Author: daktre
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Dispatched
What’s wrong with death sir? What are we so mortally afraid of? Why can’t we treat death with a certain amount of humanity and dignity, and decency, and God forbid, maybe even humor. Death is not the enemy gentlemen. If we’re going to fight a disease, let’s fight one of the most terrible diseases of…
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Health system regulation in India
The medical establishment has become a threat to health – Ivan Illich begins his book “Limits to Medicine: Medical Nemesis” (1975) with these lines Going by recent events, Illich’s trenchant criticism of Western medical establishments is also pertinent to healthcare in India. First, there was Aamir Khan’s Satyameva Jayate TV episode on corruption in India’s…
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Open government (data)
Comment is free, but facts are sacred Thanks to the exceedingly good central government run website to file applications under the Right to Information Act (see end of this post for details), I got the opportunity to look at some useful data on implementation of large nationwide schemes. I have been trying to obtain data…
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Afrindian Mammals
I just came across a recent book on Indian mammals. Congratulations to the authors (M. S. Pradhan, S. S. Talmale), both from the prestigious Zoological Survey of India. I, for one would have bought it, if not for its fairly expensive pricing. It is priced at 4500. I hope, that by now, the authors have…
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Meanderings on doctors, forests and public health
While scanning early literature on the acknowledgement of the complexity of organising and studying healthcare in societies, I got a bit distracted into my favourite pre-occupation of understanding early doctors. While the natural-history work (especially in British India; see Shyamal’s essay on Edward Balfour for example) had been an early pre-occupation of the military surgeons,…