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India’s “flawed” democracy and the colonial legacy

Originally posted in OpIndia The news that self-appointed guardians of world democracy, the US based Freedom House and Sweden’s V-Dem Institute had downgraded India’s democracy to “partially free” and “flawed” has captured the headlines in…

Ways to improve English communication and vocabulary

English Vocabulary: The first step to expand your vocabulary is to buy the Wren and Martin “Wordpower made easy.” You will learn the linguistic origin of words and begin to look at English words in…

Excerpt: What is the path forward?

While there are many quixotic demands of protesting farmers, the prime concerns seems to be mistrust of the private sector and questioning the intentions of the government. Much of the farmer opposition is based on…

Excerpt: Why not give MSP prices to all farmers?

The people advancing this argument have absolutely no understanding of how markets work. Around 60-80% of foodgrain procurement in India currently happens through the private sector. Some pay the MSP prices but most do not.…

Excerpt: Will farmers be screwed by privatization?

Indians have a paternalistic and socialistic approach to privatization. Nehru nationalized Indian Airlines hoping to provide top notch service and to make it accessible to everyone. Indira Gandhi did the same with Indian banks to…

Excerpt: Are the protests non-political?

Just look at who is driving the protests in the enclosed list. We see the following – a bunch of purely political parties and the Bharatiya Kisan Union (highlighted in yellow). The President of the…

Excerpt: Are farmers from all over India protesting?

It is silly to say that Indian farmers are protesting. While much of the protests are political, most of the protests seem to be from one state, Punjab. To understand why, it would help to…

Excerpt: Who are the vested interests?

Private sector players like Amul, Suguna, Nestle, Hatsun, and ITC work directly with farmers and set up storage and collection facilities to procure directly. This simplifies the supply chain and makes the overall costs cheaper.…

Excerpt: Long term consequences of no reforms

India is stuck in the past. Figure 2 shows that it is almost 200 years behind the rest of the world when it comes to moving out of agriculture, and transitioning to other sectors of…

Excerpt: Coming to terms with the virus within

The standard model of a virus is that it is non-living, it is a strand of RNA and is inherently destructive. While some parts of these descriptors may be correct in some scenarios, it would…

Excerpt: The deepest questions of life

Is there a definition of life? Right from childhood, we are brought up to think that it is easy to differentiate living from non-living. Living beings can see, hear, smell, taste and feel. Humans are…

Excerpt: A peek into the viral universe

Let us trace the history of virology. Several hundred years ago in China, people inhaled powder from scabs of smallpox sufferers in order to immunize others. By the 1700s this was a well-known practice in…

Excerpt – Studying genetics and virulence

COVID 19: Coronaviruses have historically caused mild common colds, outside incidents like the SARS and MERS outbreaks. Mutations in 2019 have turned this less harmful Coronavirus into the more malevolent COVID 19 version. The COVID 19…

Excerpt: Investigating the origin of pandemics

In November, doctors in southeastern China began to see the first cases of what would later be a global pandemic. Doctors had never seen the viral illness before, and at first, thought the cases they…

Essay 1: The hidden world of viruses

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a…