Ground zeroes review

In his post- Tum Bin avatar, Anubhav Sinha is like an intrepid reporter on ground zero who negotiates multiple points of view, but lets the reader know which side he is on. This week, he completes his trilogy on the issues that go against our credo of unity in diversity. After addressing religious rancour in Mulk and the caste cauldron in Article 15 , he turns his sharp gaze to regional identity in Anek . Over the years, the North East has remained out of focus of not just policymakers, but also Hindi cinema. Apart from a stray Tango Charlie (2005), one doesn’t remember any mainstream Hindi film that addressed the insurgency in a part of the country that didn’t get into a “happy marriage”, as one of the characters says in the film, with India in 1947. Anek is a deeply-political film that asks why people of certain parts of the country have to repeatedly prove their love and worth for the country, and echoes the deep-seated distrust that a section of the Northeast people … [Read more...] about ‘Anek’ movie review: Anubhav Sinha launches an incisive inquiry into a disturbing truth

Even though Anthony Fauci, the White House’s chief medical adviser, backed off his statement that the United States is “out of the pandemic phase,” elected officials and much of the public seem to think that he had it right the first time. But if the end of the COVID-19 emergency is at hand, the United States is reaching it with lower vaccination and higher per capita death rates than other wealthy nations. The conventional wisdom is that the American political system failed at public health—by prioritizing individual rights over collective safety; sowing doubt about the benefits of vaccines, masks, and other protective measures; and most important, failing to implement universal health care, paid sick leave, and other safety-net programs. I agree with the conventional wisdom. But there’s plenty of blame to go around. Public health also failed America. The two most important federal public-health agencies, the CDC and the FDA , have been uniformly criticized for muddled … [Read more...] about How Public Health Failed America

Throughout the town of Rochester, Minnesota, where I grew up, 18 themed goose statues (each an imposing 5 feet tall and 525 pounds heavy) stand sentinel. Airport Goose wears aviator goggles. A press pass hangs around Newspaper Goose’s neck. Library Goose cosplays as William Shakespeare. At amateur baseball games, Rochesterites cheer for the Honkers. In our local newspaper, the movie reviews once issued ratings on a scale from zero to four honks. The city’s flag features three Canada geese flapping over the skyline. Clearly, Rochester loves its geese. But also, sometimes, it can’t stand them. The city’s estimated 6,000 Canada geese regularly irritate their human neighbors with ill-tempered honking and steadfast production of up to two pounds of poop daily that foul parks and regularly close beaches. “That’s the No. 1 complaint in parks since I’ve been here,” Paul Widman, the director of the city’s parks-and-recreation department, told me at Silver Lake Park last October, the sound … [Read more...] about Should Humans Let Geese Be? Can We?

Trade relations between the U.S. and China haven’t been at their best in the past few years. Add to it supply-chain disruptions brought on by the pandemic, exacerbated now by the war in Ukraine... disruptions that have made global majors look beyond China for manufacturing bases or partners, in an approach now named the ‘China PLUS One Strategy’. Srivats Ram , MD, Wheels India, a prominent auto-components maker, said that the opportunity for companies of all sizes, is waiting to be taken. Even if the effects are not felt immediately on the ground, initiatives taken now have high chance of bearing fruit in the medium term, he pointed out. Edited excerpts from an interview: Can you take us back in time on the reasons for global companies to look at China? When large manufacturing entities in the U.S. and Europe moved production to China in the 1990s, they knew they got a low manufacturing-cost base and also access to a big market for a large number of products. It offered a … [Read more...] about China-PLUS-One is an opportunity for Indian firms