Thread on socialism etc

Writing this to reiterate the point many are making: We need to focus on the ACTUAL harm to most Indians caused by regressive tax policies of bjp-rss, & not on imaginary, exaggerated harms to a fraction of Indians that wealth redistribution MIGHT cause To "middle-class" Indians dissing socialist ideas and policies, plz understand that it is progressive taxation & wealth redistribution that has historically made possible the kind of public education & other facilities which we take for granted.

Evolution & Science in India

As ppl r increasingly critiquing the (non-publicly-consulted) curriculum changes in our school science textbooks, the parts on human evolution have received much attention. Like this @RichardDawkins tweet: All of these recent discussions (incl Replies on abov tweet) have led to the rehashing of som old/continuing ideas about Hindusim & science: that "unlike other religions, Hinduism is very much aligned with science" (eg, 'Darwin's evolution ideas align with our religious beliefs')

Ancient DNA: Triumphs, Triumphalism, & Caution

The discipline of paleogenomics - extracting, cleaning, and analyzing remnant DNA from people who lived thousands of years ago - is phenomenal science. The 2022 Medicine Nobel to Svante Pääbo basically honors this new discipline. For at least a decade now, this science, paleogenomics, has made waves in popular media and the mainstream public discourse. Not as much for its absolutely fascinating methods & scientific hard work, as for its interpretations, conclusions, and claims regarding our history.

Among the books on healthcare I hav found most helpful is "The Body Multiple" by Annemarie Mol. It primarily discusses how medicine works despite its inherent messiness.

Here's a video in which Mol talks about this book - 20 years after it was published..
In the book we learn how, in a large hospital, different depts & practitioners interpret the same ailment (atherosclerosis) in different ways. There r always tensions & conflicts betw teams & practitioners, but by & large the hospital continues to function & to provide good care.

T​he 2018 Tumbbad is among the best and most visually spectacular Indian films. Many of us know that. At the same time - what is less known - it is also one of the best Indian movies ever on caste.​

[Sorry, major spoilers ahead] There is much to learn from Satish Deshpande's work on how the privileged in India have succeeded in "amputating" the full meaning of caste to simply mean 'lower caste', thus "leaving the upper castes free to monopolise the 'general category' by posing as casteless citizens."

Contrary to what sanghi propaganda says, Bollywood films hav always been extremely strong on patriotism, & the Khans (as early as Mother India's Mehboob Khan) hav been central to this patriotism.

Gowariker's SWADES is one such amazing film, & this is prob its most powerful scene Back then, as an 18-yr-old who had grown up in an India where patriotism hadn't descended into bigoted hindutva nationalism, I absolutely loved this scene (& SRK's top-notch portrayal).

The idea is simple: its far more imp to be a responsible citizen than a "proud" Indian.

Very thankful to Rema Nagarajan for providing this platform for my research and dissertation. Many ideas are discussed in this interview, and in this thread I would like to highlight one: the dominance in Indian policymaking of elite Indians and elitist worldviews.

https://twitter.com/RemaNagarajan/status/1543466907604422657

A while back I made a presentation on health policy in India. I will use some slides from that ppt here

Reading the context-less, false equivalence-laden, plain bad takes & tweets on the oppression of Muslim students in Karnataka, one thing comes out very clear: Many elite Hindus are shockingly oblivious to the massive privilege & majoritarianism they enjoy & hav always enjoyed.. A good example of that privilege is the openness and ease wit which murderous ideas are taught to teenage girls at Durga Vahini camps. These camps r a hotbed of hatred & violent training, but they go on as casually in our midst as the dinner-time yells of news presenters..

Community health

In d late 1960s, when Indira Gandhi was in her first term & the US was preparin to send humans to moon, Mabelle Arole & Rajanikant Arole decided to show the world how "Medicine is a social science and politics is nothing else but medicine on a large scale." Their groundbreaking project, the Comprehensive Rural Health Project (CRHP, Jamkhed), is known in public health & global health circles, incl how it has improved health indicators lik maternal mortality & infant mortality rates.

But here I wud like to go beyond metrics & numbers

Scholars beyond publications:

One of the most inspiring persons in d field of global health today is Vikram Patel. Not as much bcz of the usual stuff - awesome work in his field, publications & all that, - but, IMHO, more because of the unusual stuff..
indianexpress.com/article/opinio… Eg, in this article he doesnt fall into the trap of Indian (Hindu) exceptionalism, so common with NRIs.

He doesnt stop at that.. He also further writes that it is extremely worrying to see within India itself now, diversity in cultures and ideas is being discouraged and crushed.

Public vs private healthcare

Healthcare in India has been subject to so much expert analysis & commentary, & been offered so many "solutions" ov the past 15-20 years, that one wonders why hundreds of millions in India still continue to suffer from lack of access to decent care.. I'm jotting down some thoughts here which came to mind over the past months when I'd read something or hear a podcast only to feel dejected by how healthcare continues to be talked about, & which now the new Covid challenges have brought to the surface again..

Farm laws & Market fundamentalism

​Mainstream econ ideas, esp around the supposedly all-encompassing benefits of what is called the free market, and the powerful 'invisible hand' which supposedly guides everyone to correct decisions, hav dominated elite discussions on #farmlaws In this thread I aim to acquaint ppl to a world which goes beyond these dominant ideas. The mainstream econ discourse, howev, often makes caricatures of opposing ideas & of critics. Eg: "they r ideologically driven". Or political, emotional, just jholawalas/activists. Etc.

The misinformation propaganda over reservations by influential privileged-caste persons has reached comical depths. This warrants a short 'Explain Like I'm 5' primer on the philosophy of reservations, esp for decent UC folks who are indeed receptive to learning more. Many anti-reservation polemic commentaries totally neglect to mention the primary goal of any affirmative action policy: proportionate representation of, & distribution of resources to, the different groups & communities which form a society.

Many kinds of events r commemorated over social media now. I'd like to invoke this phenomenon & remind ppl of quite a consequential day for healthcare in India. On 13 Nov 1995, the Supreme Court ruled that medical services were indeed covered by the Consumer Protection Act (CPA) CPA (1986) was a progressive legislation intended to provide people with simpler, more convenient mechanisms (as against courts of law) to demand accountability from those who unethically sold defective goods or provided deficient services.

SRK, Sehwag, Duryodhan

Our timelines hav been occupied by many awful things over the past few days (and for a long time before that of course). A common theme that runs thru all that awfulness, is the smallness and pettiness of the Sanghi mind One aspect of this was described well by @OmairTAhmad here. As a Maharashtrian frm Konkan, where sanghi mindsets abound, I can say with certainty that this is exactly the modus operandi of the larger sangh parivar, however much they harp about "seva" & all

https://twitter.com/OmairTAhmad/status/1452497139351769094

Unfortunate to see the example of a single postgraduate degree in ​a single subject in only two institutions out of several hundred, being used to erase/overlook the historical underrepresentation of oppressed caste communities in the medical profession and in medical specialties All the more unfortunate when one notes that alternative avenues for the same degree are available more to "open" category students than to OBC, SC, ST students. The former, in general with a few exceptions, have far more resources and the "right" contacts compared to the latter

Seeing how a lot of ppl, incl famous senior doctors & ppl from other fields, r whole-heartedly parroting sarkari claims on the Digital Health ID, one is reminded of Varun Grover's apt phrase for us - "gullible type" Ppl in New India hav truly becom such gullible type! They r so nonchalantly trusting the fairy tales of the same ppl who said Demonetisation will help the economy "in the long run", Aadhar is "optional", and that Covid "war" will be won in 18 days like the Mahabharat..

This is re. the apparent enthusiasm of some doctors for the Union govt's Digital Health ID project. I learnt about this enthusiasm from ppl's responses to @SonaliVaid's tweet yday, including the unfortunate trolling. It seems that many doctors, when thinking about larger public health issues, simply extrapolate from their narrow clinical experiences, rather than taking into account social, economical, political factors. That is, the larger universe beyond the hospital.

The content of a recent judgment by the Allahabad HC is just another instance of how a lot of "proud" Hindus lack critical thinking skills, or what we call logic and commonsense in ordinary parlance. This lack of logic is not new, and resistance to it also is not new.

https://twitter.com/t_d_h_nair/status/1433385582227451909

One influential Indian who rallied against such juvenile, ignorant ways of thinking prevalent among grown-up Hindus, especially when it comes to history, was Ramkrishna Bhandarkar.

Many might have heard of the recent disastrous flooding in parts of the Konkan region, incl in the city of Chiplun. Chiplun is where I grew up & where family & friends still live. It has been sobering to witness the disaster thru phone calls & whatsapp messages & pictures. As usual, it was neighbors who helped neighbors. It was ordinary ppl who rose to the occasion, more than local govt or national response teams. Ppl rushed to help others & carry them to safer locales; brought food & water to the stranded; arranged for volunteers & local NGOs..

This is to say thanks to the many medicos who'v been, at great risk of bein abused by trolls, callin out misogyny & sexism in medical circles. Not to mention calling out religious & casteist bigotry which is as prevalent in the medical field as elsewhere in India today. Thanks also to those who shared stories of how sexism & misogyny hav been trivialized & normalized in the profession (eg this tweet). Sad to see many medicos still refusing to acknowledge these issues & instead choosing to blame feminism, "wokeism" etc

https://twitter.com/doctorandall/status/1413401316131438596