Of late, a childhood friend's 80-year-old mother has taken to writing. Emboldened by her single-mindedness, memories dulled by a lifetime of contingencies now respond readily to the daily rustle of pen on paper. One memory stands out in Surjit Kaur's mind. In 1957, as a fresh eyed schoolteacher from Delhi she went on an educational tour to Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal. It was 10 years after Independence...
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The new untouchability-Harish Trivedi
As the dust begins to settle on the Ambedkar cartoon controversy, it may be useful to reflect on what it was all about. Contrary to some rhetorical grandstanding, it was not really about freedom of expression. Nor was it about how (not) to produce livelier school textbooks. Nor indeed about our sense of humour or lack thereof, or the special privileges of comic exaggeration or caricature that cartoonists have enjoyed...
More »Popular antibiotic is bad for heart, may lead to death-Kounteya Sinha
An antibiotic that is widely prescribed in India to combat bacterial sinus infections and bronchitis has been found to be bad for heart. A study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine on Thursday, has found a 2.5-fold higher risk of cardiovascular death in the first five days of taking Azithromycin - commonly called Z-pack - compared with another common antibiotic or no antibiotic at all. Though it was previously considered...
More »The spreading superbug
-The Business Standard Still waiting for a crackdown on antibiotic over-prescription According to a recent study in the Lancet Infectious Diseases journal, the drug-resistant bacterial strain known as New Delhi Metallo-beta-lactamase 1, or NDM-1, has spread to 40 countries. This is quite remarkable, given that it was only discovered in 2008 in the UK, among patients who had recently been hospitalised in India. The “superbug”, as it is commonly known, is...
More »Reading politics and the politics of reading-Janaki Nair
As cartoons, like all other images, are constantly subject to fresh interpretation, there is a need to set boundaries within which dissent must be tolerated; or else we run the risk of damaging the task of knowledge building Like many books, works of art, and articles that have been summarily withdrawn from public circulation, for different political reasons, and due to public pressure, the controversial 1949 cartoon by Shankar has been...
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