Opinion

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...

Bhaskar Nath Biswal India’s higher education ecosystem is undergoing a dramatic structural transformation. As the nation marches toward achieving a higher Gross Enrollment Ratio (GER) under the roadmap laid out by the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) have multiplied across the...

Melvin Durai There are many kinds of leaks in the world, and whether you like them or not depends largely on whether you’re on the receiving end of them. Being on the receiving end of a leak can be quite thrilling if you’re a journalist,...

John J. Donohue& Charlie Grabois After the right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk’s death last year, a video clip resurfaced in which he proclaimed that Black Americans “are poorer, more murderous, and more dangerous” today than in the Jim Crow era. The soundbite sparked outrage in liberal...

Pratigyan Das In a major shift in policy, the taboo surrounding sex education in India is finally set to end, as the subject is poised to become a part of school curriculum. The Centre has informed the Supreme Court that it has decided to introduce...

Rohan Sandhu A reckoning has just played out on the streets of New Delhi and other major Indian cities. Tens of thousands of young Indians rose up against an education system that is failing them, ultimately securing the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan—a powerful...

The World Bank classifies India as a lower-middle-income (LMI) economy rather than a ‘weak country,’ a status it has maintained since 2009. In other words, the WB has not revised India’s actual socio-economic status for the last 17 years. This has caused a dichotomy. In...