Ranvir Nayar, Author at Media India Group

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...

NSAs meet on Afghanistan: Delhi’s unidimensional approach falters

November 10, 2021

Today, India’s National Security Adviser Ajit Doval hosts his counterparts from seven countries to discuss the security situation in the region, notably to curb export of terror and drugs from a beleaguered Afghanistan, following the fall of the country to the Taliban three mon...

5 years since demonetisation, cash rules India more than ever

November 5, 2021

At around 8 pm in the evening of November 8, 2016, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced immediate abolishing of high-value currency notes, referred to as demonetisation in India, he outlined several goals that he had set for himself and his government as part of this drama...

COP26 headed to failure despite carbon to coal commitments

November 4, 2021

Even before the latest climate change summit, COP26, began at Glasgow earlier this year, there were more than enough warnings and definitely more than adequate evidence that the world had already turn out of time in meeting the climate change threat head on and that the Glasgow s...

World Thrift Day: Global savings surge in pandemic

October 30, 2021

The United States, the country that invented credit cards and is famous for practically everyone living off credit and out-of-pocket, has seen a record jump in its personal savings rate during the pandemic, which raced ahead to 13.7 pc in 2020 from 7.6 pc in the preceding year. N...

High energy prices could derail COP26

October 29, 2021

A report by the United Nations Environment Programme, UNEP, released barely a week before the opening of COP26, the global climate change summit in Glasgow that begins tomorrow, says that the commitments made so far by different countries to cut carbon emissions by 2030 are far s...

Atmanirbhar Bharat & ballooning trade deficit with China

October 20, 2021

India’s overall trade deficit in merchandise trade in the first six months of the current fiscal, from April 1 to September 30, 2021, jumped sharply to USD 78.81 billion, up from USD 25.7 billion last year, a hike of 207 pc, though the deficit stood marginally lower than USD 88...

India getting too close to US for China’s comfort

October 6, 2021

Yesterday, chief of Indian Air Force Air Chief Marshal V R Chaudhari told a press conference that the IAF was fully ready for a two-front war, saying he was aware of the close relationship between China and Pakistan and the ongoing buildup of forces and infrastructure by China al...

German elections mark troubled transition to post-Merkel era

September 23, 2021

No politician has dominated the political landscape not just in post-war Germany but also across the European Union as has German Chancellor Angela Merkel who has been setting the tone for her country as well as the EU for nearly two decades now. But as Merkel hangs up her gloves...

Lessons for India in ruckus over AUKUS

September 19, 2021

In a clear sign that it was not letting go of the issue, France ratcheted up its criticism of the triad of United States, United Kingdom and Australia over the nuclear submarine deal that killed a EUR 56 billion deal which Australia had signed with France over two years ago. Usin...