AuthorSreekant Khandekar

I worry for Hima Das. The story of the 19-year-old athlete from Assam, the child of farmers, is so compelling that it has overwhelmed a nation. The prime minister to cricketers to film stars are racing to congratulate the runner who has won five gold medals in East Europe in recent weeks. Will we remember Hima two years from now? We do tend to forget most sports stars other than cricketers rather...

I rate MX Player as one of the most fascinating media stories ever. Times Internet (TI) was struggling to get a foothold in the OTT space. Its offering, Box TV, launched in 2013 had failed and was put down in 2016 just when the online video space was taking off. So, in June 2018, in a brilliant lateral move, it plonked down about Rs 1,000 crore to acquire a video player, MX Player, which was...

Unnoticed, astonishing change is overtaking India. The population in 13 states has begun to shrink! To keep the population stable a country must average 2.1 births per woman (Total Fertility Rate or TFR). According to new official data all-India TFR has slipped to 2.2 – the population is barely growing. Numbers for states vary. – The lowest birth rate, 1.5, is in Delhi, same as that...

The monsoon touches all of us in one way or another. We tend to attribute variations in rainfall to climate change. Should we? An excellent interview of physicist Madhavan Nair RAJEEVAN, now Secretary of the Ministry of Earth Sciences by Amit Bhattacharya of TOI has many specifics. So, if monsoon patterns fascinate you as much as they do me, check out the sum of what Nair says: – There has...

As a resident of New Delhi, one of the world’s most polluted metros, I’d naturally support any initiative that makes the air easier to breathe. And yet the government plan to shift the two-wheeler industry entirely from internal combustion to electric vehicles in just six years sounds utterly unrealistic. And mind you, we are talking of converting the world’s biggest two wheeler...

Several generations of Indians have taken rapid economic growth for granted. It seems that this happy period is drawing to an end. No economy has managed to hit 8% GDP growth – the government’s target – without a jump in exports. But India’s exports are stuck at the level of 2013. They won’t budge. A protectionist environment worldwide isn’t helping. We routinely attribute the...

OK, here’s an exercise to test your powers of observation 🙂 When we talk of an economic slowdown we tend to look at our own experience – our firm, our sector or some big indicators like, say, real estate or auto sales. But if you look and listen closely, you’ll find clues everywhere around you. Read about three unrelated indications I found: – A doctor told me some time ago that there...