Opinion

Santosh Kumar Mohapatra Ever since the nation embarked on the path of neo-liberalism, there has been a constant attempt by the ruling dispensations at the Centre to allow entry of business houses into the banking sector. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) recently released a...

Bharat Jhunjhunwala Our GDP growth rate was negative to the tune of (-) 24 per cent in the first quarter April to June of the fiscal 2020-21. It was expected to be negative at about (-) 8 to 10 per cent in the second quarter...

Brahma Chellaney Last month, an 18-year-old Chechen immigrant stalked, stabbed, and decapitated a history teacher, Samuel Paty, in a Paris suburb near the middle school where Paty worked. Soon after, a Quran-carrying Tunisian man beheaded a woman and fatally stabbed two other people in a...

Dr Piyush Ranjan Rout Urbanisation provides the potential for new forms of social inclusion, including greater equality, access to services and new opportunities and engagement and mobilisation that reflect the diversity of cities, countries and the globe. Until 2009, more people lived in rural areas...

Jiniya Afroze It is already apparent that the impact of COVID-19 will be uneven, with poorer countries bearing the brunt of the fallout. This includes the 1.2 million children in Bangladesh who are engaged in the harshest forms of child labour. In such uncertain times,...

SN Misra As India celebrates its 71st Constitution Day it would be appropriate to recall what Justice John Marshall, the longest serving Chief Justice of the US, had observed: “A constitution is framed for ages to come and it is designed to approach immortality as...

Paola Subacchi A global collapse in economic activity during the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly increased the risk of debt distress in many countries, pushing the poorest ones to the brink. In response, various international organisations have unveiled a number of initiatives to forestall circumstances necessitating...

Melvin Durai I used to think that the only people who believed in conspiracy theories were the type of people you might find at a bank having an intense argument with the ATM. “You rascal! I’ve been watching you give notes to people, and I’ve...

Ajit Ranade Nokia was once the leader of the world in mobile phone handsets. Its largest manufacturing plant was located in Sriperumbudur in India as part of a special economic zone. In a six-year period it produced more than 500 million handsets, much of them...

Mark Malloch-Brown For much of its life, the United Nations has hidden behind the comfortable maxim that, “If we didn’t have it, we would have to invent it.” Now at the venerable age of 75 (old enough to have been a 2020 US presidential candidate),...