May 17, 2021

India Today

News and current affairs magazine

India Today7 min readMedical
From The Editor-in-chief
On May 16, 2014, Narendra Modi powered himself and his party to a historic win, marking a return to a single-party majority after 25 years of coalition governments. His feat was a result not just of his stirring oratory but also because he held out h
India Today1 min read
India Today
CHAIRMAN AND EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: Aroon Purie VICE CHAIRPERSON: Kalli Purie GROUP CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER: Dinesh Bhatia GROUP EDITORIAL DIRECTOR: Raj Chengappa CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER: Manoj Sharma GROUP CREATIVE EDITOR: Nilanjan Das; GROUP PHOTO EDITOR
India Today3 min readCrime & Violence
Still On The Run
When Param Bir Singh, commandant of the Maharashtra Home Guards, wrote a letter to Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray on March 17 in his capacity as the Mumbai police commissioner, alleging that then home minister Anil Deshmukh had given police officers
India Today3 min readCrime & Violence
Can Our Courts Manage the COVID-19 Crisis?
In 1748, Montesquieu published L’Espirit des Lois or The Spirit of Laws, which introduced the theory of separation of powers and formed the basic foundation of several constitutions, including that of India. The State that most effectively promotes l
India Today3 min readMedical
Healthcare For All
Rajasthan’s newly minted, state-sponsored Chiranjeevi Health Insurance Scheme has come at a time when it’s likely to be better appreciated by its beneficiaries. It universalises healthcare in the state—free for the poor and dirt cheap for the rest. “
India Today2 min readMedical
A Tragedy Of Errors
Massed pyres and serpentine queues of shrouded bodies. Gasping, terrified men and women pleading to be accepted as patients. The broken and bereaved mourning their dead. In New Delhi today, as in any Indian metro, the roads are silent, the bazaars ar
India Today1 min readBiology
What Needs To Be Done
1 Inject funds to expand genome sequencing capacity. The UK’s genome sequencing body got £32 mn (Rs 329 crore), four times what INSACOG got in India 2 Make samples available quickly. All labs are under-utilised because not enough samples are being s
India Today3 min readMedical
3. The Vanishing Hospital Beds
LAST NOVEMBER, WHEN COVID cases in Delhi peaked to over 8,500 daily, a majority of the patients requiring hospitalisation struggled to find beds. Even temporary additional facilities set up earlier in June failed to handle the extra load of patients.
India Today1 min readMedical
What Needs To Be Done
1 Add more beds, ICUs and ventilators and also open temporary Covid facilities 2 Ensure that medical oxygen suppy to hospitals is maintained without disruption 3 Set up a dedicated portal offering real-time data on availability of hospital beds; fo
India Today1 min readMedical
What Needs To Be Done
1 Give final-year medical students provisional approval to manage Covid cases in hospitals and ICUs, at least in some vital disciplines 2 Fast-track hirings to public health services and reskill doctors and nurses who are out of the workforce 3 ‘Re
India Today5 min readMedical
1. Warnings By Experts Went Unheeded
FOREWARNED IS FOREARMED. This maxim holds good for all nations trying to combat the waves of Covid-19 that threaten the world today. Yet the Narendra Modi government, which had acted with alacrity during the first wave, was surprisingly complacent, n
India Today4 min readMedical
5. Going Off Track
IN 2020, INDIAN AUTHORTIES widely used the T3 protocol (test, treat, track) in the battle against Covid-19. However, in 2021, none of the states most affected by the second wave appear to be following it, with mandatory quarantining also falling by t
India Today4 min read
Crash Warning
With the number of Covid-19 infections surging—India recorded 368,147 new cases and 3,417 deaths on May 3, according to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare—several states have imposed strict restrictions on public movement and variously calibra
India Today1 min read
What Needs To Be Done
1 Incentivise private path labs. A price cap on Covid testing has reduced motivation amongst private players to invest in increasing their capacities 2 Labs should hire more manpower. Lab results are getting delayed over processing of samples, for w
India Today1 min readMedical
Prioritising Healthcare
₹ 3,000 cr. State expense on the Rs 5 lakh cover under Chiranjeevi insurance scheme; Centre’s share Rs 376 crore 13 million Beneficiary families will get the insurance free ₹ 850 Annual premium for others. No age bar, no exceptions; cashless cover
India Today3 min read
The Modi Government’s Nerve Centre For Covid-19 Management
Chairperson: Dr Vinod Paul, NITI Aayog Members: Dr Renu Swaroop, Secretary, Biotechnology; V. Thiruppugazh of the NDMA; officials from the MoHFW, cabinet secretariat and a director-level officer from the PMO; Dr Randeep Guleria, director of AIIMS; D
India Today4 min readMedical
4. Failing The Crucial Test
WHEN THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION declared Covid a global pandemic in early March last year, India had 14 RT-PCR testing labs. By end-March, the country had added 106 Virus Research & Diagnostic Laboratories (VRDLs). Far behind countries such as Sou
India Today4 min readMedical
2. Not Augmenting The Medical Workforce
THE DISTRICT HOSPITAL IN Bihar’s Gopalganj district received three ventilators from the Centre in September last year. These were among the 60,000-odd ventilators the government had procured, for nearly Rs 2,000 crore, in response to the Covid pandem
India Today3 min read
7. Grave Errors In Oxygen Supply
ONE OF THE BIGGEST LESSONS for medical institutions from the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic was that more than ventilators and ICU beds, what was essential was an adequate supply of oxygen in hospitals to treat critically ill patients. Nonethele
India Today4 min read
8. The Vaccine Complacency
VACCINE PRODUCTION IS AN AREA in which India had a head-start over even many developed nations. India is among the world’s largest manufacturers of vaccines, and early human trials of vaccines, including of one developed in the country, had shown gre
India Today4 min readMedical
6. The Boom In Black Market For Key Drugs
WHEN A HARRIED Naresh Indulkar, a resident of Mumbai’s Thane, went searching for three vials of Remdesivir for a relative in critical condition in hospital, it took nearly six hours to find a pharmacy with stock. “Rs 22,000 a vial,” whispered the man
India Today4 min read
9. Wanted: A War Room That Works
IMAGINE AN OLA OR UBER app which showed cars all over the city but with none assigned to you, no payment gateway and no analytics. Would this system have worked? Unlikely. And this has been the defining feature of Covid’s second wave—chaos. Hospitals
India Today3 min read
10. The Absent State
WHEN THE NARENDRA MODI-LED Union government announced the nationwide lockdown last year, the number of Covid cases in the country stood at 618. Exactly a year later, even while the country had 3 million active cases and the total tally had crossed 11
India Today1 min readCrime & Violence
What Needs To Be Done
1 No permission should be given to avoidable social and religious public events; if given, authorities must ensure strict enforcement of Covid safety protocols 2 All constitutional bodies, government agencies must cancel/ postpone events that involv
India Today1 min readTechnology & Engineering
What Needs To Be Done
1 Speedy rollout of a real-time disaster management dissemination system 2 A national disaster management control room in the Union health ministry, linking ministries, and with nodes in cities 3 RFID tagging of resources like oxygen cylinders, geo
India Today1 min readChemistry
What Needs To Be Done
1 Oxygen storage capacities in hospitals need to be beefed up via additional storage tanks. This will also free up cylinders for public use, such as home-treatment of mild Covid cases, thereby also reducing the load on hospitals 2 Explore the feasib
India Today11 min readPolitics
From Didi To Durga
IT was dusk on May 2 by the time news came that Mamata Banerjee had created history yet again. With a hat-trick of victories, and having secured more than 200 seats for the second time, her party, the All-India Trinamool Congress (TMC), had surpassed
India Today6 min readPolitics
Baptism Of Fire
IT has been a long wait for 68-year-old Muthuvel Karunanidhi Stalin. On May 7, he will finally assume office and become the third chief minister of Tamil Nadu from the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), a party that has ruled the state for 21 years sin
India Today3 min readPolitical Ideologies
Now His Own Boss
The exit polls had predicted a return of the Left Democratic Front (LDF) to power in Kerala, but even hardcore supporters did not anticipate such a decisive verdict. Kerala not only voted Pinarayi Vijayan, 75, back to power, breaking a four-decade-ol
India Today2 min readPolitical Ideologies
Survival Instincts
Three-time chief minister N. Rangasamy is about to take charge as Puducherry chief minister for a fourth term. Joining the NDA has enabled the 73-year-old founder of the All India N Rangasamy Congress (AINRC) to muster support to form the first NDA g
India Today4 min read
Red Fort
The striking mandate in the assembly election will help the CPI(M) consolidate the party’s political base in the state and lay the foundation for a longer innings in power. With his voice growing stronger within the party, Pinarayi is free to pick th
India Today5 min readPolitics
An Uphill Climb
On May 2, within hours of a clear trend emerging in favour of the BJP-led alliance in Assam, intense speculation began as to who the next chief minister would be. In fact, choosing the right candidate to helm the state became more challenging for the
India Today1 min readCorporate & Business History
Sunlit Days
DMK-led Secular Progressive Alliance included the Congress, Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK), CPI(M), CPI and eight other allies, some of whom contested on the DMK symbol AIADMK alliance included the BJP, PMK and others ■
India Today4 min readPolitics
The Wake-up Call
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is reeling from the shock of the West Bengal assembly poll results, where despite its vaulting ambitions, the party has managed a far more modest 77 legislators to its name in a 294-member house. The BJP had turned th
India Today1 min readMedical
What Needs To Be Done
1 Contact tracing needs to be restarted on priority, else there is no way to get ahead of the spread of the virus 2 The shortage of manpower needs to be addressed. More technicians, lab workers and medical professionals are needed 3 Technology shou
India Today5 min readPolitics
All At Sea
In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, the Congress won just 52 seats—eight more than in 2014— I and failed to breach the three-digit mark in the 545-member house for a second consecutive time. Of these 52 seats, 15 came from Kerala, a state that sends just
India Today2 min read
He Laughs Best
Q. Whatinspiredyoutoparticipate in LOL—Hasse Toh Phasse? The concept is fun and interesting. It’s really tough to make someone laugh but not laugh at the same time. Also, you might be a great singer [like] Rihanna or whatever, but you want to find o
India Today2 min readPolitics
Glasshouse
Cricketer Sourav Ganguly is undoubtedly a fine judge of the ball even on the political field. Among the chosen few invitees to Mamata Banerjee’s swearing-in ceremony on May 5, Dada gave the event a miss. He had earlier ducked overtures from top BJP l

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