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4 min read
What is ONOS's (real) problem?
The Indian government set the country’s research community aflutter when it announced the launch of a long-awaited plan to improve research access without announcing many of its salient details
1 min read
Keeper of the foul air
This city is essentially uninhabitable from November to January inclusive and barely liveable the rest of the year. Should it even remain the nation’s capital? I realise Shashi Tharoor
1 min read
Tamil Nadu's lukewarm heatwave policy
From 'Tamil Nadu heatwave policy is only a start', The Hindu, November 21, 2024: Estimates of a heatwave’s deadliness are typically based on the extent to which
1 min read
Tamil Nadu's lukewarm heatwave policy
The policy is only for heatwaves, and if it doesn't expand in future to include the state's own responsibility, Tamil Nadu will miss the forest for the trees.
6 min read
Why having diverse interests is a virtue
As illustrated by the Marx-Ling-Brown dispute over that Canadaland podcast and Israel's violence in West Asia
1 min read
A cynical archaeology
From ‘ASI submits Bhojshala survey report to Madhya Pradesh High Court’, The Hindu, July 15, 2024: The Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) on July 15 submitted its scientific survey report
5 min read
On the Nature feature about the Sarafs, a rare disease, and time
Heidi Ledford has a tragic and powerful story published yesterday in Nature, about a team of scientists at the CSIR-Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology racing to develop a CRISPR
2 min read
The cost of forgetting Ballia
Actively papering over the effects of extreme weather has to be the most self-destructive thing we’re capable of in the climate change era.
4 min read
The BHU Covaxin study and ICMR bait
Earlier this month, a study by a team at Banaras Hindu University (BHU) in Varanasi concluded that fully 1% of Covaxin recipients may suffer severe adverse events. One percent is
2 min read
India can do it!
Against the background of the H5N1 pandemic in birds and an epidemic among cattle in the US, the Government of Victoria, in Australia, published a statement on May 21 that
2 min read
Justice delayed but a ton of bricks await
From 'SC declines Ramdev, Patanjali apology; expresses concern over FMCGs taking gullible consumers ‘up and down the garden path’', The Hindu, April 10, 2024: The Supreme Court has
1 min read
Cheers for everyone but the bustard
Behold, the legerdemain of spinning bad news into good: Setting aside the meaningless headline, we have a lede (and the rest of the article, for that matter) that claims the
1 min read
Reassurance by electoral bond
The electoral bonds release has been reassuring on one count. For some time after the (new) BJP first rose to power in 2014, with a groundswell of support (but arguably
2 min read
Farce and friction over an Indian astronaut
When we met Mr [Morarji] Desai, he was totally relaxed even after the long journey from Delhi. Squatting on a carpet in the Kremlin and spinning his favourite charka, he
2 min read
To the moon – or the stock market?
Now this is quite upsetting. I learn from Jatan Mehta’s Moon Monday #166 that Intuitive Machines – the maker of the Odysseus spacecraft that landed on the moon on February