India is touted as the world’s pharmacy, considering the production of allopathic drugs in highest levels both in their variety and monetary value. The country also has the distinction of being home to the world’s supply of vaccines. Call it a paradox or whatever else, the land has the highest number of victims of many…

The term politics is unarguably the most familiar one among the people of the land, irrespective of the tongues they speak or level of literacy or economic status or years of schooling. Also, the term totally decimates the urban-rural divide, given the deep interest the rustics are currently showing in informal politics, meaning: forming alliances,…

An idiom in Kannada which used to be cited often by old-timers conveys the message that quarrels between married couples happily ends at bed time (Ganda-Hendira jagala undu malaguva thankaka). A wit, adding pep to the time-honoured saying, averred that their wordy battles would ultimately get settled in the bed. In a certain sense, their…

Scholarly chroniclers often cite many civilisations of the distant past in glorious terms. Indus Valley Civilisation of more than thirty centuries vintage shines in the august company of Roman as well as Greek Civilisations that existed about 3,000 years, both resting in the pages of their history. Other regions of the world, including China, Japan…

Comparing cities with villages in the northern hemisphere is a different ball-game from the exercise in the southern hemisphere. So also, the relative profiles of the two regions in any country of the West present a strikingly diverse scenario from those of the East. In this context, comparing cities of India, numerically on the cusp…

Planet earth’s age has been determined chemically to be 4.5 billion years. Human beings have inhabited the planet for about 2,00,000 years, according to anthropologists. All other life forms have a much longer tenancy of the only planet playing host to living creatures. The processes of change-progress-development credited to the ingenuity of human beings contrast…

Emergence of the wheel and fire, both of which are so ubiquitous that hardly anyone spares time to think or talk about them have their origins in times of an undetermined date in the distant past, given the accepted feature that humans have made planet earth their home for over nearly two lakh years. The…

The current medium age of India’s human population is officially stated as 25 years, meaning that age accounts for half the total headcount of the country. The figure for life expectancy of the nation’s people at large, accepted as 68.35 years (2015), is a statistical measure of the average time a person is expected to…

Simply stated, selfie is a photograph that one takes by oneself. For the benefit of the small number of smart-phone-illiterate section in the country’s headcount, whatever fraction of it is left, “A selfie is a self-portrait photograph, typically taken with a smart phone which may be held in the hand or supported by a selfie-stick….