Author: mindworks


The social media going on an overdrive did more to harm public health situation than to ameliorate it in the midst of the raging second wave. Manu Shrivastava finds that the gullible stood at risk because of the so called magical cures and remedies of home-grown concoctions. However, a semblance of accountability seems have been thrown in with the social media putting red alerts in place. The scourge of Social Media has raised its hood like never before. And, the present-day Covid-19 crisis only provided the perfect platform for fake news peddlers and charlatans to crawl out of the woodwork…

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The Western Media found an ideal stick to bash India as the Covid situation apparently started spiraling out of control. The oxygen crisis and Remdesivir shortage fuelled by social media anguish came in handy to camouflage a patently politically motivated campaign that was meant to show India in poor light. Gajanan Khergamker describes how even respected journals like Lancet became a cog in this wheel. When the second wave of Covid-19 hit India, the popular notion was that India was caught completely off guard. For one, the number of cases that were being registered as Covid positive was phenomenal and…

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While the world grapples with the raging pandemic, India has pulled up its socks in confronting it head on. Figures elsewhere and in the country are a tell-tale story even as India’s burgeoning health sector revs up reforming its infrastructure and emerging as a good investment option in the process. Vinita Pathak enlists the proactive measures government took to turn the situation around. India is one of the few countries in the world that has tackled the Covid-19 crisis in an exemplary way. A country with a population of more than a billion people, the second-largest in the world, India…

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s clarion call to waive patents on Covid vaccines and the widespread support it has elicited at the G7 Summit has brought into sharp focus an important issue that now rests with the World Trade Organization. Manu Shrivastava explains the nitty gritty and the matrix surrounding the issue of intellectual property rights pertaining to Covid vaccines. When Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made an express plea to seek support of the group to lift patent protections for Covid-19 vaccines, during a virtual address at the inaugural outreach session of the G7 summit in the UK, he touched…

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A filmmaker cast in a different mould, Sudeep Ranjan Sarkar had his own vision and ideas and chose to see the world from his lens. Shunning the beaten path, his multi-faceted versatility gave us out-of-the-box films like Umformung, Paradiso, Lust to Glorious Dead and The Death of Spring. A maverick filmmaker, he spun his themes that had a heady concoction of surrealism and fantasy, says Shoma A. Chatterji Sudeep Ranjan Sarkar is a filmmaker who is extremely low profile. Few know him as a filmmaker who has made five full-length feature films that have been screened across the world in…

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The decision of the Supreme Court that puts 50% cap on reservations has thrown a spanner in their works but the Marathas are regardless bracing up to press for their demand again. While the legal battle will continue, Prof Avinash Kolhe argues that a time has indeed come to take a fresh look at reservation policy and the criterions it is based on so far. The politically dominant community in Maharashtra, (32% of the total population of the state) Marathas are hell-bent on getting reservations. Though the Supreme Court has rejected their demand on 5th May, the community has buckled…

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It is a must-read while we are struggling on Terra Firma and battling menaces like Covid and the like. The sooner the spiritual journey commences in a human’s life, the better, opines G Venkatesh. Film star Rajinikanth rates this as his most favourite book in a Youtube video and calls it a ‘life-changer’. So does a friend of mine from my schooldays. Watching the video perchance and a healthy review by my friend prompted me to read it. The motive was to find the higher purpose in life I have been seeking over the last year and a half in…

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Pune-based Malabika is a BSc graduate with honours in Economics, who has worked with various corporates for 15 years as a Graphic Designer. A wellness enthusiast, her journey has been from making materialistic things look good externally, to a yoga teacher who now designs her sessions to raise self-awareness in every student and make them feel good both internally and externally. Here she talks about yoga with A.Radhakrishnan Describe your personality in three words. Sincere, Compassionate and Resilient. What does yoga mean to you? How has practising and teaching it impacted your life? It’s not just a physical exercise but…

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The Roopkund Lake situated atop 15000 ft in the lap of Himalayas is an abiding enigma. Not just as a treasured destination for the trekkers but for the folklores that surround it. Filled with human skeletons that are visible during the autumn, it leaves visitors awe-struck and confounded but the feeling of having scaled the peak is over-riding. Sucharita D and Ankur K, known as the Banjara Couple, sketch their journey. Trekking mountains is pure bliss. You are in communion with nature. Its pristine beauty rubs off on you, rejuvenates you. You “find yourself” rather than being alone in the…

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Bhangarh Fort draws its mythos from the “eerie and haunted” stories that envelope its enduring imagery. An hour and half drive from Jaipur, its remnants and rubble spin fables that have survived more than four centuries and continue to charm visitors even today. Sucharita D and Ankur K, the ‘Banjara Couple’ in their nomadic spirit, foot it through abiding tales of awe and spookiness emanating from its ramparts. Just 90 kms away from Jaipur (the nearest airport), the Bhangarh Fort beckons with its unique mystic! The drive to the fort is laced with captivating imagery as it passes through the…

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