COVID-19
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Democracy 1.0 (or five remarkable things about the 2020 US Elections)
It’s coming from the sorrow in the street,the holy places where the races meet;from the homicidal bitchin’that goes down in every kitchento determine who will serve and who will eat.From the wells of disappointmentwhere the women kneel to prayfor the grace of God in the desert hereand the desert far away:Democracy is coming to the U.S.A. Democracy, Leonard Cohen Yes, like millions across the world, I was glued to my TV from November 4th until finally, CNN called the winner of the hotly contested electoral battle of 2020. Like everything about this year, the Presidential elections were unlike any other. For one, there was were just one two significant debates…
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Claiming the Earth
Several decades ago, during my first trip to Ladakh, long before Indian tourists “discovered” their own Shangri-la, I met a man perched on a boulder in the midst of the colourful bazaar. He didn’t fit into the boxes I had neatly organised in my head (this was long before I liberated myself from the boxes), so I asked him where he came from. “I am a citizen of the universe,” he said mockingly. I considered him with disdain and wondered if that was indeed the required dress code for someone who wished to inhabit a realm beyond time and space. Today, I may have moved several countries away, but a…
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The Right to Health
What do Latvia, Uruguay, and Senegal have in common? Other than very low COVID-19 fatalities, they also have a constitutional guarantee to the Right to Health. As Europe closes down in its own unique way to battle the “second” wave of the pandemic, I am drawn to the notion that perhaps things would have turned out different if countries guaranteed to their citizens, the fundamental Right to Health. By this, I don’t mean just funding departments or ministries or enabling access to public healthcare. I mean, going a step further and guaranteeing this in national constitutions. Would that tip the scales on the pandemic? Would there be fewer fatalities? Would…
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Lockdown – then and now (and all that I learnt)…
Disclaimer: these are personal reflections Spring had not quite set when we locked down for the first time. We were expecting it, but when it came, it still felt abrupt. We live in Switzerland, three hours from Italy. We knew very little about the virus, other than that it was highly infectious and the best way of avoiding an infection was to stay away from crowds. And wash hands. So when we were told that our daughter’s crèche would stay closed for a month and that our home would be the new workplace, we hoped that this would be temporary. In theory, there was no “official” lockdown in Switzerland. There…
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Pandemic & the Poverty trap
India holds the record for pulling the most number of people out of poverty in a single decade. The UNDP’s multidimensional poverty index of 2019 calculated that from 2005 until 2016/17, 271 million people had been lifted out of poverty in India. This stunning feat rested largely on targeted poverty eradication programmes in several low income states, many of them supported by the World Bank. All these programmes hinged on women’s self help groups that started out as a savings initiative to leverage institutional credit, transforming over time, into undertaking businesses at scale and forming producer companies. Since 2003, I have observed groups in different Indian states, form, flop, dissolve,…
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SAME OLD ways to fight a new virus
This paper was presented at the inaugural session of a webinar on the Covid-19 pandemic organised by MAC INSERCH on the occasion of World Environment Day on June 5, 2020. This blog has been edited for brevity. Thank you for inviting me to this important Webinar that puts in perspective human health in relation to planet health. As we experience this historic pandemic of epic proportions, it is important for us to shift the focus away from ourselves and use the eye of the sharp eagle that swoops down on its prey hundreds of metres below, where it surveys all that lies beneath. If we do indeed adopt this approach,…
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Pandemic papers…
We were flying to Lisbon when I noticed for the first time, a tiny New York Times column about a new coronavirus that had come from the wet markets of Wuhan and spread across Hubei province in China. Having worked on infectious diseases before, we public health enthusiasts were in the habit of predicting the next apocalypse. SARS, MERS, H1N1, Ebola – they had all been truly disappointing. “You’ve got to read this,” I nudged my husband sprawled onto the seat beside me. He looked at the article and shrugged. “Seems to be localised to one province. They’ll have it under control in no time,” he said. Famous last words.…
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The first post!
Getting started is often easier said than done. I have dithered over blogging even before it became fashionable but putting myself out there has given me stage fright. I’m not sure why the process of proffering an opinion – especially about everything – seems so daunting. It was the covid crisis that spurred me on. I realised that all of us were a little short on time. I realised that there was just so much to share. And I realised that the time to do it, was now. So this blog is about everything and everything. You’ll find me commenting on travel and art, sharing experiences of raising my feminist…