India needs a new rural-centric development model | Opinion

Go back to Gandhi, Kalam, and Deshmukh; use technology, create jobs; issue self-reliant village bonds

Migration has accelerated exponentially over the last decade in India. Current estimates of the total number of migrant workers range from 72 million to 110 million. India has the second-largest migrant worker population in the world, second only to China. One in four workers in India is essentially a migrant. The lack of authentic data on their numbers, their living and working conditions and perpetual uncertainty in their livelihood prospects have been brought in to sharp focus with the coronavirus pandemic.

Despite the best effort of both the central and state governments, the mass movement of nearly 10 million migrant workers has brought into sharp relief the urgent need to shift to a new paradigm of economic development and urbanisation in which migration under economic distress or due to the lack of amenities is brought down. This can be done if we can convert the Covid-19 crisis into an opportunity to rethink and reimagine our development model. Fortunately for us, an alternative model that minimises migration is available in the works of Mahatma Gandhi, the late president APJ Abdul Kalam and social activist and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) ideologue Nanaji Deshmukh.

The aspiration for self-reliant development at the village level began with the Gandhian model of swaraj. From the time of his return from South Africa, Gandhi immersed himself in village movements in Champaran (1917), Sevagram (1920) and Wardha (1938). He visualised a comprehensive programme of constructive work, which included economic self-reliance, social equality and a decentralised political system at the village level.

For Gandhi, the model of self-reliant villages was the basis of a free democracy. He declared, “My idea of village swaraj is that it is a complete republic, independent of its neighbours for its own vital wants, and yet interdependent for many others in which dependence is a necessity.” His was not a model of a closed economy and a village economy perpetuating itself at the lower levels of income, but one in which local populations could be employed locally but with rising incomes and higher productivity. It is not well known that in his quest for technological improvement, Gandhi had put out an advertisement for a better version of the charkha in British and Indian newspapers in 1929, and even offered a handsome reward of Rs 1 lakh for it (about ~2.5 crore today).

Kalam, the missile man, had his own model called Providing Urban Amenities in Rural Areas (PURA). His vision was to develop rural India through a cluster development system where 50-100 villages with common competencies and/or mutual markets could be horizontally or vertically integrated as PURA complexes. These villages would be linked through “four connectivities” — physical, electronic, knowledge and economic. The goal was to provide income and quality of life opportunities to all within PURA complex. While some rural-rural migration would be acceptable, rural to urban migration would be minimised. He envisioned 7,000 PURA complexes at the cost of Rs 130 crore per unit built through public-private partnerships.

Deshmukh called for self-reliant villages based on a model of integral humanism where harmony was also a pivotal force. In his work across 500 villages in India, especially in the Chitrakoot area, the successful implementation of the model called not just for zero unemployment and no one below the poverty line, but also zero internal legal disputes and no widow being denied remarriage. In Deshmukh’s model, the collective social consciousness that promoted collective well-being was considered to be a cornerstone to next-generation rural development.

Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi implemented the model of rurban development when he was chief minister of Gujarat. This was sought to be replicated at the pan-India level through the launch of the Shyama Prasad Mukherji Rurban Mission in 2014. The model follows a cluster development design to create social, health, education and economic infrastructure across villages.

In order to make 650,000-plus villages and 800 million citizens self-reliant, technology will have to play a critical role. We need to create a rural knowledge platform through active collaboration between the public and private sector. This will provide the expertise to take cutting edge technology deeper into villages and generate employment. Today, the Internet and artificial intelligence are being used extensively around the world to facilitate sustainable agriculture. Large-scale and real-time data collected from farming practices and collated with global price and production numbers can be used to offer more profitable choices to our farmers.

In a survey of urban migrant workers, 84% of them reported that their primary source of livelihood in their villages was casual work. Only 11% stated that agriculture was their primary source of income. This indicates that there is a need to create jobs in rural areas far beyond just augmentation of agriculture. In fact, agriculture itself will shed jobs with the addition of technology.

To finance this ambitious re-engineering of our development model, Atmanirbhar Village bonds could be issued to raise resources. Part of the mandated priority sector lending by scheduled commercial banks could be used to finance these bonds. We need to prioritise self-reliant village projects to be funded from such lending. We need to create a fresh curriculum in engineering, medical colleges and business schools to train the workforce to operate in villages.

The capacity of India’s youth to innovate needs to be unleashed in villages. India needs to build the nation, village upwards and not city downwards. We need to eliminate the division between Bharat and India. This can be achieved bringing Gandhi’s and Kalam’s ideas of developing a rurban India to the centre of the development model.

Rajiv Kumar is vice-chairman, NITI Aayog

Srijan Pal Singh is CEO, Dr Kalam Centre, Delhi

The views expressed are personal

Source: Hindustan Times, 24/06/20

When fear leads to faith: The disease Gods of India

Resorting to faith in times of distress has been an inherent human reaction since the beginning of civilisation. In India worship of Goddess Hariti, Sitala, Ola Bibi has been prevalent to ward off diseases.

“I am worshipping the coronavirus as a goddess and doing daily pujas for the safety and well being of healthcare professionals, police personnel and scientists, who are toiling to discover a vaccine.” Anilan, a temple priest at Kadakkal in Kollam district of Kerala, gives the reason behind the ‘Corona devi’ idol he’s now offering daily prayers to. Faraway, in Biswanath district of northern Assam, a group of women recently assembled on the banks of a river to perform a puja to ‘Corona ma’, who they believe will destroy the virus that has killed thousands across the globe. Similar images of women offering prayers to Goddess ‘Corona mai’ have also emerged from Sindri and Bokaro in Jharkhand as well.

While these images from Kerala, Assam and Jharkhand have resulted in angry social media responses, resorting to faith in times of distress has been an inherent human reaction since the beginning of civilisation. The British polymath Bertrand Russell had in his famous lecture titled ‘Why I am not a Christian’ delivered in 1927 at London, expressed that “fear is the foundation of religion’.

“Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown, and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole thing—fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death.”

One of the most common religious manifestations of fear is that of the snake God. “Throughout history, humans have had an uneasy relationship with serpents. Snakes are important in many religions including the Judeo-Christian tradition, Hinduism, Egyptian and Greek mythology, and Native American religions, among others. This prominence in so many religions may be the result of humans’ fear of snakes,” writes Jonathan W. Stanley in his research paper, ‘Snakes: Objects of Religion, Fear, and Myth’. In Indian religious tradition too, snakes are worshipped in different parts of the country in different ways.

Yet another example of fear giving rise to religion is that of the multitude of war deities. While Indra and Kartikeya have been associated with war in Hinduism, Mars was the God of War in ancient Roman religion, Ogun is the God of war in several African religions.

The fear of diseases and the resultant suffering, have also given rise to several religious manifestations. The first plague in human history, also known as the Justinian Plague in the sixth century CE, was seen as an act of angry Gods. “There is no single or predictable response to epidemic disease. Nor is it correct to assume that religious responses are always apocalyptic,” writes historian Duane J. Osheim in his research paper, ‘Religion and epidemic disease’. “It might be better to recognise that religion, like gender, class, or race, is a category of analysis. The religious response to epidemic disease may best be seen as a frame, a constantly shifting frame, subtly influencing illness and human responses to it,” he adds.

One of the earliest iconographic traditions we have of a Goddess being worshipped to ward off a disease is that of Hariti. Several statues of Hariti with her brood of children have been excavated from territories ruled by the Kushana dynasty in the early centuries in the Christian era. The Kushanas had inherited the Graeco-Buddhist religion from the Indo-Greek kingdom they replaced, which explains the popularity of Hariti in Buddhist tradition.

The first smallpox outbreak in the world is known to have been in the fifth century BCE in Europe. When it first occurred in India is hard to tell, but records of Chinese visitors to India I-Tsing and Xuanzang in the sixth and seventh century CE, shows the popularity of Hariti statues across every Buddhist monastery in the subcontinent. Given that smallpox was often considered to be a disease that primarily affected children, Hariti was worshipped for the overall wellbeing of children, childbirth, fertility, as well as for warding away diseases afflicting children.

However, scholars have remarked upon the fact that Hariti was introduced into Buddhist tradition from rural and tribal folklore wherein smallpox Goddesses were worshipped from much before. Historian Sree Padma, in her work, ‘Hariti: Village origins, Buddhist elaborations, and Saivite accommodations’, notes that Goddess Hariti had folk origins in Andhra Pradesh where she was known as Goddess Erukamma. “The Goddess of smallpox and other contagious diseases who are also regarded as guardian deities are ubiquitous in Andhra. The names of these smallpox Goddesses might vary from region to region. Some of these are called Mutyalamma, Pochamma, Peddamma, Nukalamma, Ankalamma etc.,” she writes. Padma goes on to explain that “some smallpox Goddesses are deified human women who died during their pregnancies or when delivering children. Devotees believed that the spirits of these women would bring destruction and death to their children unless they are approached with proper offerings and prayers.”

The folk Goddess was later incorporated into Buddhist tradition where she was revered for protection of children and fertility. Archaeological evidence shows that images of Hariti appeared during the period of Mahayana Buddhism between 150 BCE and 100 CE, and spread beyond the Indian subcontinent to be part of the Buddhist cultural world in central, east and south-east Asia.

Belgian priest and scholar of Buddhism Entienne Lamotte, in his 1988 book ‘History of Indian Buddhism’, notes that “she is still invoked in Nepal as the Goddess curing smallpox, and the monks are expected to ensure her daily nourishment”. He goes on to elaborate that images of Hariti are widespread, the most famous one being at a site in Peshawar. “She carries a standing child in her hand and two others on her shoulders; the plinth is engraved with an inscription, from the year 179 (or 139) of an unknown era, begging the Goddess to take smallpox away into the sky,” he notes.

Sitala: The cooling Goddess of Smallpox

By the 19th century, British physicians in India ranked smallpox among the most prevalent and destructive of all epidemic diseases. Historian David Arnold in his book, ‘Colonising the body: State medicine and epidemic diseases in nineteenth century India’ notes that “Smallpox accounted for several million deaths in the late nineteenth century alone, amounting on average to more than one hundred thousand fatal cases a year.”

Believed to be an incarnation of the Hindu Goddess Durga, Sitala, or simply ‘mata’ (mother), was widely worshipped in the 19th century in Bengal and North India, as one who can cure smallpox. Anthropologist, Ralph W. Nicholas in his research paper, ‘The Goddess Śītalā and Epidemic Smallpox in Bengal’ observes that “there is no evidence of the Goddess of Smallpox before the tenth to twelfth centuries, and she appears to have attained her present special significance as goddess of the village in southwestern Bengal abruptly in the eighteenth century”.

Despite the fact that there were several other Goddesses of smallpox in 18th-19th century Indian folklore, Sitala seems to have enjoyed a special position. What is interesting is that while she was revered as a Goddess, Smallpox was believed to be a manifestation of her personality. “The burning fever and pustules that marked her entry into the body demanded ritual rather than therapeutic responses. To some Hindus, recourse to any form of prophylaxis or treatment was impious, likely to provoke the Goddess and further imperil the child in whose body she currently resided,” writes Arnold.

Sitala, meaning the ‘cool one’, was to be pacified with cooling substances such as curd, plantains, cold rice, and sweets. “Similarly, when an attack of smallpox occurred, cooling drinks were offered to the patients as the abode of the Goddess, and his or her feverish body was washed with cold water or soothed with the wetted leaves of the neem (or margosa), Shitala’s favourite tree,” explains Arnold.

It is fascinating to note that despite smallpox being eradicated from India in the 1970s, Sitala continues to hold a place of reverence in large parts of the country.

Ola chandi/bibi: The Cholera Goddess

Yet another deadly epidemic of 19th century India was Cholera. Even though references to Cholera occurs in ancient medical works of Hindus, Arabs, Chinese, Greeks, and Romans from the fourth century BCE, the disease acquired a whole new status in the nineteenth century, when a total of five Cholera pandemics claimed the lives of millions across the world.

Consequently, the ritualisation of Cholera is believed to have started after the pandemic of 1817. “Only in deltaic Bengal, is there known to have been worship of a specific Cholera deity, called Ola Bibi by Muslims, and Olai-Chandi by Hindus,” writes Arnod. He adds that “before 1817 the Goddess enjoyed far less popular devotion than Sitala, but she was thereafter extensively propitiated during the season when cholera was most prevalent.”

Reports by European missionaries mentioned in Arnold’s book suggests that reverence for the Goddess often manifested itself in young girls dressing up as Ola Bibi/ Chandi to receive her worship. Apart from Bengal, she is also worshipped in Rajasthan as the deity who saves her devotees from cholera, Few other deities invoked by the fear of diseases include Ghentu-debata, the God of skin diseases, and Raktabati, the Goddess of blood infections.

While resorting to religion has been a natural human response to fear, scientific intervention has started obliterating the same. As Russell noted in his lecture: “Science can teach us, and I think our own hearts can teach us, no longer to look round for imaginary supports, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make this world a fit place to live in.”

Further reading: 

Religion and epidemic disease by Duane J. Osheim

Hariti: Village Origins, Buddhist Elaborations and Saivite Accommodations by Sree Padma

History of Indian Buddhism by Etienne Lamotte

Colonizing the Body: State Medicine and Epidemic Disease in Nineteenth-Century India by David Arnold

The Goddess Śītalā and Epidemic Smallpox in Bengal by Ralph W. Nicholasjaundice, diarrhea, and other stomach related diseases.

Source: Indian Express, 22/06/2020

How oppressive containment measures during Poona plague led to assassination of British officer

Indian Civil Service officer Charles Walter Rand felt the need for strong measures to "stamp out plague from Poona" and deployed the military to search infected persons. Soon, reports and rumours of harassment of locals - especially of Indian women - at the hands of British soldiers started emerging from the city.

THE FIRST recorded case of bubonic plague in Pune – then Poona – was discovered on October 2, 1896 when two passengers from Mumbai alighted at the railway station. By December that year, the city was showing signs of local transmission and the disease had started to spread rapidly – especially in the densely populated Peth areas. Earlier, after the reports of plague came in from Mumbai in September 1896, the municipal corporation had appointed a medical officer at Pune Railway Station to watch out for persons with Plague symptoms and send them to special sheds erected at Sassoon General Hospital.

The plague wave that had reached Pune was part of the ‘Third Plague Pandemic’ which had started in Yunnan, China in 1855 and entered India through the port city of Mumbai via Hong Kong. The epidemic would last for well over two decades and would kill about 10 million Indians between 1896 and 1918, as it ravaged one city after the other.

However, none among scores of cities that were afflicted by the pestilence would cause as much political uproar as Pune.

A DANGEROUS PLAGUE CENTRE’

By the end of February, 1897, Pune had recorded 308 cases of plague with 271 deaths. The dread of the disease which had such a high mortality rate had caused the locals to flee the city. The municipal officials estimated that about 15,000 to 20,000 locals had left the city to escape the pandemic and had settled in villages in the outskirts. As this was happening, locals, as well as Englishmen, were asking for the appointment of a ‘strong officer’ who would improve the sanitary and health situation in the city, failing which, they feared, “the matters will never mend and go down from bad to worse.”

The strongman that the Bombay Presidency Governor William Mansfield Sandhurst decided to appoint was 34-year-old Walter Charles Rand, an Oxford-educated officer of the Indian Civil Service, who was then serving in Satara. Rand was appointed on February 10, 1897 as an Assistant Collector and Chairman, Poona Plague Committee.

“My first duty was to ascertain the extent to which the disease had already spread in Poona,” Rand wrote in the plague report that he drafted in June-July, but died before its submission in August. “After examining the current death register of Poona Municipal Corporation and mortality returns for previous years I discovered that … the morality in the city was growing at an alarming rate since the beginning of January…On the same day I also informed the Collector that Poona had become a very dangerous plague centre,” Rand wrote.

WHY MILITARY HELP WAS TAKEN?

As per Rand, Surgeon Captain WWO Beveridge arrived in Pune to assist in fighting the epidemic in the city with the idea of using military men in the plague operations. “Up to the time of Surgeon Captain Beveridge’s arrival, the use of anything but civil agency for dealing with the epidemic had not been considered. The officer, who had had considerable experience of the Plague in Hong Kong and methods adopted there for stamping it out, formed an opinion that the help of soldiers would be desirable in Poona, especially to search for sufferers from plague, their removal to suitable hospitals, and the disinfection of plague-infected houses,” Rand says in the report.

Following this, Collector RA Lamb sent out a formal request to the government of Bombay Presidency. “The aid of the soldiers is needed because the men are available, they are disciplined, they can be relied upon to be thorough and honest in their inspection, while no native agency is available, or could be relied on if it were,” he said.

At this time the population of Pune – including those residing in municipal limits, cantonments and suburbs – was 1.61 lakh. The plan prepared by Rand attached the greatest importance to house-to-house search for infected patients and suspects. There was intense aversion among the townsfolk for taking out the plague-infected family members to the hospital. The families resorted to “incredible shifts” in order to prevent authorities from detecting a plague patient. Such patients were hidden in lofts, cupboards and gardens or “anywhere where their presence was least likely suspected”. This, the administration argued, would leave no option but to resort to “compulsory methods” to ensure isolation of the infected patients.
Five special plague hospitals were erected in various parts of the city, one each for Hindu, Muslim, Parsi communities in addition to a general hospital for all patients and the Sassoon Hospital where Europeans were treated. On the same line, four segregation camps were set up where family members and oth“There was, it is true, no Indian example of the suppression by strong measures, of an epidemic of plague which had established itself in a large town, but the possibility of so suppressing the disease had been demonstrated at Hongkong in 1894. It was certain that if the plague was not to be allowed to run its course, but was to be stamped out of Poona, stringent measures would have to be taken,” Rand observed in the report.

The containment policy adopted by Rand and his team was to actively search the localities in the city with the help of the soldiers accompanied by natives for plague-infected patients (or their dead bodies) and take them to the hospitals (or cremate the bodies under medical supervision). The houses where patients were found were cleaned, fumigated, dug up (to destroy rats) and lime washed.
The work of search parties was carried out between March 13 and May 19 1897. About 20 search parties (later increased to 60) each consisting three British soldiers and one native gentleman were formed for his purpose. A division of 10 search parties had one medical officer and a lady searcher to inspect women in purdah.

“In order that plague patients might not be removed before the arrival of the troops, no intimation as to what area that was to be searched was given to the public. The streets in which the search took place were patrolled by Cavalry. The only important complaint about the first day’s work was that doors forced open by the troops were not reclosed. This difficulty was overcome on subsequent occasions by attaching to each search division a few Native troops with hammers and staples to fasten up doors after the searchers,” reads the report.

As per Rand’s report, the attitude of the residents was “friendly” to the search parties except that of the Brahmin community which was unfriendly and tried to obstruct the searches. The medical officers were supplied with cash advances and had instructions to pay compensation for any articles belonging to plague patients that may have been destroyed in the process.

“It was found at the beginning of the operations that rather too many articles were at times destroyed as rubbish. Orders were accordingly issued on March 26 to Officers commanding limewashing divisions to visit, if possible, all houses to be limewashed and to decide what should be destroyed in each. It was also laid down that when a property of any value to the owners was destroyed by limewashing party, the Officer commanding the division should note the approximate cost of replacing what had been destroyed in order that compensation might afterwards be paid. In practice nothing was destroyed after the first fortnight of the operations except in the presence of an officer,” reads the report.

The searches, the Committee claimed, bore results. Between March 13 and May 19 1897, it searched 2,18,214 houses and found 338 plague cases and 64 corpses. The report says each house was searched 11 times during the course of the operation.

All entry and exit points to the city were manned by British soldiers to ensure that no one from the infected area enters Pune or plague suspects flee the city or smuggle out the dead bodies to escape testing by the authorities.

As per the British, there were very few complaints against the conduct of the soldiers – both British and Indian – and whenever any complaint was made action was taken against the violators. In a letter written to Rand on May 20 1897, Major A Deb V Paget, who was commanding the operations, lists six cases of violation of discipline by soldiers which were found to be true and involved stealing of cash, pocketing goods and receiving money from the locals.er contacts of the plague patients were kept under observation.

The committee also claimed that these “energetic measures” carried out by military officers with “praiseworthy zeal” led to the decline of the disease by the end of May 1897 after a peak in March.

HOW INDIANS SAW THESE OPERATIONS?

Local experience of these search operations and forceful segregation of plague patients and suspects, however, was not as benign. The complaints sent to senior officials – including Rand – and news reports in the local publications suggest that residents looked at these operations as a reign of terror.

As per the petitions, summarised by Rajnarayan Chandavarkar in his essay ‘Plague Panic and Epidemic Politics in India: 1896-1914’ published in the book Epidemics and Ideas, there was wanton and indiscriminate destruction of the property during searches. The segregation and lime washing parties would dig up the floor, put gallons of disinfectant in the nook and crannies of the houses. They at times broke open the doors and left them ajar, took away “perfectly healthy” persons and, in some cases, even neighbours and passers-by were packed to segregation camps.

“…There were complaints that ‘all the females are compelled to come out of their houses and stand before the public gaze in the open street and be there subjected to inspection by soldiers. Soldiers were said to behave ‘disgracefully with native ladies’ and the tenor of the official response was that they had ‘merely joked with a Marathi woman’ suggest that sexual harassment probably did occur. Shripat Gopal Kulkarni, an octogenarian, complained that ten or twelve soldiers had burst into his house, forced him to undress, ‘felt…the whole of my body and then made me sit and rise and sitting around me went on clapping their hands and dancing,” writes Chandavarkar.

It was at this backdrop that Bal Gangadhar Tilak wrote in Mahratta, his English newspaper: “Plague is more merciful to us than its human prototypes now reigning the city. The tyranny of the Plague Committee and its chosen instruments is yet too brutal to allow respectable people to breathe at ease.”
No doubt that the regulations and measures as they were imposed in Pune were the most stringent among all the cities afflicted by the pandemic. In fact, Antony MacDonnel, Lieutenant-Governor of the North-Western Provinces, had observed in a July 1897 communique that “If the plague regulations had been enforced in any city of these provinces in the way in which …they were…enforced in Poona, there would have been bloodshed here.”

THE MURDERS

Blood was indeed shed in Pune too. On June 22, 1897, Chapekar brothers – Damodar (27), Balkrisha (24) and Vasudev (17 or 18) – shot Rand and Lieutenant Charles Ayerst (mistaking him for Rand before he was located in the preceding carriage) while they were returning from Queen Victoria’s Jubilee Celebration at Government House in Ganeshkhind (now Pune University). While Ayerst died immedDamodar Chapekar, who is said to have planned and led the assassination, made it clear in his confession (which was later retracted by him) that the search operations carried out by British soldiers were behind his decision to kill Rand.

“In the search of houses a great zulum (atrocity) was practised by the soldiers and they entered the temples and brought out women from their houses, broke idols and burnt pothis (holy books). We determined to revenge these actions but it was no use to kill common people and it was necessary to kill the chief man. Therefore we determined to kill Mr Rand who was the chief,” Damodar was recorded to have said on October 8, 1897 in front of a magistrate following his arrest.

While Chapekar brothers or their accomplices did not mention of it, the British also surmised that the attack may have been inspired by the “peculiarly violent writing of the Poona newspapers regarding the plague administration” that shortly preceded the murders, almost openly advocating the duty of forcible resistance to the authority. The reference here was to Bal Gangadhar Tilak’s editorials in Kesari as well as writings and reporting in other newspapers such as Sudharak and Poona Vaibhav among others.

The government – startled, embarrassed by the murders – booked Tilak of sedition under Section 124 of Indian Penal code for exciting feelings of disaffection among the public through his writings in Kesari. It was also alleged that by glorifying and justifying Shivaji’s killing of Afzal Khan in the 17th century, he directly supported violence and resultantly caused murders of the two British officers barely a week after the publication of the articles. A few months later, the court found Tilak guilty and sent him to 18 months of imprisonment.

ACCUSATION OF SEXUAL VIOLATIONS

The alleged atrocities committed by British soldiers during plague control operations also caused an uproar in United Kingdom when Congress leader from Maharashtra Gopal Krishna Gokhale who was visiting England to appear before Welby Commission gave an interview to The Manchester Guardian (now The Guardian) on July 2, 1897 (published on July 3) in which he levelled serious accusations against the British soldiers. These “rumours” were the talk of the town in India but were raised outside the country with such prominence for the first time.

Apart from detailing how soldiers “ignorant of the language and contemptuous to customs” offended  in scores of ways, he also made allegations of “violation of two women, one of whom is said to have committed suicide rather than to survive her shame” attributing the information to his contacts back home in Pune. This caused an uproar in the British parliament as well back home in India. The Bombay Presidency government called it a “malevolent invention” and challenged Gokhale to prove them or share with the government the names of the persons who had shared this information with him.

After his return to India, Gokhale tried his best to gather evidence from the persons who had written to him about the atrocities against the women – especially the two cases of rape – but nobody was willing to come forward, especially in the light of the severe crackdown in Pune post Rand’s assassination including sedition case against Tilak. A detailed account of this episode has been given by Stanley Wolpert in his book Tilak and Gokhale: Revolution and reform in the making of modern India.

Unable to substantiate these claims, Gokhale published an “unqualified apology” to British soldiers which was published by The Manchester Guardian and The Times of India on August 4.iately, Rand succumbed to the injuries on July 3.

As per, Chandavarkar the rumours of these violations – which may or may not be confirmed – should be seen as an indication of the nightmarish experience of the local population of their private places being “invaded and violated” by uninformed foreign agents.

“Stories about the behaviour of the soldiers may have borne a considerable measure of truth but they also reflected the nightmarish invasion and violation of privacy – even god-rooms and kitchens – by the most frightening, powerful, uniformed foreign agent of public authority. Sexual harassment by the soldiers and their ‘disgraceful behaviour towards the native ladies’ almost certainly occurred – and, indeed, physical examination, ‘the exploration of the native’s body’ in the street or at railway checkpoints may themselves be regarded precisely as that – but reports of them also served as a metaphor for the violent eruption of the state into the privacy of people’s lives,” Chandavarkar writes.

After the initial frenzy had abated, and following Rand’s murder, the Plague Committee slackened its operations although plague continued to flourish. The killing spree in the city went on for several years. By May 1904, it infected 45,665 and killed 37,178.

Source: Indian Express, 9/06/2020

Children and the pandemic

Disruption in health services, suspension of mid-day meals, use of ASHA workers for COVID-related activities could aggravate India’s malnutrition problem.

COVID-19 has changed the way we have been taking all that is precious to us for granted. It has not only made the world pause, reflect and rearrange priorities in life, but has made many of us aware of our privileges and shown us a mirror to how we react to human sufferings as a society. While we come to terms with the COVID-induced changes one cannot comprehend the damage that the pandemic will inflict on children, albeit indirectly. Since the outbreak, the world has focused its attention acutely on the higher fatality rate the virus has caused among the elderly and launched a scientific enquiry on why children have emerged relatively unaffected. But amidst decoding this mysterious eccentricity of the virus, what has escaped our attention is the long-term damage the cascading effect of COVID-19 is likely to cause in children — through inadequate health services, broken medical supplies, interrupted access to nutritious food and income loss in families.

The long-term impact of the pandemic on economic and social systems remains invisible, but experts have begun to caution with worrying forecasts. Drawing from a recent Lancet study, the UNICEF has warned that three lakh children could die in India over the next six months due to disrupted health services and surge in child-wasting, a form of malnutrition when the child is too thin for his/her height. India is expected to bear one of the heaviest tolls of this preventable devastation, partly because its record in managing malnutrition among children was grim even in pre-COVID-19 times. India is home to half of the “wasted children” globally, reckons the recently launched Global Nutrition Report 2020. More than a third (37.9 per cent) of our children under-five years are stunted, and over a fifth (20.8 per cent) are wasted, the report adds. These rates are significantly higher compared to average prevalence in developing countries, which stand at 25 per cent for stunting and 8.9 per cent for wasting. Furthermore, even the National Family Health Surveys (NFHS) data shows that in the decade up to 2015, children suffering from severe acute malnutrition grew to 7.5 per cent from 6.4 per cent. Separately, Observer Research Foundation reports that with 15 per cent of the total population in the “hungry” bracket, India is one of the most undernourished regions in the world.

This nutrition insecure backdrop of India makes it dangerous to live through an extreme adversity like the current pandemic without proper planning for protection of our vulnerable population. Past few weeks, the entire country has been in lockdown mode to contain the infection which has brought economic activities to a complete standstill and resulted in income losses. Mid-day meals, the main source of nutrition for millions of children had to be suspended with schools shut, and congregations banned. Some states are trying to substitute it with dry ration but sharing of food by other family members in such trying times cannot be ruled out.

Overall health outreach services have been disrupted amid the panic the virus has triggered. Services of our front-line workers, the ASHAs and Anganwadi workers, had to be diverted for COVID-19 surveillance activities. Considering that they have been the lifeline of government’s nutrition programmes, this is bound to result in neglect of children and their nutrition status.

The highly infectious nature of the virus has prompted decisions that have caused serious economic distress, particularly to those dependent on daily wages to survive. Vulnerable groups have been further pushed to poverty. Children belonging to poor households face the highest vulnerability in terms of physical growth and brain development at crucial stages of their life because of highly compromised, untimely, and unhealthy meals, poor dietary intake and weakened immune system. Hence, pregnant or lactating mothers, infants and young children need protection not just from the virus, but from a lack of healthcare facilities, inadequate diet and misinformed breastfeeding practices.

Even as lockdown regulations ease and essential healthcare including antenatal care services slowly start resuming, the pandemic has already led to severe adverse consequences for mothers and children, particularly those facing socio-economic disadvantages. To restore efficiency in the system, special rations, including nutrients like protein, good fats, vitamins, essential minerals with less sugar, need to be made readily available on an urgent basis for mothers and children, so that their weakened immunity is boosted to fight deadly infections.

Government silos are abundant with 71 million tonnes of rice and wheat, recently there were images of pulses rotting in godowns that went viral. It is important to mobilise resources to increase the access of people to a diversified diet. Nutrition programmes like the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), mid-day meals, and anganwadi centres should continue to work as essential services and provide rations and meals to beneficiaries’ homes. States need to innovate strategies to support marginalised workers and ensure access of food at people’s doorsteps. As the numbers of vulnerable are set to soar, the country needs to expand preventive coverage of access to food and pre-empt a hunger crisis.

Post the pandemic, new strategies will have to be planned out for strengthening community-based management of acute malnutrition. Structural reforms of the Nutritional Rehabilitation Centres (NRCs) will have to be considered along with a ready workforce that has to be trained to fulfil the needs of the population during and post-pandemic. This will ensure access to nutrition services for women and children, improving their health.

The battle ahead is full of grave challenges. Properly planned, sustainable, inclusive polices and relief measures need to be implemented with an efficient, skilled and motivated workforce on the ground with seamless coordination between the Centre and states. Post pandemic, we shouldn’t have to live with this one regret — that the preventable damage surpassed the damage that was unpreventable.

Source: Indian Express, 18/06/2020

What is Dexamethasone?

Dexamethasone is "the first drug to be shown to improve survival in COVID-19". It is "inexpensive, on the shelf, and can be used immediately to save lives worldwide".

As the world struggles to flatten the curve of the novel coronavirus, a low-cost drug is appearing to offer some medical respite from the Covid-19 pandemic. Researchers in England say they have the first evidence that the widely available steroid called dexamethasone reduced deaths by up to one third in severely ill ventilated patients.

The observation was based on a clinical trial called RECOVERY (Randomised Evaluation of COVid-19 therapy) to test potential treatments for Covid 19, including a steroid treatment with low-dose dexamethasone.

The drug was given either orally or through an IV. After 28 days, it had reduced deaths by 35 per cent in patients who needed treatment with breathing machines and by 20 per cent in those only needing supplemental oxygen. It, however, did not appear to help less ill patients

So, what is dexamethasone?

“Dexamethasone is inexpensive, on the shelf, and can be used immediately to save lives worldwide,” said Peter Horby, a study leader of the University of Oxford, and one of the Chief Investigators for the cDexamethasone is a steroid drug typically used to reduce inflammation. According to the NHS, “steroid tablets, also called corticosteroid tablets, are a type of anti-inflammatory medicine used to treat a range of conditions. They can be used to treat problems such as allergies, asthma, eczema, inflammatory bowel disease and arthritis.”

Significantly, Dexamethasone is also “the first drug to be shown to improve survival in COVID-19”. “This is an extremely welcome result. The survival benefit is clear and large in those patients who are sick enough to require oxygen treatment, so dexamethasone should now become standard of care in these patients,” Horby said.linical trial

Steroid drugs reduce inflammation, which sometimes develops in COVID-19 patients as the immune system overreacts to fight the infection. This overreaction can prove fatal, so doctors have been testing steroids and other anti-inflammatory drugs in such patients. The World Health Organization advises against using steroids earlier in the course of illness because they can slow the time until patients clear the virus.

The clinical trial that proved Dexamethasone to be effective

As part of the RECOVERY trial, Dexamethasone was tested on 2104 patients who received 6 mg of the drug once per day for ten days and were compared with 4321 patients randomised to usual care aloBased on these results, “one death would be prevented by treatment of around 8 ventilated patients or around 25 patients requiring oxygen alone.”

Overall dexamethasone reduced the 28-day mortality rate by 17% with a highly significant trend showing greatest benefit among those patients requiring ventilation, researches estimated.

Other methods of treatment in the ongoing trial includes the HIV drug Lopinavir-Ritonavir, antibiotic Azithromycin, anti-inflammatory treatment Tocilizumab, and Convalescent plasma. Hydroxychloroquine, the malaria drug promoted by US President Donald Trump, has been stopped due to lack of efficacy.ne.

Source: Indian Express, 17/06/2020

How I secured an internship after losing one, during COVID-19’

Divya Choudhary, a master’s degree student at the University Southern California (USC) Viterbi School of Engineering, shares how she managed after losing an internship during the pandemic.

The news has highlighted job loss due to COVID. However, there is still a ray of hope for students; companies are still looking for interns. As a graduate student at the USC Viterbi School Engineering, I faced a setback due to COVID-19. I lost an internship that I had secured two months earlier. However, despite the global economic turmoil, I secured a new internship within 12 days.

As a part of the executive board for graduate students, the largest student group on USC’s campus, and my role as a student ambassador in the Viterbi School of Engineering’s dedicated career office, I have learned certain “ins” and “outs” of the recruitment process. Below are a few tips that helped me persevere in getting an internship during this period:

Extend your reach and enquire with your contacts: My involvement in activities throughout campus helped me garner contacts. Leverage your contacts and extended networks to enquire about informational interviews. Find out if there is a protocol in place that an individual can follow to be conDon’t give up: Even though the job market appears uncertain, it is essential that students have an optimistic outlook and keep actively looking out for opportunities. Remember that any offers rescinded at this point in time are circumstantial and not a measure of one’s qualities or reflective of the strength of your resumé. Having a positive outlook during these times will help you keep going despite any hiccups.

Prepare smart: Do not slacken your interview preparation because of these setbacks. Get back up and revisit important concepts like machine learning models, basics statistics, deep learning algorithms if you have used them. A very important point most people miss in their preparation is problem-solving skills – focus on understanding how the algorithms or products you developed helped meet business needs and ease customer experience. It’s important to be able to understand and talk about the bigger picture of your projects along with their minute implementation details. This will help you stand out among a sea of other applicants.sidered for an internship should one become available.

Engage with the university alumni: Alumni networks of your university can prove to be very helpful to your search. Students can reach out to the executives whose work they admire since the alumni are a part of the very industry that students aspire to work in and thereby are more updated about opportunities. In addition to this, alumni often have a bent towards hiring from their alma mater as they have confidence in the core competencies of the upcoming graduates. It is essential that students take advantage of both your career offices and your departmental resources at the university. (Don’t ignore their emails, events, or recruitment opportunities!)

As for me, while an alumnus was seeking a full-time employee and I was scouting for an internship opportunity, I wrote to the individual anyway and received a prompt response. This is the internship I landed.

Source: Indian Express, 13/06/2020

A book a day keeps the blues away; Your lockdown reading is here

Reading is a solitary act, but during the lockdown, you can be alone together with other book lovers, thanks to these digital initiatives.

Pick a Book

* Thousands of e-books are just a download away; many are available on discount, others, free of cost. Publishing house Juggernaut Books has made select titles available for download free on its mobile app. Read the prize-winning Early Indians by Tony Joseph or actor-writer Twinkle Khanna’s Pyjamas are Forgiving, if you are in the mood for something light. For a dose of history, you can turn to Kohinoor by William Dalrymple, or, for policy discussions to Good Economics For Hard Times by Nobel prize-winning economists Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo

 National Book Trust is also offering some of its titles for free download, as part of its initiative #StayHomeIndiaWithBooks. Over 100 books, in various Indian languages, including Ahomiya, Bangla, Guajarati, Malayalam, Odia, Marathi, Kokborok, Mizo, Bodo, Kannada, Sanskrit, can be downloaded from its website nbtindia.gov.in. Most of these are for children and young adults, but there are also classics by there Rabindranath Tagore, Premchand and others. More titles will be added soon.

* Kolkata-based Seagull Books is offering a free book a day, available for download from its website. The first batch of seven is already out, which includes translated works of writers Banaphool, Alawiya Sobh, Florence Noiville, among others. Return to the site each Sunday for a fresh stash for the week.

* Author Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni has penned the first chapter of what is to become a crowd-sourced novel — possibly an apocalyptic one, given the times — in which, Manaroma, a school teacher, wakes up to find not only her husband and children missing, but the whole city quiet. Initiated by Harper Collins India, anyone can participate in the contest and the collection of the prize-winning chapters will result in a book.

Festive Fervour

* A virtual literature festival with book readings, conversations, sneak peaks into authors’ bookshelves, masterclasses and workshops has been organised by Juggernaut Books. You can listen to actor Konkana Sen Sharma read Jhumpa Lehri’s Hell-Heaven, Shabana Azmi read the story Nanhi ki Nani by celebrated Urdu writer Ismat Chughtai or tune into a masterclass by dietician Rujuta Diwekar, who will guide people on quarantine workouts and meal plans.

* Manjul Publishing House is also organising a two-day literary fest from April 11 on their Instagram live. Watch 20 authors, including mythologist Devdutt Pattanaik and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, on @manjulpublishinghouse.

* The annual Jaipur Literature Festival has also announced a new series called ‘Brave New World’, in which the sprawling grounds of Diggi Palace have been replaced by the boundless possibilities of the internet, with interactions with over 40 authors including Jhumpa Lahiri, Michael Palin, Robert Macfarlane, Aanchal Malhotra, Bee Rowlatt, Edmund de Waal, Peter Carey, Roger Highfield, Tom Holland, among others. Instead of putting out videos of older sessions, the organisers decided to have “digital-specific format, a point-of-view, one-on-one, half-hour sessions, directly talking to the viewers, taking questions”. Peter Frankopanm, who argued about “the danger of a forthcoming pandemic” in a magazine article in December after the outbreak in Wuhan, will be in discussion with Pulitzer-prize winner writer and oncologist Dr Siddhartha Mukherjee; Tom Holland will be talking to Stephen Greenblatt about Roman poet-philosopher Lucretius’s warning on p

Authors’ Lounge

* Organised by Niyogi Books on their facebook page, many authors are doing readings of their works. Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award-winning writer E Santhosh Kumar narrated a short story from A Fistful of Mustard Seeds, which was originally written in Malayalam over two decades ago.

* Roli Books has launched their digital initiative, Roli Pulse, which will see podcasts, weekly debates and virtual book clubs. They have also been running a weekly line-up of authors speaking on various issues. This week saw activist Aruna Roy discussing the migrant exodus due to the lockdown with Chirag Thakkar, commissioning editor at Roli Books, while Sujata Assomull and fashion designer Rahul Mishra contemplated on the Indian fashion scene in the times of COVID-19.

* Watch out for Harper Collins’s virtual reading party along with ‘The Curious Reader’, a portal for booklovers, on Instagram Live. The first edition, on April 11, will be called ‘Chai Time’, and it will feature Richa S Mukherjee, author of Kanpur Khoofiya Pvt Ltd.

*Pan Macmillian has also joined the bandwagon with a ‘Reading Space’, where they will post videos and articles every Tuesday from their authors, on a range of topics — investigative stories, history, culture and travel, climate change, personality development and spiritual guidance. The first one was by Ankur Bisen, author of Wasted.andemics.

* JCB Prize for Literature has also announced a series on their Instagram called the #TheJCBPrizeCatchUp. Here, readers and aspiring writers can interact with authors and dwell upon the challenges the virus has brought to fore — isolation, loneliness and sickness and how that affects their creative process. On April 11, Mukta Sathe will talk, followed by Vivek Shanbhag on April 13, and Roshan Ali on April 15.

* Pakistani writers Fatima Bhutto and Sanam Maher are also making an effort to bring the global literary community together with a project in support of writers, publishers and booksellers affected by event cancellations and bookshop closures in this time for social distancing. ‘Stay Home, Stay Reading’ has writers from all over the world sending videos reading, in many languages, from their work and works that bring them comfort in these times. While Bhutto read from Alice Greenway’s White Ghost Girls, Irish writer Caoilinn Hughes read from her latest dark comedy The Wild Laughter, and Omar Musa read from his debut novel Here Come the Dogs.

One for the Kids

* Penguin has come up with a line up to keep the children engaged with the online initiative called #OnceUponABookWithPenguin. Since March 30, at 6.30 pm, an author has been going live on Momspresso’s Facebook page every day to tell the kids a story. While Neha Singh’s I Need to Pee, Tazmeen Amna’s The Incredible Adventures of Mr Cheeks: The Carnival of Hastings, and Ruskin Bond’s Mukesh Starts A Zoo turned out to be really popular with children, the upcoming sessions include a reading of Let’s Do This Together by Lubaina on April 11, and Lavanya Karthik will end it with Ninja Nani on April 14. Mompresso has also collaborated with publishing house Hachette with another set of sessions at noon. On April 11, Archana Garodia Gupta and Shruti Gupta will hold an interactive history quiz.

* Meanwhile, Usha Uthup and Nandita Das, among other celebrities, have come together to sing, read and tell stories on Katha with Karadi, a website that Karadi Tales launched to entertain children during the lockdown. They have several audiobooks narrated by actors such R Madhavan, Vidya Balan, Soha Ali Khan and Jaaved Jaaferi, along with virtual storytelling sessions by actor Janaki Sabesh and authors like Natasha Sharma and Sampurna Chattarji. They have released a free e-book titled Farmer Falgu Stays at Home, written by Chitra Soundar, on the importance of social distancing, and another one titled Princess Easy Pleasy – I’m So Bored by Natasha Sharma, a story about how children can quell boredom while indoors. They are hosting daily live events on their Facebook and Instagram pages at 5.30 pm.

Source: Indian Express, 11/04/2020