In this coronavirus lockdown, India feels like the calm before the storm

Strong social networks got India through the calamity of demonetisation. By not giving migrant workers enough time to get home, the govt has likely deprived them of this

At a time when India faces the global economy going into recession, perhaps even a depression, I find myself unhelpfully distracted by a Danish woman with blue eyes and dark skin. Nature magazine this week reports that a piece of birch wood she chewed on 5,700 years ago offers evidence of the strep throat she was trying to alleviate. The Alice in Netherworld of Covid-19 leaves one gasping in surprise at the exponential rise in infection rates in New York and California and the stupidity of Londoners ignoring social distancing mandates. But it is also an antidote to the echo