News
THE WEEK India
Following the Trends
Understanding Thematic Investing
3 min |
July 13, 2025
THE WEEK India
I AM CONFIDENT INDIA WILL STAND ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF HISTORY
As the Dalai Lama turns 90, the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) is stepping up efforts to counter China's claims over his reincarnation and rally global support for religious freedom.
3 min |
July 13, 2025
THE WEEK India
Salon secrets
Meenakshi Jayan apprenticed at a beauty parlour to prepare for her award-winning role
4 min |
July 13, 2025
THE WEEK India
THE HUMBLE GIANT WHO CAN REVIVE DEMOCRACY
As we celebrate the 90th birthday of the Dalai Lama, it is important to reflect on what he means to the world at a time when the values he embodies, such as democracy and universal human dignity, are more threatened than at any time since the days of World War II. In his powerful new memoir titled Voice for the Voiceless, he tells the story of his relentless 75-year struggle against the communist government in China.
2 min |
July 13, 2025
THE WEEK India
THE LIGHT THEY CARRY WITHIN
For young Tibetans, devotion to the Dalai Lama is not a quiet sentiment; it is a lived commitment, often carried out in secrecy and frequently at personal cost. Their love for their spiritual leader is inseparable from the broader struggle for Tibetan identity and freedom. Many of these young people have risked torture in prison, separation from their families and loved ones, and a profound test of the patience and compassion the Dalai Lama continues to teach them. And these quiet heroes keep alive the hope of an entire civilisation.
7 min |
July 13, 2025
THE WEEK India
THIS 'RICHARD' IS A CONSTRUCT, EXISTING ONLY AS MUCH AS I GIVE IT ENERGY
For Richard Gere, the boundary between acting and real life has been deeply revealing. “As an actor, I construct emotions to tell a story,” he says. This response once made the Dalai Lama laugh, as just as “we manufacture emotions in acting, we get caught in the illusion that the emotions of daily life are somehow more real,” he says.
5 min |
July 13, 2025
THE WEEK India
Courage under fire
Bakhtiar K. Dadabhoy's book Honest John is an excellent biography of a towering personality who played a crucial role in the development of post-Independence India, whose life, for the most part, remained in the shadow of more flamboyant characters of the time, like Jawaharlal Nehru and J.R.D. Tata. John Matthai was independent India's first railways and transport minister and later, its second finance minister.
2 min |
July 13, 2025
THE WEEK India
Heart beat!
Padma Shri Velu Aasan marched to the beat of his own drum and took the 'untouchable' parai music from the margins to the mainstream
5 min |
July 13, 2025
THE WEEK India
The new corker
Zohran Mamdani's win in New York City's Democratic mayoral primary took most by surprise, but he needs to keep the momentum going to be the city's first Muslim and South Asian mayor
8 min |
July 13, 2025
THE WEEK India
US CONGRESS IS UNITED ON THE TIBET ISSUE
When Tiananmen Square survivor Wu'er Kaixi met his longtime friend and former speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi in Taiwan three years ago, he brought her chocolates, knowing of her fondness for them from their shared history dating back to China's 1989 crackdown on students.
7 min |
July 13, 2025
THE WEEK India
A GLOBAL ICON FOR COMPASSIONATE LEADERSHIP
Studying and later teaching economics and development at the University of Cambridge, I soon came to question neoclassical economics, with its central hypothesis of selfish individualism, and neoliberal orthodoxy, with its worship of the market.
3 min |
July 13, 2025
THE WEEK India
Plane truths from two accidents
As a reporter, I had the misfortune of covering two airline accidents. One, India's worst ever; the other—pardon me for saying so—the best ever.
2 min |
July 13, 2025
THE WEEK India
India is more than a moment
All of last week, our countless new fashion media companies and content creators have gone dizzy with delight broadcasting all the Indian references at Europe's famous fashion week.
2 min |
July 13, 2025
THE WEEK India
No spooking the spymasters
Despite international scrutiny and internal turf wars, the ISI’s dominance within Pakistan’s peculiar military ecosystem remains more secure than ever
5 min |
July 13, 2025
THE WEEK India
A FOND DREAM: GOING TO MECCA WITH THE POPE
The audacity of that dream still lingers. At an event in Oslo, soon after he received the Nobel Peace Prize, the Dalai Lama turned to me and whispered, “Wouldn't it be wonderful if the Pope, the Shankaracharya, a few others and I could travel together to Mecca and pray there for world peace?” It wasn’t for the cameras. It was a quiet longing, improbable, tender and heartfelt—a pilgrimage not to convert, but to honour sacred reverence.
5 min |
July 13, 2025
THE WEEK India
RAPTORS FORT
JORBEER, NEAR BIKANER, IS A WINTER HOME TO BIRDS OF PREY
3 min |
July 13, 2025
THE WEEK India
The drone ballet over Ukraine
As summer kicks in, a new flying species swarm Ukrainian skies—making cities dangerous, even unliveable. The threat comes from Russia’s newly invented drones, immune to jamming. Penetrating Ukrainian airspace with near impunity, these kamikaze drones bomb border supply and troop convoys, even entire neighbourhoods, enabling the Kremlin to capture more territory than it has in the past year—without extra boots on the ground.
2 min |
July 13, 2025
THE WEEK India
Governance and paradoxes
R. Mohan's second book looks at the evolution of Kerala's polity
2 min |
July 13, 2025
THE WEEK India
Tuvalu at twilight
These are times when the mind struggles to make sense of things.
2 min |
July 13, 2025
THE WEEK India
BODH GAYA COULD HAVE BEEN DEVELOPED LIKE AYODHYA
Born in Himachal Pradesh in 1966, Shartse Khensur Rinpoche Jang-chup Choeden is a Tibetan Buddhist scholar and current secretary general of the International Buddhist Confederation.
2 min |
July 13, 2025
THE WEEK India
TODAY, IT IS WOMEN-LED DEVELOPMENT
It's been a year since Annpurna Devi took charge as the Union minister of women and child development.
3 min |
July 13, 2025
THE WEEK India
RULE OF THE MATRIARCHS
Baking bread in flight, wearing a soldier’s coat in disguise, educating orphaned children—the heroic story of how the Dalai Lama’s mother and sister raised a spiritual leader, sustained a community in exile, and shaped the course of modern Tibetan history
8 min |
July 13, 2025
THE WEEK India
HOW JAPAN SEES THE DALAI LAMA
The Dalai Lama has clearly shown us what is most important for humanity amid the various conflicts happening around the world and the serious challenges humanity faces. The world is returning to an era in which the order created after World War II has been destroyed, where powerful countries use force to obtain what they want.
3 min |
July 13, 2025
THE WEEK India
THE PLANET NEEDS A DALAI LAMA
In the midst of the present planetary chaos, one man preaches love and compassion to his fellow human beings. This man is Tenzin Gyatso, the Dalai Lama of Tibet, who turns 90 on July 6.
4 min |
July 13, 2025
THE WEEK India
Chariot rolls: so does Bharat
Every year, as the summer yields to the monsoon winds, Bharat prepares for one of its most awe-inspiring traditions—the Jagannath Rath Yatra. While Puri remains the epicentre, this festival transcends geography. I had the privilege of participating in the celebrations this year at Hauz Khas in Delhi, where the spirit of devotion moved not just the chariots, but every heart that had gathered to witness this sacred journey.
2 min |
July 13, 2025
THE WEEK India
You think in two languages when you translate
Banu Mushtaq's International Booker Prize-winning Heart Lamp is bold, impactful, and radical. Equally radical is the work of Deepa Bhasthi, who selected Mushtaq's 12 stories which comprise the book and translated them from Kannada to English, but with an accent.
3 min |
July 06, 2025
THE WEEK India
A golden run to a silver mile
This is a very special year for me. Like Sabyasachi and the India Fashion Week, I am also celebrating 25 years in the business. For two and a half decades, week after week, uninterrupted (except of course when I was on annual leave), I have been writing a fashion column.
2 min |
July 06, 2025
THE WEEK India
INDIA MUST AVOID SEEING THE WORLD THE THROUGH LENS OF THE US PRESIDENT
A transactional and unpredictable United States has put India's foreign policy to the test at a time when regional peace and stability have become paramount for the country's progress.
8 min |
July 06, 2025
THE WEEK India
Centre's stage
Rahul Gandhi-led initiative hopes to turn around the Congress's fortunes in Gujarat
4 min |
July 06, 2025
THE WEEK India
Food for thought, and big dreams
Earlier this month, I wrote my final letter to shareholders. Soon, I will be addressing my last annual general meeting. I feel overwhelmed with emotions—a sense of pride along with a feeling of nostalgia and immense gratitude—as I look back at almost a decade at the helm of Nestle India.
2 min |