Open letter to President Kovind

APJ Abdul Kalam as then President of India amidst Adivasi children at BR Hills on October 15, 2006 after his talk at VGKK tribal residential school campus in sharp contrast to President Kovind’s visit on October 7, 2021

Dear Mr President,

It was another October in the year 2006, when a vehicle bearing the national emblem instead of a license plate (as is the norm for vehicles transporting the President) stopped at B R Hills in Chamarajanagar district of southern Karnataka. It was an exciting time for the Solega people who were among those who welcomed him. And why not? It was after all their lands and forests that the (then) President was visiting, and it was with pride and anticipation that they received President Kalam. School girls from Vivekananda Girijana Kalyana Kendra (VGKK) school welcomed him. In complete breach of the blue book which is prescriptive of protocols and behaviours during Presidential visit replete with colonial referencing to visits by (then) royalty, President Kalam insisted on going everywhere that the local district administration had forbidden. He met patients at the tribal hospital that he inaugurated, shared thoughts in his speech on his vision for rural and remote areas, and later on hugged and was hugged by scores of Solega Adivasi children. As a doctor at the hospital, I watched in awe as he demonstrated his familiarity with the name of the local Adivasi community and asked me about the status of Sickle Cell Disease (known to be prevalent among several of these communities). He even naively promised that in a decade genetic engineering would find a treatment for it (which is not yet the case).

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Pachelbel’s Canon in D

Thanks to GSK & ASM for sharing this with me.

Health sells, but who’s buying?

Based on an invited article written for RGNUL Student Research Review Vol 6, Issue 1 titled Healthcare in India: Tracing the contours of a transitioning regime



Pandemic plausibilities at landscape level: case of High Asia

An invitation to join a bunch of ecologists who’re working in High Asia led to this perspective piece that traces plausibility of spillovers turning into pandemics in what is considered relatively low-risk (a literal “coldspot”) for zoonotic disease oubreaks due to its relatively sparse populations and large and unihabitable landscapes. However, as we argue rapid land-use change, macroeconomic (even geopolitical!) pressures could create new niches and open up vulnerabilities for spillover events.

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Who killed Father Stan?

Father Stan died on July 5, 2021. He was arrested and charged under a legislation that – to put it mildly – is irreconcilable with several Constitutional protections in India. In addition, the denial of his bail was further a clear violation of the basic principles of freedoms and liberties. And he is not an exception in terms of the inability of the State to deal with dissent in a democratic way, a kind of stifling of space for the varied expressions that society and governance have thrown upon many communities.

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