FACEBOOK is in the limelight for both the right reasons and the wrong reasons. The wrong reason is that, what was supposed to be a small configuration change took Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp down for a few hours last week. It affected billions of users, showing us how important Facebook and other tech giants have become to our lives and even other businesses. Of course, the much more significant issue is the whistleblower, Frances Haugen, a former employee, making tens of thousands of pages of Facebook's internal documents public.

THE New York Times (NYT) has recently published an article (September 14, 2021) detailing how politics overrode science in India's deadly second wave. It is based on the struggle of a young scientist, Dr Anup Agarwal, who sought to warn the top scientific and health agency Indian Council of Medical Research, of a second wave and that a policy based on the so-called Super Model would prove a disaster for the country. Dr Agarwal has since then left the country.

THE Ministry of Environment, Forests & Climate Change (MoEFCC) last week filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court conveying that it has now given the go-ahead for seven controversial hydro-electric projects in the Upper Ganga region of Uttarakhand.  These projects include the 512 MW Tapovan-Vishnugarh hydro-electric project on the Dhauliganga which was almost completely destroyed in the massive floods of February 2021, killing more than 200 people including  over 150 workers and others whose bodies are probably still interred in the ruins of the project

THE nation has been debating our collective achievements, weaknesses and failures over the past 74 years since Independence in relation to the vision of the republic’s founders and of the independence movement. This article discusses two key founding ideas which do not always get the attention they deserve or do so largely in an obligatory fashion. However, both ideas are crucial and may well determine the future of India, especially in the so-called knowledge age of the 22nd century in which we are situated but have not duly acknowledged.

MANY parts of the world experienced extremes of climate and their consequences during June and July 2021. Whereas definitive attribution of particular weather events to specific causes has always been difficult given the numerous variables involved, scientists have almost unanimously ascribed this summer’s events all over the northern hemisphere to climate change. Even within that context, two aspects have been noteworthy. First the intensity, indeed ferocity, of the climate events and their impacts.