Budget 2018-19

  The pandemic found three of the world’s most prominent democracies shockingly underprepared, governed by leaders as incompetent as they were deluded The year 2020 was, by any measure, rich in awakenings and reckonings. None were as earth-shaking as those forced upon the United States, Britain and India. The pandemic found three of the world’s most prominent democracies shockingly underprepared, governed by leaders as incompetent as they were deluded and encumbered with states that had steadily rendered themselves incapable of performing their most basic duty: protecting human lives. In each case, stridently advanced claims — whether to be a new superpower (India), to become one again (Britain) or to provide moral leadership to the world (U.S.) — were broken on the wheel of an unforgiving virus. The socio-economic challenges before these countries suddenly seem immense, greater even than those faced after the calamity of two world wars. The conventional formulas for national uplif...

  While cities from New York to London to Melbourne went into shutdown, the entirety of Taiwan stayed open for business I was at Hong Kong international airport the morning the U.S. reported its first case of the virus out of Wuhan, China. News had already been circulating about this deadly new illness in Taiwan, my point of departure, and I spent that layover rushing around looking for the provisions needed to minimize the risk on my flight to New York. Masks were out of stock but I eventually found a small bottle of sanitizer with a cartoon Shiba Inu dog on the label, an irony I’d later appreciate. At the airline lounge, staff were dismissive of my suggestion that hand sanitizer be made available at the counter to all passengers. I knew that would change. By the time I landed at JFK airport, Chinese authorities had shut down Wuhan in an admission that this virus was serious and spreading. Yet that move was far too late. Three days earlier Taiwan had already set up its Central Epi...

The investment required to serve Asia’s third-biggest population spread across 6,000 inhabited islands – out of a total of at least 17,000 isles and atolls – is already large “It’s time for us to work from home, learn from home, worship at home,” Indonesia’s president announced in the early days of the pandemic in March. What Joko Widodo couldn’t have known back then was how social distancing would bring rivals in the country’s competitive telecommunications industry closer together. Credit for consolidation must go where it’s due: to the sprawling geography of the world’s largest archipelago. The investment required to serve Asia’s third-biggest population spread across 6,000 inhabited islands — out of a total of at least 17,000 isles and atolls — is already large. But with 197 million Internet users spending more time at home guzzling data, it’s pointless and wasteful for five mobile operators to seek to duplicate expensive infrastructure in a nation stretching from the Pacific Ocean...

  The Coca-Cola Company has said that it was laying off 2,200 workers, or 17 per cent of its global workforce, as part of a larger restructuring aimed at paring down its business units and brands. The Coca-Cola Company has said that it was laying off 2,200 workers, or 17 per cent of its global workforce, as part of a larger restructuring aimed at paring down its business units and brands. The Atlanta-based company said on Thursday that around half of the layoffs will occur in the US, where Coke employs around 10,400 people. Coke employed 86,200 people worldwide at the end of 2019. The coronavirus pandemic has hammered Coke’s business, as sales at places like stadiums and movie theaters dried up due to lockdowns. Its revenue fell 9 per cent to USD 8.7 billion in the July-September period. The downturn forced the company to accelerate a restructuring that was already underway. “We’ve been challenging legacy ways of doing business and the pandemic helped us realize we could be bolder ...