Pratap Bhanu Mehta

Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: Democracy has already lost the war

April 01,2026 06:00:45 AM

Even those fully aware of the impending catastrophe feel utterly disarmed and disempowered, as though democracy itself has been evacuated as a site for reflection on war

Clifton Crais exposes the Dark Origins of Modernity — Guns, Empire and the ‘Mortecene’Subscriber Only

March 14,2026 10:02:36 AM

In The Killing Age, Clifton Crais says modernity is a machine for systematic killing

Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: Revisiting ‘The Wealth of Nations’ and its abiding suspicion of concentrated powerSubscriber Only

March 09,2026 07:00:22 AM

Smith’s critique of mercantilism was not a simple brief for non-intervention; it was a diagnosis of how states are captured by vested interests

P B Mehta writes: An aimless war is waged as spectacle. We have all devised new strategies of moral evasionSubscriber Only

March 07,2026 06:58:46 AM

The real obscenity of this moment is not simply the war itself; it is the normalisation of a world in which war has become performance. But if the great powers have chosen nihilism, the rest of the world still has a choice

Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: From a book on authoritarianism, lessons on ‘realism’ for IndiaSubscriber Only

February 28,2026 06:18:35 AM

The Captive Mind, Czesław Miłosz’s searing anatomy of authoritarianism, highlights the dangers of self-deception in the name of 'realism'

P B Mehta writes: As we contemplate possibilities of AI, it is wreaking enduring transformations in state-capital relationsSubscriber Only

February 21,2026 07:05:37 AM

The firms leading this transformation — Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google — no longer resemble ‘light’ digital platforms. They look more like early 20th-century infrastructure monopolies

Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: India-US deal is one-sided. It creates vulnerabilitiesSubscriber Only

February 10,2026 07:09:12 AM

Trade is never just about trade. India’s strategic abdications are already visible. India’s position on the Ukraine war was a classic case of evasion. But being compelled under duress to do what one might have chosen on principle, namely, to stop purchases of Russian oil, is something else altogether

Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: Epstein Files aren’t an ‘island story’. They are about the nature of collective powerSubscriber Only

February 03,2026 08:12:02 AM

The files provide a sobering X-ray of some of America’s elites: Immature, full of impunity, corrupt, venal, venial, and venereal all at once. They also provide a sobering view of global politics: There are no grand purposes, not even a political economy

Is MAGA an ideology or a political style? What Laura Field’s Furious Minds revealsSubscriber Only

January 31,2026 16:00:06 PM

Laura Field’s Furious Minds is a deeply brilliant, important, but ultimately disturbing account of a set of ideas that may place not only American democracy, but the wider world, at risk

Pratap Bhanu Meha writes: The gift to India that was Mark TullySubscriber Only

January 25,2026 19:48:34 PM

Sir Mark was unique in the annals of journalism not merely because he reported from India for decades with genteel insight, understated eloquence, moral toughness, wry humour, and as much objectivity as any journalist can humanly muster. He was unique because, on so many occasions, his voice constituted the only first draft of history available at the moment

Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: Trump is succeeding because leaders across the world want to be little TrumpsSubscriber Only

January 23,2026 07:20:23 AM

The world had become too psychologically dependent on the United States. Trump can act as a patriarch because we have put the US in that position. Much of the world, even in the face of Trump’s perfidy, is behaving like errant children, seeking their father’s good graces

P B Mehta writes: Equality is not the enemy of growth – oligarchy isSubscriber Only

January 13,2026 07:50:13 AM

The way income inequality is framed in public debate is a red herring. By associating all talk of equality with resentment, we avoid asking serious questions about inequality’s real effects

Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: A new year wish for India in 2026 — Let sober realism be the guide, not political fantasySubscriber Only

January 02,2026 07:10:23 AM

We are told that historical anxieties can be healed by deepening communal antagonism, as if recasting contemporary politics as an epic struggle between Hindus and Muslims were the path to renewal. In this imagination, politics becomes myth, victimhood becomes virtue, and the past substitutes for the future

P B Mehta writes: MNREGA was the ground beneath our feet. It’s slipping awaySubscriber Only

December 19,2025 06:19:19 AM

One of the principal arguments advanced against the MGNREGA is that it raises wages. This concern underlies the clamour to restrict the scheme to the agricultural off-season. But in the context of the extreme precarity at which the Indian poor operate, this concern is close to moot

P B Mehta writes: Party-state is marching into public universities. There is no one to say noSubscriber Only

December 12,2025 07:47:10 AM

We must ask whether the form of party politics that dominates student life in India is counterproductive. Should student bodies be formally affiliated with political parties at all?

In thinking of the good death, what are the lines we ought to draw?Subscriber Only

November 29,2025 07:01:24 AM

I must confess an admiration for David’s absolute lucidity. I don’t know what kind of terror it takes to anticipate the erosion of memory itself.

In The Eleventh Hour, Salman Rushdie asks: What remains when words fail?Subscriber Only

November 22,2025 10:42:15 AM

This collection of stories is animated by death — by ghosts, by conversations with dead authors, by meditations on mortality

P B Mehta writes on SC ruling on governors: An obligingly ambiguous piece of judgmentSubscriber Only

November 22,2025 07:05:44 AM

A backtracking Court writes a new doctrine of law as infinite elasticity

Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: In Delhi and beyond, toxic air is sustained by toxic politicsSubscriber Only

November 14,2025 10:28:14 AM

And if that politics continues unchallenged, it will soon turn into something more dangerous still, a toxic distemper. Ignore it at your peril

Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: From Zohran Mamdani, Nehru and the forgotten thread of freedomSubscriber Only

November 07,2025 06:06:25 AM

Mamdani’s invocation of Nehru recalled a formative episode in Nehru’s own life -- his first engagement with city government at the age of 34, when he was elected chairman of the Allahabad Municipal Board.

Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes on climate change: If Trump’s denialism is dangerous, Bill Gates’s complacency is more soSubscriber Only

November 01,2025 07:05:08 AM

Gates’s argument, Trump’s appropriation notwithstanding, is not denialist. Nor is it a call to ignore climate change. Yet his reframing of priorities is, in some ways, more insidious

Peacemaker: The forgotten U Thant gave the UN its moral voice, writes Pratap Bhanu MehtaSubscriber Only

October 25,2025 10:18:38 AM

Peacemaker, a new biography by Thant Myint-U, revives the story of how the forgotten Secretary-General U Thant gave the UN its rare moral authority.

Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: Does the collapse of sincerity mark the end of our capacity to make a common world?Subscriber Only

October 24,2025 06:21:30 AM

The problem with sincerity is that it is not merely an inner mental state; it must be a legible social practice, a form of life. Yet, something in the contemporary structure of the world renders sincerity unreadable. We simply cannot attribute it to anyone

PB Mehta writes | Lessons from a Nobel laureate: To become a knowledge power, India must address structural disconnects in its own knowledgeSubscriber Only

October 18,2025 06:51:09 AM

Work of Joel Mokyr forces us to confront a truth: Knowledge is not simply a tap that can be turned on by getting the incentives right -- one must also account for the capacity to respond to necessity

P B Mehta writes: The loneliness of Ram and GandhiSubscriber Only

October 02,2025 08:17:08 AM

Both reached the same uncomfortable truth — the moral exemplar often stands outside the logic of power