Away from the distraction of its new high-profile politics, Wayanad's worries seemed very down to earth, discovers Shyam G Menon.
The mood in the tribal heartland in the east and in central India spread over Odisha, Jharkhand, Chattisgarh and parts of West Bengal and Assam, is upbeat.
The toast of the Congress for their tenacity and the difficult choices they made to fulfil a five-month political commitment, their stories are many.
The Supreme Court will hear on March 11 the bail plea of civil rights activist Binayak Sen, sentenced to life imprisonment on charges of sedition and links with Naxalites. Sixty-one-year-old Sen has challenged the order of the Chhattisgarh high court, which had rejected his bail plea on February 10.
The revocation of provisions of Article 370 of the Constitution has given a new lease of life to over 3,000 Valmiki community members who live on the land that was allocated to their ancestors when they shifted to Jammu from Punjab's Gurdaspur district on invitation of the erstwhile state government in 1957.
Dr Mary Varghese's determination to live life beyond her wheelchair inspired Chelsea Clinton to include her in She Persisted Around The World: 13 Women Who Changed History.
The Indian Medical Association will consider taking back police complaints lodged against yoga guru Ramdev and also a defamation notice sent to him if he withdrew his remarks against COVID-19 vaccines and modern medicine, IMA national chief Dr J A Jayalal said.
The agitators belonging to 70 organisations, led by KMSS and Asom Jatiyatabadi Yuba Chatra Parishad, gathered at the secretariat to protest against the passing of the bill in the Lower House of Parliament.
'And because she was very close to Indira Gandhi, she was close to me.' 'Sonia is a wonderful person'
Indra Nooyi, the former chairperson and CEO of PepsiCo, has said that she has "never, ever, ever" asked for a raise as she found it "cringeworthy" and cannot imagine working for somebody and saying "my pay is not enough." Nooyi, 65, who helmed the beverage giant PepsiCo for 12 years and stepped down as its chief executive officer (CEO) in 2018, has published a memoir 'My Life in Full'. Born in Chennai, she graduated from the Madras Christian College and studied management at the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Calcutta before moving to Yale University in the US for a master's degree.
'That secularism in India is at risk is alarming for someone like me. I'm born secular,' Anjolie Ela Menon, the well-known painter, tells Pavan Lall.
Illustrious international thinkers met at the Milken Institute Global Conference 2021 and many discussions addressed the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the world at large.
'The irony of Indian political history is that those who championed the cause of the UCC destroyed the prospects of the UCC by pushing Muslims to their back,' says Reverend Valson Thampu.
'We want Muslims to go about their work and business unhindered.' 'They should not get victimised and that will only come through the process of reconciliation.'
Centuries old religious conflicts may be nearing an inevitable end with the addition of nuclear warheads to their arsenal, says T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan.
...Are algos taking over from 'shoeshine and a smile', asks Ajit Balakrishnan.
Ambassador T P Sreenivasan bids adieu to an unusual human being who passed away into ages on Saturday.
'After Father Stan Swamy's death one thing has become very clear, that if you fight for justice in India you will be called a Maoist by the State.'
'I love beaches and hence I love my swimsuits.'
The NTAGI has also stated that those having laboratory test proven SARS-CoV-2 illness should defer COVID-19 vaccination for six months after recovery, the sources said.
'Chances of getting the disease are not reduced, either after one dose or both doses of the vaccine.' 'And the probability of getting the infection -- you need to differentiate infection from disease -- by getting vaccinated is almost unaltered, be it single dose or two doses.' 'But your chances of developing moderate to severe disease, after getting infected, gets reduced with every dose you receive.'
'She won the first prize in the state for chanting shlokas from the Gita.'
The Omicron variant carries 'concerning' mutations that may make it more transmissible and allow it to evade immunity, scientists said on Monday, stressing that the one certainty in the uncertainty of the many things unknown is this -- COVID is not a short-term crisis and vaccines are still a critical tool.
Will voters in Ernakulam take to the Communist MP who asked 447 more questions and took part in 162 more debates than your average MP? Will Arun Jaitley's wish come true? Krishna Prasad, the renowned journalist and Outlook magazine's former editor-in-chief, reports from Kochi.
She lived for two-thirds of her life in India, adopted its national cause and customs, and took an Indian passport. She served a prison sentence in Lahore as part of Gandhi's protests against an Imperial power which happened to be her motherland. Freda Bedi delighted in confounding accepted definitions of identity.
Mowgli is a darker take on Rudyard's famous story.
'One one hand, the BJP puts Uniform Civil Code as a goal in its manifesto, and on the other, it pushes massive discrimination against Hindus.' 'This is not sabka saath, sabka vikas. Rather it is "Haj ka saath, church ka vikas",' argues Sankrant Sanu.
'If you delay the diagnosis even by 24 hours, in that 24 hours individuals would have affected more people.' 'So, contact tracing, testing, isolation, quarantine needs to continue.'
I wondered how being scientist-mathematician helps one cycle better. Perhaps the self-discipline helps; perhaps it is the scientist-technologist perspective of breaking down the whole into separate pieces, identifying specifics and working on them for improved results, mulls Shyam G Menon.
'He came back from the US only to work for his country.' 'He has invested his fortunes to build this company and is married to his work.' 'Rarely does one see such commitment.'
'By the time actual action began, it was already too late.' 'The virus was raging.'
'Serial testing is much more valuable than a single test which reflects just a point in time.'
'The challenges of the world are too great for any one religious tradition to address alone... The best way to learn about other religions is not from books, but from people... Go talk to someone from a different faith tradition. Get to know them. Build up some trust.' Dr Katharine Rhodes Henderson, who jointly won Hofstra University's Guru Nanak Prize for inter-faith champions in the United States, discusses religion and the challenges of extremism in this lively interview with Rediff.com's Arthur J Pais.
'Your body will be able to deal with Omicron at any time, but it depends (on when) if you are vaccinated.'
The NDA candidate tells the Election Commission that the Maoists plan to kidnap him.
'We need to have the courage to take a rational look at known facts and act accordingly,' advises Mohan Guruswamy.
'We really need to look seriously to see if there are any local variants.'
Communalising law and order situations is fraught with danger; we need to tread cautiously. Interjecting a communal angle into what is purely a law and order issue does nobody good; it muddies the picture, fuels unrequited passion and distracts us from the core issue, says Vivek Gumaste.
'We were lucky, in many ways, that we got the disease late.'
