• In the Indian Express, Harish Damodaran explains why the current slowdown is unique in modern India’s history.
  • Should cricket commentators always be people who have played the game? In the Telegraph, Mukul Kesavan weighs in on the Bhogle-Manjrekar spat.
  • India will now find it difficult to tough-talk leaders in the neighbourhood, all with strong mandates of their own, writes Suhahini Haider in the Hindu.
  • Like Indira Gandhi, Narendra Modi’s image allows the BJP to win easily in national elections. But unlike  Gandhi, Modi’s image seems inadequate for state polls, argues Shekhar Gupta in the Print.
  • It wasn’t too long ago that economic aspirations for India echoed China’s. Now it is looking more like Indonesia, Malaysia or the Philippines – that is, just another middling emerging market, writes Daniel Moss in Bloomberg.
  • Economists have little luck making any real world change but when it comes to establishing themselves in positions of intellectual authority, unaffected by such failings, their success is unparalleled. One would have to look at the history of religions to find anything like it, argues David Graeber in the New York Review of Books.
  • In the New York Times, Charles M Blow recounts how the popular American holiday Thanksgiving is rooted in the mass killing of Native Americans by European settlers.
  • In the Guardian, Samanth Subramanian explains how our home delivery habit reshaped the world.
  • Globalisation dissolves local cultures, even as technology turns the West inward, writes Joshua Mitchell in City Journal.
  • Food is a strong proof of our animality; it is equally strong evidence of how we transcend it, writes Wilfred McClay in the Hedgehog Review.
  • What is authentic love? In IAI, Kate Kirkpatrick presents a view from French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir.