THE problems of the electricity sector have grown with the neoliberal reforms of the sector that started from the 90’s. The Enron style reforms introduced high cost private power into the grid in the 90’s, followed by the Electricity Act 2003, which virtually de-licensed generation and abolished planning of the power sector. We now have the new proposal of separating what is called “carriage from the content”, which shorn of this new English, means that electricity flowing though wires will be owned by separate entities than the one owning the wires.

IT would be humorous if it was not so tragic, but it is another winter in Delhi and North India as a whole, and has brought with it, yet again, another prolonged spell of terrible air pollution. The usual media commentaries have been appearing, providing partial explanations for the pollution, its many causes and the possible impacts of the measures being taken to tackle it.

WE now see a new Anglo-Mysore War being waged: the RSS has aligned with the British to deny Tipu Sultan his role in Indian history. Yediyurappa says Tipu was “not a freedom fighter”, a strange argument to give for dropping all reference to Tipu from history books. It must be difficult for a mind schooled – or more correctly lobotomised – in the RSS School of History to understand that the Anglo Mysore Wars were not wars for Indian independence, but a part of colonial wars that the British waged.

ON October 8, 2019, in Dassault’s plant in Merignac in the south of France, Raksha Mantri Rajnath Singh personally took delivery of the first of the 36 Rafale multi-role fighter aircraft India had acquired from France in 2015-16, the latter year being when the deal was signed. The handover was, of course, mostly symbolic since the first 4 Rafale fighters would arrive in India only in May 2020, while the first full squadron of 18 fighters would hopefully be available in India only in mid-2021 and the remaining 18 more than a year later in April 2022.

TWO recent studies on ancient DNA and migrations into South Asia appeared at the same time in two of the most prestigious journals of their disciplines, one in Science, and one in Cell. Both share a number of common authors and have used Harvard’s genetics laboratory resources. Each of the papers are important in their own right. The Science paper reports ancient DNA from 523 samples from a number of sites in Iran, Central Asia and Anatolia, and comparing it to the current population in the region and in south Asia.