This is a commentary I wrote, on how to think about and approach the “end” of the COVID pandemic in India. It was published in The Wire Science on 31st October 2021. Here is the link. Below is an excerpt from the article. As Sivaramakrishnan says, policymakers prefer to conceptualise epidemics as finite, circumscribed events… Continue reading Epidemics End. Eventually. Sort Of
This article was published in the Harvard Library Bulletin in July 2021. I studied the Minutes of Evidence of the Indian Plague Commission published in the late 1890s, and used those volumes to comment on some aspects of biomedical practice and doctors in India. The full article can be found here. Below is an excerpt:… Continue reading Plague and the History of the Medical Profession in India
This was published on April 29 with the wonderful, new Indian magazine “Fifty Two.” Here’s the link. Below are some excerpts: “A letter to the editor of The Times of India by Bombay-based doctor Bhalchandra Krishna, written in 1888, highlights the range of Indian response to modern hospitals. Among the many factors “injurious to the… Continue reading A history of how the state in independent India ended up championing modern medicine
There has been a lot of commentary on how the Aarogya Setu app, publicized heavily by the Government of India, has hardly been of any assistance in the Covid control efforts. At the same time, it is important to note that perhaps the government was aware of its uselessness from the beginning, and that the… Continue reading Aarogya Setu: The dangerous obsession with technology in public health policy
In late March I wrote a piece for The Wire on the century-old Epidemic Diseases Act. The full link is here. Below are some excerpts from that article, and also a link to one original primary source from the late 1890s: the proceedings of the Council of the Governor-General at Calcutta. Many states in India have… Continue reading Covid-19 in India: a short history of the Epidemic Diseases Act
In April I wrote a piece for The Wire, titled ‘India’s Tumultuous History of Epidemics, Religion and Public Health Policy.’ Find the full article here. Some excerpts below: In a racialised phrasing similar to the ‘Chinese virus’, cholera in the 1800s was called, in Europe and America, either ‘Asiatic cholera’ or ‘Indian cholera’. The… Continue reading Covid-19 in India – Religion and epidemics in Indian history
[For the previous post on lockdown and its pain, see here. For other Covid-related pieces, see here, here, here, and here.] The lockdown in India, implemented in haste and more for political brownie points than for people’s welfare, continues to exact a massive toll – now more in terms of its lingering after-effects than direct… Continue reading Covid-19 in India – Society and Culture – The Lockdown and its Pain -2
For the previous posts in this series, see here, here, here, and here. [Throughout history epidemics have served as excellent windows into social and cultural beliefs and norms. While this contagion-catalyzed uncovering of a society’s thought processes helps historians understand past societies in better ways, for present societies it can potentially be utilized as a… Continue reading COVID-19 in India – Society and Culture – the Lockdown and its Pain
CARING FOR INDIA 