Mandatory rural service for doctors seems to be an idea that is gaining strength in India. The Union Health Minister has reportedly said that soon, medical students would have to spend a year in rural areas. Already, students in Telengana and Andhra Pradesh are being asked to work in rural areas for a year –…
It’s a slippery slope when we start banning books and even worse, withdrawing or recalling books. Do books need to start passing through a censor soon, to determine what is acceptable and what is not? Not that even a censor would help – because apparently all it takes is a few people to take offense…
It seems one cannot open an Indian newspaper without reading about at least one rape happening somewhere every day. This time it is a gang rape of a journalist in Mumbai. The bastion of the last city supposedly safe for women has also fallen. Mumbai continues to be much safer for women than many other…
This is a very moving survivor’s account of the flooding at the Kedarnath shrine. It is hard to imagine the scale of destruction and the suddenness of it, even reading news reports. To actually live through that is horrific beyond words. I keep reading reports about how the Government is not doing its job, evacuating…
It is a cycle almost as predictable as the boom and bust of economic cycles – every few years, the monsoon fails and suddenly, there is water scarcity in the cities. People suffer and try everything they can to tide over the shortage. Then, the next year the rains are better and everyone forgets about…
Now that the government has approved FDI in multi-brand retail, it has paved the way for the likes of Walmart and Amazon to set up shop in India. Predictably, there have been protests from shopkeepers and Bharat Bandhs from political parties. Street vendors are saying the government is ignoring the working class, while others are…
My grandmother died last week. When I heard the news I was profoundly relieved. Sad, yes, but mostly relieved. Let me tell you why. She had spent the last month or more in the hospital, mainly in the ICU at a big name hospital. A great team of doctors was taking care of her round…
Long years ago, I went to the Regional Transport Office twice – the first time to get my two-wheeler driving license, and the second, to get my car driving license. Both are still valid, which means, in theory, that I can drive a car anytime I go to India, if I am feeling particularly brave,…
Not too long ago, I was researching baby names and paying close attention to what people were naming their babies. It didn’t take me long to realize that we Indians have a few unwritten rules for naming our babies. Here are the top 10 rules based on my research : 1. The name should start…
As I read through the news coverage of Sathya Sai Baba’s death, it struck me how we (or at least our news media) seem to view news events as one more excuse to talk about cricket players. Why does there seem to be more coverage of Sachin’s grief following Sathya Sai Baba’s death, rather than…
In the past, I’ve written about theft from passengers’ bags by baggage handlers in Indian airports, and the mysterious chalk marks used by customs officials to mark certain bags for special treatment. Little did I know that singling out NRIs for stealing from their bags is an international practice. According to this news article, Michael…
With the cricket World Cup going on, I have been watching a lot of Willow TV. There are a lot of NRI targeted ads, but one in particular irritates me considerably. It doesn’t help, either, that given the frequency of ads and the constant repetition, I watch this particular ad quite a few times everyday. …
The other day, there was an interesting article in the Hindu on the subject of why women scientists drop out. The article quoted two research papers, which tried to analyze why there were so few women scientists at the highest levels. The first is the one by Kanta Rani and Rajesh Luthra of CSIR’s human…
When temple authorities lie, it is much worse than when ordinary mortals do. When temple authorities tell big, fat whoppers, you wonder what the world is coming to, and how they think they can get away with it. The Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB) has finally admitted to what the more cynical among us have always…
Much is being made in Indian newspapers of A R Rahman’s two Oscar nominations (Original Score and Original Song). Nobody has seen “127 hours” or knows anything about the score or the song, but it’s an Oscar nomination! We will be even more thrilled if he wins in at least one of these categories. All…
The Imagined Universe 