People who play doctor or heed quackery are biting off more than they can chew Whenever a patient with bleeding in the stomach or a child whose fever has not subsided in a week is admitted into Sasaram-based physician B.B. Singh’s clinic, he immediately knows that it’s a case of self-medication. “At least 40-50 per cent of my patients have either had sleeping pills, or antibiotics, or painkillers without a...

Nobody sheds a tear when the police harass ordinary citizens. But with the rich and powerful under the corruption scanner, the Prime Minister now fears a police state. The Prime Minister and his advisors just don't get it. At a time when the public is looking for an end to the loot of public money, the last thing they want to hear from their government is a bunch of excuses and...

-The Times of India   The high drama over Baba Ramdev's midnight eviction and action against the peaceful gathering has shifted the focus away from the central is sue raised by the Baba – black money overseas – to the right to protest in a democracy. This being the case, there is danger of an uninformed debate on black money taking over, guided more by emotions and populist talk rather than...

It was not that long back that Baba Ramdev, a Yadav from Haryana, was just a superior yoga instructor with a mass following, a people's Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, whose clientele was at the upper end of the social spectrum. Today, Baba Ramdev heads a yoga and health empire, worth hundreds of crores, with even an island off the coast of Scotland, gifted to him by grateful devotees, to run a...

The concept of “a ubiquitous magic plastic” that bring out the unique in a living person has caught the fascination of most of us. An unpopular government sees in it the ability of cutting a long red tape short to correctly identify the genuine citizens in need. The agonised cops of India see in it a great ally to apprehend the much-wanted terrorists, whose biometric data could now be verified...