Opinion

When NITI Aayog released the country’s first-ever Investment Friendliness Index (IFI) on 17 July, the headlines went to the large states — Gujarat at the summit with 56.6, followed by Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. But tucked into the city-states and Union Territories category was a...

In the lexicon of development, few words sound as reassuring as “graduation,” which suggests progress past critical milestones and an escape from dependency. In global health, however, graduation increasingly creates a trap. When a country crosses the World Bank’s threshold from low- to middle-income status,...

By Bhaskar Nath Biswal The passage of the Public Examinations (Prevention of Unfair Means) Amendment Bill, 2026, through Parliament marks a decisive attempt to confront a crisis that strikes at the core of India’s social fabric. The recent nationwide outrage following the NEET-UG 2026 paper...

Bhabani Shankar Nayak Various forms of crises, risks, and insecurities are intensifying, even as governing elites drum up patriotism, nationalism, and ethnic and religious unity to hide the failures of the ruling classes and their capitalist system with all its powers. Labour is more productive...

Kailash Satyarthi The defining question of our time is no longer whether AI will transform our world. It already has. What the world needs now is a moral compass for the technology, which is why I introduced the concept of Compassionate AI to the 12,000-plus...

By Satish Kumar Dear Prime Minister Andy Burnham: As the new Prime Minister of Great Britain, I write to suggest that you appoint a Minister of Peace! The British government should lead the world towards peace so that other nations can follow the example. Imagine,...

By Kaushik Basu During the seven years I served as chief economic adviser to the government of India and as chief economist at the World Bank, I came to appreciate what a strange discipline economics is. Parts of it amount to little more than organised...

By Daron Acemoglu Designer babies who are genetically engineered for desirable health, physical, and intellectual features are now within reach using existing technologies, a prospect that raises far-reaching societal and ethical questions not unlike those associated with advances in AI. One difference, though, is that...

Ask someone today whom they turn to when feeling anxious or struggling to sleep, and increasingly the answer is a chatbot, not a friend or a doctor. In a survey of 19,000 adults across 18 countries that AXA conducted with Ipsos earlier this year, 61%...

In 2023, US President Joe Biden ordered US intelligence agencies to share evidence of Russian war crimes with the International Criminal Court, with the goal of indicting Russian President Vladimir Putin. This marked a sharp break from precedent, as the United States had long insisted...