The ‘Foreign’ page of every Indian newspaper is replete with images and reports of protests and revolts these days. Thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, democracy is facing its deepest crisis since the 1930s. On the external front, it is on the defensive, facing a strange combination of democracy and dictatorship on the one hand and the jihadists on the other. It is undermined by a paralysis of institutions that makes it ungovernable...

All over Europe, after the disappearance of the ISIS in October 2017, there is a significant decline in jihadist attacks. Many countries, including France, have lowered their level of vigilance because there is no longer the presence of an agency that plans large-scale fatalities. But this is not the end of jihad. It is a regression, but also a kind of mutation. From almost a quasi-industrial enterprise, like the attacks of November 2015...

For those who still doubt it, the news of this summer (series of heat waves, multiplication of forest fires, cyclones, etc.) is a reminder of what scientists have been saying for almost fifty years: our civilization is facing a global climate crisis endangering the entire planet. Human activities have become the predominant telluric force, our current geological era being described as Anthropocene. The figures projected by organisations such as...

The last three years in Calcutta, my few woollen garments have languished incan an old iron trunk that once belonged to one of my paternal aunts. I haven’t used them because it never felt so cold that I needed them. Not that this phenomenon hasn’t struck me in the years before but I wasn’t convinced of the permanent departure of winter. Now I am. Winter has left this city. It isn’t that Calcutta ever experienced the...

Shortly after I wrote this post, I read a report in a French language newspaper on cycling. It reported that Elisabeth Borne, the French Minister of Transport has said,” We must stop looking at the bike patronisingly and consider it a minor matter. “ She is thinking of launching a great bike plan in early 2018 for improving daily transport and help the bicycle to take off as a daily mode of transport for many. Still little known in France, the...

Working from home allows a city-dweller to escape the daily drudgery of commuting. When such an individual goes out even for a brief sojourn within the city, she is quickly annoyed by the condition of roads and the interminable traffic jams. The wait appears endless. What  a waste of time and energy!  Do we ever care to find how many man days we lose by keeping our women and men waiting on the roads? What is its effect on the environment, on...