Ranvir Nayar, Author at Media India Group

Cynically combatting Covid-19 in India

January 5, 2022

On Tuesday, hours after chief minister Arvind Kejriwal tested positive for Covid-19, the Delhi government announced further restrictions on movement in the national capital, imposing a weekend curfew, to add to the night curfew already in place, in addition to having closed gyms,...

Migrant deaths reach new highs in 2021

January 3, 2022

About a fortnight ago, the International Organisation for Migration, the United Nations body in charge of migrants and their interests, said that over 160 migrants had died off the coast of Libya as they were trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea and reach Italian coasts. Last we...

Omicron: Modi sleepwalks taking India towards 3rd wave

December 30, 2021

If one scans the headlines from the past two weeks, there have been two different kinds of stories that have dominated the national news. One is a political rally, or an inauguration of a multi-billion rupee project by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, preferably somewhere in Uttar P...

Counting costs of climate catastrophe: USD 170 bn in 2021

December 28, 2021

A report published by British charity Christian Aid says that the 10 biggest extreme weather events in 2021 caused damage exceeding USD 170 billion, while claiming more than 1075 lives and displacing 1.3 million people worldwide. The charity goes on to say that this is the highes...

Meeting with PMO: Election Commission has failed India

December 22, 2021

For decades, the Prime Minister’s Office in India has functioned as the most important body in the executive, often far more powerful than even the senior most cabinet ministers. In many ways, it is important for the Prime Minister to have an empowered PMO, not only to help the...

France eyes bigger share of Indian defence market

December 18, 2021

Ever since the controversial government to government deal to buy 36 Rafale fighter jets that was announced out of the blue by Narendra Modi during his first visit to Paris as Prime Minister in 2015, France has been eyeing a much bigger order from India. For France, Modi’s deci...

Belarus-Poland standoff, Channel tragedy put focus on EU’s poor migrant policy

December 2, 2021

Six years after it was faced with a crippling flow of migrants, from war-hit and natural disaster affected parts of Middle East and South Asia, Europe is having a tough time again with migrants. In the worst-ever such incident in decades, dozens drowned in the English Channel as ...

GDP growth data hides deep potholes on road to recovery

December 1, 2021

The growth in Indian economy in the second quarter of the current year was more or less as per expectation of analysts. With 8.4 pc growth in the quarter ending September 30, added to the 20.1 pc growth registered in first quarter of the fiscal year, Indian Gross Domestic Product...

Lessons from flare up of Covid-19 across Europe

November 29, 2021

Recently, in its most alarming statement in months, the World Health Organisation warned that Europe was once again the epicentre of the Covid-19 pandemic and that it was the only region in the world where the number of cases was rising still. The warning came as a range of natio...

Housing crisis targets Gen Z & single mothers

November 28, 2021

In Sweden, the government fell in June earlier this year when it tried to change the rules that would have led to rise of house rents. In the recent elections in Germany and also in Canada political parties promised new policies to keep house prices as well as rents under check a...

Paytm collapse may cool IPO fever in India

November 23, 2021

Paytm’s founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma does not believe in doing things small or moderate. Though he had founded the firm in 2010 for mobile recharges, Sharma and Paytm hit pay dirt only in 2016 when Prime Minister Narendra Modi abolished high value currency notes in a di...

Rich world dodges climate finance & climate equity at COP26

November 14, 2021

For months leading up to the opening of COP26, the 26th meeting of Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), dozens of reputed scientific organisations had said that it was really the last chance to pull the world back from the b...