Opinion

Ajit Ranade The past week has been dominated by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s remark alluding to an “act of God”. She was referring to the Covid-19 pandemic which is now seen as the main cause of the unprecedented recession in India and the world. Never...

Dr Errol D’Souza Is migration to urban areas advantageous for rural migrants? Mostly it is assumed that cities play an important role as a conduit for many to get away from rural poverty. Yet my limited experience of working with underprivileged migrants indicates that cities...

Saeed Naqvi The late RK Mishra, the editor of Patriot and founder of Observer Research Foundation, used to tell a delicious story about Indira Gandhi whom he knew well. One day, Dev Kant Barua, Congress president during the Emergency, furtively handed Mishra a crumpled piece...

Shivaji Sarkar Consumption shock from the pandemic is severe and the world economy devastated. Like the World Bank, the Reserve Bank of India too is less hopeful of coming out of contraction and even with higher government spending recovery may be delayed. The Indian collapse...

Yuen Yuen Ang There is no bilateral diplomatic relationship more consequential than the one between the United States and China, which affects not only the two countries but all of humanity. And now, the future of this relationship hinges on who will lead each country...

Dr. D. K. Giri The presidential elections in the United States generate a good deal of interest across the world. The election in November next is drawing more attention than usual because of the re-run of mercurial incumbent Donald Trump. In India, the nomination of...

Bharat Jhunjhunwala Many thinkers – Gandhians and others – favoured a village-centric growth strategy. The argument is that we cannot bear the economic load of urbanization; that urban living is impersonal and disrupts human relationships; and that urbanization is synonymous with centralised governance in which...

Dr S. Saraswathi Controversies over the contempt of court law will go on irrespective of the final scene in the Supreme Court in the Prashant Bhushan case. For, the case has raised the crucial question of the need for a relook into the law, which...

Ashok Mahapatra Our history teaches us that invaders and migrants to our country came from the Northwest. Our instinct has always been to defend our North-Western borders. This was one of the main reasons why the Chinese aggression of 1962 left such a scar that...

Anita Saluja The spectacle of the Independence Day celebrations at the AICC headquarters this time was a reflection on the state of affairs in the Congress. The unfurling of the flag was performed not by Congress president Sonia Gandhi or Rahul Gandhi, but by veteran...