The Global Telescope

India-EU: A Natural Alliance  By Vikrant Sharma  Founder-Editor, The Global Telescope    On 15 th July 2020, India and EU held a virtual summit that saw discussions on healthcare cooperation, environmental commitments, data privacy and protection, the threat of terrorism and radicalisation, increased maritime cooperation, human rights (including gender equality and women empowerment), and civil nuclear cooperation.  India and EU might seem unlikely companions. European Union’s problems seem very different from the ones India faces. While France, Germany, Spain and Portugal (all of them members of the European Union) were colonisers over the past few centuries and made a lot of fortune as a result, India was a British colony that suffered terribly at the hands of colonisers and lost a mind-boggling amount of its pre-British era fortune. But if you dig a little deeper, the India-EU alliance makes a whole lot of sense. India is a quasi-federal union of states that divides power between t

The Remdesivir Saga  By Ashwin Vardarajan   The Trump administration recently secured all of the world’s supply of the drug ‘Remdesivir’– which has been found to be an effective remedy against COVID-19– for the months of July, August and September. Consequently, no other country in the world would have access to this drug for three months – something which raises alarming concerns for many who are fighting the same battle against the virus amid the dreams of a conclusive vaccine being distant. The drug is manufactured by a US-based company known as Gilead Sciences Inc, and was considered a (unsuccessful) cure for the Ebola virus. Quite hubristically, the Trump administration stated that they have “ struck an amazing deal to ensure Americans have access to the first authorised therapeutic for COVID-19 .” Although US has been the worst hit country at the time of this article being written, it has shown no dismay to the what this deal would mean to the world at large. At a time when gl

A Pandemic Towards A Greener World  By Vikrant Sharma,   Founder-Editor, The Global Telescope     The one issue that has cut across national, continental and ideological lines over the last decade has been the environment. There are people who believe humans and their activities do not have any real impact on the environment, and there are those who believe the world is going to end in a few years’ time at the pace we are on right now. Most people believe something in between. Many developed countries are seeing the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity to radically shift towards a greener path. As economies slowly and cautiously reopen across the world, we see many governments trying to make an effort to use this disruption to make the economic activity greener and more sustainable. How did we get here, you ask? Let’s rewind a bit for a traditional Vikrant history lesson (I will keep it small, I promise). The first ‘Green Parties’ emerged in Europe in late 1970’s. One of the first succe