In March 1971, this author was invited to join the famous Gobind Ballabh Pant University of Agriculture & Technology, Pantnagar, UP, the largest in Asia, patterned along the “Land Grant Pattern” of the USA, by the Vice Chancellor late Dr. Dhyan Pal Singh, a very dynamic bureaucrat. The invitation was to join as Senior Associate Professor & Senior Research Of...
The imposition of unprecedented mass quarantine, school and restaurant closings, factory closings across most of the world is putting the focus on the alarming vulnerability of what is a global food supply chain to severe breakdown. Before the lockdown an estimated 60% of all food consumed in the United States today was consumed outside the home. That includ...
In an interview to German television Deutsche Welle (On April 17, 2020), writer-activist Arundhati Roy accused the Government of India “of exploiting the coronavirus outbreak to inflame tensions between Hindus and Muslims”, adding dramatically, “the situation is approaching genocidal”. Given their experience with a democratically elected leader in 1933,...
The winter of the Corona crisis is far from over. No green shoots are appearing anywhere across the globe yet. The Director-General of World Health Organisation, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has already pressed the panic button, saying the “worst” of the novel Corona virus has yet to come. The WHO DG further asserted “it’s a virus that many people still...
The political games being played over Taiwan for the last few months are yet another example of how the common SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus crisis has barely had any effect on the nature of global political processes. Taiwan’s issue with mainland China has long been one of the main sticking points in deteriorating relations between the world’s two leading powers, ...
Dramatic political and social decisions are being made across the United States and around the world on what emergency quarantine measures and other steps must be taken. In many cases the radical and severe measures, such as shutting down the world economy, are being justified by COVID-19 case projections of morbidity into the future. If there is one person ...
The United States and Iran have waged a contentious dialogue of the deaf for much of the past four decades. It is a dialogue that seemingly brought the two countries to the brink of war in January following tit-for-tat attacks with potentially devastating consequences for Arab Gulf states. The tit-for-tat culminated in the killing of Iranian general Qassem S...
Anger is as normal a human emotion as any other - sex, affection, combativeness, protectiveness, sorrow. It gets a bad press these days, though. That is especially true in intellectual circles and among the self-consciously virtuous/goodhearted in general. That’s surprising in one sense. After all, an incapacity to get angry probably would have resulted in h...
The coronavirus pandemic and the global economic meltdown forced Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the United States, and Russia to call time out in a war that was less about prices and more about market share and survival of the fittest. The agreement among producers to cut production by 10 million barrels a day amounts to a ceasefire that will likely...
India stands at the cusp of a development crossroads: will it be counted among “countries that matter” or will it stand by the tired old “Developed Country” model, governed by the tyranny of per capita power consumption, state of roads, etc. One India lives in cities, another in villages. The urban population is mainly middle and upper middle class and is no...
Collective tragedy is always a learning experience. So it has been for great wars, natural disasters, economic collapses, political revolutions. The COVID-19 pandemic is such a tragedy. Although the number of casualties may pale compared to the carnage of war, there are ancillary effects that leave us shocked and sobered. Most obviously, there is sudden onse...
At present, we are carefully studying all aspects of the global responses to the Coronavirus pandemic, the biggest challenge facing humanity in the 21 century. In our analysis of the current situation, we would particularly like to focus on the way some Southeast Asian nations have responded to and have been fighting the COVID-19 outbreak. It is important t...
It is quite clear that the Coronavirus has resulted not only in a significant impact on people and their health, and in a negative effect on economics and politics but also in the break-up of fragile alliances that were the pride of many nations at some point in the past. For example, the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (CCASG or Gulf Coo...
Many governments in industrialized countries decided to respond to the Covid-19 epidemic by confining their populations. This strategy does not stem from medicine, which has never practised isolation of healthy people, but from good management of medical resources to prevent a massive influx of sick people so as not to clog hospitals. Few industrialized coun...
“Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power” - Giovanni Gentile, Encyclopedia Italiana. This definition from one of the exponents of the program has far more clarity than the over-used one coming from present-day people of mostly liberal persuasion who define fascism as anything they don’t lik...
He was known as “the Riddler.” Even “the Dark.” Heraclitus of Ephesus was one of a kind. In his heart of hearts a contemptuous aristocrat, this master of paradox despised all so-called wise men and the mobs that adored them. Heraclitus was the definitive precursor of social distancing. We, unfortunately, owe the “pre-Socratic” reductionist label to 19th ce...
Some contours of the post-Coronavirus world are clearly visible. The nation-state has regained legitimacy; the case for free flow of refugees/immigrants across a borderless world has collapsed; and governments are facing the critical test of whether they can rally their people behind them to overcome the disease. India has performed remarkably well so...
To assess the wide-ranging speculations as to the lasting effects of the COVID-19 crisis with a modicum of rigour, we should begin by differentiating between two categories of possible change. One covers those that are likely to emerge over time as the outcome of largely individual modifications of behaviour. This is what we might call the socio-cultural...
Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh are facing their own set of challenges while combating the COVID-19 (Corona Virus). While there was worry about Ladakh earlier, now Kashmir is emerging as a cause of concern. Ladakh, of course, is not completely out of the danger zone, one infection case came up in district Kargil on April 2, thirteen days after the last case was...
Thursday’s [April 2-Ed] jobless claims leave no doubt that the country is in the grips of another severe recession. More than 6.6 million Americans filed for unemployment insurance in the last week. That number exceeds the gloomiest prediction of more than 40 economists and pushes the two-week total to an eye-watering 10 million claims. According to CNBC: “...
Things often look the way they do because someone claiming authority tells us they look that way. If that sounds too cynical, pause for a moment and reflect on what seemed most important to you just a year ago, or even a few weeks ago. Then, you may have been thinking that Russian interference in western politics was a vitally important issue, and something ...
There are a large number of multi-media resources functioning across the world with the singular agenda of creating a rift between the Hindu and Sikh communities by resorting to despicable propaganda based on blatant lies and misinformation. One such organisation is 5K Broadcasting, a UK-based so-called media house that has its office at 29 Saxon Grove, Leed...
A crisis such as the COVID-19 epidemic serves as a stress test for the system – a dye inserted and circulated to highlight its functioning in terms of efficiency and capacity. The relevant system is the national polity for that is where the locus for meaningful action resides. Of particular interest are the Western democracies. Serious questions already had ...
FBI director Christopher Wray warned about the potential threat posed by Chinese students in American universities, not just to the government, but to the society. Wray said his warning was not just for the intelligence community, but also America’s academic and private sectors (The Chinese Student Threat, Inside Higher Ed, Feb. 15, 2018). The US Education D...
What’s going on in the fifth largest economy in the world arguably points to a major collusion scandal in which the French government is helping Big Pharma to profit from the expansion of Covid-19. Informed French citizens are absolutely furious about it. My initial question to a serious, unimpeachable Paris source, jurist Valerie Bugault, was about the liai...
With each passing day, the Coronavirus (COVID-19) scare has become a nightmare for Indians. No one seems to be sure about its origin, and where it will all end: how many Indian lives will be lost. At a time when Anglo-Saxons are changing the world order, an incontrovertible proof of which is Britain taking control of the Red sea entrance with able support...
More and more people have recently begun talking about the end of the European Union. Moreover, while many observers used to cite Brexit as a sign that the European Union is on the brink of collapse, it is now clear that Brexit was just one of many blows the EU has been dealt, which has been suffering with underlying problems since it was established: Foreig...
The present spread of novel Corona virus, COVID-19, across the globe has infected thousands and sent many to death, with casualties rising daily. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has termed the disaster as pandemic. The virus has spread to about 196 countries in six continents. The news of lockdown is coming from countries across the globe every day, and ...
The question is not if, but when the long-standing American defence umbrella in the Gulf, the world’s most militarised and volatile region, will be replaced by a multilateral security arrangement that would have to include China as well as Russia. The United States’ perceived diminishing commitment to the Gulf and the broader Middle East and mounting doubts ...
Let me begin by answering the above question bluntly: India is a kritocracy (also kritarchy) and an unacceptable one at that. On March 3, 2020 there was a cryptic report in Janmabhumi Daily that shared the concern of the Chief Justice of India, Mr. S.A. Bobde, on how the judiciary was stressed by media reports criticizing the judiciary. It was made in the co...