ISSUES AND CONCERNS ಸಮಸ್ಯೆಗಳ ಮೇಲೆ ಕ್ಷಕಿರಣ

Friends  We are at the end of the year month. They say ‘all good things come to an end’ so shall be the bad ones. Anything that begins has to end. What the last month had in store for India and Indians has to be seen. Among the major events of the month has been the election of Barack Obama as the President of U.S. for the 2nd time. Death of Bal Thackeray brought to an end the life of one of the most charismatic parochial politician of the country. How politics of Mumbai shall change after the exit of Tiger shall be a matter of interest. Hanging of terrorist Kasab is another sad development that probably had to happen, whether right or wrong. Month-in-Perspective has covered events that happened during the month, across India. As usual space constraints are limiting the coverage, of all happenings of relevance, to India and to the world at large. Two events that took place during the month have been covered under Focus for its larger relevance. The attack on Malala Yousafa...

KARNATAKA: There was this book by Michael Lobo “Is Christianity a flawless religion?” released in Mangalore, the other day. He is a former physicist at IISc Bangalore. Book is expected to generate lot of debate since it seems to have favoured liberal over literal. Opinions are likely to be polarised, informs a source. However, clergy in Mangalore is confident, that since Christianity is a religion that believed in continuous corrections, if any, there will only be healthy debate with an open mind. Hope and wish that it remains so. The important thing is, all those who are practitioners of any organised religion, be it Christianity, Islam or Hinduism, should always remain open for its own sake. In a continuously evolving world there should be continuous and participative debate among the opinion makers within the faithfuls without any fear of diktats or fatwas. It is the diktats and fatwas which normally vitiate an open atmosphere especially in a country like India where we have at ...

MALALA YOUSAFZAI –  THE UNLIKELY HEROINE 9th Oct. 2012, can go down as the most-memorable date in the history of movements for EMPOWERMENT OF WOMEN, the world over, especially those among the Muslim fraternity. On that fateful day, two gunmen stopped an open-backed van carrying a dozen girls to school in Mingora, the largest town of Swat region in Pakistan. The gunmen asked for Malala by name, ‘Where is Malala? Who is Malala?’But she was the only one who never covered her face unlike the rest of girls in the vehicle, and she said, as if to challenge the gunman, ‘I am Malala’, and the world around, for those school going girls, came crashing down. Gunmen shot Malala twice, at point blank range. It was mayhem. This attack was carried out by TNSM which is an Urdu acronym of Movement for the Enforcement of Islamic Sharia (Tehreek-e-Nafaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi). Stories of fundamentalism, many time violent, is as old as Pakistan. It has always been there in different forms...

GANG LEADER FOR A DAY The Stay-Together Gang The breakdown of the gang affected Ms. Bailey as well. When the gang didn’t make money, Ms. Bailey didn’t make much money either. And with demolition so near, she needed all the money she could get to help the tenants she wanted to help. She paid for day care so single mothers could go look for new apartments. She hired a car service to take tenants on their housing searches. She helped others settle their outstanding electricity bills so they’d be able to get service once they entered the private market. But as the money ran out, some tenants began to turn on her. Even though the CHA was supposed to provide relocation services, it was Ms. Bailey who had stepped into the breach, for a fee, and so she was the one who now caught the blame. She was widely accused of pocketing the gang’s money instead of using it for the tenants. I had never seen Ms. Bailey cry until the moment she told me about these accusations. “I have lived here...

Sickness sells Prof. B. M. Hegde, hegdebm@gmail.com “When I see some of the people who are glorified in magazines these days - who are so thin it's bordering on sickness - I just feel exhausted.”  Katherine Heigl  And, sells very well. Every hour in the US the TV adverts for drugs runs around 80 drugs! Many of them who see these do discuss the drug with their doctors as most drugs are advertised as if they are tailor made for you hypochondriasis. Nearly half of all those that see their doctors get to take the drug, some for the rest of their lives. Sickness sales are the highest in the world today from the commercial point of view. The Pharmaceutical companies laugh all their way to their banks! What is the result? Every symptom, however trivial it might be, gets blown out of proportion. Many of life’s normal physiological processes like menarche, menopause, pregnancy, child birth, sexuality, sorrow, old age maladies and death have all become medicalised today, ...

A hospital where doctors have TB Mumbai : This year’s civic health budget is Rs 2,345 crores but resident medical officers live in such squalor in Sion Hospital that 11 of them have contracted tuberculosis. Confirming this, dean Dr Suleman Merchant said, “Funds have not been sanctioned to house the resident medical officers (RMOs) properly.’’  Two of the RMOs, the backbone of civic hospitals, tested positive for multi drug resistant TB, which is lethal. RMOs, however, claim that this could just be the tip of the iceberg as several of them are hesitant to admit that they have contacted this airborne disease because of social stigma. Health activist Ravi Duggal said this was the result of the BMC’s apathy towards the health sector. “With the middle class opting for private hospitals and the unions of doctors and nurses growing weaker, there is no one to raise concerns about the deteriorating state of public hospitals,’’ he said. In the old RMO quarters of the hospital, f...