This article was published in the magazine The India Forum on Dec 25th. It’s a kind of heartfelt letter to people of India about the very worrying direction the country is taking under the authoritarian regime of the BJP and the cultural regressiveness (and repressiveness) of the RSS. Here’s the link to the full article.… Continue reading Why I’m Losing Hope in India – A Socialist, Secular, Democratic Reflection
The callous response to Dr Payal Tadvi’s suicide last year prompted me to write this piece. It’s an appeal to the medical profession in India to wake up to casteism in their midst before it is too late. The article was published in the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics on 23rd Nov 2020. The full… Continue reading Caste and casteism in medical education and training in India
There has been a lot of commentary on how the Aarogya Setu app, publicized heavily by the Government of India, has hardly been of any assistance in the Covid control efforts. At the same time, it is important to note that perhaps the government was aware of its uselessness from the beginning, and that the… Continue reading Aarogya Setu: The dangerous obsession with technology in public health policy
For the previous posts in this series, see here, here, here, and here. [Throughout history epidemics have served as excellent windows into social and cultural beliefs and norms. While this contagion-catalyzed uncovering of a society’s thought processes helps historians understand past societies in better ways, for present societies it can potentially be utilized as a… Continue reading COVID-19 in India – Society and Culture – the Lockdown and its Pain
For the previous posts in this series, see here, here, and here. [Throughout history epidemics have served as excellent windows into social and cultural beliefs and norms. While this contagion-catalyzed uncovering of a society’s thought processes helps historians understand past societies in better ways, for present societies it can potentially be utilized as a way… Continue reading COVID-19 in India – Society and Culture – PPEs, Frontline workers, and their families
This appeared in The Wire on 28 January 2020. Here is the article. I wrote this mainly in response to the Indian government’s gradual and timid abandonment of the universal health care goal for its people, with the latest setback being the plans to hand over our country’s civil hospitals to private agencies. “Immediately after… Continue reading Why India’s founders championed a well-funded government-led healthcare system
We are so used to seeing the interesting Republic Day parades since childhood that we hardly pause to think where and how exactly all of that originated. The bare minimum we are told is that the revered Constitution of India came into effect on January 26 1950, and the celebrations commemorate that event. While that… Continue reading What are the origins of the unique cultural parades during India’s Republic Day celebrations?
This is an understandable discrepancy.. until one realizes that that history of colonial India and of what we know as India’s ‘struggle’ for independence is as much a history of the West and Western actors as of India! I wrote this as an answer to a Quora question (here). I copy most parts of that… Continue reading Why Indian historians do not write about the West as frequently as Euro-American historians write about India
CARING FOR INDIA 