New labour codes
On November 21, the Union government said the four consolidated labour codes on wages, industrial relations, social security, and occupational safety and health had been brought into force, replacing…
The House
Daily writing promptIf you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be? View all responses I had a dream once, that I was sitting, resting in a cosy alcove of walls empanelled with wood, wit…
'First state to disburse highest compensation'
The following jacket advertisement (which is expensive) appeared in The Hindu (and perhaps other newspapers as well; I didn't check) yesterday: Something seemed off about the messaging here when…
A little ignorance can be a good thing
Picture a city where most drivers use the same navigation app. At 9 am, the app says one side street is the quickest shortcut to get from area A to area B. Thousands of commuters accept this option an…
Why do we trust scientists?
Individuals can’t master the mathematics of cryptography or the molecular biology of vaccines, yet they still trust these fields of science and the suggestions of their exponents to make decisions.…
Is the war against science?
From ‘7 basic science discoveries that changed the world’, Nature, October 29, 2025: Basic research is easily mocked because it can seem impractical, but, in fact, it is a major driver of economic gr…
The 'impact' of climate writing
The problem begins simply enough. A journalist finds a word that seems to fit almost everything. It might be "crisis", "pivot" or the ever-convenient "impact". It's c…
Gentle yet final
A strange thing: a whale has washed up on a beach near Visakhapatnam. Not just any whale but a fully grown baleen, a hundred feet long and weighing about 40 tonnes (although I’m not clear how they wer…
Quasicrystal, heal thyself
Scientists have uncovered a remarkable self-healing property in a strange class of materials known as quasicrystals, revealing their ability to grow into a perfect, single structure even when faced wi…
On Jane Goodall
Jane Goodall was a celebrated figure in conservation. Her work with chimpanzees in the Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania redefined primatology. However, more than a few publications as well as co…
The 'religious' function of science
We often understand science primarily in terms of its tangible successes, looking to it for advances in medicine, for the foundations of technologies, and for the tools with which to predict and manag…
A bad Nobel for Mokyr
The American-Israeli economic historian Joel Mokyr has been awarded one half of the 2025 special Nobel Prize for economics "for having identified the prerequisites for sustained growth through te…