Make Sense of the world
Unique insight from 2,000+ contributors in 80+ Countries
The first thing to bear in mind when looking at the recent violent demonstrations that have occurred in Latin American countries like Chile, Ecuador, Haiti and Bolivia is to resist the spell of common myths about the region. Latin America is a vast territory composed of 20 countries, from Mexico...
A group of Italians started the Slow Food movement back in the 1980s. Stay away from fast-food restaurants, they urged: Eat local, focus on traditional recipes, relax and enjoy your meal. The Slow Food movement began as a protest against McDonald’s, which opened a new franchise near...
More than constructing toilets, India needs to change the way its people think, behave and act when it comes to personal and public hygiene. This is the second of a three-part series. Indians have some of the most elaborate cleaning rituals in the world. It has roots in a peculiarly Indian sense...
What can governments do to improve peoples’ preparation for the new labor market in a “glocal,” or global, economy? The concept of work is as old as civilization. Aristotle, the great Greek philosopher, used the expression praxis for doing something for its own purpose, and poiesis to...
In 2012, Ashweetha Shetty left a remote village in Tamil Nadu to join the Young India Fellowship, a one-year post-graduate diploma program at Ashoka University in the northern Indian state of Haryana. Shetty was the first among her family members to finish college, breaking many social barriers to...
While the US continues to uphold many of the world’s standards in democratic leadership, in the area of family separation it has too much in common with some of the most brutal regimes. The US secretary of homeland security, Kirstjen Nielsen, resigned her post in April this year under a cloud...
India needs to introspect as to why it has fared so miserably when it comes to being happy. The UN's 2019 World Happiness Report released in March shows that India is on a declining trend when it comes to happiness. The county ranked 117 in 2015, 118 in 2016, 122 in 2017, 133 in 2018 and is now...
In a fair world, freedom of international movement would be a fundamental human right, and the obstacles put in its way removed. The complex river of human movement brings with it creativity, resilience and, sometimes, challenges. But its fertile depths are the source of many of our gains if...
The US is ready for something new. Progressives now have an opportunity to remake America and its place in the world. Donald Trump has shaken up US foreign policy. Most of what he has done has been disastrous, like pulling America out of the Paris climate accord and the Iran nuclear deal. He has...
Critics dismiss the Green New Deal as a dream. But that’s precisely what it is: visionary. It’s become a common trope of the Trump era for columnists and commentators to attack the lunacy of the far right at the same time as castigating the “loony left.” These pundits, who usually place...
America’s national emergency is not on its southern border, but rather in the White House in the form of its inept president. On February 15, President Donald Trump declared a national emergency in order to appropriate the funds needed to build a wall on America’s southern border with...
