"If we don't learn from the tragedies of the past, we are cursed to repeat them in the future," proclaims the home page of the website of the Himachal Pradesh State Disaster Management Authority. To ensure that the irony is not lost on either the creator or the visitor of the website, just...
Even as a 13-year-old, I had strong views on education. I had the opportunity to study in two countries with entirely different education systems. I began my education in India and studied for five years in Ahmedabad. My father then moved to the United Kingdom and I studied in a London-based...
Kabul has fallen again to the Taliban. Surprisingly, so has the Panjshir Valley where the legendary Ahmad Shah Massoud defied both the Soviets and the Taliban. Even more surprisingly, India has stayed silent so far. It was in 1996 that the Taliban took over Kabul the last time around. Following...
The COVID-19 pandemic is increasing inequality globally and even advanced economies have not been spared. Before the pandemic began in 2020, inequality was on the rise. Decades of globalization, loose monetary policy and the rise of oligopolies have contributed to this phenomenon. In many ways,...
When experts look back at the early 2000s, they will observe that India embarked on a construction spree to develop its transport infrastructure. The country is emulating what the United States and Europe did in the previous century and what China and East Asia have done more recently....
The United Arab Emirates is one of the world’s major gold trading hubs. In 2019, it was the fifth-biggest importer and fourth-biggest exporter globally. During the COVID-19 pandemic, international demand has surged. But as Reuters reported in 2019, much of this gold...
Narendra Modi, the prime minister of India, has completed seven years in office. At the same time, his autocratic leadership has brought the simmering discontent in the foreign policy establishment out in the open. Some members of the Forum of Foreign Ambassadors of India signed an open letter...
India has come a long way since its independence from colonial rule in 1947. It started as a mixed economy where elements of both capitalism and socialism coexisted uneasily. Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, was a self-declared Fabian socialist who admired the Soviet Union. His...
In just over a month, India has gone from boasting about its vaccine distribution to becoming the global epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic. As this author explained in a previous article, many have questioned whether India’s vaccine diplomacy was a bold masterstroke or an unwise...
In terms of numbers, India ranks the third worst after the US and Brazil when it comes to COVID-19 infections. At the time of publishing, the country has recorded over 12.3 million confirmed cases and more than 163,000 deaths. The BBC reports that India is facing a “severe, intensive” second...
