Opinion

Ajit Ranade Last October, India and South Africa proposed in the World Trade Organization that intellectual property rights of Covid-related drugs and vaccines be suspended.  This proposal was supported by 60 countries. However, the US, still under the Trump administration and the EU were opposed...

Rosalind McKenna In March, South Sudan received its first batch of COVID-19 vaccines. While that is good news, it came almost four months after the first doses were administered in the United Kingdom, highlighting the wide disparities in global vaccine distribution. If these gaps are...

Chandra Shekhar Chitrala As a child, I remember feeling puzzled when reading about people being referred to as critics. I wondered why anyone would want to criticise something, and more importantly, why others not only allowed the critic to make unpleasant remarks, but actually paid...

Jayati Ghosh The Biden administration’s decision to stop opposing a proposed Covid-19 waiver of certain intellectual property rights under World Trade Organization rules is a welcome move. The US Trade Representative acknowledges that “the extraordinary circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic call for extraordinary measures.” While...

Dhanada K Mishra When my host Federico Giovanni, a fifty-something, tall, athletic, and handsome Italian, offered to take me cycling about four months ago, I was sceptical, not without reason. The beautiful Sai Kung country park in the New Territories in Hong Kong is a...

SN Misra Manoj Das was a literary prodigy, whose first collection of poems, Satabdira Artanada came out when he was 15 and he edited a journal, Diganta, a year later. He is by far the tallest bilingual writer that Odisha has produced. While his writing...

Dr. Guru Prasad Mohanta “People spreading rumours and gossip against COVID-19 vaccination would face legal action,” warned a City Corporation. The case can be registered under Public Health Act. A clear message has been sent for spreaders of infodemic and scare mongers. We are in...

Dr D K Giri American President Joe Biden has set September 2021 as the new deadline for the US troops to pack off from Afghanistan. The NATO soldiers will follow suit. Afghanistan government will be left to defend itself. President Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai has reassured...

Melvin Durai If you’re a full-time employee of a large organisation, you probably enjoy a number of benefits, including paid holidays, sick leave and maternity leave. These benefits vary widely from employer to employer, as well as from country to country. The movie streaming company...

Santosh Kumar Mohapatra The coronavirus pandemic is the greatest global trauma since the Second World War and unprecedented in most of our lives.  Calling the pandemic, the world’s worst public health crisis in 100 years, an Oxfam report in 2021 said it triggered an economic...