Persisting and increasing inequalities have been a defining feature of our times. French economist Thomas Picketty, in his seminal work Capital in the Twenty-First Century, has postulated that inequalities are here to stay as they are hardwired into the system. Returns to capital have been, and continue to be, much greater than those that are […]

‘Why aren’t people terrified? What do we have to say? What do we have to do?’ - This dialogue, a desperate plea for help, is from the recent movie Don’t Look Up that released in 2021. A satirical take on the climate crisis, an exasperated astronomer, one of the main characters, ask this question while desperately trying to get the attention of the media and government, as a comet, hurtling through space with earth in its path, threatens to end all life in a matter of months. The fast approaching comet is an allegory for climate change, leading the astronomers to desperately attempt to tackle the government, political, celebrity, and media indifference to the impending crisis, much like the struggle and frustration of climate scientists today.

The world we live in today is fraught with challenges across the sectors of health, education, livelihoods, gender, human rights, among others. In the past two years, many of them have been amplified as the pandemic swept across the globe, leaving in its wake a trail of disruption, forever altering lives for many.

The COVID-19 pandemic was just the beginning of it all for me. Insidious and all-consuming, I vividly remember how it began and how, slowly, a constant sense of anxiety took control of every aspect of my life. Amid the ongoing crisis, my family lost five members to COVID. While such desperate times took a toll […]

Inequality is arguably one of the biggest challenges of our times, and it continues to grow wider and deeper with some worrying statistics. The richest 1% of the population controls almost half of the world’s wealth and the World Bank estimates that the pandemic has pushed 88-115 million more people into poverty in addition to the nearly 690 million already living in extreme poverty. 2.2 billion people do not get clean drinking water and 45% of the world population does not have access to a safely managed sanitation services. Apart from the inequalities and inequities, the last couple of decades have also seen tremendous ecological and environmental degradation due to adverse climate change effects. Global temperatures are increasing, and 18 of the 19 warmest years on record have occurred since 2001.