Showing 1 - 10 of 35
Humanity's alignment problem
News, Antara Haldar, Published on 06/01/2026
» It's lunchtime on top of the world again. Time's annual "Person of the Year" issue released two weeks ago has revived the iconic Depression-era photograph of steelworkers casually lunching on a beam suspended over Manhattan. With the city rising beneath them, the image portrays risk as normalised, even glamourised.
Adam Smith and the moral economy we have lost
Oped, Antara Haldar, Published on 12/11/2025
» With the 250th anniversary of The Wealth of Nations approaching next year, the world is gearing up to honour Adam Smith. But which Smith should be recognised? The hard-nosed "founding father" of modern economics, or the philosopher who wrote The Theory of Moral Sentiments? Scholars have wrestled with this question, a riddle known as "Das Adam Smith Problem", for centuries, because it concerns not just dualities within Smith's thought, but also our own uneasy relationship with morality and markets.
When societies rise, fall, and face catastrophe
News, Antara Haldar, Published on 11/10/2025
» When the United Nations emerged from the rubble of two world wars 80 years ago, it represented humanity's most ambitious attempt ever to turn catastrophe into cooperation. But while the scarred world of 1945 had hope following the Allied victory, that optimism has since curdled. The UN today is underfunded, risk-averse, and paralysed.
The postwar era's first democratic authoritarian
Oped, Antara Haldar, Published on 08/09/2025
» The 78th anniversary of India's independence last month offers an opportunity to recall one of the most insidious moments in the country's post-independence history: prime minister Indira Gandhi's 1975 decision to declare an emergency and suspend civil liberties. A new book by political scientist Srinath Raghavan, Indira Gandhi and the Years That Transformed India, not only revisits that fateful move, but also traces its lasting impact half a century later.
Tiny Vanuatu steps up to protect the climate
Oped, Antara Haldar, Published on 28/08/2025
» Although the International Court of Justice (ICJ) turned 80 this year, there is a sense in which it has never felt younger. In a David-versus-Goliath moment, the tiny Pacific Island state of Vanuatu recently changed international law forever by bringing the world's most important issue before its highest court. The result is an ICJ advisory opinion on "the legal obligations of states in respect of climate change", as requested -- at Vanuatu's urging -- by the UN General Assembly (with 132 states co-sponsoring the resolution).
Forgetting what democracy is for and all about
Oped, Antara Haldar, Published on 10/07/2025
» On June 2, I got a sense of history coming full circle in the Polish town of Sopot, on the Baltic Sea just a few kilometres from the Gdańsk Shipyard. Sharing a stage at the Plenary Session of the European Financial Congress with Lech Wałęsa, the legendary trade unionist who led the 1980 Solidarity strike at the Lenin Shipyard and later became Poland's first post-communist president, I felt I was witnessing the end of an era.
The late Pope Francis and the soul of economics
Oped, Antara Haldar, Published on 06/05/2025
» Pope Francis redefined the papacy in profound ways. As the leader of the Catholic Church, he worked to make it more inclusive of women and the LGBTQ+ community. As the first Latin American pontiff, he became a voice for the Global South. And by taking his name -- and inspiration -- from St Francis of Assisi, he positioned himself as a champion of the poor and marginalised.
Why global governance is failing badly
Oped, Antara Haldar, Published on 14/03/2025
» The United Nations was established in 1945, succeeding the failed League of Nations, to pull humanity back from the brink of self-destruction. It was a bold experiment in collective security, designed to prevent another world war and manage conflicts through diplomacy rather than violence.
So what are we supposed to make of MAGAnomics?
Oped, Antara Haldar, Published on 20/02/2025
» While the end of World War II 80 years ago ushered in an age of reason, Donald Trump's return to the White House has ushered it out. His MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement promises to take a wrecking ball to the postwar global economic order, raising the question of what will replace it.
Covid's lessons have now all been forgotten
Oped, Antara Haldar, Published on 03/01/2025
» In December 2019, as the world was looking ahead to a new year, a novel virus was quietly spreading in China. Soon, the Covid-19 pandemic would bring the world to a grinding halt, forcing billions of people into unprecedented lockdowns and shuttering economies worldwide. Five years on, we are still grappling with the effects of this "grey rhino": a high-probability risk that was nonetheless neglected or ignored.