I have come across a Communist Party of India poster seeking to begin the party's centenary year celebrations on January 2, with D Raja, the party general secretary, as the chief guest. In Hindi, the poster has been released by the party's Bihar unit, which used to be one of the strongest in India, but like rest of the country, it too appears to have gone phut.

Top multinational corporations appear to be apprehensive: US president-elect Donald Trump may put additional tariffs on goods manufactured in China mainland, even if their headquarters are based in Taiwan, Japan or the US. Hence, they are considering relocating their units from China to several countries, including Thailand and India.

A little less than two months back, I was reading a story in The Hindustan Times by my journalist friend Maulik Pathak with the headline "How Gujarat villages take the dangerous flight of illegal migration", and I was instantly reminded of the village about which Pathak was referring to -- Dingucha. I visited Dingucha , which is in Gandhinagar district of Gujarat, a few years back, where I was taken by one of our family members whose ancestors belonged to this village. They still have a house in the village, with quite a big open space, where we relaxed. 

In an unusual move, Gujarat Dalits from as many as 182 talukas will be handing over as many boxes containing “sava ser sunth” – one and a quarter ‘seer’ (traditional unit of weight) of dry ginger – to district collectors or taluka chiefs (mamlatdars) with a suggestive message to Union home minister Amit Shah: "We won't tolerate your recent insult to Babasaheb Ambedkar in Parliament because our mothers had fed with sunth during and after the childbirth to make us strong-willed", to quote a Dalit activist.

Senior Vadodara-based health rights activist Jagdish Patel has forwarded to me an important news item. Emanating from Gansu Province, located in the northwestern region of China, and disseminated by Gansu News, which covers a range of topics, including regional development and economic activities, in the province, the news item, in "simple" Chinese with translation in English, says that there is "breakthrough" in exporting asbestos from China to India.  Hailing the breakthrough in foreign trade for the province's Akesai county for the first time, "showcasing" it as regional economic progress, the news of export to India comes six months after the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced a ban on the only type of asbestos, chrysotile, used in the United States. Banned in 65 countries around the world, according to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), an estimated 100,000 people die each year from “work-related asbestos exposure” beca...

An interesting feature I noticed during my recent visit to restaurants in the United States was the prevalent culture of tipping. While tipping is common in India too, especially in restaurants, hotels, and other service sectors, one rarely finds an open display explicitly welcoming tips. This is quite unlike the United States, where boards or signs encouraging tipping are often prominently displayed.

On December 14 falls the birth centenary of Raj Kapoor, referred to as a legend who acquired international fame – especially in the former Soviet Union – at a time when few others in Bollywood could dream of reaching that level. Undoubtedly one of the best actors who during the early black and white days showed his empathy towards the underdog -- Awara (1951), Shree 420 (1955), and Jagte Raho (1956), to name just a few -- he is also called the Charlie Chaplin of Indian cinema because he often portrayed a tramp-like figure.

The other day, a group of friends, all neighbours, got together to spend some quality time on tea post dinner. As were sipping the hot tea, a middle aged lady, who had joined us, asked all those present not to sit "very hot" tea, as it causes cancer. I found this very strange and asked her what her source was, and she replied, a YouTube video.

While frequent advertisements on TV are extremely jarring, I was a little amused while watching a Policy Bazaar-sponsored advertisement. The advisement by one of India's most well-known online insurance brokers sees a woman asking a kid entering the house why he hasn't been to school. The kid enters in with a bag full of vegetables in his hand which he presumably bought in the market at a time he should have been in the school.

Has Gujarat missed the Artificial Intelligence (AI) bus as it did the Information Technology (IT) bus in the 1990s despite claiming to be an industrial powerhouse sought to be promoted by none other than Prime Minister Narendra Modi? It would seem so if the latest study by the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A) "Labour-force Perception about AI: A Study on Indian White-collar Workers" is any indication.

An Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A) study, "Labour-force Perception about AI: A Study on Indian White-collar Workers", has revealed that as many as 60% of white collar workers fear job loss as a result of artificial intelligence (IA) being introduced in Indian industry, while only 53% "hope" that new jobs will be created.

A World Bank report, while praising India, a “middle-income” country driving the surge in internet users across the globe, states that if in 2018, only one in five Indians used the internet, by 2022 there was already “a staggering 170 percent growth in internet users”. But a deeper look in the report suggests two things: One, Indian IT business is facing stiff competition from China, and two, insofar as speed is internet speed is concerned, India has far to go.

In a surprise move, an American university has published a "controversial" report titled "Caste-Based Discrimination in US Higher Education and at Rutgers". The report has sparked debate, as no sooner was it released than an Indian diaspora advocacy group, CasteFiles, filed a complaint against Rutgers University and Prof. Audrey Truschke, co-chair of the task force that prepared the report. The complaint, filed under Title VI of the US Civil Rights Act of 1964, alleges violations of the right to education free from harassment and discrimination.