Worldcrunch
“Cultivation of mind should be the ultimate aim of existence.”–Babasaheb Ambedkar. -Essay- NEW DELHI — The latest entrant in the world of social media has been Clubhouse. While the audio-based platform boasts of providing a ‘room’ for free-wheeling discussions on anything and everything, it is imperative that it take note and address the casteism being […]
“We all have the same story here. After my family abandoned me, it was these people who adopted me and looked after me for all these years.”
? Bom dia!* Welcome to Monday, where the financial secrets of the rich and powerful are exposed in a massive data leak, the two Koreas get on the phone for the first time in months, Japan has a new prime minister and there’s a spicy Nobel prize winner for medicine. For Paris-based daily Les Echos, […]
Women who have found themselves in charge of a family after the sudden deaths of family members discover rules, regulations and laws making mockery of their situation.
Countries are rolling out increasingly aggressive campaigns in an international effort to vaccinate the world out of the COVID-19 pandemic. Two weeks ago, Italy became the first European country to make COVID-19 health passes mandatory for all workers, while others, including the U.S, France and Hungary, have mandated vaccination for federal workers or healthcare staff. […]
Winning a Nobel Prize can’t be the only criterion by which we measure a nation’s scientific achievement — but it is a matter of pride, like winning a gold at the Olympics. Lower funding on R&D alone doesn’t explain India’s abysmal show at the Nobel Prizes. Some key elements seem to be missing, beyond funding and infrastructure, vis-à-vis our scientists’ ability to produce path-breaking work.
The stigma around so-called “non-custodial mothers” has prevented us from expanding our own imagination of what motherhood can, or does, look like when it is practiced by non-residential mothers
Op-Ed INDIA — I don’t watch many Netflix programs, but a series recommended by my cousin has struck me like a bolt of lightning. Called How to Become a Tyrant, it presents what it calls “a playbook for absolute power.” Much of it is tongue-in-cheek, yet it’s based on the actual tactics and strategies used by Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Mao Zedong, Muammar Gaddafi, Kim Il-sung, Idi Amin and Saddam Hussein. So if you take it seriously, it tells you what you must do if you aspire to be India’s tanashah. And the remarkable thing is it feels uncannily like […]
Aspects of discredited Israeli policies are being imitated in a country half a continent away.
NEW DELHI — I had never given thought to the provenance of funeral wood, until news reports revealed in late April that officials in Delhi had begun receiving requests to chop trees in city parks amidst the colossal surge in COVID deaths. It was a jolting statement to encounter, for it forced me to reframe a life-giver into a death-enabler in ominously stripped, urgent terms. Wood, of course, had been used for cremation since ancient times, but to think of it as coming from our very midst instead of some sequestered supply-area bore a sting of abrasiveness. Would our public […]
The need to prioritize comprehensive planning is just as acute in both in urban and rural areas.
Particularly in mega cities like New Delhi, the pandemic and its accompanying lockdowns have changed our audible environment. What does that tell us about where we’re heading?
People think doctors have lost empathy. But we feel each death, and every young life lost comes as a bolt out of the blue.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/embed/TMpEOF_VtbE expand=1] This past week India has seen more new COVID-19 cases than any other country since the crisis began, as hospitals struggle to deal with a massive influx of patients and shortages of oxygen. Meanwhile, the country has surpassed the grim milestone of 200,000 death, with crematoriums overwhelmed. The facilities are running out […]
The raging COVID-19 epidemic, combined with an acute shortage of oxygen, has created a nightmare scenario in places like Nashik, in the northern part of Maharashtra state.
The government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi sets off youth groups to enforce lockdowns and wants to control the ‘demand’ for oxygen cylinders.
A year after riots in Delhi and elsewhere, Muslims are being forced out of their neighborhoods.
This was a different kind of monkey business. Police say they’ve arrested two men in New Delhi for allegedly using monkeys to rob people in motorized rickshaws. The case came to light in early March, when a man in the Indian city’s Malviya Nagar neighborhood reported that three men carrying monkeys had robbed him of […]
Residents of the state’s ‘bastis’ get free rations and state-provided services on the back of ID documents with proof of address. But their homes are also subject to frequent demolition on the grounds that they are illegal encroachment.
A year after the world’s second most populous nation went into quarantine, a new study aims to calculate the cost in terms of mental health illness, suicide and inability to receive medical care.
Absent in India’s schools, which help reinforce power imbalances, is any real acknowledgement of street-level efforts to push back.
The contemporary crises of our world – climatic, democratic, technological, economic, epidemic – can no longer be understood or contained within the logic of nation states.
NEW DELHI — India is a cricket-crazy nation. We love our cricketers and some of us even worship them. Also, we love our cinema. We look up to the reel life heroes and admire them with the expectation that they are real life heroes. But what happens when these influencers do something unexpected? When we keep someone on a pedestal we, unknowingly, keep them in the position of authority and give them the power to influence us, our decisions. From their fashion sense to their political ideologies, we believe everything they do could be correct, since they’ve achieved something we […]
In a rush to bolster its image, the Modi government is giving away coronavirus vaccines that will do little for the country’s international standing and would be better served at home.
Welcome to Tuesday, where drug companies are being called out for vaccine delays, Italy slips into a political crisis and a special lion is born in Singapore. We also look at the rise and fall of Uber in Egypt. Why local history matters in a globalized world History, as it takes place on the local […]
Our New Delhi-based writer will be watching with pride as Kamala Harris becomes the first woman of Indian descent become vice president — but is also very much aware of the glass ceiling the incoming president is breaking.
It’s stupid to expect people without any medical training to understand how each vaccine candidate has been evaluated. Public accountability offers an alternative.
The forced abortiona of a Hindu woman married to a Muslim man should be treated like murder by the state. Yet, not much is being said about it, or other ways new laws are used to disenfranchise Muslims.
Learning can never stop, despite the schools being closed. Teachers around the world were forced to get innovative to overcome the lockdown.
Hindu nationalist groups want to force the cancellation of Netflix shows that celebrate inter-religious romance with Muslims — it’s both censorship and ethnic prejudice.
A growing number of women — farmers, students, ASHA workers and others — have joined the demonstrations. Others support the effort by staying home to tend family farms.
From France to China, these female worship leaders not only provide spiritual guidance but also encourage diversity and dispel stereotypes, from both within and outside of their community.
Despite decades of violence and tension between opposing army outposts, villagers caught in between have no choice but to keep living their lives.
Demarkated by the British for tax purposes, these villages have since been swallowed by India’s massive capital city, but continue to stand apart in terms of zoning and design.
PARIS — It was touted last spring as the silver lining of the coronavirus crisis: the lockdowns and travel bans might wind up being a boon for the environment. Air pollution numbers were down, urban birds could be heard chirping and photos circulated of blue skies above some of the typically smoggiest cities in the […]
Reflections on an election from far away, but still so close.
From the moment the movie began, I had a funny feeling. First, there were no opening credits — nothing to tell us who the producers or director were nor what famous actors would appear. No sign of even the author’s name, like they showed in The Godfather. But I had seen Batman Begins, so I […]
The pandemic has prompted many city workers to seek refuge back in the countryside roots. For the government, it’s an extra challenge, but also an opportunity for long-term rural development.
What is happening in India is casting a long shadow on the forthcoming U.S. elections.
-Analysis- NEW DELHI — It was mid-September 2014, India was abuzz with the visit of Chinese president, Xi Jinping and his wife, folk singer Peng Liyuan. Televisions channels played an extended video loop of Prime Minister Narendra Modi sitting on a swing with Xi on the banks of the Sabarmati River, while excited anchors foretold an era of Sino-Indian peace, forged between the two strongmen who had come to power within two years of each other. Six years later, the Modi-Xi relationship lies in tatters, as do ties between New Delhi and Beijing. With Chinese soldiers having marched across the […]