Co-Written by K. Rajasekharan Nayar and Arathi P. Rao The possibility of developing vaccines and drugs against COVID-19 is being closely watched by the world. The journal ‘Nature’ reports that there are about 115 vaccine development initiatives in the world of which 78 are confirmed as active and 37 are unconfirmed and of the 78 confirmed active projects, 73 are[Read More…]
The Parque Taruma cemetery during the coronavirus outbreak in Manaus, Brazil. Brazil now has the second-highest number of reported coronavirus cases, surpassing Russia. Blue, turquoise, and white crosses mark the dead in mass graves in Manaus, Brazil, a visual reminder of the toll the novel coronavirus has had on the country. The University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and[Read More…]
The epidemic is almost over in Italy. After almost three painful months of lockdown and the loss of about 30.000 lives, the daily number of victims of the coronavirus is slowly dwindling to zero. In a couple of weeks at most, the epidemic will be completely gone. It is time to restart, but the damage has been terrible. The lockdown[Read More…]
New Socialist Initiative (NSI) on India’s ‘war against Covid 19’ # Today, India has emerged as a new epicentre for the novel coronavirus in the Asia Pacific region.With 1,58,333 confirmed cases of Covid 19 and deaths of total of 4,531 people after contracting the virus, it has already crossed China’s COVID-19 numbers. # New Socialist Initiative (NSI) feels that the[Read More…]
Abstract There are so many articles, reports and research on covid-19 (corona) by different institutions, researchers and banks of various countries. There are economic research on it there are physiological researches on it and in coming time there will be more psycological researches also conduct on it. But as we know to prevent to cure or to procure for any[Read More…]
Co-Written by Tehzeeb Anis & Prof. Mohammad Akram After three consecutive lockdowns, the countrywide lockdown got extended again for another two weeks in the form of Lockdown 4.0. This episode of lockdown is witnessing extended relaxation related to travel, market and permission to work in specific sectors. Lockdown is used by the union government as the main instrument to combat[Read More…]
In days to come, social scientists will write varied accounts on the responses of the Indian state to the ongoing pandemic called Covid-19. Academicians will deploy the visible categories of class, caste, race, gender, religion, economy, centre, state, region, demography and many more to enquire and weave multiple narratives. Each study would offer us new perspectives to look into ourselves,[Read More…]
Manish Azad is a political activist. That is why he has been a victim to State repression. On February 29, he returned from prison after 8 months. Even before this, he has been writing for Dastak. Here is his article, presenting all the aspects related to the corona virus pandemic. This article is especially important in the context that while[Read More…]
Globally, three million children a year die of hunger or malnourishment according to theworldcounts.com. The site also notes the number is dropping steadily. In a May 2019 editorial ,Voice of America reports, “Today, some 821 million people suffer chronically from hunger. And although this is significantly fewer people than the numbers we saw a decade ago, hunger still kills more people than AIDS,[Read More…]
I was born and bred in Dehra Dun. Then, in search of job and a future, for some years of my life I worked and lived in Delhi and Ahmedabad. In the twelve or so years at the time, no one in Delhi nor Ahmedabad ever called me a “migrant”. Today many young women and men, having studied engineering, medical,[Read More…]
The pandemic is helping to understand a few facts of the current state of geo-politics. One of these facts is China’s voice – voice with all its meanings. China has called for international cooperation against COVID-19, popularly named coronavirus, to tide over darkest hours. China has said: Cooperation and solidarity are the most powerful weapon to prevail over the epidemic.[Read More…]
Co-Written by Akhter Hussain Bhat & Dr. Mohammad Akram The novel COVID-19 has caused widespread concern, fear, anxiety and stress among millions of people worldwide. The virus has affected more than 5 million people causing more than 3.3 lakh deaths while many are battling for recovery around the globe. Owing to the stern and infectious nature of the virus, the[Read More…]
The spread of COVID-19 infused crisis has huge impact on all aspects of life and economy across India. It is particularly posing a serious challenge to the social and economic development of rural poor, migrants and farmers. The local businesses and communities are significantly affected by the Coronavirus pandemic. The Government of India led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced[Read More…]
Co- Written by Kamala Tamirisa, Ritu Thamman and Martha Gulati Health care professionals need more support. Based on a survey of 553 health care professionals in mid-April, 2020. The death by suicide of Dr. Lorna Breen, the medical director of the emergency department at NewYork-Presbyterian Allen Hospital in New York City, is just the beginning of yet another health care[Read More…]
COVID-19 Pandemic: Surpassing Islamic Republic Of Iran, India Now 10th – Out Of 188 Countries – Worst-Affected Globally! The number of n-Coronavirus cases in India has raced past the cases in Islamic Republic of Iran. It may be recalled that Iran was the worst hit country in the middle-east; outside China it was the 2nd hardest affected. In the beginning[Read More…]
Two months after imposition of the most stringent and large-scale lockdown in the world, with the pandemic still undefeated, it is the Indian Republic that is looking more and more like a struggling COVID-19 patient. It is running low on oxygen in its blood, several organs are already failing, costs of treatment shooting up and the country’s leadership looks utterly[Read More…]
Letter to the Prime Minister To Shri Narendra Modiji Prime Minister Dear Shri Modiji, I forward here a copy of my last letter dated 15-5-2020 and copies of the previous letters addressed to you on the excruciating problems faced by crores of the migrant workers across the length and the breadth of the country. I am not sure whether my letters have[Read More…]
Remember when you were a kid, locked within that monster called a grade school, at dismissal time? You must recall how the seas just opened and the throng descended on the schoolyard… like , well… ants at a picnic. Thus, the expression becomes almost timeless. So it is with so many of our Amerikan public whenever the opportunity reveals itself[Read More…]
Introduction COVID-19 pandemic, its emergence, global spread and the crisis therefrom are inseparably linked up with the character of neoliberal accumulation today. As is widely recognised, its origins are rooted in profit-driven corporate capital’s unbridled plunder of nature and consequent invasion and intrusion in to wild life ecosystem leading to spill-over of viruses to humans and their subsequent mutations. That[Read More…]
As a student of political science we have been familiar with Samuel Johnson’s amazing words on patriotism, an essential ingredient of nationalism. He wrote: ‘Patriotism is last refuge of scoundrel.’ History has been witness to the truthfulness of this dictum multiple times globally. Back at home what does it mean could be witnessed personally and closely by observing what RSS-BJP[Read More…]
Co-Written by Abass Rather & Aqib Yousuf Covid-19 Pandemic has brought the world under a precarious situation as the millions of people have been rendered jobless. Over 122 million people in India lost their jobs in April, according to estimates from Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy. Around 75% of them were small traders and wage-labourers. The sudden and unexpected outbreak[Read More…]
Co-Written by Asmita Verma, Surabhi Agarwal and Bobby Ramakant The Epidemics Act, 1897 gives the central and state governments authority to impose any regulations which may be necessary to contain the outbreak of a disease. Some state governments such as Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhatisgarh have already used this power to bring private healthcare facilities in their state under government[Read More…]
Wuhan-based virologist Shi Zhengli has identified dozens of deadly SARS-like viruses in bat caves, and she warns there are more out there. Scientificamerican.com Editor’s Note (4/24/20): This article was originally published online on March 11. It has been updated for inclusion in the June 2020 issue of Scientific American and to address rumors that SARS-CoV-2 emerged from Shi Zhengli’s lab[Read More…]
The above is the title of news release by WHO. The two-day meeting of the 73rd World Health Assembly (WHA) was held in Geneva on May 18-19, discussed Covid-19 and how the world is coping with that. Even as the media in India is engaged 24×7 on Covid-19, this historic session was given poor coverage, and many of those that[Read More…]
As a singular event, Covid-19 could be an opportunity for a total political and economic reconfiguration. Instead, Modi capitalizes on daily fatality statistics (short term chaos) and uses the fear of death as the basis of his strategies; best exemplified by his death discourses directed at the nation. Faced with an emerging humanitarian catastrophe (long term focus), the national response[Read More…]
The world’s progress in eliminating poverty is set to suffer a major setback due to the coronavirus pandemic, forcing more people to survive on less than $1.90 per day, the World Bank has said in a recent statement (Press release no.: 2020/193/EXC). “The pandemic and shutdown of advanced economies could push as many as 60 million people into extreme poverty[Read More…]
The novel corona virus has infected more than 100,000 people in India. WHO has declared the virus to be pandemic. But pandemics have always been anti-urban. Coronavirus undermines the most basic notions of the urban life that is the idea of ‘public’. It undermines the idea of shared spaces- one shouldn’t be coming out in large numbers. One shouldn’t be[Read More…]
It is not only about physically surviving the pandemic. People miss people, and places, sometimes desperately. And they die, when separated. We are bombarded by briefings and numbers. We are scared into submission by horrifying medical stories, by shocking images, and then, simultaneously, by predictions of economic and social downfall. Day and night, day and night. But somehow, so often[Read More…]
Is something as basic as being with your loved ones and being able to maintain social distancing a privilege in this pandemic? Walking for miles in the scorching heat of May, with minimal water and food to reach a place that would make one feel a little more comfortable than the rest of the world, a place we all[Read More…]
Edouard Louis’ novel, Who Killed My Father, is a collection of short and riveting letters addressed to his 50-years-old father resting on his deathbed. The author, with splendid eloquence and brevity, put forth the plight of working-class of France, who has been rendered redundant in an era of unregulated capitalism. The sheer contempt for the political elite is clearly visible[Read More…]
Co-Written by Vijaya Ramachandran and Sandeep Pandey Lockdown in the wake of coronavirus threat has seriously affected the livelihood options for the migrant workers and daily wage earners. While the government has announced that they will be given free ration, even if they are not linked with local Fair Price Shop part of the Public Distribution System, which is the[Read More…]
SARs Cov-2, the virus that has caused the lockdown of 1.3 billion human beings in India has also caused an unprecedented humanitarian crisis across the country. The International Labour Organization estimated in April that around 400 million workers were at risk of slipping into poverty due to sudden and unplanned stringent nationwide lockdown. However, a lockdown of such magnitude has[Read More…]
Trump is blaming China for the Covid-19 pandemic to hide his criminal negligence during the crisis. A detailed Timeline of the disaster reveals that China informed the WHO and the World of the Wuhan outbreak on 31 December 2019 but Trump spent the following 4.5 months minimizing the seriousness of the pandemic and slagging both China and the WHO. With[Read More…]
This spring, the novel coronavirus pandemic has raised the issue of the relationship between the blindest kind of religious faith and rational skepticism — this time in two countries that think of themselves as polar opposites and enemies: Supreme Leader Ali Khameini’s Iran and Donald Trump’s America. On the U.S. side of things, New Orleans pastor Tony Spell, for instance, has[Read More…]
As the nationwide lockdown to curb the spread of COVID-19 continues and the nation staggers in its recovery from the debilitating impact of the pandemic, many are left stranded away from home and battling hunger every day. Many migrant workers and students walked hundreds of kilometres to reach home but several others couldn’t and they are left without shelter and[Read More…]
Barack Obama speaking on 16th May spoke for the first time about the coronavirus pandemic and the responses of the ruling elite. He observed that, “More than anything this pandemic has fully, finally torn back the curtain on the idea that so many of the folks in charge know what they’re doing,” Obama told graduates from several dozen historically black[Read More…]
The working class, which successfully accomplished revolutions in many countries in the modern age, which played its invaluable role in productive growth in India, too, since freedom movement, undergoing such tragic and inhuman suffering today in the days of Corona pandemic, is a matter of shame for independent India. However, it can’t erase the role of working class from history.[Read More…]
How could the Great Patriotic War in which the Soviet people (including many members of my own family) lost at least 25 million lives, have anything in common with the latest outbreak of the novel coronavirus? You think this is an absolutely insane question? However, before you dismiss it, think twice. There are similarities how they are being portrayed. There[Read More…]
Co-Written by Sanghmitra S Acharya, Sunita Reddy & Nemthianngai Guite The COVID-19 pandemic, which has engulfed the world, has betrayed the informal sector migrant labour stranded all over the country. The dreams which were nurtured by the pull factors exerted by the ‘citylights’, were further fueled in the wake of ‘Jandhan’, which heralded a new chapter in the lives of[Read More…]
Co-Written by Tehzeeb Anis & Prof. Mohammad Akram COVID-19 is highly contagious infection and has already affected more than 4.5 million people globally. India is also setting up new records in spike of Covid-19 cases almost daily. Within 24 hours, India has recorded biggest single day spike in number of cases with 5242 new patient as of 17th May 2020.[Read More…]
Political speeches are often scripted. They not only reveal intentions and priorities, but also the politician’s art of communicating with the people. It is in this context that Prime Minister Modi’s two recent speeches, one on March 24 and the other on May 12, gain significance. To be sure, Prime Minister’s two speeches focused on different themes. The March 24[Read More…]
No doubt the clarification that India will not map Covid-19 infections on the basis of religion has many heaving sighs of relief. But will the peace last? “Move for community-based mapping of coronavirus?” a recent news item in a prestigious daily asked, getting tongues wagging about “closed-door meetings at the highest level”, though no “official” decision had been taken in them. The Ministry of Health declared that any such news is “baseless, incorrect and[Read More…]
The last most remembered pandemic can be traced to the general crisis facilitated by the First World War. The “Spanish Flu”, as it was popularly known, was connected to a strain of the influenza viruses, which was in circulation among troops from 1916 onwards. By 1918, the virus strain triggered a full-blown pandemic, spreading in waves that lasted up till[Read More…]
If you cannot discover or create something, best steal it. It has been the operating principle for everything from wealth to technology. With the efforts to discover a vaccine to the novel coronavirus being all but bound by solidarity, the race on plundering secrets has already begun in earnest. No one party can claim particular innocence in this endeavour. All[Read More…]
We are living in the time of Covid-19 pandemic caused by a newly identified coronavirus. This pandemic along with collateral economic crisis has threatened human life all around the globe. However, in these tough times, there is another shadow epidemic of domestic violence, which is putting the physical and mental health of many women in Indian households in danger. The[Read More…]
Odin, the Norse All-Father, is said to have hung from a tree for 9 days and sacrificed one of his eyes to acquire the knowledge of the world. These days, thankfully, all the Nordic people have to do to acquire knowledge is… well, live in the Nordics. The five countries which make up the Nordic region are: Denmark, Finland,[Read More…]
Co-Written by Arundhati Dhuru and Sandeep Pandey All the narratives of a progressing nation, Rajiv Gandhi’s ‘marching into the 21st century,’ Atal Behari Vajpayee’s ‘shining India,’ A.P.J. Abdul Kalam’s ‘providing urban amenities in rural areas,’ Manmohan Singh’s achievement of 8-9% Gross Domestic Product growth rates and Narendra Modi’s ‘smart cities’ have crumbled in the wake of national level migrant workers’[Read More…]
Two recent reports deserve our attention: The first one is the case of a young labourer named Amrit, s/o Ramcharan and his friend Mohammad Yakub was travelling to Basti, UP from Surat, Gujarat. Suddenly Amrit became unconscious. Since the passengers in the truck protested, the boy was dropped on the road side in the middle of the night. Amrit’s friend,[Read More…]
Misfortunes never come singly, do they? The pandemic which has turned us into emotional cripples illustrates our culpable sin of negligence of duties and obligations to the environment. Like old age, it has diminished our power to live our life as we used to see fit. To speak of the growing sense of pessimism that has taken hold of us[Read More…]
Indicative of the multi-layered responses on ‘worker-employer-government’ problematic that characterises the Covid-19 lockdown days, the Central trade unions have declared a day of protest on 22 May 2020. CTUOs call has come in the wake particularly of the radical changes in the labour laws being initiated by various state governments. COVID-19, besides the health risks it entail, has also brought[Read More…]
Vaccine development and immunity for COVID-19: Some thoughts and doubts 
I’m the Pied Piper 
Self-reliance and the Continuous Cycle of Exploitation 
Digital Divide: Obvious and Clear Between Haves and Havenots 
India-Nepal Border Dispute : The International Ramifications 
SpaceX Astronaut Launch: Curiosity, science and the Red Planet 
Palestinian Genocide Poem: “And Then They Stole The Falafel” 
Floyd’s final words – A poem from Hell 
Christian Pastor Brutally Attacked In Uttar Pradesh, Admitted In ICU 
Beating Swords to Plowshares 
One Life, One Love, 300 Children 
If Not Now, When? 
Israel-China Relations: Staring Into the Abyss of US-Chinese Decoupling Democracies can’t breathe without responding to Race and Caste discrimination 
Tablighi Jamaat and mainstream media: What makes news and what doesn’t! 
Lives In Education 
Sinister Flatulence: Trump versus Twitter 
Intellectuals cant be threat to public order or to humanity 
Jacinda Ardern: A Prime Minister with Difference 
Do we Really Honor Bhagat Singh? 
“Nepal map runs into Parliament wall” : Who built this wall? India! 
Out-Of-Pocket Healthcare Expenditure, Covid-19 and Impoverishment in India 
“Do Not Resuscitate”: My Experience with Hospice, Inc. 
Towards the forward march of workers led alternative globalisation The Empire’s Executioners? 
Revisiting Multilateral Institutions in the time of COVID-19 
Minneapolis police station set on fire on the 3rd day of Floyd murder demonstration in U.S. 
Photos of mass graves in Brazil show the stark toll of the coronavirus 
Three months later, Florence restarts. But not quite 
Supreme Court Issues Interim Orders on Migrant Workers Return 
Who Are the Secret Puppet-Masters Behind Trump’s War on Iran? 
COVID-19: Zafrullah Chowdhury, Women, and the Dot Blot Kit 
Labour in the Time of Corona 
Crisis for the People, Opportunity for the Corporate-Government Nexus 
Passing Behind Our Backs 
What You Kill When You Kill Someone 
Challenges faced by visually disabled women 
The Immediacy of Touchlessness 
Johnson & Johnson’s Double Standard Regarding Their Talcum Powder 
The Great Depression, Coronavirus Style 