HOME
Category: Editorials
January 01, 2005
India has witnessed yet another disaster and with it has come another outpouring of sympathy, good intentions and long-distance aid - all fuelled by television images of grieving relatives, politicians' and filmstars' flying visits, and long lines of people waiting for help. The media carries gha...
January 01, 2005
Population control. The words seem to erupt into conversations periodically. It is a reaction afflicting politicians and bureaucrats of all hues, in spite of decades of research and scholarship which have established that coercive measures directed at changing fertility behaviour do not work, tha...
October 01, 2004
Societal support to the death penalty in India was high during the public debate preceding the hanging of Dhananjoy Chatterjee in Kolkata. Community hysteria was such that some youngsters died in mock re-enactments of the hanging, and the hangman acquired the status of a celebrity. The support ba...
July 01, 2004
In September 2003, an international initiative was launched to treat 3 million people living with HIV/AIDS by 2005-the 3-by-5 initiative. According to WHO estimates, 95% of the 40 million people living with HIV/AIDS (PLHA) are in developing countries. Less than 8% of those needing anti-retroviral...
April 01, 2004
In our scandal-prone Indian public life, one scandal distinguishes itself by the amazing regularity with which it hits the headlines every few years. The only variation is its shift from one city to another as if in planned rotation. Thanks to the desperation, ingenuity and collusion of the playe...
January 01, 2004
If the one who decides does not pay, and the one who pays does not decide, will truth alone have a chance? If the one who decides does not pay, and the one who pays does not decide, and if the one who decides is 'paid', will truth stand any chance?
January 01, 2004
How many people know that eight patients in Hyderabad who were administered recombinant streptokinase to test its efficacy and safety have died? According to the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC), the trial was being conducted by the drug's manufacturer Shantha Biotechnics without tak...
October 01, 2003
Liver transplantation is accepted worldwide as the only cure for terminal liver failure. Although the recent tragic death of a liver donor at a hospital in Delhi underlines the need for caution, a knee-jerk reaction to liver transplantation or liver donation is inappropriate.
April 01, 2003
'What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?' Non-violence in peace and war — Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)
July 01, 2003
The severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic has been one of the most dramatic transnational infections of recent times. Images of entire populations of countries carrying on their daily activities with facemasks have perhaps no precedent in the history of man's struggle against infectio...