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Change in the Time of Pandemics: Social, Economic and Medical

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The Covid-19 pandemic has me thinking. Which are the areas that are affected the most today AND why is it so difficult to contain? Urban areas with a sizable population that live in slums or clustered houses. Areas where social distancing is near impossible. Where access to education is absent and literacy level is very poor. Where access to public dispensaries and hospitals are very poor. Where they are available are of such low quality that going there might get a person more ill-health than when they went there in the first place. These need not be super speciality hospitals but where basic curtesy, cleanliness and availability of supplies exist. India must realize now the cost of neglecting and appeasing its squatters and hutment areas. India must realize the importance of education, multifarious skill-building and building preventive, predictive and clinical health facilities. India must understand the importance of the collective where small and medium scale
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Eating Right

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Here we go again! One more post about diet. At the outset, I would like to say that there is NOTHING new that you will see here. You know everything already. I might even be plagiarizing this since all I know is either from talking to/ observing others and from reading articles. Another note: I am not a dietitian or a doctor. If you have health complications, I suggest you check with them before you read any further. Then WHY am I writing this? Because we all know what we are doing wrong and what we should be doing to set things right. Correct? Yes. However, are we able to do it? Unless we repeatedly suggest this to one’s subconscious, it just does not stick. For some, a diet may be difficult to follow given an underlying physiological or psychological condition. Will I say cut out all your carbohydrates and sugar? NO! What I am going to say is profoundly simple. Yet it will be very difficult at first. It will be difficult for achieving this conti
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Keep Clean, Go Green

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Writing after a long time. Hope to be a lot more regular in times to come.  Half of the topic I've chosen to write today is the flavour of the season.  Everyone seems to have woken up to the need to get our country clean. India's current Prime Minster (Narendra D. Modi) has been trumpeting the need to keep clean almost since the day he joined office - maybe before as well when he was the Chief Minister of Gujarat. Our country that has been termed filthy, dirty and adjectives such as these for a long, long while now. It has AGAIN been given a shot in the arm to clean-up its act. This is not the first time this activity has been taken up at the national level. Will this catch the nation's imagination and stick such that it becomes part of the psyche? Or will this be another attempt that will fizzle out? And then another political war will start with the opposition stating "I told you so"!  Let us first understand what the aim is. "We need to make
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Indian Parliamentary System

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60 years of Indian parliamentary system. What do I make of it? A simple thing: more and more people in India reading Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler. More and more people liking the civil society activists. More and more people all over the world angered by the Indian economic policies and procedures. More and more people in India are talking about the Arab Spring. More and more people... The list goes on and on...and people are not happy with the way things are neither at the Center nor at the state (federal) levels. What do people think of politicians? Dirty, corrupt pigs. What do people think of government officials ('babus')? Lazy, corrupt pigs. Is this correct? It doesn't matter. What people think about you is who you are to the rest of the world! And there has to be a grain of truth if most people think of you the way they do. How has this come to pass? We are a country who have had expert statesmen like Sardar Patel, Rajagopalachari and Vajpayee...all politicians
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Commonwealth Games in New Delhi, India

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Should the Commonwealth Games be allowed to go on in India? Firstly, I am sure that the material used is substandard. This would put the participant sports persons and the viewing public and dignitaries at risk. Secondly, it has caused enough havoc, death and generally looting of tax-payers money to get this shameful blot on beautiful city like New Delhi. The ministers and the organizing committee who are part of this mess should be first removed from their positions. An enquiry should be done on these corrupt people and the entire money that they have eaten up unearthed and ploughed back into other development activities. When sports is no big deal in India, when work and studies are the only criteria for importance, why should this country host an event of this magnitude? When there are millions of poor people, illiterate people, a population that is beyond control, dirt and grime on the streets, lack of sanitation, lack of proper drinking water why should this country be spen
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