Opinion

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),...

Bharat Jhunjhunwala India is being criticised by various International Human Rights watchdogs. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has expressed “concern over restrictions on non-governmental organisations, arrests of activists and implications of the Citizenship Amendment Act." The Human Rights Watch has recently said,...

Binay Kumar Singh Xi Jinping, leader-for-life of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), has recently directed his party members to “form an impregnable fortress in maintaining stability” by strengthening the role of the CCP in Tibet. He also stated that “absolute loyalty (to CCP) was necessary...

Thomas Cueni More than one in five Americans hospitalised with COVID-19 also contracts a bacterial infection. In the absence of effective antibiotics, those lucky enough to beat the coronavirus might die at the hands of these not-so-novel pathogens. Unfortunately, the pipeline of new antibiotics is...

Arvind Subramanian Once US President-elect Joe Biden’s administration has made the relatively easy decisions to rejoin the Paris climate agreement, remain in the World Health Organisation, and attempt to reboot the World Trade Organisation, it will confront three key foreign-policy issues. In order of importance,...

Melvin Durai One of the perks of being a celebrity is that you can make lots of money by being a brand ambassador and endorsing products, companies and organisations. If you’re a popular actor in India, the list of products you’ve endorsed is probably longer...

Jayati Ghosh The American pharmaceutical company Pfizer and Germany's BioNTech have announced that the COVID-19 vaccine they are jointly developing was more than 90 per cent effective in early clinical trials. The news raised hopes around the world that life may soon return to pre-pandemic...