Subterms
In 1968, German mathematician Dietrich Braess made a rather fascinating observation. When you added an additional road between points A and B, it slowed traffic down rather than speed it up. The Braess paradox, as it is now called, is a counterintuitive observation that has been studied and expanded for over half a century, with […] More
In 2014, early in Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s first term, the world was abuzz with India’s demographic dividend. More than half of India’s population was under the age of 24, GDP was growing at 7% to 8% annually in spite of corruption and high inflation, and Modi had won a decisive mandate in national […] More
In March 2015, the unexpected newly elected president of Sri Lanka, Maithripala Sirisena, stated that the national anthem could be sung in Tamil at official and institutional events. For anyone alien to life on the teardrop island, this announcement may have come as a surprise since, after all, Tamil and Sinhala are the two official […] More
Around the world, the news agenda is dominated by the coronavirus and the policy responses to it. Naturally, most of the attention is paid to things like how many people are dying and when the various lockdowns can be lifted. However, in every industry, there is a story to be told about the impact of […] More
India has an abysmally low percentage of people with access to decent health care. About 300 million Indian citizens live below the poverty line and, for them, medicine is prohibitively expensive. For decades, serious medical conditions have pushed families into poverty and destitution. From 2000 to 2015, the annual national health-care expenditure averaged around 4.00% […] More
Last week, 53 days after his suspicious disappearance on March 10, Bangladeshi journalist Shafiqul Islam Kajol was “found” by authorities in Benapole, 150 miles from Dhaka where he was last seen. On May 3, border guards apparently discovered Kajol, the editor of the daily newspaper Dainik Pokkhokal, in a field near the Bangladesh-India border, blindfolded and with his legs […] More
US President Donald Trump had already taken a sledgehammer to the export-led growth model. With the COVID-19 pandemic rousing primal passions, hitherto unfashionable ideas are emerging like Dracula from their grave. Protecting infant industries to improve future competitive advantage or strategic players for national security reasons are policies many are embracing with gusto again. Some […] More
On April 5, India responded to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call to light earthen lamps for nine minutes at 9 pm. Earlier on March 19, he appealed for a 14-hour “people’s curfew” three days later. On March 25, Modi imposed a national lockdown over 1.3 billion people, the biggest such exercise in the world. Bringing […] More
