May 2020 – Dev Kusum Foundation

Borders around the country remain closed, no matter what the compulsion of those trying to cross them

Any territory around the world, right from a street to a State to a city or a region, has its characteristics. The word “territory” has one of its most common usages in the field of sports and athletics where identities compete from a defined piece of land without having a sovereign status. Thus, it is that Scotland, as a territory, can field a team without having a sovereign status. However, this cannot be the place to resolve these concerns or indeed debate them. The use of the word “territory” in the first sentence of this column is in terms of identity. COVID-19 has changed many things in our world. How many of them will remain altered and how many will relapse to their original form once the virus leaves us is anybody’s guess. However, if one can survive the stress of the possibility of being a Coronavirus suspect and being put in quarantine, then there are some very interesting processes at play.

A former civil servant, who for some reason had to travel by car from Almora to Delhi, thus traversing through the three States […]

The cost of free expression

The absence of credible research for sustainable conclusions before being put out in the public domain can have its risks

Some day, when this pandemic is over and the world begins to heal from the Coronavirus’ impact on the health and global economy, some researcher might seek to do a content analysis of the newspapers, magazines and journals being published in India and around the world. S/he might decide to discover the themes which captured the imagination of the world and received the maximum coverage at the end of 2019 and in 2020. Predictably, Covid-19 will dominate the word count, progressively rising from a limited percentage in December 2019 to almost a crescendo by mid-2020 and beyond. Every other theme in the world would have been edged out, almost as if nothing else existed during this period. The statistical tool box will be open and graphing, scaling, analysis by percentage and analysis by regions and much more, will follow.

However, there will be very little data available on how many people actually suffered due to the lack of adequate medical care because of an overwhelming preponderance of the Covid-19 theme. There will be negligible data available on people who suffered mental agony […]

Monthly Archives: May 2020

Impenetrable barriers

The cost of free expression