Opinion

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...

Melvin Durai The video of Melania Trump, Donald Trump's wife, and his daughter Ivanka Trump greeting each other at the recent Republican National Convention has been watched more than five million times. At first, it seems to show a friendly relationship between stepmom and stepdaughter....

Suman Dash Bhattamishra & Rangin Pallav Tripathy In a recent judgement, the Orissa High Court has affirmed the right of non-heterosexual couples to live together. The court also declared that the rights of a woman in such a relationship will be safeguarded under the Protection...

Dr Errol D’Souza Half of humanity lives in cities today and almost all the urban expansion in the next few decades are going to take place in the developing world. Yet one in four urban residents across the world lives in slums and the share...

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...