Capturing currents

By Malini Shankar Digital Discourse Foundation With death rates and mortalities increasing because of the COVID 19 Pandemic, disposal of COVID 19 dead bodies has become a civic challenge.   Hospitals are not giving the mortal remains of COVID 19 victims to their families even for funerals. This deprivation of culturally sanctioned funeral rites in India or an opportunity for loved ones to take leave of the deceased has created even more panic.   The message that the general population gets is, “if we get infected, not only will treatment and isolation not allow us a loving care while living, neither will we get a loving funeral when we die”. This is a potential mental health hazard for the living – in these times of a terrorising Pandemic. ICMR's guidelines do not prohibit handing over the dead body to the relatives, although the Karnataka State Government Guidelines - for instance - does prescribe transportation of COVID 19 mortalities from the hospital straight t...

Checklist for Lockdown  By Malini Shankar Digital Discourse Foundation  Disaster mitigation is all about Inter Agency Coordination or IAC to bring relief to the common Man. According to Disaster Risk Reduction Theory the very first stage of IAC involves the following: 1st stage: 1.          Search and Rescue 2.          Recovery 3.          Food security 4.          Water supply 5.          Sanitation and hygiene 6.          Combating breakout of epidemic 7.          Mitigate crime 8.          Counselling 9.          Effective communication 10.        Disposal of dead G...

By Malini Shankar Digital   Discourse  Foundation  Facing starvation, they risked everything to go back to their native homes. Most of the migrant workers hailed from poorer states of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and were working in the more prosperous states of Maharashtra, Karnataka Kerala and Tamilnadu. Talking of the north south demographic divide in India Professor Amita Bhide tells Digital Discourse Foundation “This is a clear reflection of the spatially uneven development of the country post-independence and a continuity of the trajectory of colonial economy. The West and South with relatively more investments in education, industry and greater decentralisation has become the area of development and with more opportunities; and hence triggered migration from North and East which have been reduced to a position of beggars”.   “Even though I own 4 hectares of ancestral agricultural land in my home town of Bhadrak district in Odish...

By Malini Shankar Digital Discourse Foundation  The Novel Corona virus is a mutant with traces in similar strains of SARS, SARI, MERS, H1N1, H1N5, H1N9, Hantavirus, and before that Dengue, Chikungunya, Bird Flu, Swine Flu. But none other than the Coronavirus has gripped Humanity, terrorising to wipe out the human race itself. Like every modern Pandemic, Aviation has served as the catalyst for spread of the infection globally. To stop the virus from spreading halting aviation was an immediate necessity. But aviation was stopped only after the World Health Organisation of the United Nations declared COVID 19 a global pandemic. That it was a biological weapon of mass destruction cannot confidently be dismissed as ‘Chinese Whispers’ confidently yet. Industrial output dependent on aviation suffered. The global economy, - already tethering on recession - went into a fiscal tailspin. GDP figures were tumbling quarter after quarter even before the Pandemic. Unemployment was as r...

B y Malini Shankar Digital Discourse Foundation Like every other pandemic in modern history, aviation has been the catalyst for the spread of diseases globally. COVID 19 or the Novel Corona Virus 2019 supposedly had its origins in the wet markets or - live but illegal wildlife markets in the Chinese city of Wuhan in China.   The Novel Corona virus is a mutant with traces in similar strains of SARS, MERS, H1N1, H1N5, H1N9, Hantavirus, and before that Dengue, Chikungunya, Bird Flu, Swine Flu. But none other than the Coronavirus has gripped Humanity, terrorising to wipe out the human race itself.   Nation after nation ordered unprecedented Lockdowns in an attempt to prevent spread of the virus amid speculation that it was a biological weapon of mass destruction. None can confidently dismiss it as ‘Chinese Whispers’ confidently yet.    Even before the COVID 19 triggered Lockdown was announced, recession was knocking at the doors with GDP figures ...