Weekend reads

  1. The RBI has a more coherent case on its capital base, performance and autonomy than its critics. Central banks need to be adequately capitalised in order to perform their core functions which include being the lender of last resort for the banking system, argues Amartya Lahiri in Indian Express. 
  2. In The Hindu, former West Bengal Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi says the Opposition should take lessons from the results of the recent bye-elections in Karnataka and work on united action. 
  3.   As recent history suggests, embattled American presidents, unable to make progress domestically, often play for foreign policy wins. As non-controversial as India is for the American public, that’s an easy option, writes Anirudh Bhattacharyya in Hindustan Times. 
  4. With the rapidly falling cost of sequencing the whole human genome, it should be relatively easy to undertake a widespread genetic analysis of various groups and help fight inherited diseases, says Rahul Matthan in Mint. 
  5. In the context of #MeToo, Lekha Chakraborty in BusinessLine argues for making gender justice a budgetary priority. 
  6. In this photo essay on Longreads, Alice Driver captures the travails of those trying to flee the violence in Honduras and make it to the United States, whose President Donald Trump has threatened force to stop them from entering US territory. 
  7. A Marine’s mysterious death in World War I’s final days still haunts his family. In Washington Post, Jobby Warrick tries to trace the final battles his grand uncle fought as the world celebrates the 100th anniversary of the end of the first great war. 
  8.   Despite breathless claims of a deepening political cold war, Democrats made gains this month in every Republican-leaning voting group in the United States, writes Carl Beijer in Jacobin. 
  9.   Countless women have been mistreated ever since sex became common on our screens. Hollywood’s newfound awareness of intimacy choreography can help change things.  
  10.   Tanzania’s latest anti-free speech rules require bloggers to pay a hefty licence fee and subject themselves to writing things that don’t annoy the regime, reports Amanda Leigh Lichtenstein in Fountain Ink.