The Covid-19 pandemic is a big setback to one of the most ambitious goals humanity has ever set for itself: the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). According to a recent study by UNDP, even in a non-Covid scenario, the global community would be struggling to achieve the SDGs by their 2030 deadline. The long-term impact of the pandemic has moved us further away from achieving these goals. There is a need…
Browsing Category Uncategorized
Peaceful death is really an essential human right, more essential perhaps even than the right to vote or the right to justice; it is a right on which, all religious traditions tell us, a great deal depends for the well-being and spiritual future of the dying person. The Tibetan Book Of Living And Dying: A Spiritual Classic from One of the Foremost Interpreters of Tibetan Buddhism to the West, by…
Poverty and its brutal consequences
Poverty invokes different kinds of reactions and responses from different people and it has many dimensions. That makes it a very fascinating topic for researchers, philosophers, religious teachers, philanthropists, writers… It can incite brilliant intellectual expositions, economic, karmic or systematic explanations, petty rhetoric or emotional outbursts. But from those who are victim of it, a mention of word poverty, often incites visceral responses which are triggered by the memories of…
Social media is not the barometer of nation’s mood.
Social media is increasingly influencing policy makers, politicians and bureaucrats in visualizing and shaping some of the key decisions that have a very comprehensive impact on all citizens. Mass media too these days is factoring social media reactions heavily in their analysis and in building their viewpoint on many issues. If we go by social media indicators, Trump was losing heavily, BJP was going to win a majority in Bihar…
Doubling Farmers’ Income – Making it a reality
Our Prime Minister’s call to double the farmers’s income1 by 2022 is an opportune call as the growth in farmers’ income has stagnated and it caused significant distress to farmers. Doubling the farmers’ income by 2020, if it is achieved, would be a remarkable achievement as it had not been achieved in last 3 decades. The challenge is more steep when it comes to doubling the income of farmers who…
Empathy and Economics
One of the most annoying thing in the pre-cable/satellite television era was Doordarashan mourning demise of political leaders or other eminent personalities. It meant that there is no music, movies or anything related to entertainment on our television. As a kid, we did not like the forced mourning on us. The other thing that we did not like was the news for hearing impaired. Once the cable TV made its…
Addressing Household Air Pollution and Celebrating Cooking : Dharma Chef
Household Air Pollution (HAP) is emerging as a major health risk and is responsible for more than 4.3 million premature deaths globally every year. The biggest and most common contributor to HAP is the use of biomass fuels for cooking in our traditional cookstoves. Availability of free biomass, free traditional cookstoves, and our age-old and ingrained cooking practices, which revolve around these traditional cookstoves make these polluting and health threatening…
Lighting Up Young Minds
One of the luckiest things that can happen to you in life is, I think, to have a happy childhood. -Agatha Christie Indeed, a happy childhood is something that every kid deserves. On this literacy day, we started something that was our contribution to add happiness to some childhoods. We (know more about what we do) started a campaign titled “Lighting Up Young Minds”. The objective of this campaign is to…
Bihar: A Glorious Past and An Uncertain Future
As I walked past a small hut the chorus of ‘ek duni do.. do duni char.. caught my attention. The sound was coming from the hut on my left. I took this route many times, but never stopped to have a second look on the hut. It was so commonplace in a village full of huts. I stopped and so did a couple of people who were with me. One…
#Awesome #auroville #india #instahub