Pratap Bhanu Mehta

Pratap Bhanu Mehta is Contributing Editor at the Indian Express. He has been vice-chancellor of Ashoka University and president, Centre Policy Research. Before he started engaging with contemporary affairs, he taught political theory at Harvard, and briefly at JNU. He has written on intellectual history, political theory, law, India's social transformation and world affairs. He is the recipient of the Infosys Prize, the Adisheshiah Prize and the Amartya Sen Prize. Follow @pbmehta

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More From Pratap Bhanu Mehta

Peacemaker is the biography of U Thant, the forgotten UN Secretary-General who built and outlived the UN’s moral authoritySubscriber Only

October 25,2025 10:18:38 AM

Alongside, the book also tells the story of the United Nations and its prescient role as an institution of decolonisation

Sat, Oct 25, 2025

The purpose of communication is no longer the creation of common ground. It is a display of oneself

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

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

Fri, Oct 24, 2025

Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt win Nobel Prize for Economics

PB Mehta writes | Lessons from a Nobel laureate: To become a knowledge power, India must address structural disconnects in its own knowledgeSign In to read

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

Sat, Oct 18, 2025

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

Thu, Oct 02, 2025

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Donald Trump.

P B Mehta writes: An imaginary conversation between Donald and NarendraSubscriber Only

September 19,2025 07:06:35 AM

On tariffs, trade and leaders who make nations great

Fri, Sep 19, 2025

P B Mehta writes: Nepal, France, America — democracy seems overtaken once moreSubscriber Only

September 12,2025 06:55:47 AM

There is one recurring theme: Young people feel robbed of their future

Fri, Sep 12, 2025

P B Mehta writes: Can Indian capital step up when it is needed the most?Subscriber Only

August 29,2025 06:12:12 AM

For decades, businesses blamed the state for stifling potential. Now they reveal their innate inability to invest, build, or imagine the future

Fri, Aug 29, 2025

Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: Alasdair MacIntyre and the oppressions and fictions of modernitySubscriber Only

August 18,2025 07:05:27 AM

His masterpiece, 'After Virtue', published in 1981, anticipates many of the pathologies of modern political life.

Mon, Aug 18, 2025

P B Mehta writes: Giving in to the American state is an affront to India’s dignitySubscriber Only

August 05,2025 07:23:13 AM

Our pro-America lobby is loudly proclaiming that this model is working. Let us put it as modestly as we can, the jury is out on that one. But in any case, it is not clear what the rest of the world gains

Tue, Aug 05, 2025

Naima Abu Ful holds her malnourished 2-year-old child, Yazan, at their home in the Shati refugee camp in Gaza City on Wednesday, July 23, 2025. (AP Photo)

Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: If Gaza’s corpses can vanish from our conscience, what else are we becoming blind to?Subscriber Only

July 24,2025 06:28:25 AM

The horror in Gaza is so palpable that explanation or contextualisation often feels obscene. These are now tools of evasion, not illumination. The evasions and silences are linked to the broader civic failures of democracy

Fri, Jul 25, 2025

Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: Hyper nationalism prevents our foreign policy from asking tough questionsSubscriber Only

July 17,2025 06:20:56 AM

India is rightly concerned, and is somewhat shocked, that it lost the diplomatic high ground after Operation Sindoor

Thu, Jul 17, 2025

P B Mehta writes: In Bihar, now, prove your identitySubscriber Only

July 08,2025 07:20:53 AM

EC exercise in Bihar is an illustration of bureaucratic insensitivity, state overreach. It will erode trust in institutions

Tue, Jul 08, 2025

Rather than fixing good and bad nationalism, let us talk directly about the issues and values at stake. (Illustration: C R Sasikumar)

Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: On Emergency and nationalism, a debate that blinds us to the futureSubscriber Only

July 01,2025 06:14:32 AM

In an era of such planetary-scale economic, technological and moral change, it is galling that we still want to remain stuck in the Seventies

Tue, Jul 01, 2025

Pratap Bhanu Mehta on conflicts across the world: Dangerous new thresholdsSubscriber Only

June 18,2025 07:05:39 AM

The impunity and nihilism of this moment are glaring. Amidst mass devastation and suffering, our moral faculties have been paralysed

Wed, Jun 18, 2025

free speech, censorship, hate speech, free speech legal restrictions, communal harmony, blasphemy laws, legal censorship, citizen agency, Indian express

Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: What a free speech regime requiresSubscriber Only

June 13,2025 07:10:33 AM

Crisis of free speech is crisis of social mistrust. Each act of legal censorship is a vote of no confidence in our autonomous agency

Fri, Jun 13, 2025

Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: SC order in Mahmudabad case casts a shadow on our rightsSubscriber Only

May 23,2025 06:51:58 AM

We are now in a constitutional regime in which even the Court’s philanthropic benevolence in granting bail lays the groundwork for further oppression.

Fri, May 23, 2025

Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: Dealing with Pakistan, weak or strongSubscriber Only

May 12,2025 07:20:22 AM

Immediate onus is on Pakistan to demonstrate commitment to pacification of terrorism. There is no avoiding political process in Subcontinent

Mon, May 12, 2025

Security personnel at Pahalgam terror attack site

The Pahalgam abyssSubscriber Only

April 24,2025 16:29:57 PM

Perpetrators of the terror strike will be brought to justice. But a sense of foreboding will remain

Fri, Apr 25, 2025

technology, technological dependency, technological developments, tech sector, digital technology, General Purpose Technologies, editorial, Indian express, opinion news, current affairs

Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: How technology affects balance of power — and the lesson for IndiaSubscriber Only

April 19,2025 07:05:12 AM

If you want to be a technology leader, you should focus less on getting dominance in specific sectors and more on broad-based policies that allow for the diffusion of General Purpose Technologies

Sat, Apr 19, 2025

US President Donald Trump after his remarks on tariffs in the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., April 2, 2025. (REUTERS)

Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: India must stand up to Donald Trump, the bullySubscriber Only

April 05,2025 07:05:41 AM

Recent US moves are brutal power play. Delhi must work on an international coalition to resist his imperiousness

Sat, Apr 05, 2025

Arun Shourie’s book on Savarkar, A New Icon, is a biting indictment of the Hindutva leader but fails to diagnose what makes his ideology so pervasive in modern IndiaSubscriber Only

April 04,2025 18:51:12 PM

Shourie does what he has so often done in the past: read original sources deeply and thoroughly to make a compelling case for the prosecution. Savarkar does not escape the full force of Shourie’s forensic wrath. He uses Savarkar’s own words to indict the man

Sun, Aug 03, 2025

Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: Under Trump, America teeters on the edge of authoritarianismSubscriber Only

March 18,2025 07:42:21 AM

His playbook has an Orwellian penchant for the inversion of language and policy and rides on normalising fear and compliance

Tue, Mar 18, 2025

Centre, state, party: The many conundrums of federalismSubscriber Only

March 14,2025 06:56:07 AM

The question of the dominance of parties threatens to obscure issues of federalism, including on delimitation

Sat, Mar 15, 2025

Pratap Bhanu Mehta writes: After Ukraine, imperialism is now the normSubscriber Only

March 05,2025 06:58:33 AM

The fact that the invasion of Ukraine happened at all was a profound failure, not of Ukraine as Trump suggests, but of the international community, which failed to uphold its security guarantees to a country that had willingly given up its nuclear arsenal.

Wed, Mar 05, 2025

As BJP returns to power, its challenge is to strike a balance between city’s urban aspirations and urbanity. Delhi polls

Delhi’s contradictions took down Dikshit and Kejriwal. They will continue to haunt BJPSubscriber Only

February 20,2025 06:54:58 AM

Perhaps the starting point for thinking about governance is to not begin with a list of schemes, but the contradictions that Delhi must manage.

Wed, Feb 26, 2025