Long Reads News - Page 20

Day before Karnataka Assembly Elections 2018, business as usual in Bengaluru
With just a day to go for the Karnataka Assembly Elections 2018, the mood on the streets of Bengaluru was a mix of the everyday and the charged

Ladakh's nuns
The number of Ladakh's nuns had dwindled to 300 in the mid-1990s as they grappled with adverse factors. Thanks to the intervention of Dr Tsering Palmo, the founder of the Ladakh Nuns Association, the community is now 1200-strong.

IPL and Big Data Analytics: A Match Made in Heaven?
When it comes to Twenty20 cricket (T20), a more evolved and nuanced approach to analytics is the need of the hour — and the Indian Premier League (IPL) is a glaring example of this.

Shoojit Sircar's reel women — and their real avatars
Shoojit Sircar's onscreen universe isn't very different from ours. His poignant stories are born from intricate realities.

From Lahore Fort to Lawrence Gardens
Abeera Saleem and Abrar Ahmed’s recent artworks make one reflect on how colonial and patriarchal binaries continue to inform our ideas and policies, interminably repeating their violence

The Outsiders: Nomadic Bakkarwal tribe in focus after Kathua rape case
Bakkarwals (literally ‘goat people’) are nomadic pastoralists from Jammu and Kashmir. They move to the plains of Jammu in winter, and the high mountains of Kashmir in the summer, making way not just for their flocks of sheep and goat, but also for the entire trekking industry in the state.

Wild Hair and Mad Dalit Women
I had just been looking in all the wrong place for answers but as it turns out — Dalit women have always had answers to these questions. Women with loud and vulgar laughter who, like their hair, are mad and untameable — always do.

Kashmir's tulips bloom
Spring in Kashmir is a time when life blooms after a harsh winter. And nothing reflects this changing of the seasons better than the valley's tulips.

China: A look behind the wall
China is a 'wall-building country': It built the Great Wall to keep enemies away. In recent times, it built its 'firewall' to ban world-conquering companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter. There are numerous such ‘walls’ — real and virtual — all over China, but you rarely get to see them.

Dipa Karmakar: The quest continues
Dipa Karmakar and her coach Bishweshwar Nandi discuss processes, mindsets, and Produnova — the Vault of Death — with Firstpost.

Inside Dantewada's Phagun Madai celebrations
The nine-day celebration of this festival in Bastar's Dantewada is marked by the enactment of a story from the Ramayana, among other rituals | #FirstCulture

Kashmir's ghost theatres
Once beloved cinema halls lie in shambles in Kashmir, or have been turned into shops and other establishments

Living on the edge
By the LOC, the people of Mothul battle fear, uncertainty amid ceasefire violation

Krishna Sen case: Story of woman who pretended to be a man to swindle wives raises many questions
The case of Krishna Sen from Nainital — born biologically female, who posed as a man, married two women, and now stands accused of harassing one of them for dowry — throws up interesting questions about gender identity, male privilege and how we perceive them

Howrah Bridge turns 75
The Howrah Bridge, which recently turned 75, changed the skyline of Kolkata and became an iconic symbol of the City of Joy | #FirstCulture

Amaravati 360: Can Andhra Pradesh's new capital be an agrarian city?
There is a need to rise up over petty interests, politics behind land dealings, and adopt a generous, rather magnanimous, inclusive, and all permeating vision in the first place.

Amaravati 360: AP's capital doesn't know what it wants to be
The Andhra Pradesh government aspires to build a capital city that will amaze the world. Those who live in the city, hope that Amaravati will become a model city.

Amaravati 360: Pandalaneni Srimannarayana's lonely fight against the AP government
The fourth part of the series focuses on Pandalaneni Srimannarayana's battle against the corrupt practices in AP government's push to acquire lands near Amaravati.

Amaravati 360: AP govt's social impact assessment is a sham
The third part of the series tells you the story of five unruly villages which have resisted the AP government's land pooling scheme.

Amaravati 360: Farmers rail against AP's land pooling scheme
While the problems faced by the land owners typically range over finding better compensation and adapting to a different lifestyle, the tenant farmers and landless labourers from the region who have lived here for many generations — those who would be the worst hit — are still struggling to find a voice.

Amaravati 360: How AP's landless turn penniless in the name of development
Land is a lucrative investment in this region; these lands yield gold. Farmers typically earn a few lakh rupees per year from cultivating each acre of land, so fertile is this soil.

Our Daily Bread
From 'lavaas' to 'girda', Kashmir has a delicious array of local breads | #FirstCulture

19 years after debut, Sadagoppan Ramesh takes a trip down memory lane
19 years to the day, amidst soaring tensions inside the Chepauk cauldron in a high-voltage clash against a world-class Pakistan bowling attack, 23-year-old Ramesh had announced his arrival in style and provided India hope. Two years later, he had disappeared. This is his story.

Watashi
'Feeling blue after dying? Don’t worry. Seek help for your post-mortem depression.' Life after death can have depressing consequences (quite literally) | Presenting #FutureFiction on #FirstCulture

Analog/Virtual
In a new world where productivity is prized, under-performers are subjected to a strange form of punishment | Presenting #FutureFiction on #FirstCulture

A Broken Mould
A pleasure doll discovers she has feelings and a mind of her own | Presenting #FutureFiction on #FirstCulture

MAYiHELP
A spy seeking to report a tip comes up against a confounding hurdle — a chatbot assistant | Presenting #FutureFiction on #FirstCulture

Epitaph
Coming back to plain old reality when humanity's been living in enhanced VR can be quite a shock! Presenting #FutureFiction on #FirstCulture

The Scavenger
A young man working as a scavenger amid the toxic remains of the earth gets a chance he'd only ever dreamed of | Presenting #FutureFiction on #FirstCulture

Dhara's Devotees
On an alien planet, a race of refugees attempt to start cultivating crops — to what effect? Presenting #FutureFiction on #FirstCulture