Indian Opinion

WHO website marked the spread of coronavirus around the globe Coronavirus has come as a danger not only to the life chances of people but also to the livelihood of the people who work every day and dependent on that money for survival. Apart from the government employees, pensioners, people belonging to the upper-middle class, all others are facing questions of survival. Large private companies are still paying to their employees, but small-scale business cannot afford it. The government should also think about the direct cash transfer to ordinary people who are directly affected by the lockdown. Although the US, China, Germany and a few other countries are likely to develop a vaccine in coming months, it is very unfortunate that India could not develop anything significant to deal with the virus. Once the vaccine hit the market India will end up paying billions of dollars for the vaccine.   It is a tragic reality that if COVID-19 lockdown expanded further, India is ...

Mukesh Devrari The question of access to the information world cannot be seen in isolation. It is impossible for the nation-state to provide universal access to the internet and to various services through it with changing the wider situational realities of the common masses.  Is it possible to provide smartphone and computer to a population which does not have anything to eat? Is it possible to provide access to the internet to the 25 per cent population which is illiterate? Is it possible to provide access to the internet for free of cost to each and every citizen? Even if universal access to the internet is ensured for free in third world countries like India, what purpose it will serve if more than 90 of the content available on the internet is in non-Indian languages. These are the hard questions which need hard answers. Recent reports in newspapers also highlight another disturbing report. Indian railways provided free internet services in many railway platforms ac...