GENRE: Voices

Sweeping changes at the helm of affairs in government brings with it sweeping changes in ground realities as well. In the mid-nineties, even though the IT revolution was already well underway, Chennai, the capital city of Tamil Nadu, then called Madras, did not sport a presentable or attractive enough look for a capital city. In fact, it was way behind other state capitals and metro cities in terms of the first impression it made. Soon after their victory in the May 1996 elections, then CM M Karunanidhi renamed the city as Chennai and initiated a host of projects under the umbrella…

With COVID, lockdowns, unemployment, heartbreaking journeys of migrant workers back to their villages, news of illness and death making headlines every morning, this year has taken its toll on all of us. Hunkered down in our houses, distanced from family, friends and colleagues, we had few reasons for cheer. But even amid this seemingly incessant gloom, we found some inspiration from the citizen engagement and impact that we saw in several spheres. Though the government failed us consistently and abysmally, warriors among us arose to take control of the situation. Men and women across the country organized toolkits, Twitter drives…

“But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”― George Orwell, 1984 How do we use language to shape and control thoughts? How do we use language for behaviour change? How do we use language for affirmative action? How do we use language to respect the person as a whole rather than as a trait,  a diagnosis or a condition?  In the early days, before the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared COVID-19 as a pandemic, one term that repeatedly made the rounds was 'social distancing'.  Benign as it sounds, to behave responsibly by maintaining a certain physical distance from the…

This is a time of immense grief and loss for me. Unable to face the harsh reality of my mother gasping for each breath in the ICU, I was drowning myself in work. Coincidentally or so I think, I was working on a report analysing asphyxiation of Vrishabhavathi, Arkavathi, and Cauvery rivers, and suffocation of aquatic lifeforms the rivers supported. As the dissolved oxygen graph took shape, I realised: The million times I had held the dissolved oxygen meter underwater to measure oxygen saturation levels across rivers was no different from the million times we plugged the oximeter to my mother’s…

The COVID pandemic has exposed our hollow development strategies aimed at achieving the United Nations' sustainable development goals (SDGs), to which India is a signatory. This hasn’t just brought to the fore the need for revisiting our strategy to move forward for a better and equitable world harmonious with nature. At the same time, it has also thrown light on how the present processes will not help in achieving any landmark advancement in attaining close proximity to the sustainable development goals. Instead, what we are witnessing is a catastrophe of unprecedented proportions. To elucidate further, here are a few critical areas that require immediate intervention if we…

And so, here we are, in yet another lockdown. The results are encouraging. The chain of transmission seems to be weakening, at least in Chennai, where the numbers have fallen precipitously. That is by itself a reason for commending the initiative. But what after the lockdown is lifted and we all go back to our normal activities to the extent possible? What happens when markets, shopping malls, places of entertainment, gyms, hair and beauty saloons, public transport and offices open up again? After all, they cannot be kept closed forever, can they? What then if the COVID numbers rise again?…

These are no ordinary trees. These are the birds, the butterflies and the bees. These are where our kids sat immersed with books, stories and workshops in the annual children’s book festival. A fellow mom asks me, Where will kids have beautiful story sessions now? True, it wasn’t just the books but the magic of being in the lawns of the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA) each spring season, frolicking and giggling under these angel guardians. And yet, 1,838 of these trees in and around the IGNCA campus, and the road in front of National Archives, are…

The National Agitation Committee (NAC), a nationwide organization comprising EPS’95  pensioners, went on a  countrywide “One Day Fast” on June 1st to press their demands for the implementation of  a  Supreme Court judgement on Employees' Pension Scheme 1995 (EPS’95) dated October 4th, 2016. The verdict had directed the Employees Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) to increase the pension amount based on the pensioners’ actual salary. Over 60 lakh members participated all over the country, with five lakh members from Karnataka, including one lakh from Bangalore taking part in the one day fast. The NAC plans to intensify its agitation if the union…

While 2020 was decidedly not a great year for the entire world, we expected better times in 2021. So far, however, that has not been the case for India. We have seen alarming numbers of cases, including among children, high mortality rates and desperate scenes in hospitals and health facilities. Even as I write this, thousands of COVID patients in isolation and in hospitals are fighting a stiff physical and mental battle against the disease. Even so, I still hold out hope that we will emerge from these terrible times, stronger than ever before, with a sense of togetherness binding…

Who would have thought that in 2021, an American corporation known to harvest private communications for corporate profit would stand up against the Indian Government, defending the Right of Privacy of Indians. Ironically, here we are in the middle of the pandemic, worrying about how police can zoom in to suspend our fundamental right of expression, or walk into our homes and take away all that is ours, when the administration should, in fact, be ensuring that not one more person suffers, or dies, of COVID. We are living through most bizarre times. Holding on to the idea of a…