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…
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…
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…
Through Patrix’s blog, I discovered a fascinating article in the Washington Post on the author behind the Hardy Boys series. Franklin W. Dixon (or at least the first Franklin W. Dixon), it turns out, was really someone named Leslie McFarlane. The first few dozen Hardy Boys books were churned out by Leslie, and later the…
How many decades does it take to build a godown? CNN-IBN had an article a few weeks ago about how 10 million tons of wheat and rice are at risk of rotting in India, as they are stored in the open under tarpaulins. This isn’t new, as we know. Every few years, some newspaper publishes…
There are a few things that stood out in Joel Stein’s Time article on the Indianization of Edison, New Jersey, his hometown : 1. There is the casual, drive-by racism: One kid I knew in high school drove down an Indian-dense street yelling for its residents to “go home to India.” In retrospect, I…
I am gladly eating my words. I have gone on record in the past saying that I am glad Wimbledon has a “no 5th set tie-break” policy. After watching the match between Frenchman Nicolas Mahut and American John Isner, I wonder whether it is time to rewrite the rule. My objection to deciding the fifth…
As most of you know, Desi Pundit died at midnight last night. The website has been shut down, and though you can probably still find old posts on Google’s cache, there are no archives on the site itself. Desi Pundit is not alone. Last week, Ultrabrown decided to close shop too. At this rate, I…
Am I alone in wishing Anamika Veeramani had screamed, or jumped up in joy, or cried, or shown some emotion after winning the Spelling Bee? She seemed so matter of fact, I was left wondering whether it hadn’t sunk in, or whether she was too shy or reserved to show any emotion. But more than…
Is it a good idea for a US university to outsource the grading of students’ assignment papers to India? At least one Professor at the University of Houston has taken the lead on this. The Chronicle for Higher Education has an article on Ms. Lori Whisenant, director of business law and ethics studies at the…
If you thought Arundhati Roy had given up writing fiction after “The God of Small Things”, you just need to read her “Walking with the Comrades” to know she hasn’t. It’s a fascinating article that blurs the line between journalism and propaganda. Completely obliterates the line, in fact. The article doesn’t tell me much…
The Imagined Universe 