Archives: All articles

Half a century ago, long before artificial intelligence became a commonly-used phrase, well before computers were used not just to predict electoral outcomes but human behaviour as well, decades before Google, Facebook, Amazon and Cambridge Analytica became household names and giant conglomerates started exercising an overweening influence on what more than half the population of the planet read, heard and watched, there used to exist a corporation called Simulmatics in the United States of...

Gurugram: Less than a month after Suvendu Adhikari, former Trinamool Congress (TMC) Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) of West Bengal from Nandigram, joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the presence of Union Home Minister Amit Shah, other TMC leaders have become increasingly vocal in expressing their unhappiness and frustrations with the functioning of the ruling party in the state led by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, and are apparently preparing the ground to join BJP in the run...

Gurugram: On Friday, the Centre for Justice and Accountability, a non-profit organisation based in San Francisco, California, the US, filed a complaint with the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Committee on behalf of Ahimsa Wickrematunge, daughter of slain Sri Lankan journalist Lasantha Wickrematunge, who was murdered on January 8, 2009, the international news agency Associated Press reported. The committee is a body of experts established by the International Covenant on Civil and Political...

IN recent weeks, a series of attempts have been made by governments in different countries, notably Australia and the United States, to curb the overweening dominance of two of the biggest digital monopolies on the planet. Unlike many parts of the world where a consensus has emerged that the unrestrained dominance of Alphabet (the parent company of Google, YouTube and the Android operating system on mobile phones) and Facebook (including WhatsApp and Instagram) is terrible for humankind, the...

Bengaluru/Gurugram: On September 23, Annapurna Devi, member of the Lok Sabha from Koderma, Jharkhand, and R K Singh Patel, MP from Banda, Uttar Pradesh, both belonging to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), wrote letters to the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India, levelling allegations of financial malpractices against Sanjay Gupta, the resolution professional appointed by the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) to manage the corporate insolvency resolution proceedings for the ailing...

Gurugram: In a regulatory filing for the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and the National Stock Exchange (NSE) on November 26, CG Power and Industrial Solutions Limited (earlier Crompton Greaves Limited) announced that all its existing directors––Ashish Guha, Sudhir Mathur, Ramni Nirula, Jitender Balakrishnan, Narayan Seshadri, Pradeep Mathur, Aditi Raja and Rathin Roy––had resigned from the company and its subsidiaries. In their place, six new directors were appointed, signalling the change in...

Gurugram: On November 20, banks that had loaned money to CG Power and Industrial Solutions Limited (formerly Crompton Greaves Limited), which used to be headed by Gautam Thapar, agreed to a one-time loan restructuring programme paving the way for the Murugappa group to take over the well-known power equipment manufacturer. Once among India’s high-profile, jet-setting corporate captains, why is Thapar a beleaguered man today? He has been ousted from the company he once headed. He cannot leave the...

Bengaluru/Gurugram: In a letter dated September 20 to Union Communications Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, Congress member of the Rajya Sabha, Kumar Ketkar, has claimed that the government’s Department of Telecommunications (DoT) is failing to collect huge amounts running into lakhs of crore rupees in back payments of Adjusted Gross Revenue (AGR) dues that it is entitled to claim from Mukesh Ambani-headed Reliance Industries Limited (RIL). Ambani is India’s and Asia’s richest man and also one of...