FIRST & FOREMOST ASIAN WEEKLY IN EUROPE India records more than 43,000 new Covid cases on a single day
Eating for better health needn’t be expensive SEE PAGE - 8-9
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Keeping children safer at school
India abstains from UNHRC vote on Lanka’s human rights record
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SEE PAGE - 16-17
Let noble thoughts come to us from every side
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27 MARCH - 2 APRIL 2021 - VOL 49 ISSUE 46
WE REMEMBER
inside: Maninder Sidhu appointed as Canadian Parliamentary Secretary SEE PAGE - 22
India, US to further strengthen defence ties
Priyanka Mehta
On the anniversary of Britain’s first lockdown, an independent research report by the British Academy warned that society will continue to feel the impacts of Covid-19 for a decade or more without an urgent public policy overhaul. Their review ‘The Covid decade: Understanding the long-term societal impacts of Covid-19’ appeared as Britain observed a minute’s silence over the lost lives of 146,487 people who are believed to have diedof Covid-19. The Academy forecasts that significant intervention will be needed to avoid an acceleration towards poorer health, social and economic outcomes and a more extreme pattern of inequality. Most concerningly it has warned about the lost and likely unrecoverable access to education at all levels, exacerbating existing socio-economic inequality and impeding progress towards a prosperous, high-skilled economy. Continued on page 6
India and the US resolved to further strengthen their robust defence ties as a bulwark against China’s belligerence in the Indo-Pacific, even as US secretary of defence Lloyd J Austin raised human rights issues and India’s impending induction of the Russian S-400 missile systems. Continued on page 25