Last week, Brazil’s total death toll from COVID-19 passed 400,000. In India, the pandemic is taking around 3,500 lives every day and has prompted a global response, with offers of oxygen, ventilators, intensive-care beds and more. Although these two countries are thousands of miles apart, the crises in both are the result of political failings:… Read More India, Brazil and the human cost of sidelining science
NB: God bless you RamKaran ji. Om Shanti. RamKaran Mishra is a Hindu priest who performs the last rites at the Ghazipur crematorium in east Delhi, on the frontline of India’s Covid crisis. He’s been cremating up to 150 bodies day after day, working long hours into the night. With no end in sight,… Read More The Hindu priest struggling to cremate India’s Covid dead – video
Recently the former District Communication Chief of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) for Delhi tweeted “There is fire everywhere in Delhi, has any Dilliwala seen BJP Delhi? Where is BJP4Delhi? Or is the state body dissolved?” Rajendra Tuli’s question could as well be put to the BJP and its leaders, generally missing from the fight… Read More Bharat Bhushan – Covid-19 drugs: Eager beavers of BJP play God
England is due to host the next football World Cup, and in preparation for this most prestigious of sporting events, the stadium in Wembley has undergone a makeover. The refurbished stadium is ready a year before the tournament is scheduled to kick off. The Football Association’s chief executive boasts that this is now the largest… Read More Ramachandra Guha: The unmaking of India
NEW DELHI (Reuters) – A forum of scientific advisers set up by the government warned Indian officials in early March of a new and more contagious variant of the coronavirus taking hold in the country, five scientists who are part of the forum told Reuters. Despite the warning, four of the scientists said the federal… Read More Devjyot Ghoshal, Krishna Das. Exclusive: Scientists say India government ignored warnings amid coronavirus surge // Kapil Komireddi: Modi Fiddles While India Burns
NB: The only caveat I have to make on this incisive comment refers to the (admittedly conditional) phrase: “instances that must haunt any ruler left with an iota of conscience.” Our rulers do not have an iota of conscience. Within days of the latest lockdown, the RSS general secretary was talking about anti-national forces conspiring to… Read More Suhas Palshikar: A monumental failure of governance // ‘There should be no clampdown on information, people can voice grievances on social media’: Supreme Court
Article on the US proposal for a common minimum tax on corporations and its likely benefits for India in The Hindu on April 27. It is attached here https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/an-idea-on-taxation-that-is-worth-a-try/article34417756.ece Panel discussion on reverse migration of workers during second coronavirus wave in India, organized by IMPRI on April 26. https://youtub.e/xopvAKaivV4 Article on fighting the second wave… Read More Arun Kumar: Articles and discussions on COVID and impact, Global Corporate taxation and Academic Autonomy
The pandemic has now firmly gripped many smaller cities, towns and villages where the devastation is largely under-reported. Rajesh Soni spent eight hours taking his father from one hospital to another in a tuk-tuk in Kota district in the northern state of Rajasthan on Tuesday. He couldn’t get an ambulance and the rickety vehicle was… Read More India Covid-19: Deadly second wave spreads from cities to small towns
The selected cartoons appeared first in other publications, either in print or online, or on social media, and are credited appropriately. Alok Nirantar | Twitter https://theprint.in/last-laughs/ecs-too-little-too-late-decision-and-indias-kafka-esque-reality/647537/ Election Commission responsible for spreading Covid-19, should probably be booked for murder: Madras HC // Bharat Bhushan on the departing CJI: Good riddance Reality of Lucknow’s Covid funerals stands… Read More EC’s ‘too little, too late’ decision, and India’s ‘Kafkaesque’ reality // Reality of Lucknow’s Covid funerals stands in stark contrast to UP govt’s claims
Newly-built “dry latrines” and “hanging toilets” in rural India are the result of the lockdowns of 2020-21 despite the Prohibition of Employment of Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013, and a strict ban. Sanitary toilet usage has declined because of the COVID-19 scare as, currently, more than six lakh toilets in rural India have acute water… Read More Pragya Akhilesh – The pandemic has exposed India’s dirty truth: a broken sanitation system
