Women agricultural labourers like Mangala Harijan, who migrate to work as hand-pollinators in Karnataka’s Haveri district, earn meagre sums of money despite toiling for the billion-dollar seed industry Mangala Harijan remembers every village she has travelled to for work. “Kunchur, Kuragund, Kyatanakeri … I had also gone to Rattihalli one year,” she says listing the… Read More In Haveri: ‘We work hard, but we can’t save’
A new field of psychology has begun to quantify an age-old intuition: Feeling awe is good for us. HENRY WISMAYER We were halfway down the Point Reyes peninsula when Dacher Keltner wandered off-trail. He stopped at an outcrop of granite boulders, where the ground fell away toward Driftwood Beach and the wide, open Pacific beyond.… Read More Finding Awe Amid Everyday Splendor
Eric Bennett First posted April 26, 2018 NB: This comment on the issues connected to ‘multi-culturalism’ and ‘deconstruction’ is written about American literary and media studies departments, but is relevant in other continents. DS Now that we have a culture of higher education in which business studies dominate; now that we face legislatures blind to the… Read More Dear Humanities Profs: We Are the Problem
First posted April 24, 2018 NB: This article, along with Shanti Bhushan’s petition listing ten instances of bench fixing, shows who is committing contempt of court. You cannot utilise your formal authority to throw all principles of fairness (such as not sitting in judgement in a case involving yourself) – to the winds; and then behave… Read More Death of Judge Loya: A critical examination of the ECG and post-mortem demonstrates the failings of the Supreme Court verdict
Letter to the readers, Mainstream, January 7, 2023 DOCUMENTS: BOOKS: IMAGE & SOUND: Editor’s Picks:
YOGENDRA YADAV Has the Bharat Jodo Yatra lowered communal tempers? I ask this question with some trepidation. I have been a data person for a long time. I have asked for hard evidence for any cause-effect claim. And this question does not admit hard evidence. At least not in such a short time span. Yet… Read More Has Bharat Jodo Yatra lowered communal tempers or is it naive optimism?
P.V. RAMESH Medical education in India does not prepare doctors to effectively manage contemporary health challenges, let alone emerging ones. What we need is a comprehensive overhaul to align medical education with the needs of the country and the goal of universal healthcare. The Covid-19 pandemic wreaked unprecedented havoc on the lives and livelihoods of… Read More How’s India Doing in Medical Education for Universal Healthcare?
“They operate in six of the seven continents. The only continent they don’t operate in is Antarctica because penguins don’t have money to buy drugs,” At least 29 people killed in Culiacán as drug cartel gunmen fight bloody battle to stop transport of El Chapo’s son after arrest Mexican troops battled to regain full control… Read More Twenty-four hours of terror as cartel violence engulfs Mexican city
First posted Friday, March 18, 2016 NB: This is the text of my keynote address to the Eighth East-West Inter-cultural Relations Conference held at Ramjas College, the University of Delhi, on March 17, 2016. The details of the conference may be read here A pdf file of the address is downloadable here – DS Satyagraha – An answer to modern nihilism… Read More Satyagraha: An answer to modern nihilism
सीबीआई जज की मौत को लेकर उठे सवाल First posted November 22, 2017 NIRANJAN TAKLE NB: The essential feature of the fascist project is the abolition of the distinction between legal and illegal violence. The presence of DIG Vanzara, an accused in the Ishrat Jahan and Sohrabuddin Sheikh encounter cases, in an RSS meeting attended by its ‘Sarsanghchalak’ Mohan… Read More A Family Breaks Its Silence: Shocking Details Emerge In death of presiding judge in Sohrabuddin Trial
After the truth-shower 