Show, don’t tell: Political narrative through the eyes of a fiction writer

December 6, 2023

Fiction writers would teach how important it is to ‘show’ an audience (reader or listener) and not resort to mere ‘telling’ for effective real-life storytelling/ narratives. In creative writing it is very important to construct mental images of believable pictures and compelling characters for a reader to go on turning...

Voters must be made aware of healthcare issues

July 5, 2022

Covid 19 pandemic is when we have so clearly understood how broken our health systems are and this has made us contemplate the role that the government should play in ensuring healthcare for all in the country. Surprisingly Indian election manifestos across all parties don’t allow healthcare any decent space....

Fungible: The idea at the centre of the NFT sensation

November 26, 2021

What makes NFTs special is that each one represents something unique, and not interchangeable with anything—in other words, not “fungible”. This is what distinguishes them from cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, which are fungible—interchangeable—even though they use the same software technology (blockchain technology) as NFTs. NFTs serve as a kind of deed...

Students’ mental health concerns amid the pandemic

November 11, 2021

Virtually every school in the nation closed in March 2020, replacing in-person schooling with online piecemeal education programmes. The learning setbacks over the last one and half years range from grave for all groups of students to catastrophic for poor children. As a parent of two school going kids, from the start...

Effective first aid necessary for mental healthcare

October 8, 2021

Traditionally, mental healthcare has been oriented to provide care to people, mostly adults, in crisis and emergencies arising out of the madness. Decades ago, when I was in school, we thought of mental disease to be a sickness that belonged to ‘a mysterious kind’. We all have come a long...

COMING OUT OF THE SHADOWS: HOW TO PROTECT MENTAL HEALTH OF TEENAGERS

July 27, 2021

Emerging from waves of Covid-19 pandemic, more than ever, we must prioritise the mental health of the growing minds — the children and adolescents. It is our collective responsibility to keep the well-being of young ones at the forefront in the preparation for future Covid-19 waves and recovery plans. Generation...

Genome surveillance for pandemic disaster preparedness

June 18, 2021

Besides uncovering the gaps in healthcare infrastructure, the pandemic has thrown up the lack of a data-driven ecosystem and culture in the country at various levels of the healthcare system. In today’s world, as much we appreciate the potential of genome science, we need to know that it’s a resource-intensive...

HOW TO TACKLE HEALTHCARE RESOURCE SHORTAGE AND EXPANSION STRATEGY

May 12, 2021

In healthcare, there is no equivalency between a doctor and someone who isn’t one, as patient safety requires doctors to step in when a complex problem or uncertainty arises over the given treatment. But considering the current shortage of doctors (and nurses and paramedics and assistants and so on) amid...

LIVING IN THE SHADOW OF PANDEMIC: WITNESSING THE SHADES OF GREY

May 1, 2021

Spring in Lutyne’s Delhi is a burst of colours — the brightest bougainvillaeas covering porch tops, trellis over entrance gates, the Gulmohar trees flaunting scarlet clusters, the sensuous purples, the purest whites, and at places confetti of cotton wicks from bursting pods of a cotton tree — paint a classic...

UNDERSTANDING THE SOCIO-POLITICAL DETERMINANTS OF HEALTH

February 5, 2021

The health system in a certain place is often a palimpsest which bears traces of both current and historical social and cultural (and health) practices. Health is also a deeply political issue. Legendary German physician Rudolf Virchow in the nineteenth century summarized his belief in the inseparability of medicine and...