8 Feb 2022
Harini Calamur
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A few days after Republic Day, where we celebrated our rights, we are seeing the sight of young Muslim women who are seeking a college education being turned away from institutions of learning – for the crime of wearing a hijab/burqa. In a blatantly discriminatory move, some colleges across coastal Karnataka are preventing their female…
2 Feb 2022
Harini Calamur
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Last week, there were three days of public violence in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. At stake were not religion or religious differences. Nor was it offence to religion. What took place was an outpouring of simmering anger and resentment that does not bode well for the state or the nation. Angry young aspirants for a…
24 Sep 2021
Oommen C. Kurian
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There are four types of endemic human corona viruses in the world—229E, NL63, OC43, and HKU1—and people across countries commonly get infected with these. According to experts, SARS-CoV-2 virus is soon becoming the fifth endemic human coronavirus. Once the supply bottlenecks of COVID-19 vaccines are overcome, the SARS-CoV-2 virus is supposed to become yet another…
4 May 2021
Vikas Kathuria & Arul Scaria
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It is clear by now that universal access to vaccines depends upon cheap prices, and high scale and speed of production. Even if governments subsidise prices to make the vaccines cheap or ideally free of cost, at present, there are not enough vaccines to administer the critical mass of the population in poor- and middle-income…
2 Apr 2021
Samir Saran
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As Britain readies to host the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow in November this year, there is a concerted effort to push countries towards publicly endorsing and adopting ‘Net Zero’—a carbon neutral emission norm—as policy. This is a demand for an inflexible, near-impossible, time-bound agenda to achieve what is…
23 Jan 2021
Oommen C. Kurian
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The biggest vaccination campaign ever has also brought the focus on health inequalities at a global scale. As of 21st January, of the more than 55 million Covid-19 vaccine shots administered across the world, only 55 doses have gone to people of a low-income country. That country is Guinea, and they have secured these 55…
6 Jan 2021
Oommen C. Kurian
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Despair was the leitmotif of 2020. Even countries with acclaimed health systems have been through a nightmare that is yet to end. In this gloomy, dismal scenario, as the world enters 2021, the multiple COVID-19 vaccines that have secured regulatory approvals across the world and are being rolled out to much fanfare, offer a glimmer…
10 Oct 2020
Chitra Subramaniam
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No, the system is not broken. For most Indians there never existed a system except one that took the subjugation and acquiescence of millions of Indians for granted. From one generation to the next, the obligation to obey has been transmitted without words as if genetically coded. The instructions were and are in the air.…
28 Sep 2020
Chitra Subramaniam
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Deontology. It’s a word that constantly speaks to the journalist in me. Rules, ethics, respect and language must guide an editor 24/7 as s/he examines evidence, facts, leads and stories. There comes a time when journalists who respect their work and that of their colleagues seek to secure the hard won gains of free speech…
26 Sep 2020
S. Ramadorai
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India has a positive demographic opportunity, with over 60 percent of its population in the working-age group. Needless to say, education and skill development are the tools required to realize this demographic potential. In this backdrop, the formulation of the National Education Policy 2020 that replaced the 34-year-old National Policy on Education (NPE), 1986, assumes…