France bringing an end to lockdown on May 11 but it will not mean instant return to normal life. A woman, wearing a protective face mask, walks past Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral, Paris, France, April 27, 2020. From this point, the buck stops with the Modi government, as the country trudges along the Covid highway. The …
Continue reading “There is no exit from coronavirus, only containment”
In business transactions and international diplomacy alike, there could be constant variables and dependent variables. Constant variable is where the value cannot be changed once it has been assigned a value. But it becomes a dependent variable if it is susceptible or open to the effect of an associated factor or phenomenon. Then, there is …
Continue reading “US return to JCPOA can end impasse over Iran”
Soviet officers and American soldiers met up at the Elbe River near Torgau, Germany, 25th April, 1945 Unusual for a Saturday evening, the White House and the Kremlin upgraded their websites simultaneously to feature a joint statement by the two presidents on “Commemorating the 75th Anniversary of the Meeting on the Elbe” (here and …
Continue reading “Trump and Putin revisit the “Spirit of the Elbe””
Afghan President Asraf Ghani (C) received Iran’s special envoy Mohammad Ebrahim Taherian at the presidential palace, Kabul, April 20, 2020 A tweet by the US President Donald Trump on April 22 said, “I have instructed the United States Navy to shoot down and destroy any and all Iranian gunboats if they harass our ships at …
Continue reading “Trump’s threat to Iran has a hollow ring. It betrays angst.”
The 76-day Covid-19 shutdown in Wuhan, China, was lifted on April 7, 2020. The search for the genesis of Covid-19 is developing into an epic story. Thanks to the insinuations by the US President Donald Trump — ‘China virus’, ‘Wuhan virus’, etc. — that were explosive in their political and strategic content, Beijing is now …
Continue reading “Covid-19 has a grandma, grandpa and great grandpa. Where are they?”
The Times of India featured a tantalising commentary last week titled Kerala shows the way: Decades of investment in public health is helping the state control Covid-19. The title is self-explanatory. The commentary showered fulsome praise, rightly so, on Kerala’s success in controlling the coronavirus outbreak. It attributed Kerala’s success story to three factors: the …
Continue reading “Kerala’s Covid story is hard to replicate”
European Union unveiled a road map to phase out Covid-19 pandemic containment measures, Brussels, April 15, 2020 A European Union road map plotting the way out of the containment measures to counter Covid-19 — commonly known as ‘lockdown’ — was unveiled in Brussels on Wednesday. The document titled Joint European Roadmap towards lifting COVID-19 containment measures holds …
Continue reading “Europe eases Covid-19 lockdown but caveats remain”
Senator Bernie Sanders (R) endorsed the candidacy of Joe Biden (L) in the US presidential election in November For all practical purposes, Joe Biden has emerged as the Democratic Party’s nominee in the US presidential election in November. There was an inevitability about it once Bernie Sanders sensed that despite his impressive network of volunteers …
Continue reading “Biden invites the left into his coalition to take on Trump”
Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered a speech proposing a summit in September of the “founder countries of the United Nations, the five states that hold special responsibility to save civilisation,” Jerusalem, Israel, January 23, 2020 A perfect deal is where all protagonists get something out of it. All oil-producing countries stand to gain if oil …
Continue reading “Why the OPEC+ deal is a many-splendoured thing”
No social distancing in Stockholm: Sweden has taken a “flexible” approach, but Prime Minister Stefan Löfven regrets that wasn’t good enough. It might have sounded exciting two days ago to propose the Swedish pathway as the ideal route for India to pursue to combat the coronavirus . But no longer so. When it comes to …
