The Interview With Karan Thapar

In a comprehensive interview which covers many aspects of the Middle East war, India’s former Foreign Secretary, Shyam Saran, says that the present Middle East war will be remembered as Trump’s big mistake. He called it “a grave grave miscalculation”. He called it “a grievous blow to the United States and it will take a long time for the United States to recover from this.”

n an interview to explain the deep and serious concerns India’s transgender community has with the recently introduced Transgender Persons Amendment Bill, Prof. Aqsa Shaikh, Professor of Community Medicine at Jamia Hamdard University, points out that the key error the government has made in the amendment bill is to assume that gender lies between the legs of an individual whereas, in fact, it lies...

In an interview to The Wire, Prof. Foad Izadi, Associate Professor of American Studies at Tehran University, who spoke from Tehran, says that Iran’s new supreme leader is injured and he cited reports to that effect from within Iran. Prof. Izadi also said it could be the case that BBC reports that the new supreme leader has survived a second attempt by Israel to kill him whilst he was in hospital c...

In strong and outspoken criticism of Indian foreign policy, a former National Security Advisor, M. K. Narayanan, has said that Indian foreign policy is confused and argues that we are not as influential as we once were. India may be internally and economically a more powerful country than it has ever been but our capacity to influence events around the world and win respect for our views is not as...

Israeli professor of history and international relations Avi Shlaim says that Donald Trump is “Netanyahu’s poodle”, adding that Netanyahu “plays him like a fiddle”. Prof. Shlaim says that Donald Trump is the only American President who is gullible enough to become part of Netanyahu’s plan for regime change in Iran. However, Prof. Shlaim believes that regime change is almost impossible to achieve f...

Kanwal Sibal, a former Foreign Secretary and former Ambassador to Russia and France and now Chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University, and Manoj Joshi, a Senior Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation and a highly regarded Strategic Affairs Analyst, discuss whether Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu have underestimated Iran’s resilience and its capacity to retaliate and fight on. In particular...

The well-known historian, author and strategic affairs analyst Srinath Raghavan says “India is objectively on the side of the aggressors in this war”. He says what matters is not what India says but what it does and how its actions are perceived by others and, in this instance, India is perceived to be on the side of the aggressors. Speaking of the Prime Minister’s visit to Israel, 36 hours before...

Whilst as yet it’s too early to say how good or how inadequate is the new methodology for calculating GDP, which came into operation last month, India’s former Chief Economic Advisor, Arvind Subramanian, has pointed out that the old methodology, which came into operation in 2015, overstated GDP growth between 2011-12 and 2023-24 by 1.5-2 percentage points and between 2004-05 and 2011-12 it underes...

India’s former Ambassador to Nepal Ranjit Rae has called the performance of Balendra Shah and his Rashtriya Swatantra Party in Nepal’s recently held elections “an astounding victory”, the scale of which has taken everyone by surprise. He says Balendra Shah in his person bridged the traditional divide in Nepal between the hills and the plains. He presented himself in the Terai as the son of the soi...

In strong and outspoken criticism of the government’s refusal and failure to criticize the US-Israel strikes on Iran and the assassination of Ayatollah Khamenei, India’s former National Security Advisor and former Foreign Secretary Shivshankar Menon has said it is “inexplicable” and “sad”. He says this will not impress India’s BRICS partners and it “diminishes” the country’s reputation. Menon, who...

One of Nepal’s most highly regarded journalists, the Founder Editor of Himal Southasian, Kanak Mani Dixit, says he is “flummoxed” by the Nepal election results which he said are “not just a landslide but up upheaval”. The BBC’s assessment of the result suggests that Balendra Shah and his Rashtriya Swatantra Party could have won 182 out of 275 seats, which is a two-thirds majority.

India’s former Foreign Minister, Salman Khurshid, says that Prime Minister Modi’s refusal to criticize the US-Israeli strikes on Iran and the killing of Ayatollah Khamenei have let India down. The strikes are a clear breach of the United Nations Charter and India’s silence is a break with its well-established tradition of speaking out and take clear positions in the interests of its strategic auto...

With the US-Israel-Iran war becoming a regional crisis how much worse could the situation become? Can decapitation really lead to regime change in Iran? How long can Iran fight on? Will UAE, Qatar, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia retaliate? And what more does President Trump have in mind? Those are the key issues Karan Thapar discusses with the Defence Editor of The Economist, Shashank Joshi.

The Editor of Desh Sanchar.com Yubaraj Ghimire says that the new Nepal government that will be elected by the polls to be held on the 5th of March is likely to be unstable and won’t last long. He also says that the interim administration under former Chief Justice Sushila Karki has been a failure and did not live up to the high expectation people had of it when it took over in September 2025. Ghim...

In strong and stinging criticism of the Supreme Court’s refusal to hear the hate speech against Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, Dushyant Dave, a former President of the Supreme Court Bar Association, has said the top Court has made “a Himalayan blunder” and “let down 1.4 billion Indians”. Dave said the Supreme Court “insulted each one of us” by refusing to take up the matter and, additio...

In an interview to discuss the implications and consequences of the United States Supreme Court striking down President Trump’s reciprocal tariffs and his decision to impose 15% global tariffs on all goods from all counties, the Founder of the Global Trade Research Initiative Ajay Srivastava says that India should now walk out of the India-US interim trade agreement. He said India should now invok...

In an interview to discuss the arrest of former Prince Andrew on suspicion of misconduct in public office and its implications and consequences for the British monarchy, the former Editor of the Financial Times, Lionel Barber, has said this is a blow for the monarchy and it will become a very serious blow if Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is charged and convicted. However, Lionel Barber says that King...

Relying entirely on official data made available by the Election Commission of India and the Andhra Pradesh Chief Election Officer i.e. entirely official data, the well-known economist and current affairs commentator Parakala Prabhakar has revealed there is reason to believe serious mischief took place in the Andhra Pradesh polls of 2024, both at the Assembly and the Lok Sabha level. He points out...

The well-known and popular Trinamool Congress MP, Mahua Moitra, has publicly called for Petroleum Minister, Hardeep Puri’s resignation and apology to the nation over his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. “He owes it to the nation to apologize and resign”, she says. Mahua Moitra has also claimed that “Puri has lied repeatedly and brazenly about his relationship with Epstein.” Furthermore, his emai...

In an interview to discuss the recent Home Ministry order directing all six stanzas of Vande Mataram to be played at official functions and that schools start the day with community singing of the song, Supreme Court lawyer Sanjay Hegde has called this “constitutional vandalism dressed up in national pride”. Hegde points out that there is no law that requires any Indian citizen to compulsorily sin...

In a wide ranging interview to discuss the outcome of the recent elections in Bangladesh and the new government that will be formed by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party with Tarique Rahman as the new Prime Minister, Zafar Sobhan, the Editor of Counterpoint and former Editor of the Dhaka Tribune, has said that Bangladesh is now a democracy, even if credible questions can be raised about an election...

With the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) picking up immigrants  especially brown looking people, and even deporting them, a climate of fear has built up among the Indian community, says Sravya Tadepalli.    “Indians are the third most undocumented community in America,” says Tadepalli, deputy executive director of Hindus for Human Rights (HfHR). “Among Indians there is a perception that...

We present two separate interviews, packaged as one, with Ashok Gulati, Distinguished Professor at ICRIER, and Avik Saha, National President of the Jai Kisan Andolan, on the question has India been successful in ensuring that genetically modified produce or its derivatives are not given access to the Indian market? The government insists that is the case but could there be room for doubt? We explo...

Historian, author and political commentator Ramachandra Guha, believes that India is becoming a Hindu Pakistan and that the treatment of Muslims is a form of “medieval barbarism”. He says: “India in 2026 is as close to being a Hindu Pakistan as it has ever been … in politics and in the law, in symbol and in substance, in word and in deed, India is … becoming ever more like Pakistan, except that he...

In exactly a week, on the 12th of February, Bangladesh will hold what The Economist calls its first proper elections since 2008. Foreign policy expert Shafqat Munir, a Senior Fellow at the Bangladesh Institute of Peace and Security Studies, says that if the Bangladesh Nationalist Party wins, as is widely expected, it’s 60-year old leader, Tarique Rahman, will seek to reset and improve the relation...