India
I am an independent journalist based in Kolkata, India. I write about health, politics, public policy, environment, science, art and culture.
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Business | Economy
Jute transportation in Baduria Bazaar, North 24 Parganas, West Bengal (Photo credits- Biswarup Ganguly, Wikimedia) Since September last year, representatives of the jute industry have been appealing to the Centre to reconsider some of their decisions that have had alarming effects on their business Kolkata: Kamal Shaw is a 44-year-old worker at Alliance Jute Mill in Jagatdal, in West Bengal's North 24 Parganas district.
In March 2020, as Covid-19 began to spread across India, the government in New Delhi enacted the world's largest nationwide lockdown. Businesses shuttered, and many low-income families lost their livelihoods overnight. With both the formal and informal economies at a near standstill, many workers fled the cities for their home villages, and the health crisis quickly became a humanitarian crisis as well.
Kolkata is a study in contrasts. Also known as the City of Joy, the megacity is a blend of old and new, of east and west, of clamor and quiet. We took to the streets of Kolkata to ask people about their first and future paychecks.
The social and economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic continues as governments around the world grapple with the crisis. When the first COVID-19 case was reported in India in January, WHO and the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare issued a list of basic protective measures against the disease.
Social Justice | Policy | Gender | LGBTQIA+ Issues
he doors and windows of all the tin shacks in Kasturba Nagar slum in Nagpur, were tightly shut, the streets eerily empty. An overcast sky threatened rain. Ashu Saxena, a social activist, was going from house to house, urging people to come out and talk to her. But the doors remained closed.
Trolling, UAPA and journalists In June 2021, 56 shanties housing around 270 Rohingya refugees were destroyed in a fire in the Kalindi Kunj area of South Delhi, near the Delhi-Uttar Pradesh border. Noor* , a reporter for an online news platform, went to the Rohingya camp to report on the incident.
When the Supreme Court read down section 377 of the Indian Penal Code in 2018, after 157 years of its existence, it said police officials should be given sensitisation training to equip them to handle issues related to the queer community. Four years later, police continue to harass and attack lesbians, gays, transexuals, and others of varying sexual orientations, and ‘counsel’ them to seek ‘treatment’. Compliance with the SC’s orders is low.
In 2021, Kerala and Madras high courts said that the medical curriculum of India is queer-phobic and perpetuates stigma against gender and sexual minorities In our society, transgender people face violence at the slightest provocation. Not many show up to help them cope with the after-effects.
Kolkata: "I am determined to go for higher studies. Once I get my Kanyashree money, I will use it to go to college," says Jahira Khatun. Khatun ... Mamata Banerjee's Schemes For Adolescent Girls Bear Fruit But Challenges Remain Read More "
The name Dhapa conjures up images of garbage trucks and the stench emanating from waste. It is a locality in the eastern fringe of Kolkata where the city's garbage is dumped. A road near the Science City crossing takes one past the cauliflower and corn plantations grown in these lands.
With little by way of legal framework to protect them, many couples have had no options other than to live on the run and ask friends for help.
In 2009, Twitter took down a trending hashtag. The hashtag in question started in South Africa and had the word "darkie" in it.That word is not a slur in South Africa, but it was used as a slur against the African Americans community in the USA.
Kolkata: Late on the evening of July 20, 23-year-old Sanjit Mondal*, a gay man, was accosted by two men on a motorcycle while on his way home from visiting a friend in Kolkata's Chinar Park neighbourhood. They asked him to accompany them to the nearby police station.
Even when the howling wind and torrential rain brought by Cyclone Amphan was causing havoc around her on May 20, Sabita Sardar was not afraid. "We are used to dealing with bad weather. I wasn't feeling scared. In fact, those who live in concrete homes were more scared," she said.
The LGBTQ community in Chicago is not taking any chances on President-elect Donald Trump's shifting statements. Organizations and groups advocating LGBTQ rights are hosting on-going events to calm, organize and inform the community about their rights and the resources available to them.
A live video aimed to provide a safe space for the LGBTQIA+ community to express freely soon turned into a homophobic nightmare but Instagram did little to secure their space For the queer community in India, instant hate has become a lingering problem on Instagram.
For anybody a mid-December Delhi night brings up images of cold and eerily empty roads. And for a woman out in the street, it is nothing but the constant threat of rape or death. However, a group of c...
She resides under a flyover in the busy Gariahat area of Kolkata. After breastfeeding her son, she hands him over to her mother Sabita Sardar and leaves for work. Cradling the baby, Sardar slowly sits down on a piece of cardboard. "Mampi found a cleaning job in two local shops.
When Lallan Paswan first tried to learn how to manoeuvre a hand-pulled rickshaw, other rickshaw pullers sat in the back like passengers to help him practice. "When I lifted the [front end of the] rickshaw for the first time and tried to take it forward, I couldn't do it," he says.
Some weeks ago, Kalu Das - who travels from his village to Kolkata to collect items for recycling - resumed his rounds. But business is bleak, profits are tiny, his wife has lost her job, and the family is struggling #RuralIndiaOnline
Kolkata: Ranjita Sinha, a transgender woman, a former member of the West Bengal Transgender Development Board and director of Association of Transgender/Hijras of Bengal (ATHB) has been distributing rations to members of the trans community in Kolkata since the lockdown began in March. "A lot of them have lost their livelihoods due to the pandemic.
Lucia Wrooman has been cleaning homes in the Chicago area for 14 years. Originally from Mexico City, she came to the United States with her Italian husband and son after they sold their restaurant in Acapulco in 2002.
Governance Now photo On Monday, June 17, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee finally decided to visit the house of a Barasat college student who was raped and murdered on June 6.
Aamir returns home full of hope and pride Mohammed Aamir Khan has reasons to be unhappy, feel vengeful and hurt. Instead, he chooses to be grateful with an angelic smile spread across his face. Most of us complain about little inconveniences in our daily life.
Health | Science
Features The pandemic has been an extraordinary stressor for unpaid caregivers who are also working. Carers share how companies can better help them. When the Indian government announced a complete lockdown in March 2020, Jasleen was at her wit's end. Before the pandemic, the communications professional at a Delhi-based think tank mostly focused on her professional work.
Asian Scientist (May 30, 2022) - Researchers at the University of Tsukuba, Japan, have unraveled the mechanism by which antibiotic resistance is transferred among bacteria. Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bacteria is the leading cause of staph infections worldwide. Staph infections range from skin infections, food poisoning, pneumonia to toxic shock syndrome among others.
An older study done in 2010 by the Institute of Health Management Research in Jaipur found that Sundarbans suffered from poor health indices. At the time, about half of the children below the age of five years were malnourished; the general morbidity rate was higher than in the rest of the state and there was a high reliance on quacks.
What happens when a child misses out on some vaccinations? Can she get them later? News9 spoke to experts to find out the answer. Certain vaccinations are not age bound, said Mumbai-based paediatrician Dr Manisha Mukhija. "Children who have missed the doses can take them at any age.
Experts cite several reasons for the rapid increase in the number of COVID cases in the state. "Not all states can have COVID-19 outbreaks at the same time," said Dr Giridhar Babu, professor and head of life-course epidemiology at the Public Health Foundation of India.
According to 2018-19 Economic Survey of India, 60 percent of primary health centres in India have only one doctor, while about five percent have none. This results in the accumulation of diseases among the most vulnerable segment, delayed presentation and the subsequent need of speciality treatment at high costs, leading to health-related poverty shocks and untold misery. Some startups in India are trying to address this gap in rural healthcare by providing telehealth services and...
Researchers at The Washington University School of Medicine, in the U.S. have found metronidazole, an antibiotic, can inhibit the growth of endometriosis in mice by regulating the mice's gut microbiome. The finding opens up the potential of a new, cost-effective treatment for women with endometriosis.
Ozone pollution in the Arctic can take anywhere between a few days to several weeks and months through slower mixing in the high latitude troposphere, says Professor Frode Stordal, Department of Geosciences, University in Oslo (UiO). "Ozone can be formed in Asia and transported to the Arctic, or the ozone precursors can be transported to the Arctic and ozone being formed there.
But in a report published Monday in the medical journal BMJ Case Reports, doctors warn that popular toy Nerf guns really can put eyes at risk. The case report details three unrelated cases within three months treated in the Moorfields Eye Hospital accident and emergency department in London.
"I am trying to protect others from going through what I and my family are going through," John Loos said at a news conference in Chicago on Monday. During a Chicago Cubs-Pittsburgh Pirates game on August 29, Loos was hit by a ball traveling at high speed.
The Parent Curve offers a look at the norms and numbers around tough decisions parents face. Where are you on the curve? The American Academy of Pediatrics warns that overuse of digital media and screens can put children and teens at risk of obesity, sleep problems, cyberbullying and negative performance at school.
Between 2010 and 2015, doctors collected data on more than 350,000 privately insured children up to 18 years old who had undergone those surgical procedures. They monitored the children's prescriptions for codeine and alternative opioids. Codeine, an opioid pain reliever, came under scrutiny due to its adverse effects on children.
"She wasn't developing on a regular trajectory," said Cervantes, who stars as Alexander Hamilton in the hit musical theater production "Hamilton" in Chicago. Soon after, Adelaide had a seizure. "Then the terminology 'epilepsy' starts coming into the conversation about what's wrong with her," he said.
Alexandre Faite, head of the International Committee of the Red Cross delegation in Yemen, described the scale of the outbreak as "unprecedented" on Friday. Faite said the number of suspected cases there stands at about 750,000 -- up from almost 276,000 as of July 5.
They have successfully genetically modified hens to produce eggs containing large amounts of interferon beta protein, a protein used to treat various illnesses, including multiple sclerosis and cancer. The protein is very expensive, costing between $300-$1000 for just one microgram, according to pharmaceutical company, Cosmo Bio who co-led the research.
Cloee Cooper, a research analyst in Boston, remembers it that way. "You get to dress up as someone else, walk all over town, attend haunted house parties and celebrations at school," she said. But Coopersays that when she was growing up in Mount Shasta, California, her parents had a few rules: "Don't go inside a person's house unless you know them.
Featured Image: A portion of 3D printed spine from hyperelastic bone The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that each year, about 2,650 babies are born with a cleft palate and 4,440 babies are born with a cleft lip with or without a cleft palate in the United States.
When researchers at Northwestern University started researching sodium-ion batteries, they had one uniform goal - find commonly abundant materials for a cheap alternative to lithium ion batteries. The depletion of lithium sources makes it essential to find alternative sources of battery power - soon.
Falls Creek Baptist Conference Center, the oldest church camp in Oklahoma, hosts more than 50,000 kids and teens who come for summer camp each year. Falls Creek originates from the Washita River in Murray County and flows directly into the campgrounds named for it.
People start trickling into the National Severe Storms Laboratory holding coffee cups and laptops. By 8 a.m., eight people fill a room for the Spring Experiment. The laboratory in Norman, Okla., is open all year. But now it's tornado season.
Chicago Exotics Animal hospital opened its doors in November 2000 in Skokie, Ill. The clinic was started by Dr. Susan Horton who saw the need for an exotics-only practice. It caters exclusively to exotic pets like chinchillas, geckos, hamsters, bearded dragons and tortoises. The clinic has three full-time doctors, as many part-time doctors and nine technicians.
Blogs | Personal Essay | Live Reporting
By: Puja Bhattacharjee Deena Nath Rajput studied electronics and telecommunications engineering due to family pressure. He scored good marks in the engineering entrance exams and took admission to a college in Bhilai, Chhattisgarh. But his heart was somewhere else, the Bilaspur native told Slow Bazaar. After completin
By Puja Bhattacharjee Twenty years ago, Syed Ahmed, a dhurrie (handwoven rug) weaver from Khairabad in Sitapur district, had to travel to Chennai, Delhi, and other big cities, to sell his handwoven rugs and carpets.
By: Puja Bhattacharjee Nitin Singh developed an interest in bees when he was pursuing his post-doctoral fellowship in Israel. Under the guidance of his mentor Dr. Victoria Soroker, he was researching eco-friendly compounds that would treat parasitic diseases in bees. After spending three years in Israel, observing, and
Puja Bhattacharjee Do you rush out of your apartment in the morning to catch that train or bus? Do you stay back at work night after night trying to finish the day's work? Is your fast-paced lifestyle affecting your sleep, moods, and routine? Then maybe it is time for you to slow down.
By Puja Bhattacharya Imagine growing up in a city where delicious fragrances waft through homes; where every lane tempts you to breathe in deeply the ery scents that seduced Mughal emperors centuries ago. Kannauj in Uttar Pradesh, is considered the perfume capital of India.
By Puja Bhattacharjee After completing his graduate studies, Chandra Prakash Shukla, the native of Pratapgarh in Uttar Pradesh, was clueless about his future. Most family members were into service. "Somebody was a gazette officer, some relatives worked at the post office and some family members were employed in a cle
As the Delhi riots raged, I realised that sometimes remembering to reach out to people can be a powerful expression of solidarity. My grandmother had witnessed the aftermath of the Hindu-Muslim riots in 1947, at what was then Calcutta. She had also lived through the Naxal movement in the city.
Lok Sabha Election 2019 LATEST Updates: The Election Commission has sought factual report from Madhya Pradesh Chief Electoral Officer by Friday in the matter of Pragya Singh Thakur's statement, "Nathuram Godse was, is and will remain a 'deshbhakt'".
Doctors Strike LIVE Updates: Health Minister Harsh Vardhan has written to West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on ongoing doctors' strike in the state. He has asked her to "personally intervene to resolve the current impasse" and take steps to ensure secure working environment for the doctors.
West Bengal Lok Sabha Election voting updates: The seventh and final phase of the Lok Sabha election in West Bengal is half-way concluded in the nine seats that went to polls on Sunday. Watch LIVE News, Latest Updates, Live blog, Highlights and Live coverage online at firstpost.com.
Art | Culture
"My grandfather was dancing on the roads of Sylhet, modern-day Bangladesh. He was very happy on that night. After all, the country was being liberated (sic)." This message was one of many written on postcards and pinned to a table alongside hundreds of postcards documenting personal stories about the Indian independence movement at the Indian Museum in Kolkata, the capital of the British Indian empire, until 1911.
October 23, 2019: Puja Bhattacharjee posted on LinkedIn
For millennia, the metal has adorned crowns and hilts of swords. It has been used to enhance paintings and ornaments to increase their value. In some cultures, gold is a predominant feature of festivals and celebrations. In Eastern cultures, the metal is an integral part of auspicious occasions like marriages and festivals by way of gifts and sacred rituals.
Frank Sinatra called orange the happiest color. Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky described orange as "red brought nearer to humanity by yellow." It is a sacred color in many Eastern religions. Hindu and Buddhist monks wear orange robes, and in Hinduism, orange represents fire and therefore purity; impurities are burned in fire.
The color is overwhelmingly associated with delicacy and femininity. That, however, is a recent development. "If you go back to the 18th century, little boys and little girls of the upper classes both wore pink and blue and other colors uniformly," said Valerie Steele, director of the Museum at FIT, the Fashion Institute of Technology, in New York.
Environment
Ghoramara Island is one of the 54 islands in the Sundarbans Delta complex of the Bay of Bengal. Once spread across 8.51 sq km, the island today has reduced to 4.45 sq km. Over the last three decades, Ghoramara has lost 75% of its landmass due to climate change.
Editor's Note: Are you bothered by the drastic changes in our climate, causing extreme weather events and calamities such as the Kerala Floods? #WhyOnEarth aims to take the truth to the people with stories, experiences, opinions and revelations about the climate change reality that you should know, and act on.
The coastline of West Bengal is spread over two districts: South 24-Parganas and East Midnapore. Fishing in West Bengal is also mainly focused on these two districts. About 100 km south of Kolkata in the Kakdwip subdivision of South 24 Parganas lies Sagar island.
It's time. Energy leaders are calling for a shift to renewable power sources to meet future needs for utility companies, including for Commonwealth Edison Co. "How do you take the systems we have built into smart systems and turn it clean?" asked Anne Pramaggiore, president and CEO of ComEd.
Like a child, the Yamuna gushes down the Yamunotri glacier, its free flowing and crystal clear waters cutting through mountains and valleys. The youthful Yamuna generously nurtures life on its way. But its free-flowing spirit is abruptly interrupted at Hathnikund barrage in Haryana. There, the water is diverted through the western and eastern Yamuna canals.
Years ago, Rasool Khan toyed with the idea of adding plastic to bitumen to improve roads. Now, government has adopted the eco-friendly technology Failure is an opportunity to learn and grow. But only a few adhere to this adage and Rasool Khan is one such person.
At half a million, the number of travellers who use the New Delhi railway station every day is larger than the population of most cities. Imagine the waste they leave behind, from water bottles to leftover food and much more. It would form a sizeable dump. Yet, surprisingly, the station appears cleaner these days.
Video Editing
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Politics
Kolkata: The son of farmers for whom farming was no longer viable, Tapan Das left home 20 years ago. Today he is 42, illiterate, earns about Rs 4,000 a month working on construction sites--Rs 3,000 if you deduct the rent he pays for a mud house without electricity and water in an illegal slum.
Editor's Note: A network of 60 reporters set off across India to test the idea of development as it is experienced on the ground. Their brief: Use your mobile phone to record the impact of 120 key policy decisions on everyday life; what works, what doesn't and why; what can be done better and what should be done differently.
In complete disarray after 2011 assembly poll drubbing, the Left Front in Bengal tried to regroup before the general elections. A few more seats in this Lok Sabha won't matter much. The question is, are they in it for the long haul?
One in every four Trinamool candidates in Bengal is a celeb, mostly from the film world. A look at the strategy behind Mamata Banerjee's masterstroke to contain faction fighting Only the most ardent of fans would recognise Deepak Adhikari even in West Bengal. Unless, of course, you add a.k.a. Dev.
Longform
Living in geographical anomalies called enclaves along the Indo-Bangladesh border, they lived bereft of modern administration. After decades of struggle, people of 51 enclaves in India and 111 in Bangladesh get to chose their nationality (Puja Bhattacharjee) Agroup of seven crowd around a newspaper Abu Bakr Siddique is reading.
The inside story of how India's largest coal producer played on the strengths of the public sector to revive its fortunes Photos courtesy: CIL A few kilometres from the Dhanbad railway station lies Jharia Coal Field (JCF), one of the biggest coalfields in India.
Profiles | Interviews
Molecular machines can perform tasks such as removing toxins from chaotic environments. But Stoddart's lab is a haven of tidiness and order. SHyNE spoke to members of his research team at Northwestern University to get know the mentor for whom they work.
The ministry of earth sciences (MoES) is one of the youngest - and one of the least talked about - wings of the government. It looks after a myriad of scientific and technical activities, mostly dealing with earth system science.
British journalist and health worker Shereen El Feki dared to rush where most fear to tread. But she's nobody's fool. She researched on sex in the Arab world. The result: her first book, Sex and the Citadel: Intimate Life in a Changing Arab World, has been nominated for the Guardian First Book Award and The Orwell Prize.
Breaking Bread with Governance Now: Dr Priyanka Shukla, CEO, Rajnandgaon, Chhattisgarh The idea was to talk over lunch, but by the time we finally meet, it is 4.30 pm. Dr Priyanka Shukla had had her lunch earlier. Shukla is not a district collector yet.
I have launched Kailash Satyarthi Children's Foundation, a global initiative which is going to address policy, awareness, and engagement gap. The foundation will work on creating a global policy institute, which is going to address all aspects related to children.
Chance confrontations with rawness of reality changed his perception of life; he chose to make the most of it for others Even for a hillman, a winter night in the high-altitude Uttarkashi district can be ruthlessly cold. Biting, shivering, bone-chilling - all adjectives will fail here; cold will not.
When not painting, celebrated Indian artist Jatin Das is busy researching for a series of projects. In between he likes to have a cup of strong coffee and listen to classical music gifted to him by his close friend, photographer Raghu Rai.
Puran Bhatt's world-renowned puppetry stares at the same fate as that of his locality, Kathputli Colony - bleak In the mid-1950s, a group of travelling artistes, mostly puppeteers from Rajasthan, would frequently tour the northern and eastern states, sometimes going as far as Nepal. The money was good, and they got respect.
Plan to navigate through the Horseshoe Casino parking lot and take a short walk along the lakefront before you can get to the turnstile entrance of the Hammond Bird Sanctuary in Hammond, Indiana. I followed Carolyn Marsh, 72, into the sanctuary early one morning.
The man whose efforts brought realty giant DLF on its knees wishes he never had to do all this It took Mr Biswas a lifetime of hard work to have a house of his own in VS Naipual's 1961 classic novel, 'A House for Mr Biswas'.
Urban Development
September 4, 2018. Kolkata. It's quarter to five in the evening. The shanty dwellers in Majerhat felt the earth shake. A loud crash, dust rising from rubble and crumbling concrete, water splashing. The Majerhat bridge, running partly across a canal, had collapsed. A nearly 70-foot section came down, crushing many vehicles and killing one person instantly.
Irreverent city might not be game for a Kyoto-like transformation A s dusk sets in, Asi ghat comes to life. A stage has been set up and performers gather in colourful garb. Locals and tourists begin to occupy the steps of the ghat. Tea sellers and boatmen do brisk business.
A locality of artists sits on land worth 1,000 crore. It has gone to a builder for 6 crore. Even if the people survive relocation, their art may not Pooran Bhatt is famous in Kathputli Colony, and he is famous in the many countries where he has performed.
To build a 66km ring road, Surat will not take a penny from the state or centre. Nor will it spend a penny from it's shallow pockets. So what's this self-financing, self-sustaining model that is making waves in urban planning circles?
In a season of bans in India, the one on e-rickshaws in Delhi is being lifted. The travails of e-rickshaw drivers show the tricky nature of regulations in the country Shree Bhagwan Jaiswal pushed the pedals of his cycle rickshaw in Old Delhi for more than 20 years.
Rising out of an epidemic, Surat has made incredible progress in waste management with citizen participation - a model worth emulating Governance Now image Natwarlal Patel still remembers those few days in 1994 when a plague epidemic broke out in Surat. He spent a week holed up in his home, too afraid to venture out.
People running Surat's renowned diamond cutting and textile units in zone-3 are sleeping better these days, and it's set to get contagious - thanks to the third eye! It was the first week of June and Khetan Bhuva was about to end his eight-hour shift.
Miscellaneous
By Wednesday, eight of the nursing home's residents had died. The causes of the deaths are under investigation to see if any of them were heat-related, said Raelin Storey, director of public affairs for the City of Hollywood. "The initial investigation has determined that the facility's air conditioning system was not fully functional," the city of Hollywood, Florida, said in a statement.
The new report grades the 25 largest US fast food chains on where they stand on antibiotics. The results are a mixed bag: For the third year in a row, the only two As were awarded to Chipotle Mexican Grill and Panera Bread. More companies passed this year than ever before.
The residents of the villages in Salboni block of West Bengal's West Medinipur district live in great poverty, with very little governance reaching them even as a mammoth steel plant, owned by the Jindal group, entered the state's record books as the biggest investment till date
With over 700 children with special needs, Salboni is adequately short of expert educators and infrastructure to give the lessons due to them. It's more an issue of implementation than a systemic snag, say experts Amrit Das stood on the porch of the headmaster's office in Salboni high school as his father spoke to one of his teachers, staring straight ahead, oblivious to the general air of chaos and cacophony around him.
In a West Medinipur village, the local politician puts his MLA local area development fund to pump water, show the future to poor children In large swathes of land across India, few men are more powerful than an elected public representative, and fewer still are as essential for development as such men and women on a mission to usher in change.