The two-word caption of today’s column may need a footnote at the outset. Even as the intended meaning of the words may become clear in the lines to follow, the first word is about the rate at which the country’s headcount is increasing from a given year to the next and the second is about…

Narratives in the land’s epics as well as history featuring the event of man-woman coming together in wedlock are fascinating to read. The system of swayamvara (the bride-to-be at full liberty in choosing her man from among a number of aspiring men) included the practice of stipulating a select set of qualifications for the men…

The question To be or Not To Be? figuring in the play Hamlet, attributed to William Shakespeare (1564-1616), may have been answered by the character in the play. Asking the question “To Eat or Not to Eat” in a similar vein is generally answered in favour of eating (the attractive dish) by people at large…

Many may remark that it is sheer sarcasm to say that India’s macho image or masculinity is mirrored by the frequently published finding by the country’s demographers namely, the number of females per 1000 males in the land is steadily going down, given the current figure of 950 or thereabouts. Further, the males of the…

One is at a loss to take the occasionally published fact that India is the world’s second most populous country as complimenting its steadily expanding masses or otherwise. Further, the frequently flashed news that India’s share in the global disease burden of many afflictions such as Malaria, Diabetes, Tuberculosis, Cancer of mouth and others surpasses…

Even the humble cow got entangled for sometime recently in the web of inter-political-party wrangling with a not-entirely-hidden agenda of mutually belittling themselves before the land’s masses. The main issue that got clouded in the process, namely the two clearly contrasting practices of one section in the population worshipping the domesticated species and the other…

Country-wise stock-taking of economic health is a modern annual exercise in many countries across the world, including India. Currently, the index of that feature as it changes either progressively or regressively from a given year to the next is expressed by the term GDP (Gross Domestic Product), regularly appearing in bold print of dailies but…

An old Kannada saying has the message that the spark displayed by a person in later life is clearly visible in bud stage itself, drawing the analogy from the plant world that a robust tree has its origins in its sapling stage itself, if not at the seed stage. Many a child prodigy in various…

In a two-way movement of sorts, scientific knowledge as well as technologies in the form of ubiquitous devices and machinery has witnessed West-to-East direction while yoga, ayurveda and philosophies espoused by India’s luminaries of a distant past have witnessed East-to-West direction, India being accorded a prominent position in the East. In the august company of…

The oldies in society are honourably identified as senior citizens. That honour, gracefully accepted as a time-honoured tradition in the land, seems to have faded in our times leading to the event of  World Elder Abuse Awareness Day (WEAAD) observed every year on June 15. The International Network for Prevention of Elder Abuse designated this…