• In the Indian Express, Meeran Chadha Borwanka explains why the appointment of Rakesh Asthana as new Delhi Police chief is brazen overreach by the Union government.
  • During the pandemic, a new variant of capitalism has emerged, argues Larry Elliot in the Guardian.
  • There is a strategic paralysis in Delhi with respect to Afghanistan, even as other strategic challenges are growing, writes Vivek Katju in the Hindustan Times.
  • In Mint, Renu Yadav explains how India’s real estate law lets down home buyers.
  • When democratically elected governments cease to be held accountable by a society weakened by poor health, low morale and joblessness, demagogues are prone to blindness and ineptitude. That is how democracies die, explains John Keane in the Indian Express.
  • In Capital Daily, Tori Marlan writes about an Australian man who has gone for two decades without money.
  • In the New Left Review, Cedric Durand asks how far has new American president Joe Biden broken with neoliberalism.
  • China was behind India in the early 1950s. But, explains Adam Tooze in his newsletter, in less than three decades, it had raced ahead on human development. So much so that the World Bank in 1983, quite presciently, predicted the Chinese economic boom.
  • As Bangladeshi actor Azmeri Haque Badhon introduced the jamdani sari to Cannes, in the Indian Express Paromita Chakrabarti looks at the garment’s history in South Asia.
  • Why is English spelling so weird and unpredictable? Don’t blame the mix of languages; look to quirks of timing and technology, explains Arika Okrent in in the Aeon.