Opinion

By Melvin Durai While driving the other day, I spotted a bumper sticker that said, “Has anyone tried unplugging the country and plugging it back in?” If only it were possible to do that. Many people around the world would want to unplug their countries...

Two major events this summer – the Blue Economy and Finance Forum (BEFF) in Monaco, and the third UN Ocean Conference in Nice – reflected the growing recognition that protecting the ocean is not only an environmental issue, but also a political, economic, financial, and...

India’s major economic reforms were spurred by a foreign exchange crisis. It was the summer of 1991 when foreign exchange reserves went to nearly zero. An emergency loan from the IMF was taken, and a slew of reforms were initiated. Exchange rates, import duties and...

By Shivaji Sarkar The Bihar election delivered a clear mandate, but the celebrations mask a harder truth: the state is walking into a period of acute fiscal strain powered by an explosion of welfare promises. The politics worked; the economics now begins to bite. The...

By-Kaushik Basu I n January 1934, the New York Times published an essay by journalist Harold Callender on a new phenomenon sweeping Nazi Germany: Gleichschaltung. Literally translated as “coordination,” the term had acquired a far darker meaning – the systematic Nazification of German society. Callender’s...

By Paola Subacchi As emails and documents from the estate of the convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein continue to surface, the revelations have embarrassed many prominent men and, in some cases, toppled them from their positions. But the disclosures have a wider significance, because they require...

By Bhabani Shankar Nayak Jeffrey Epstein’s scandal is not merely an abnormal aberration of a perverted, prodigious pedophile and his group of rotten socialites who were enjoying the architecture of impunity that shields abuse and exploitation based on access to power, privilege, and wealth. It...

By DK Giri It has been three years, eight months and three weeks since Russia invaded Ukraine, and Moscow has yet to agree to a cease-fire. Earlier this week, Ukraine saw its fiercest fighting in months as Russian forces attacked the eastern town of Pokrovsk....

By Carl Bildt It was once common to speak of a “liberal international order.” Even if the accompanying institutional arrangements were not always entirely liberal, international, or orderly, the label had its uses. After all, the purpose of an ideal is not to describe reality,...

By Rajdeep Sardesai We live in the Instagram-reel age, where a short, sharp sound bite on video resonates far more than an erudite debate. That partly explains why, on counting day in Bihar, a clip of mine—blowing a whistle and remarking that Prashant Kishor had...