Opinion

Why are Indian startups imploding?

Indians have rightly been proud of the dynamism of our startups. Various government programs — Digital India, Startup India — are supposed to have energized the sector. Senior officials have insisted that “visionary and astute leadership” have “turned India into the [wo...

Opinion

Europe’s new carbon tariff won’t help the climate

Many within the European Union probably view its new Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism as an enormous step forward in the fight against climate change and for the EU's own global prestige. And it is true that the EU has achieved internal consensus — always a difficult process — surp...

Opinion

To save the planet, poor nations need to get paid

This week, the Democratic Republic of Congo — Africa’s second-largest nation and the sixth-most heavily forested country in the world — is auctioning off large sections of those forests to oil and gas companies. The decision has enraged climate activists: The vast tracts of equator...

Opinion

Heatwave: Britain can look at India for answers

London was burning earlier this week. So many blazes erupted during the recent heatwave that the city’s fire brigades had their busiest day since Hitler sent his V-2s screaming across the Channel.The runways at Heathrow began to melt when temperatures crossed 40 degrees Celsius, while embattle...

Opinion

India can’t afford its coal addiction

Nothing makes you appreciate air-conditioning like high summer in India. Here in Delhi, temperatures are running over 100 degrees for much of the day, with two full months still to go before the cooling monsoon rains arrive. Unfortunately, just as everyone decided to crank up their ACs or at least t...

Opinion

The UK shouldn’t disarm itself in the soft-power war

There are very few ways in which Great Britain can still claim to be a global power. It does not set the terms of world trade as China does. It has ceded the waves to the U.S. Navy, which boasts ten times as many aircraft carriers. It does not have regulatory or standard-setting power, unlike the Eu...

Opinion

The world is going to need a Covax for Climate

When he stunned the Glasgow climate conference by committing India to achieving net-zero emissions by 2070, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi issued a crucial caveat. Without the “transfer of climate finance and low-cost climate technologies,” he said, developing nations such as India ...

Opinion

After Covid, let’s keep our masks on

It has been a year since the pandemic hit India and, for me, the oddest thing is how healthy I’ve been. Like most but not all of the people I see on the streets, I have been masked up these past 12 months. I’ve washed my hands religiously and avoided crowds. As a result, for the first ti...

Opinion

Rest of Asia will miss Abe more than Japan will

A month before he ended his first stint as Japan’s prime minister in 2007, Shinzo Abe addressed the Indian Parliament in New Delhi. Quoting the Mughal scholar-prince Dara Shikoh, Abe spoke of the “confluence of the two seas” -- the Indian and Pacific Oceans -- that were undergoing ...

Opinion

Covid-19: World’s vaccine makers must cooperate

Intellectual property is a convenient fiction. It is a right enforced by state power and international agreements, one that’s even more fragile than other forms of property rights since it’s not tangible.We choose to believe this fiction because we also believe that intellectual property...

Opinion

Protests across India have weakened Modi

For the first time in years, the government of India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi is playing defence. Protests have sprung up across the country against an amendment to India’s laws, which came into effect recently, that makes it easier for members of some religions to become citizens ...

Opinion

India’s man-made water crisis threatens more cities

One of India’s largest cities, Chennai, is dealing with a crippling crisis: It has run out of water. In the middle of a particularly hot summer, the four lakes that supply the capital of the southern state of Tamil Nadu have dried up; together they contain just 1 per cent of the volume they di...