How Can We Matter

Another year is dawning. It is also the dawn of a new decade - starting on 1 January 2021 and ending on 31 December 2030. I am sure these coming ten years would be the beginning of a new era. 

Having worked for 38 years with spatial data in the field of mapping and GIS, never did I imagine that, after 6 years of retirement, I would be back again working with spatial data, and that too produced using the latest technology of laser mapping! 

If I go by the conventional medical wisdom then I should be taking four medicines a day, lifelong, after my heart attack and angioplasty in Jan 2011. However, I have gone completely medicine free since 2014, and so far so good, though there remains a lurking fear whether I am pushing my luck too far!

My grandson, in his 12th grade philosophy class, is given the following type of discussion assignments: 

Thanks to Swaminathan Lakshminarayanan (VLS), I was able to locate and talk to my SAC-ISRO colleague Dr KS Rao, a Microwave Remote Sensing specialist, yesterday after a gap of 35 years! 

" Once you learn how to die, you learn how to live. ” When you reread a book much later in life, it gives you newer insights; because you start seeing the world a little differently, as you get older. 

Just as many parents, students, and teachers had faced their first online class with some sort of stress and anxiety, today it is my turn!  I have been provided with written instructions on keeping Two Plain sheets of paper, One Pen, a Quiet room without distractions, and to ensure that I charge the laptop prior to the online meeting!  The whole thing came about because I had volunteered myself as a guinea pig for a medical study. To be precise, I have elected to be a participant in the Tata Longitudinal study: "Alzheimer’s Disease: Understanding mechanisms for early diagnosis and treatment" , being carried out at Centre for Neuroscience, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.  The TATA Longitudinal study of Aging (TLSA) is a long-term, ongoing aging cohort study of residents of the city of Bangalore, India. The study began in 2015 with the aim of recruiting 1000 elderly subjects from Bangalore and follow them up periodically for several years. Alzheimer's disease is th...

It looks like the fierce confrontation at the India-China Line of Actual Control (LAC) is nothing but a distraction to hide the real warfare that is going on behind the scenes.

The ancient India had several universities , many of them devoted to higher learning, which attracted scholars and students from as far away as China, Persia, and Greece . India's Vedic civilization had given great prominence to education in the society. The two most famous ancient Indian universities, and also the oldest ones in the world, are Takshashila and Nalanda .

It is not just in India that the right wing has swept the nation. Other countries where this has happened are Brazil, United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, Russia, Israel, Hungary, Poland, Turkey, Sweden, Japan, Philippines...

The 23 Congress veterans, who were with the party ever since they could write the alphabets, who have been dutifully swallowing the pills of Nehru-Gandhi principles every morning after breakfast, who were at their best sycophantic behavior in front of their Madam , were in for a rude shock, for, they got carried away by the master oratory, impeccable writing style, and the choice of arcane and exotic words of the English language, by their wordsmiths Shashi Tharoor and Manish Tiwari ! Image Credit: NDTV When they put their signatures in the letter, these old-timers didn't have the least idea that they were committing the most unpardonable crime of asking for ' fair internal elections ', a ' full-time, visible leadership ', and ' sweeping reforms ' - all concepts unheard of in the corridors of the Gandhi family . Now they are left on tenterhooks saying that their ' grievances ' in the letter will be examined and appropriate actions taken! Loyalists Pr...

For the first time, from a trip organized by a private company SpaceX , NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley have returned to Earth bringing their historic two-month mission at the International Space Station (ISS)  to an end.  Their mission began on 30 May 2020 , when Behnken and Hurley both launched inside the SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule from Cape Canaveral, Florida and then docked with ISS a day later. Called Demon-2, the mission was meant to prove out Crew Dragon’s biggest capabilities -- by safely transporting people to space and getting them to the ISS. Now SpaceX has proved that the Crew Dragon capsule can safely bring people back home, too. Astronauts Revisit Their Mission Aboard ISS After Returning To Earth In SpaceX Capsule This is just a reminder to my grand-kids . Maybe, when they are ready on their own for their holidays, they might be able to book their journey in space, as well as lodging, through Airbnb . Who knows! There is a 6-bed room place up there ...

This is an important national milestone in the development of the country and probably the most creditable achievement of the Modi government as it will touch and shape each and every person of our future generation for years to come.

How dare one asks such a question? We are ruled by a democracy ! A government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them through a system of representation involving periodically held free elections. Democracy - a system of government in which the common people hold political power.  

Should the party elders drag the charismatic dimwit kicking and screaming into the Presidential Chair of the Congress party?

It is rather ironic that we don't notice our body has a strong immune system when it is running smoothly! A system made up of various organs, cells, and proteins that protects our body from harmful substances, germs, and cell changes that could make us ill.

The first school that I attended in my village was a primary school called Paral School and Koran Master was its Head. It has weathered 70 years of sustained existence, now with the name South Kuthuparamba UP School . The roof is tiled now, whereas it was covered with thatched coconut leaves during my days.

It is a real pity to see the most talented Congress MP Shashi Tharoor in a pathetic and deplorable situation doing the subservient duties of supporting ' the family '.

In the tiny little kingdom of the Congress that is shrinking after each election, the Emperor has instilled such fear in his subjects that no one dares to tell him that the vividly shocking and sensational tweets he is sending out every day are nothing but clownish.

India is the first and the only nation in the world to have outsourced the governance of the country to an external agency.

I'm not a fan or follower of Bollywood. But how the established people in the Bollywood industry gangs up against talented new comers even to the extent of pushing them to the verge of suicide, is monstrous and horrifying.

Not long ago there was a time when  PV Narasimha Rao  was the PM and  Atal Bihari Vajpayee  was the leader of the opposition during 1991 to 1996 ...

Indian Army is afraid of not China or Pakistan . Our army is valiantly facing and fighting the enemies at the borders with total allegiance to the motherland. However, they are afraid of the backstabbers; those shameless hypocrites and traitors who stab them from behind!

Though India-China dispute is simmering in the icy-cold Himalayan borders and scores of our solders have been martyred, the whole thing pales into insignificance when you realize how China has invaded each and every city, town, and village of our motherland.  

Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, or MGNREGA,  enacted in 2009, is an Indian labour law and social security measure that aims to guarantee the ' right to work '. How the scheme was used as a tool for another mega-corruption by the UPA government is clearly revealed by UPA's own 2013 CAG  report.

PM Modi completes one year of his second term today. His Government has set new goals for India's developmental vision and is realising them one by one.

On this ' Eid Mubarak ' day, it is gratifying to listen to a speech on Bharathiyata (being an Indian), Sanatana Dharma (a way of living), and Arsha Bharata (Vedic way of life) by Dr MM Basheer , a retired medical doctor, scholar, and also a popular religious activist and speaker.

It is a futile exercise to package the public image of an imbecile into an intellectual. And yet the Congress is attempting the impossible.

After the lockdown, you eagerly step into a world in which many people and businesses go back to normal. You see thousands of people returning to the streets, public transports, shops, offices, work places, and consequently social-distancing measures are compromised.

There is so much talk about Aarogya Setu , Indian government's app these days, especially after PM's recent announcement. What exactly is it?

Unity in diversity of culture, language, food, dress, caste, religion, beliefs... is our strength as a nation. Our Indianness - socially, culturally, intellectually, and spiritually - was challenged five times:  in 1947, 1965, 1971, 1999 by the Pakistanis and in 1962 by the Chinese. At all times we rose as one to defend our country and proved that we are one nation. Seeing the desperate and reckless measures resorted to by Congress and opposition parties now, I doubt whether we can do it again! Has our Indianness irretrievably lost? Only time will tell whether sense will prevail!

No doubt JNU is India's most prominent liberal arts University. But why is it that there are so many left leaning intellectuals, consisting of both students and professors, in JNU as well as in many of the top social sciences universities in India today? Let me try to answer this crucial question.