New Delhi, July 23 (IANS) Going by the results of the Assembly elections held in West Bengal earlier this year, it can be safely said that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has emerged as the principle opposition party in the eastern state.

New Delhi, July 23 (IANS) Anasuyabai Kale played an active role during the freedom movement for which she was jailed and refused to apologise in return for being released. One of Indias first women parliamentarians, she was the inspiration for her great-granddaughter Supriya Kelkars debut novel "Ahimsa".

New Delhi, July 19 (IANS) Some 30 years ago, American author and relationship counsellor John Gray had created quite a stir with his path-breaking book "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus". Positioned as a practical guide for improving communication and getting what you want in your relationships, its premise was that the basic cause of relationship problems between men and women were the result of their psychological differences that they belonged to different planets and that each gender was dependent on its planets society and customs and not to those of each other.

Abdulla Haiwad is President of the Afghan Governors Assembly which is a prominent Kabul-based body of 66 past and present Governors of the country. Haiwad was Governor of the Ghor province in Afghanistan. He is currently under treatment at Alanya, Turkey, following a Covid-19 attack and yet was willing to respond to questions furnished by IANS.

New Delhi, July 10 (IANS) Everything in our lives warps and unravels with the passage of time, says P.A. Chawla, a fan of T.S. Eliot, which explains her nom de plume, of her new book, "The Slow Disappearing" , part memoir and three parts fiction that suggests fading relationships as well as a fading memory, the writing of which she describes as a "wonderfully cathartic experience".

New Delhi, July 7 (IANS) Writing a book on the exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits was "very emotional" because of the "ghastly details" that came to the fore and 16-year-old Anushka Dhar feels "humbled" to have shed light on the tribulations of a community forced to leave their homeland three decades ago. An eternal optimist, she also hopes to settle down in Kashmir someday, describing this as a "a full-circle moment" if and when it happens.

New Delhi, July 2 (IANS) It has its origins in the Harvard University PhD thesis of Mircea Raianu, a historian of global capitalism and modern South Asia and currently Assistant Professor of History at the University of Maryland, who was "struck by the extraordinary continuity and resilience" of the Tata conglomerate "from its origins in the mid-19th century to its current position of importance to the Indian economy in the early 21st century".

New Delhi, June 28 (IANS) Its a scholarly work that grew out of the inherent curiosity of Manoj Kewalramani, one of Indias foremost analysts studying Chinese politics, foreign policy and approaches to new technologies. Not only does it examine threadbare the Communist Party of Chinas approaches to cultivating sources of strength and exercise of power in a post-pandemic world, but also contains forceful lessons for India that the moral or values-based propositions being hitherto followed need to be backed by hard power - economic and military.

Kochi, June 23 (IANS) Malayalam star Prithviraj Sukumaran acknowledges the industry has been missing "happy films", and the reason is the contained environment under which everyone has been living over the last one and a half year.

New Delhi, June 21 (IANS) As one walks through the ruins of Nalanda, every stone speaks of a bygone era that asks to be kept alive in our collective consciousness, says the multi-faceted Shivani Singh of her captivating historical thriller that is a fascinating tale of how one of the worlds most ancient universities got destroyed.

New Delhi, June 18 (IANS) Describing her journey as "a creative pursuit in unexpected directions" Shobha Nihalani, the Hong Kong-based writer of thriller, adventure and dream novels -- and life coach -- says venturing into the self-help genre for her new book made her realize that self-esteem is the reason why we feel stuck or are unable to achieve our fullest potential.

New Delhi, June 16 (IANS) Is the world headed for Cold War 2 more than three decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union? The contours were first visible just before the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic in a bitter trade war that erupted between the US and China and seemed to have taken a backseat as the world struggles to control the spread of the virus. However, US President Joe Biden's remarks backing NATO and QUAD to control China has again stoked the fires of what could happen in the 'new normal'.

New Delhi, June 15 (IANS) India is consistently delivering in-kind contribution to the world's largest first-of-its-kind upcoming fusion reactor ITER in southern France. But India has not been fulfilling in-cash contribution, said its Director-General Bernard Bigot on Tuesday.

New Delhi, June 10 (IANS) Ayesha Chenoy, a successful investment banker who won the prestigious Adam Smith Prize for economics at Cambridge, served stints at Merrill Lynch, UBS Global Asset Management and Credit Suisse before cofounding in 2013 an advertising agency that she says empowers brands and help them build their digital real estate: a universe of interactive and immersive experiences.

New Delhi, June 5 (IANS) From dentistry to animation to promoting environmental issues through illustrations and cartoons, the world has come full circle for Rohan Chakravarty, whose new book "Green Humour for a Greying Planet" (Penguin) has just been published and who fervently hopes the pandemic will come as a "huge lesson" for governments worldwide to redefine their concepts of development.

Chennai, June 4 (IANS) Eminent American civil rights activist Reverend Jesse Jackson Seniors efforts have paved the way for US Vice President Kamala Harris calling up Prime Minister Narendra Modi and announcing to allocate Covid vaccines doses to India, said Vijay Prabhakar, an noted Public Health Expert in Chicago.

New Delhi, May 31 (IANS) Our bodies are intelligent systems designed to keep most diseases at bay, but we must pay more attention to the signals they give us. Listening to our bodies allows for true restoration through Ayurveda, which has so much to offer and its simple application can transform one's daily life, says Dr G.G. Gangadharan, who, for over three decades, has championed this sound, scientific framework of healthcare that has saved countless lives over 5,000 years.

New Delhi, May 27 (IANS) There are three degrees of flawless skin, leading aesthetic dermatologist Anupriya Goel was told by her hosts during a visit to South Korea, one of the major global centres of innovation and trendsetting in beauty products where skincare is akin to religion. There's 'dewy' skin, the most common and popular category; a step away is 'honey' skin or even transparent and radiant skin; and there's the mother of all skin types - the 'glass' skin, says Anupriya Goel, who has evolved a six-point mantra for achieving this ultimate and details this in a new book.

New Delhi, May 19 (IANS) Indian intellectual systems have been greatly influenced by the ancient Kashmiri centres for theological discourse and out of these debates emerged the "remarkable" Kashmir Shaivism that assimilates the concepts of metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics into a single entity, says techie-film historian-author Prachand Praveer, whose seminal book on world cinema has been essentially influenced by 10th century Kashmiri philosopher Abhinavagupta.

Lucknow, May 17 (IANS) After dealing with the second Covid wave successfully, the Uttar Pradesh government is gearing up to stop the third wave of the pandemic. For this, not only beds are being increased in hospitals, but oxygen concentrators have also been arranged in rural areas.

New Delhi, May 15 (IANS) Award-winning childrens author Vaishali Shroff belongs to a family of wildlife enthusiasts. While her husband and children look for interesting sightings and topographies to photograph, she looks for stories and lessons to be learnt, like for instance, that life in a forest evokes empathy for all living beings.

New Delhi, May 10 (IANS) Author and gastronomist Veena Sharma has always believed that ones kitchen is ones best pharmacy, providing us with the particular admixtures and combinations that help uplift both our physical and mental constitutions.

New Delhi, May 8 (IANS) In 1998, Ray McLennan, who till then had been importing into the UK "all sorts of things" from India like musical instruments, saris, tilak, Tulsi malas and agarbatti, purchased Motilal Books, a small Oxford-based distributor focusing on academic bookshops and university libraries.

New Delhi, May 6 (IANS) The Delhi and District Cricket Association (DDCA), a perennially controversial body, provided the Indian Premier League (IPL) accreditation cards to two individuals who were hired by an agency as part-time workers during the tournament, says BCCI Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU) chief Shabbir Hussain Khandwawala. The two individuals were allegedly providing match/other information to undesirable people on phone from inside the Arun Jaitley Stadium in Delhi.

New Delhi, May 6 (IANS) It began as a tale of a mother and a daughter, two Indian Americans who are gold thieves, but expanded into a magical realist story about two immigrant families and about the costs of ambition, says Atlanta-based author Sanjena Sathian, of her debut novel, "Gold Diggers" (HarperCollins).