Professional Commentary

In 2017, Tarun Vijay, a former MP from India’s ruling party and member of a far-right Hindu religious group, remarked with a glaring display of ignorance that Indians cannot be racist because they live with South Indians who are “Black.” Putting aside the dimwitted logic of talking about north and south Indians as two different [...]

READ MORE

Since murder is a horrible wrong, preventing a murder must be a good thing, right? Truth be told, it can get complicated. Among the many questions raised by the killing of George Floyd, we should pause to consider what would have happened if a bystander had actually been successful in rescuing Floyd from the knee [...]

READ MORE

Last week, the Supreme Court issued its hotly anticipated decision in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia. Writing for the 6-3 majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch held that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects LGBT persons from sex discrimination in employment. Pundits on the Left and Right have near-universally expressed shock that Justice [...]

READ MORE

Today, the U.S. legal system faces a public that is becoming increasingly impatient with systemic unequal protection of the law. As the peaceful arbiter of disputes in a democratic society, the judiciary cannot stray too far from that public, lest its legitimacy be lost. However, recent Supreme Court jurisprudence has pulled that judiciary further from [...]

READ MORE

The British Mathematician, Clive Humby once famously said, “Data is the new oil.” He used it as a metaphor to explain that data is a resource, just like oil, that is useless “unrefined,” but once it is “refined” (mined and analysed), it creates enormous value. A lot of information can be extracted from data just [...]

READ MORE

Systems of government procurement are instrumental in mitigating the effects of the public health crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. First of all, well-organized cooperation between the government and the private sector can help address the most urgent problems, such as shortages of personal protective equipment and ventilators. Second, contracting out research and development projects [...]

READ MORE

The Prime Minister (PM) is the Chairman ex-officio of both the Prime Minister National Relief Fund (PMNRF) and the PM-CARES Fund, constituted to deal with disaster situations, like COVID-19 (which is also a “notified disaster”). Notably, the Disaster Management Act, 2005 (‘2005 Act,’ for short), pregnant with the statutory Fund, having all the trappings of [...]

READ MORE