Bharatiya Janata Party - Catabatic (Page 2)

A lotus for Modi, with love from Manipur

Aug 20, 2023 3 min read

This bit of news is so chock full of metaphors that I'm almost laughing out loud. Annotated excerpts from 'CSIR’s new lotus variety ‘Namoh 108’ a ‘grand gift’ to PM Modi: Science Minister'…

Anonymity in journalism and a conflict of ethics

Apr 12, 2022 13 min read

Scicomm ABVP anonymity Bharatiya Janata Party CCS Rules 1964 Hindutva Jawaharlal Nehru University pseudonymity Rolling Stone science journalism The Wire Science

I wrote the following essay at the invitation of a journal in December 2020. (This was the first draft. There were additional drafts that incorporated feedback from a few editors.) It couldn’t be publ…

The BJP's fake news (fake?) meeting

Feb 2, 2022 1 min read

Analysis Bharatiya Janata Party Big Tech Facebook fake news Google social media takedown requests Twitter

Reuters published a very interesting report on February 2, entitled 'Exclusive-In heated meeting, India seeks tougher action from U.S. tech giants on fake news'. Excerpt: Indian officials hav…

Anti-softening science for the state

Mar 6, 2021 6 min read

Op-eds Scicomm Science Bharatiya Janata Party COVID-19 pandemic free press Gautam Adani government communication report Group of Ministers report independent media Mukesh Ambani neglected tropical diseases Patanjali Ayurved Principal Scientific Adviser research and development S.S. Bhatnagar Award science journalism soft topics tigers vaccine apartheid vaccine nationalism yoga

The group of ministers (GoM) report on "government communication" has recommended that the government promote “soft topics” in the media like “yoga” and “tigers”. We can only speculate what…

Vaccines for votes

Oct 31, 2020 3 min read

Op-eds Bharatiya Janata Party Bihar polls COVID-19 vaccine Election Commission ethics Joe Biden Nitish Kumar NYAY scheme polio vaccine

A week or so ago, the Bharatiya Janata Party in Bihar released its poll manifesto, the first point on which was that should the party win, it would make a COVID-19 vaccine cleared by the ICMR availabl…

The ignoble president and the Nobel Prize

Sep 13, 2020 7 min read

Analysis Culture Science Abdus Salam Barack Obama Bharatiya Janata Party Carol Greider Christian Tybring-Gjedde civic engagement democracy democratic rights Donald Trump Henry Kissinger Joe Biden Nobel laureatures Nobel Prize Nobel Prize for peace public participation public stewardship realpolitik reason of state Rep. Bill Foster scientism scientocracy

What is the collective noun for a group of Nobel laureates? I'm considering ballast. A ballast of Nobel laureates is appealing because these people, especially if they are all white and male, ofte…

Ayurveda is not a science – but what does that mean?

Aug 16, 2020 5 min read

Analysis Science allopathy authoritarianism Ayurveda bhakts Bharatiya Janata Party far right hospital care Imre Lakatos Karl Popper knowledge systems modern science nationalism Paul Feyerabend pseudoscience reason for state social science state Thomas Kuhn view from nowhere welfare welfare state welfarism

This post has benefited immensely with inputs from Om Prasad. Calling something 'not a science' has become a pejorative, an insult. You say Ayurveda is not a science and suddenly, its loudest…

The life and death of 'Chemical Nova'

May 28, 2020 4 min read

Life notes Science aachaaram Bharatiya Janata Party Brahminism caste apartheid casteism chemical reagents class apartheid hand washing Hema Malini Kent manual scavenging pseudoscience running water soap untouchability

You know how people pretend to win an Oscar or a Nobel Prize, right? Many years ago, I used to pretend to be the author of a fictitious but, blissfully unmindful of its fictitiousness, award-winning s…

'Science alone triumphs': A skeptic annotates

Apr 13, 2020 8 min read

Analysis Science Bharatiya Janata Party COVID-19 hydroxychloroquine Indian Council of Medical Research Jayant Sinha novel coronavirus virus

An article entitled 'Science alone triumphs: Providing a true picture of the world, only science can help India against coronavirus', penned by a Jayant Sinha, appeared on the Times of India&#…

'Hunters', sci-fi and pseudoscience

Mar 8, 2020 3 min read

Culture Scicomm Science Adolf Hitler Bharatiya Janata Party civil aviation Delhi riots Edward Bulwer-Lytton electricity ethnic cleansing Hindutva Hunters identity politics John Forster Nazism occult provincialism pseudoscience sci-fi science fiction technology The Coming Race Vril

One of the ways in which pseudoscience is connected to authoritarian governments is through its newfound purpose and duty to supply an alternate intellectual tradition that subsumes science as well as…

Dehumanising language during an outbreak

Mar 5, 2020 5 min read

Op-eds Scicomm Science Amit Shah Bharatiya Janata Party COVID-19 dehumanisation Eman Ahmed epidemic Harsh Vardhan infection infectious diseases local transmission private healthcare public healthcare system Saifee Hospital SARS-CoV-2 science communication science journalism The Guardian Washington Post Wuhan coronavirus

It appears the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus has begun local transmission in India, i.e. infecting more people within the country instead of each new patient having recently travelled to an already affected…

Ambivalent promises for S&T in the BJP manifesto

Apr 8, 2014 3 min read

Uncategorized Bharatiya Janata Party climate change Congress Lok Sabha 2014 elections manifesto Nuclear power private sector scientific research

There is very little, if any, concrete stuff about promoting science in the country, and a lot of it seems poised to supplant the goals of other ministries.…