Global food prices are soaring. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s Food Price Index—which covers a basket of basic food commodities (cereals, meat, dairy, vegetable oils, and sugar)—reached an all-time high of 159.7 in March, up from 141.1 the previous month.

India is no stranger to political controversies. At least half a dozen rage in its fractious public life at any time. But perhaps the most unseemly dispute recently has been the one over the country’s Covid-19 mortality figures.

After the 2008 global financial crisis, the world seemed ready to undertake meaningful reform of the international monetary system. But the promised structural changes never happened.

The Ukraine crisis shows that the European Union (EU) has a problem with power.

While the coronavirus has posed unique challenges at a time of deep global interconnectedness, pandemics are nothing new.

For decades, young people’s leftward leanings were considered an iron law of politics. “If people are not conservative at 40, they have no head,” Winston

With the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we are entering a new phase of warfare and global politics. Aside from a heightened risk of nuclear catastrophe, we are already in a perfect storm of mutually reinforcing global crises—the pandemic, climate change, biodiversity loss, and food and water shortages.

Russia’s war in Ukraine has exposed India’s strategic vulnerabilities as few other things could, raising fundamental questions about the country’s position in the world, its regional security, and the wisdom of its long-term relationships.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is showing promising signs of changing with the times.

As Russian tanks battle through Ukraine on the orders of an authoritarian president, it is worth noting that Ukrainians are not the only ones who crave democracy.

When Deng Xiaoping launched China’s strategy of “reform and opening up” in 1978, economists in the West had their doubts.

Beijing may be 6,500km from Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, but the geopolitical stakes for China in the escalating crisis over Ukraine’s fate could not be higher.

Recent talks in Geneva between Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken regarding the crisis over Ukraine achieved little.

Two years into the worst pandemic in a century, it is tempting to think that the world is stuck in a time warp, unable to shake off a virus that has so far killed more than 5.6 million people and wrecked countless livelihoods.

In 2022, the Covid-19 pandemic and the myriad crises it spawned may finally start to recede.

Although Covid-19 has been hard on everyone, it has not been an “equal opportunity” disease.

It is now more than four months since the dramatic exit of US and other Western forces from Afghanistan.

Novak Djokovic, the world’s top-ranking tennis player, has just been granted a medical exemption to take part in the Australian Open.

The restrictive, illiberal trend that has come to characterise India over the last five years has a new data point.

With the passing of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the world has lost an unstoppable force for good who taught compassion and forgiveness, and pursued his mission with a will of iron.