not unnatural because it was the deadliest single action against the security forces in almost three decades of Pakistani sponsored terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir.  But the way the media is running the terrorist action once again raises the question of how such grievous actions should be covered. Are there golden rules...

Till last week it was the sniping war at the LoC which was live, with casualties on both the sides. Even as we were discussing the new Indian Army sniper rifles under induction, it was certain that a change in character of the proxy war in Kashmir would take place sooner than later. Pakistan’s deep state masterminding the actions of terrorists in the Valley had already experimented with targeting...

Gully Boy is here and RJ Stutee has the beans on the movie! So, stop waiting and listen to Stutee’s review. Gully Boy from its onset gets us into the mood. We unthinkingly nod our heads and tap our feet in a synchronised fashion. The infectious tempo slowly grows on us as Zoya Akhter and Reema Kagti’s screenplay plunges headlong into the lives of Murad (Ranveer Singh) and Safeena (Alia Bhatt). Lis...

AMU Students Raised Anti-India Slogans: BJP District Head Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For a speech that US President Donald J Trump told supporters was likely to contain as much as “40 to 50 percent” foreign policy, the actual State of the Union address gave foreign policy short shrift. As Trudy Rubin of the Philadelphia Inquirer noted, the foreign policy part of the speech comprised around sixteen minutes of the nearly ninety-minute address. For more podcasts from The Quint, check...

Around the time of the Emergency, the then Congress Chief Minister of Haryana, Bansi Lal, was asked why hundreds of acres of government land near Delhi were allotted to a young, untested man, who wanted to build a car factory. The Congress symbol in those days was the cow and the calf. The young man was Sanjay Gandhi, son of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. For more podcasts from The Quint, check out...

Some weeks ago, I participated in an internationally-acclaimed conference attended by delegates from all over the world. The curator of the conference boasted that forty percent of the delegates were women. (I’m not sure what technicalities prevented full gender parity.) One of the side events was a panel on #MeToo, which I wanted to attend in part because I have been an active contributor to the...

Former Union Minister Arun Shourie, while responding to latest reports about the Centre waiving anti-corruption provisions in the Rafale deal, said that the uncovered facts expose “the lies of the PM and his minions, and of the captive media that has been broadcasting them. They put to shame the media, which, out of supposed neutrality has not been pursuing this investigation.” Learn more about yo...