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Why did Elon Musk purchase Twitter? His official answer – to defend free speech and democracy – is so unconvincing that the question won’t go away. Musk’s repeated appeals to these ideals to justify important decisions he has made since taking over are so confounding...

The 53rd International Film Festival of India or IFFI Jury head’s remarks in Goa at its concluding session on the highly controversial film - The Kashmir Files - have triggered yet another storm. The question that is subsequently thrown up is whether there is ample...

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s name figures in a list that includes former heads of states in Africa allegedly persecuting their political opponents. The report has been released by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF). It is an independent, bipartisan American government agency...

The abuse of the laws to silence the voice of freedom and free thinking has become rampant across the globe, including India, in recent times. But, the way this is being done in Italy under the Far-Right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who has just assumed...

The BJP government went into 2019 with a lot of energy and momentum. The electoral victory in May that year was decisive and rewarded the Prime Minister with more seats than he had secured in 2014. With the confidence of that mandate, and the idea...

The premature repatriation of P Amudha from the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) to her parent Tamil Nadu cadre last month went relatively unnoticed despite her high profile as the additional secretary. What’s intriguing about the episode is that Amudha, considered one of the brightest IAS...

The Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana famously warned that “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” But sometimes even those who can recall the past have a selective memory and draw the wrong conclusions. This is how the global policy response to...

The world population has just reached the eight billion mark prompting the United Nations to warn of more hardships coming, especially in regions already plagued by resource scarcity due to climate change. In the words of John Wilmoth, Director of the UN’s Population Division, the...

The COP27 climate summit in Egypt has shown signs of hope amid frustration among scientists that the developed countries are not really serious about efforts to bring down the level of carbon emissions and the temperature. A happy development is the breakthrough agreement to provide...

The world can breathe a little more easily now since the two great powers – the US and China – have decided to call a truce and give up the path of brinkmanship. At least an illusion has been created to this effect. The optimists...