• The real Lord of the Flies: When a group of schoolboys were marooned on an island in 1965, it turned out very differently from William Golding’s bestseller, writes Rutger Bregman in the Guardian.
  • India’s Constitution isn’t saving it from Narendra Modi’s assault on rights: The country’s founding document has failed its minorities, argues Shruti Kapila in the Prospect.
  • The Modi government’s command and control approach puts India at risk of losing the advantages gifted by its size and federal constitutional structure, argues Amartya Lahiri in the Print.
  • Islamophobia is undoing years of New Delhi’s diplomatic gains in the Middle East, write Sumit Ganguly and Nicolas Blarel in Foreign Policy.
  • Should coronavirus policies deemed necessary for the hardest-hit wealthy countries becoming a one-size-fits-all message for all countries, ask Richard Cash and Vikram Patel in Lancet. 
  • In Egypt, the ruling regime’s successful propaganda would have been impossible without the readiness of many Egyptians to suspend rational thought in order to inhabit a parallel universe in which the country stands at the center of the universe and triumphs over its enemies, writes Samuel Tadros in the Washington Post.
  • We know everything – and nothing – about Covid-19: When it comes to the pandemic, there is no such thing as “the science”, explains Matt Riddley in the Spectator.
  • On the Grand Tamasha podcast, economist Arvind Subramanian explains why he thinks the International Monetary Fund’s GDP growth projections for India are overly optimistic. 
  • Death of the office: As the pandemic leaves offices around the world empty, in 1843 Magazine Catherine Nixey asks what was the point of them anyway?