“Dadu, Dadu…Get up Dadu. Eat something. Take your medicines. Drink a glass of water. Wake up Dadu. Oh Dadu…” ‘Dadu’ means grandfather in Bengali. When she utters the word, with deep sweetness and warmth, and when she repeats it again and again, cajoling the patient to wake up, it resurrects a stream of childhood memories and a deep sense of[Read More...]
Jaipur: When the vaccination drive started in the country earlier this year there was worryingly low turnout initially in Rajasthan, India’s largest state. So much so that Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot had personally appealed to people to come forward and take the jab. Vaccination rates have improved considerably now after interconnected groups of students from the rural areas of[Read More...]
“Don’t you worry I will have to do a survey of Kovid-19 in Noorani Nagar, Green Park. It’s a question of people’s lives. By the grace of Allah everything will be fine, I will not die”. Sameer Khan breaks down as he recalls his wife Farah Qazi’s words of assurance about her own safety while working on a government survey[Read More...]
At the peak of the recent second wave of Covid infections while other parts of rural Uttar Pradesh struggled to survive the pandemic, there was no panic among residents in Deorai village of Kerakat block of Jaunpur district. This was thanks to the volunteer work done by a group of young activists, backed by celebrity poets and artists, to ensure[Read More...]
What connects the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 to Remdesivir, the blockbuster medicine widely used during the ongoing Covid pandemic? First is the fact that both are based on dubious claims. The US invasion was carried out on the false pretext of Saddam Hussein having weapons of mass destruction, while Remdesivir has been aggressively marketed as a drug the[Read More...]
During the peak of the second surge of the deadly killer virus in summer this year, parts of urban India were trapped in daily despair — amidst a non-stop spiral of dying, death and desperation. The mighty Indian State led by a ‘powerful’ Hindutva icon had literally withered away, and the rich and the poor were on their own, left[Read More...]
With five kilograms of ghungroo tied to her feet Chhaya Nagjakar practices her steps to the beat of a popular song for hours every day in her small house in the town of Miraj in Sangli district of Maharashtra. The 35-year-old tamasha artiste hopes to dance once again before thousands of mesmerized spectators sometime in the future. While Chaya persists[Read More...]
In this rural health centre in Haryana, the staff shortage is so bad a security guard had to collect Covid samples. Solra: Primary health centres (PHC) are considered the backbone of public healthcare in rural India and they cater to nearly 50,000 people in some places like Solra village in Haryana’s Palwal district. The problems faced by this facility are[Read More...]
