Meltdown

If we could sustain the distinction, and distinguish clearly between the virus from bacteria white from black , Ebola outbreak in Africa from coronavirus in New York how things might have been? The contagious from touch disinfectant from clean profane from the sacred, the dead from virus on surface. And before the end   finger-printing from secure isolation from segregation, Flat from the curve from fat off the curve. The schism and prism that adds to an ism. Arrest the endemic crisis within the system to reach and match the scale of the pandemic. In other words the social from distancing, before the cast of the invisible appears as translucent visible matter. If we all could sustain and enforce the distinction, and mark off the interim from measures the process from final Who knows, how things, could have been.

NASA and its scientists, the saviour of humanity know that the planet is reeling under a virus attack? How I miss the images of Hollywood films! Wish they were real. Earth's natural magnetic field shifted and for months world's strategic-scientific-navigational folks were clueless. They might have known since flights reached their destinations, ships anchored home, strategic and commercial launches and satellites found their orbits, passengers and goods reached their locations, so on and so forth. WE WERE NOT TOLD about it. If, coronavirus affects humans only and other life-forms animals and plants are immune to it, then, that could be a defence as well and maybe, we need not wait for 60% of human population to get infected. For countries like China and India and many in this Indian subcontinent and elsewhere, the 'herd immunity' is the plan by default. Have we forgotten population density, the limits of social distancing? Social distancing through stay at home is t...

There are many aspects of human beings, among them; one is that human beings are biological beings. They have life and one crucial aspect of this fact is that by being a biological being they are susceptible to diseases, viruses and death. Immortality research is on...but nothing conclusive yet. Humans are not the only ones who are biological beings or have life. The other day, thousands of seagulls died, apparently ocean temperature has changed. We were able to scale the proportion of change that is required to alter facts of this nature, if we choose to avoid occurrences of this kind. Fact is seabirds died in mass and very few felt helpless and humans did almost nothing to intervene and save them. A virus attack on sea stars or  starfish around north America's coasts left millions dead in 2014. Dead fish has been washing ashore in Indonesia, America, Spain and elsewhere regularly in recent months and mussels are dying in mass.  Intervention and its scale in other...

Debate began decades back about direct transfer of money to the poor and continues. Mostly politicians who are creations of elections, oppose formal distribution of cash to the poor or direct transfer of cash via the state, while being in the government or outside . People can be imparted skills and given goods but the poor cannot be trusted with cash and its direct transfer? While the companies who understand cash better are the ones who adopt the suggestion wholeheartedly. They offer cash back, directly in your account, if you buy with credit or debit cards or use online payment apps. So, if you have some purchasing power, you are part of the cash back scheme.  You can be an immediate beneficiary. Elections are supposed to fall outside the realm of financial and monetary influences in order to secure that they are 'free'. People, representatives and intermediaries understand the relationship between elections and cash as immediate and direct. Though there is an offici...

The science would be translated as vigayan in hindi and the word for theory is sidhant. Political science is rajnitik vigyan/shastra and one of its subfield political theory would be named as rajnatik sidhant as the hindi translation of their english counterparts. One would associate science with empirical and explanatory and may be sidhant is closer to principle so closer to normative. How are distinctions in the English language placed in their Hindi translation?  The translations of the terms could be literal by taking a word in its isolation looking for a equivalent word as stand alone in another language. It is possible that translations also factor the distinctions that envelops a word and is attuned to the process that turns a word into a concept and places it in a theoretical universe. The translated word or the accepted and actual term in one language may also mark the convergence and divergence of one language with another, revealing the contours of the history that bri...