Panicking about omicron
The new omicron variant of the novel coronavirus has got everyone alarmed – which is darkly ironic. This variant has reportedly racked up more mutations than previous variants of concern, including th…
Don't donate bad food and call it 'dharma'
There's a troubling pattern among some people who give food away to homeless people and beggars. I have seen this happen first-hand with my folks, my extended family and their wider group of neig…
The toxic affair between Covaxin and The Lancet
That Covaxin has been leading a ceaselessly beleaguered life is no mystery – but The Lancet journal may not know that it has been pressed into the questionable service of saving the vaccine's repu…
The names of our dragons
The first piece of very-popular epic fantasy fiction I read was J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth saga, which, among many things, reminded me how much the American and British writers of ‘high fantasy’ ow…
Dirty power
Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced at the COP26 summit in Glasgow that India will install 500 GW of non-fossil-fuel energy generation capacity by 2030. In his analysis of Modi’s speech for The Wir…
60 years of 'Tsar Bomba', history's most powerful nuke
This post was originally published on October 31, 2018. I republished it once in 2020 after Rosatom, the Russian nuclear energy corporation, released 40 minutes of previously classified footage of RDS…
Is Covaxin's WHO approval guaranteed?
I suspect after reading this PTI report that the WHO is practically helping Bharat Biotech put together a better application to have its COVID-19 vaccine, Covaxin, get the body's approval for inte…
It's great that the WHO isn't just 'not cutting corners'
Call me anti-national (and I'm sure many will) but I'm glad that the WHO isn't just "not cutting corners" in the process of considering Bharat Biotech's application for the U…
Dream11: How hard should we work to play cricket for India?
The TV ads for the fantasy cricket app Dream11 seem objectionable, to my mind. Thus far, I've seen three high-profile players of the Indian men's cricket team in these ads: Rohit Sharma, Shikh…
Where the atmanirbharta in spine?
Truth be told, I didn't expect CSIR chief Shekhar Mande could be so disingenuous. "India didn't have to depend on western countries," he says. What is this abject refusal to thank ot…
The 'one billion doses' hype
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has addressed India's people 10 times during the country's COVID-19 epidemic. This is fairly regular but also not frequent – that is, Modi's addresses are some…
He is never wrong
Akshay Deshmane reported for The Morning Context on October 20 that the Union environment ministry has reversed two important decisions it made earlier this year: (a) to invite private law firms to he…