Mihir Sharma

When he stunned the Glasgow climate conference by committing India to achieving net-zero emissions by 2070, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi issued a crucial caveat. Without the “transfer of climate finance and low-cost climate technologies,” he said, developing nations such as India would never…

In the runup to the COP26 climate change summit in Glasgow, everyone and their aide wants countries — particularly large developing countries such as India — to commit to achieving net-zero carbon emissions by a specific date. The European Union and the United States have promised carbon neutrality…

US diplomacy’s recent stream of own goals has been quite impressive. Even apparent victories such as the announcement of a “new, enhanced, trilateral” Australia-UK-US defense partnership, awkwardly abbreviated to AUKUS, have been tarnished by a sense that allies’ interests have been dismissed or…

The small but diverse group of classical-music lovers is in deep mourning after one of the pillars of its community died. Primephonic, a Dutch-American app that streamed a wide catalogue of classical music went dark last month, after being acquired by Apple Inc., which aims to fold the service into…

In cities at least, India’s nightmarish second wave of Covid-19 finally seems to be ebbing. Delhi has brought its test positivity rate below 2% for the first time in two months. The pandemic’s scars won’t be easily erased, however — and they should be a warning to other developing nations. Those…

If you are lucky enough to be healthy in Covid-haunted Delhi, life feels strangely disconnected. Offline, there’s an undeclared lockdown. The normally noisy city is silent except for the sound of birds. Social media, on the other hand, is an unfolding tapestry of tragedy. People beg for help…

Just a few short weeks ago, Indian government officials were patting themselves on the back. India was the “pharmacy of the world,” they said, and its cheaply produced vaccines would help end the Covid-19 pandemic globally. The federal health minister declared that the country had entered “the…

It has been a year since the pandemic hit India and, for me, the oddest thing is how healthy I’ve been. Like most but not all of the people I see on the streets, I have been masked up these past 12 months. I’ve washed my hands religiously and avoided crowds. As a result, for the first time in my…

Those Americans who cheered President Joe Biden’s announcement this week that the US would have enough vaccines to inoculate every citizen by the end of July might want to note the cold silence with which the rest of the world greeted the news. Biden’s triumphalism was more than a little grating,…

The Indian state faces one of the world’s most formidable challenges: rolling out a Covid-19 vaccination program for 1.3 billion people. To succeed, many things have to go right in a country that usually gets a lot wrong. The government would be wise to enlist the country’s private sector in this…