On Chess & Chennai -- this week's 🧵 Post-1923 Russia

After the Russian Revolution, Lenin kept one Romanov tradition alive: chess.

He believed the game encouraged independent thought.

The Soviets offered their citizens free chess schools and clubs. By the 1940s, they were dominating chess globally.

🧵-- This week's #52AuthorQnA is with Abhilash Pavuluri. Q: What’s your Fifty Two story about, in ten words or fewer?

A: I write about Hassan's human-elephant conflict crisis, and how complex the problem is.

Have you been to a supermarket recently where every bottle of jam, jelly, mayo and mustard looks indistinguishable from the other?

If your answer is YES, read on -- 🧵

(Illustration by Pia Alizé Hazarika) The vast majority of Indians make smart, economical decisions about the consumer goods they purchase.

In Sri Lanka, economic chaos has changed people’s lives.

@afidelf travelled out from Colombo, through markets, fields and open country, to examine this change.

The news isn’t good. Stay with me -- 🧵 Sri Lanka’s food supply chain is in a state of shock.

It began with frequent power outages and fuel shortage, then spiralled into hunger, poverty and despair.

🧵-- A brief QnA with reporter @Umesh_KrRay. Q: What’s your Fifty Two story about, in ten words or fewer?

@Umesh_KrRay: How RTI was killed in Bihar

Q: Why do you write?

@Umesh_KrRay: To tell tales of those who have no access to communication.

Machine learning, you say.

Who’s teaching these machines what to learn?

In many cases––it’s young Indian women.

Let me tell you the story.

(Image credit: Karishma Mehrotra) Chandmuni is a 24-year-old Santhal woman from Jharkhand. Everyday, from 6am to 2pm, she sits down to work in front of her computer.

Her job is to mark the joints of a hand: four per finger, 20 in all.

🧵 -- While his government was crumbling, one chief minister was watching Zanjeer at home. But what he did next transformed Indian federalism forever. First, a civics refresher. In simple terms, Article 356 of the Constitution works like this: if a governor thinks that the elected government of a state can no longer function for any reason, he can ask the Union to dismantle the State govt and step in.

This is President’s Rule

NASA Declares Sanskrit Best Language For Computer Coding

Well. Not really.

But lots of people think so, including members of our government. Here's why 🧵 “CONGRATS!!!

Sanskrit is the BEST language for computer programming, according to NASA.

Proving again that Hindu religion has most scientific basis. 🙏🙏💪💐💐 🤩 "

It's a common claim in WhatsApp forwards that Sanskrit is the perfect language for computer programming and AI.

This week's 🧵

WONDER DRUG: This Punjabi microbiologist dedicated his life to studying a compound. It saved millions of lives—including, for a while, his own. Today, rapamycin has saved millions of lives around the world.

The wonder drug is essential for immunosuppression in organ transplant patients and coronary artery stents after balloon angioplasties.

It's time for another 🧵

IIT GIRLS: How women students at IIT Bombay in the 70s were radicalised by the sexism they faced on campus. And went on to change science in India forever. 1977:

Chayanika Shah joined @iitbombay to pursue a Master’s degree in physics.

She was one of 70 women on campus. There were 3000 men.

She moved into the one ‘Ladies’ Hostel’.

The nine ‘Students’ Hostels’ were for men.

The Story of Custard (A mini 🧵)

An English romance, a refugee from Rawalpindi, a green dot—these ingredients combined to change India’s sweet tooth forever. Early 1800s:

A new type of kitchen comes into existence in India: the colonial-Indian kitchen.

A place where British memsahibs train Indian cooks to recreate bourgeois British cuisine. Roast chicken. Finger sandwiches. And for dessert, the trickiest item of all: custard.

The Sanjana Effect (A mini🧵)

There were more than twice as many Sanjanas born in 1993 as in the preceding three years.

The reason: a Pepsi commercial. In the ad, Mahima Chaudhry rings Aamir Khan’s doorbell and asks for a Pepsi. He doesn't have any. He jumps out the window, runs across the road, braves traffic, and brings her a bottle.

There’s another knock on the door.

“That must be Sanju,” says Chaudhry.

Indian scientists have been going to Antarctica for four decades. What exactly do they do there? 🧵

(1) India’s Antarctic story begins in the 1950s. Then, the world was eyeing Antarctica, for mineral riches & scientific secrets. To avoid a free-for-all, a treaty was drawn after India appealed to the UN.
The essence? No country could claim any slice of the continent for itself.
(2)

Sending love to all our readers having a rough time. If you want a few minutes to think about something else, I’m going to tell you a story. It’s about a 150-yr old hospital on a bend of the river Brahmaputra, and some of the things it has witnessed. 🧵

(1/17) Health care was a key part of the British colonial system. Meant to show that they were here to govern. Justification for their 'civilising' mission.

Tezpur was a hub for their tea estates. With the discovery of oil in 1867, became home to migrants from all over India.

(2/17)

How are you spending the last day of the year? We're drinking coffee and doing a tweet 🧵 of some of our favourite 2020 stories from India & the neighbourhood, based on the opinions of our readers, contributors and team. Ready? Needless to say this is a subjective, partial and incomplete list. The selection is limited to English-language stories from publications based in the subcontinent. Fifty Two's past contributors, team members and close pals have been excluded for obvious reasons. (Exes too.)