Tag Archives: casteism
The importance of sensible politics to good science
Stuart Ritchie writes a newsletter-blog that I quite like, called Science Fictions. On May 30, he published a post on this blog entitled ‘Science is political – and that’s a bad thing’. I thought the post missed some important points, which … Continue reading
Posted in Analysis, Science
Tagged Brahmins, casteism, gender-based discrimination, history of science, Jawaharlal Nehru, politicisation of science, reason of state
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On The Caravan’s new profile of The Hindu
On December 1, The Caravan published a 50-page report entitled ‘Paper Priests: The battle for the soul of The Hindu’. The report – actually, as a friend put it, a big profile – has many good parts and many others, … Continue reading
Posted in Analysis, Culture
Tagged casteism, Malini Parthasarathy, newsroom, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Siddharth Varadarajan, The Caravan, The Hindu
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NCBS fracas: In defence of celebrating retractions
Continuing from here… Irrespective of Arati Ramesh’s words and actions, I find every retraction worth celebrating because how hard-won retractions in general have been, in India and abroad. I don’t know how often papers coauthored by Indian scientists are retracted … Continue reading
Posted in Analysis, Science
Tagged Arati Ramesh, Brahmins, casteism, Elisabeth Bik, National Centre for Biological Sciences, Retraction Watch, retractions, self-correcting, Sunil Laxman, zombie citations
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Caste, and science’s notability threshold
A webinar by The Life of Science on the construct of the ‘scientific genius’ just concluded, with Gita Chadha and Shalini Mahadev, a PhD scholar at HCU, as panellists. It was an hour long and I learnt a lot in … Continue reading
Posted in Scicomm, Science
Tagged Brahmins, caste, casteism, constructs, experimental physics, Gita Chadha, Indian journalism, mainstream media, Nobel Prizes, science communication, Shalini Mahadev, sociology of science, upper caste, Western modernity
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The life and death of ‘Chemical Nova’
You know how people pretend to win an Oscar or a Nobel Prize, right? Many years ago, I used to pretend to be the author of a fictitious but, blissfully unmindful of its fictitiousness, award-winning series of articles entitled Chemical … Continue reading
Posted in Life notes, Science
Tagged aachaaram, Bharatiya Janata Party, Brahminism, caste apartheid, casteism, chemical reagents, class apartheid, hand washing, Hema Malini, Kent, manual scavenging, pseudoscience, running water, soap, untouchability
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That astrology workshop at the IISc
Couple caveats: I wrote this post on the night of October 28, before the workshop was cancelled on the morning of October 29. I haven’t bothered to change the tense because issuing this caveat at the top seemed simpler. A … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged astrology, casteism, falsification, Karl Popper, MS Rameshaiah, pseudoscience, superstitions
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Caste guilt
This is the age of the start-up, not megaliths. Remember T-Rex did not survive evolution. It is unlikely that religions organised like T-Rexes – most of the Abrahamic religions fit this description – will survive an era of fast change. … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged caste liberation, casteism, Dalit, Dera Sacha Sauda, Khatri, secularism, Sikhism
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To understand #NotInMyName
The more vicious public debates we have, the more it will seem like a ‘conversation’ cordoned off to those masses for whom an awareness of social and political issues is only just budding. Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged #NotInMyName, Brahmanism, Brahminism, casteism, Huffington Post, lynching, News Minute, protest, Shivam Vij, Sify, social science, upper caste, upper class
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Caste, healthcare and statistics
In late November 2014, the esteemed British medical journal The Lancet published an editorial calling for the end of casteism in India to mitigate the deteriorating health of the millions of rural poor, if nothing else. The central argument was that caste was hampering … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Amartya Sen, Arundhati Roy, casteism, economic status, healthcare, Jean Dreze, The Lancet
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Three overlooked reasons why India’s healthcare indicators remain abysmal
Scroll.in January 2, 2015 The Bharatiya Janata Party-led Central government announced in July that it would roll out a National Health Assurance Mission, whose aim would be to provide some free medical services to reduce “out of pocket spending on … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged casteism, health inspectors, import duty, medical tourism, National Health Assurance Mission, Planning Commission, poverty line, Ranbaxy Labs, The Lancet, untouchability, Wockhardt
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