Three problems of reading Engels and the reasons why we need to
On this bicentenary of Friedrich Engels, we need to understand the nature of the struggle of ideas that Engels was engaged in his times, and what its significance is today
Good news on vaccines but what about its delivery?
If we plan to vaccinate the entire Indian people, the states need to be involved in a big way, however, the Modi government has so far centralized all aspects of the management of the epidemic, treating it only as an administrative problem.
Google under fire in US for predatory monopoly practices
Tech monopolies are increasingly being acknowledged as a danger to people, other companies and even to democracy. The regulatory worm seems to be turning in many countries, even in the US where it had gone into hibernation
The 2020 Nobel in Physics and finding a monster of a Black Hole in our galaxy
This year’s Nobel Prize in Physics was won by Roger Penrose for his work on the theoretical basis of black holes, and Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez, two astronomers, for verifying the existence of such a black hole at the center of the Milky Way
Even with vaccines, it is a long and rocky road to immunity
Even if the major economies can solve their own problems of procuring the vaccines by jumping the queue with money or captive production capacities, what about the rest of the world?
Worsening epidemic and a sinking economy: Modi’s mid-year balance sheet
Having surrendered before the epidemic, India’s Narendra Modi govt. is hoping that the economy will bail it out. Unfortunately, we are likely to face the worst of both: a worsening epidemic and an economy that continues to shrink
TikTok ban and Trump’s extortionist policies
China sees the US demand for opening their and others’ markets, while ordering ByteDance to sell TikTok, as another version of the Opium War. If TikTok owning the data of its users is dangerous to national security, so is Facebook and Google owning their users’ data
Can BJP’s politics and Facebook’s business thrive without hate?
The problem of hate news is built into the genes of big digital monopolies like Facebook. We need to break up these monopolies and regulate them as the new public utilities of the digital age