Life in post-corona world
In last month’s column I described how I was enjoying my case of Corona – not, I hasten to add, the coronavirus but rather the gift I had received of Mexican beer. Sadly for me my case of Corona, enjoyable as it was, finished a long time ago, but sadly for all of us the [...]
Return to normality: But what is the norm?
After a respite afforded by lockdowns and quarantines, people impatiently look forward to a ‘return to normality’. I even wondered how forgetful, irrational and insane people could be. Even mainstream media seemed not to have grasped the lessons so obvious. Right along, I had a hitch in my mind over ‘return to normality’. It is [...]
If you can keep your head above you…
This columnist this Sunday is going from prose to verse. Today, in the context of the times, we attempt to parody Rudyard Kipling’s IF with sincere apologies to Kipling and all true poets; granting to ourselves a journalistic licence. IF If you can keep your head when all about you Are claiming that you [...]
How India’s Kerala state ‘flattened the curve’
On 12 March, a 33-year-old salesman disembarked from a flight from Dubai at an airport in southern India, feeling very sick. He was suffering from the chills, dry cough and breathlessness. Airport officials quickly moved him to hospital in the city of Trivandrum in Kerala state, where they tested him for coronavirus. Then they put [...]
In his fight against WHO, Trump plays politics with human lives
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 15 2020 (IPS) – President Donald Trump’s threat to abruptly cut all US funding to the World Health Organization (WHO) has been described as ‘reckless and deadly”—particularly at a time when the Geneva-based UN agency was engaged in an uphill battle against the spreading coronavirus. The US president, who has dismissed WHO [...]
Debt relief is the most effective pandemic aid
LONDON/CAMBRIDGE – The nations of the developed world have responded to the COVID-19 crisis by supporting their domestic economies and financial systems in bold and unprecedented ways, on a scale that would have been unimaginable three months ago. In contrast, when the world’s finance and central bank governors convene virtually this week for the semi-annual [...]