Opinion

Yashobanta Parida & Prakash Kumar Sahoo In recent times, Odisha has faced natural disasters like cyclones and floods, coupled with the Covid-19 pandemic. The state tried to curb the spread of Covid-19 and took steps to resume economic activities. Natural disasters such as cyclone Amphan...

Saeed Naqvi A priceless gift from a friend in Kerala, a Namboodri to boot, is a film to augment my collection which has sustained my personal film festival to beat the unintelligible lockdown. The film, Agraharathil Kazhuthai, or Donkey in a Brahmin Village, was a...

Dirk Helbing & Peter Seele Proponents of digital identification see the pandemic as a once-in-a-century opportunity, with a potential ‘jackpot market’ of nearly eight billion people. In these dangerous times, using digital IDs to help control the spread of the virus and eventually to manage...

Dhanada K Mishra In the year 1968, the Governor of New York State, Nelson Rockefeller, received a proposal - for a new subway line called the Second Avenue Subway. Four years later, a ground-breaking ceremony was held but the project was stalled. Years later, a...

Shivaji Sarkar It’s a fall or new beginning. The nation is pondering over the minus 23.9 per cent GDP crash. The figures are stark but life goes on. Does the GDP really matter? The lockdown has plunged India into a never-before crisis. The GDP slump...

Bharat Jhunjhunwala The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) shrank by 23.9 per cent in the first quarter of this financial year. GDP is a measure of the total amount of production made or income earned by the country. In contrast, former professor of Jawaharlal University Arun...

Manas Jena The idea of India is envisaged in the preamble of the Constitution, which has visualized building a society of democracy, equality and justice for all its citizens. There are special provisions for SCs and STs to ensure realization of their fundamental rights through...

Jan-Werner Mueller The recent Republican National Convention was scandalous for many reasons – from the misuse of the White House as a campaign prop (in violation of the Hatch Act and longstanding norms) and the brazen mendacity of its speakers, to the parade of Trump...

Dr S. Saraswathi More than five months have elapsed since we started the lockdown and are now in the phase of relaxing restrictions despite a huge surge in Covid-19 cases. India reported 79,000 fresh cases on 29 August –the highest number globally for a single...

Ian Goldin and Robert Muggah No city has escaped the deadly spread of Covid-19. But the virus has had a profoundly uneven impact on different groups of people even within the same city. When New York City was the global epicentre of the pandemic, downtown...