Char Dham will go on
"One of the greatest rescue missions in history" necessitated by a construction project pushed through at high cost, beginning with the safety and well-being of workers. Madam, what are you…
Waters and bridges between science journalism and scicomm
On November 24-25, the Science Journalists’ Association of India (SJAI) conducted its inaugural conference at the National Institute of Immunology (NII), New Delhi. I attended it as a delegate. A per…
Cognitive ability and voting 'leave' on Brexit
In a new study published in the journal PLoS ONE on November 22, a pair of researchers from the University of Bath in the UK have reported that “higher cognitive ability” is "linked to higher cha…
A stage-managed World Cup
I’m glad the ICC Cricket World Cup ended the way it did, with good cricket on show. I’m disappointed that India lost but, to echo Sunil Gavaskar at the post-match show, I’m glad it was only to a bette…
So many cynical ads on TV
I wrote about cynical ads airing on Indian cable TV a while ago. Since then I've started to notice more such ads and thought it might be useful to maintain a running list. 1. Rapido – Don't…
India has a right to noise
Excerpt from ‘More light, less sound: On firecrackers and a festival of light’, an editorial in The Hindu on November 7, 2023: The Noise Pollution (Regulation and Control) Rules 2000 stipulate that f…
On Somanath withdrawing his autobiography
Excerpt from The Hindu, November 4, 2023: S. Somanath, Chairman, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), told The Hindu that he’s withdrawing the publication of his memoir, Nilavu Kudicha Simhanga…
India's science leadership
On October 17, the National Council for Education Research and Training (NCERT) introduced a reading module for middle-school students called “Chandrayaan Utsav”. It was released by Union Education Mi…
Gaganyaan: The ingredient is not the recipe
For all the hoopla over indigeneity – from ISRO chairman S. Somanath exalting the vast wisdom of ancient Indians to political and ideological efforts to cast modern India as the world’s ‘vishwaguru’ –…
An EIA process just for the Himalaya?
In The Hindu today, lawyers Archana Vaidya and Vikram Hegde have written an article asking for a separate environment impact assessment (EIA) process for the Indian Himalayan region. The article begin…
An 'expanded' heuristic to evaluate science as a non-scientist
The Hindu publishes a column called ‘Notebook’ every Friday, in which journalists in the organisation open windows big or small into their work, providing glimpses into their process and thinking – th…
Marginalia: On NewsClick, NYT, toolkits, etc.
The Bharatiya Janata Party in power in India knows that the process is the punishment, that the amount of punishment imposed depends on the law invoked in the chargesheet, and that no law is as ripe f…