Far from bringing out the best in people and institutions, a crisis can bring out the worst too. That is precisely what seems to have happened, in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, to the concept of ‘cooperative federalism’ between the central and state governments, claimed as one of his key policies by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Since the beginning[Read More...]
What connects the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 to Remdesivir, the blockbuster medicine widely used during the ongoing Covid pandemic? First is the fact that both are based on dubious claims. The US invasion was carried out on the false pretext of Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction, while Remdesivir has been aggressively marketed as a drug the[Read More...]
Why should a country in the grip of a deadly wave of Covid-19, with people dying all around, remember the Emergency, a nationwide suspension of democracy, that happened almost half a century ago? One simple but somewhat trite answer is, those who don’t learn from history are condemned to repeat it. A follow up is ‘Oops! We learned nothing from[Read More...]
On 2 June 2021, Odisha Chief Minister Navin Patnaik wrote a letter to all chief ministers urging them to “unite and form a consensus that the Centre should procure Covid vaccines and distribute them free to the States.” With this rallying call, Navin Patnaik, waded into the controversy between the central and state governments over who should foot the bill[Read More...]
