Sunday, August 2, 2026

Dig Your Well Before You’re Thirsty: The Ancient Proverb for Modern Crises

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5 Key Takeaways

  • Preparation must happen before a crisis, not when urgency hits.
  • Human biases like present bias and optimism bias cause us to delay important actions.
  • Small, consistent efforts (kaizen) compound over time to build resilience.
  • The second best time to start preparing is now, even if you missed the ideal moment.
  • The proverb applies broadly across health, personal finance, career, business, and relationships.



The Japanese Proverb That Could Save You From Your Next Crisis

An ancient saying about thirst, wells, and the quiet art of preparing for what hasn't yet arrived.

We have all experienced that sinking moment of regret. Maybe it was watching a minor health symptom balloon into something serious because you skipped regular check-ups. Maybe it was scrambling at the last minute to gather documents for a loan application that could have been prepared months earlier. Or perhaps it was staring at a bank account drained by an unexpected car repair, realizing you had months—even years—to build an emergency fund and simply didn't. These moments share an uncomfortable truth: the best time to act was long before the urgency set in. A centuries-old Japanese saying captures this predicament with a startling image, and its lesson is one that every adult, every professional, and every leader needs to internalize.

“When you're dying of thirst, it's too late to dig a well.”

— Japanese Proverb, as documented by Proverbicals

The proverb is simple and profound. It uses a physical need so fundamental that anyone can understand it. Water, the source of life, cannot be summoned instantly from the ground when your throat is already parched. Digging a well is a slow, laborious task that requires planning, effort, and time—none of which are available when you are already in a state of desperation. The saying grabs us by the collar and demands we confront a behavioral flaw that has plagued humanity for generations: we wait until a situation becomes unbearable before we seriously commit to fixing it.

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What the Proverb Really Means

On the surface, the message is about physical survival. No one lost in a desert can start digging a well with their bare hands and hope to find water before dehydration takes hold. But the true power of the proverb lies in how easily its logic extends to nearly every dimension of modern life. The "well" stands for anything that requires steady, upfront investment: your health, your financial security, your professional skills, your key relationships, even the stability of a society's infrastructure. The "thirst" represents the moment those resources are needed urgently—a medical emergency, a sudden job loss, a natural disaster, a demanding project deadline.

When the crisis hits, the window for preparation has already slammed shut. You cannot negotiate with a failing heart to give you a few more months so you can finally start exercising. You cannot ask a volatile stock market to pause while you quickly learn the basics of investing. The proverb is not merely about avoiding danger; it is about accepting a fundamental law of cause and effect. The outcome you experience during a crisis is almost always a reflection of the choices you made when there was no crisis at all.

· · ·

Why We Delay Digging the Well

If the logic is so compelling, why do so many of us wait until we are metaphorically dying of thirst to act? The answer lies in the peculiar wiring of the human brain. Psychologists and behavioral economists have long observed a phenomenon known as present bias—the tendency to overvalue immediate rewards and undervalue future benefits. The comfort of skipping a workout today feels more real than the abstract threat of a heart attack decades from now. The pleasure of spending a bonus on a luxury item outshines the distant, foggy concept of a retirement that is 30 years away.

Another culprit is the optimism bias, a cognitive quirk that makes us believe we are less likely to experience negative events than the average person. We know that many people face job insecurity, but deep down we think our own employment is uniquely stable. We read about others struggling with debt, but we convince ourselves that our own credit card balance will be easy to clear next month. This bias creates the illusion that we have more time than we actually do, and that the well can be dug tomorrow—or the day after—without any real consequence.

Further complicating the picture is the simple fact that preparation is boring and its rewards are invisible. You don't get a medal for buying life insurance. No one throws you a parade for having six months' worth of expenses in a savings account. The work of digging a well while you are not yet thirsty looks suspiciously like wasted effort to the untrained eye. It takes wisdom and discipline to value a crisis that never happened over a convenience that you enjoy right now.

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Real-World Wells and the Many Forms of Thirst

The beauty of this Japanese proverb is how it fits seamlessly into so many areas of life. Consider a few of the wells that society collectively forgets to dig.

Health and Wellness

Think of the person who ignores a persistent cough or a nagging pain for years. When the diagnosis finally comes—advanced stage, limited treatment options—the moment for prevention has passed. Public health systems around the world learned this lesson brutally during the COVID-19 pandemic. Facilities that had underinvested in stockpiles of protective equipment, ventilators, and pandemic response teams found themselves overwhelmed and unable to scale up quickly once the virus was already spreading. You cannot build a new wing of a hospital or train hundreds of specialist nurses in the three weeks it takes for an outbreak to escalate. The time to dig that well was during the decades of relative calm.

Personal Finance

Financial advisors repeat the same mantra until they are hoarse: build an emergency fund covering three to six months of living expenses. Yet survey after survey shows large portions of the population could not cover a sudden $1,000 expense without borrowing money. When the car breaks down or the roof starts leaking, the absence of a well means plunging into high-interest debt, selling assets at a loss, or begging for help. The small, automatic monthly transfer into a savings account feels unremarkable when your paycheck is secure, but it becomes the difference between a manageable inconvenience and a life-altering catastrophe when your income stops.

Career and Skills

The professional world is littered with examples of talented people who coasted on their current expertise and never learned new tools. They laughed at the rise of artificial intelligence or ignored the digital transformation sweeping their industry. When their job was finally automated or made obsolete, they had no well of new competencies to draw from. They had to start digging—often with much less time and energy—in the middle of a personal career drought. The colleagues who thrive in times of disruption are those who were quietly upskilling on weekends, attending courses, and building networks long before they needed a new opportunity.

Businesses and Institutions

The corporate graveyard is filled with titans who failed to prepare for a future that was visible but uncomfortable to confront. Kodak's engineers actually invented the digital camera in the 1970s, but the company's leadership could not bring itself to move away from highly profitable film. When the digital wave finally crested, Kodak's well was dry, and the company filed for bankruptcy. Blockbuster had the chance to purchase a fledgling Netflix, but it sat comfortably on its brick-and-mortar model until a new business landscape left it with no viable options. These companies had the knowledge and the resources to dig the well; they just waited too long.

Relationships

Even our most personal connections function under the same proverb. A marriage that only receives attention when it is already falling apart is like a field that is watered only during a drought. The small, daily deposits of kindness, listening, and presence are the wells that sustain a relationship during times of conflict or grief. When a crisis of trust or communication erupts, you draw on a reservoir built over years. If the well was never dug, the relationship often crumbles under the heat.

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The Quiet Power of Small, Consistent Efforts

One of the most encouraging truths hidden inside this proverb is that digging a well does not require superhuman heroics. You do not need to strike oil in a single day. The digging represents the accumulation of small, consistent actions performed before they are urgently needed. Putting aside twenty dollars a week. Taking a brisk walk for thirty minutes a day. Reading one industry article each morning. Having one uninterrupted conversation with your partner each evening. None of these actions feels significant in isolation, but together they bore deep into the earth and tap into reservoirs that can sustain you through nearly any challenge.

Kaizen — a Japanese concept meaning "continuous improvement" — does not demand dramatic overhauls; it champions tiny, incremental changes that compound over time. A kaizen approach to health might mean swapping one sugary drink for water each day. A kaizen approach to finance might be automatically rounding up every purchase to the nearest dollar and saving the difference. By the time thirst arrives—and it almost always does, in one form or another—the person who practiced kaizen has a well ready. The person who waited is left gasping and scrambling.

· · ·

The Best Time is Now

There is an old Chinese proverb that serves as a perfect companion to the Japanese saying:

“The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second best time is now.”

While the Japanese proverb warns of the consequences of delay, the Chinese proverb offers a path out of regret. If you are reading this and realizing that you have neglected some crucial area of your life, the worst possible response is to wallow in self-blame about the years you wasted. That is just another form of paralysis. The rational, hopeful move is to acknowledge that today, right now, you are not yet dying of thirst. The crisis you fear may be years away, or it may never arrive. But if it does, you want the well to be ready.

Starting today means you can still make incremental progress. If you are 45 and worried about retirement, you may have missed some of the power of compound interest that a 25-year-old enjoys, but you still have two decades to build a meaningful nest egg—far better than starting at 64. If your health has been neglected, a single walk this afternoon will not reverse years of sedentary living, but it begins the process. The moment you pick up the shovel, you are already in a better position than you were yesterday. The proverb does not shame you for not having started earlier; it simply begs you not to wait a single day more.

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Implications for a World Full of Uncertainty

The decade ahead promises upheavals that make the wisdom of this proverb more relevant than ever. Climate scientists warn that extreme weather events are increasing in frequency and intensity. Communities that invest in flood defenses, drought-resistant crops, and resilient infrastructure now will weather the coming storms. Those that wait until the water is at their doorsteps will discover, tragically, that it is indeed too late to dig a well.

On a national and global scale, the proverb challenges how we think about long-term risks. The world recently lived through a pandemic that exposed how short-term cost-cutting can lead to catastrophic long-term costs. Public health systems, supply chains, and social safety nets are all wells that must be dug in times of relative stability. The countries and companies that prospered during the crisis were those that had maintained robust reserves, diversified suppliers, and invested in scientific research long before the virus had a name.

At an individual level, the same logic applies. The rapid development of artificial intelligence is reshaping entire job sectors. Employees who spend a small amount of time each week understanding how AI tools work, learning how to prompt them, and identifying how they intersect with their field are digging a well. Those who dismiss these developments as hype or who feel too busy to learn may soon find themselves in a professional desert with nowhere to turn. The thirst for marketable skills can hit hard and fast, and the digital well is not something you can drill overnight.

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A Reminder Worth Carrying

"When you're dying of thirst, it's too late to dig a well" is at once a warning and an invitation. The warning is stark: neglect the future at your own peril, because when the moment of need arrives, time is no longer on your side. The invitation is generous: you still live in a moment of relative calm. The ground beneath your feet is soft enough to break. The tools are in your hands. You possess the power to shape your next crisis into a manageable challenge, or to avoid it entirely, by doing the slow, unglamorous work of preparation right now.

Let this proverb take up permanent residence in the back of your mind. Let it nudge you when you are tempted to press snooze on a workout, postpone a savings transfer, or avoid a difficult conversation. Every day that passes without action does not feel like a loss, but it represents one more day the well remains dry. The people who seem to navigate life's hardest moments with grace and resilience are almost never just lucky. They are the ones who picked up a shovel when the sun was shining, when there was no urgency, and when no one was watching. Because of that quiet choice, they will never have to know what it is like to dig desperately with dry, cracked hands. They will simply reach down, draw up cool water, and survive.


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The Grand Inaugurations and the Swift Collapses: A Nation’s Infrastructure Farce

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The Grand Inaugurations and the Swift Collapses: A Nation’s Infrastructure Farce

So, another bridge has decided it has had enough. Just fifteen days after a minister cut a ribbon, posed for photographs, and delivered a speech about ‘world-class infrastructure’, a gaping hole appeared at its very beginning—as if the bridge itself was protesting the lie. It did not even have the decency to wait for the monsoon. In Dehradun, a 16-crore-rupee bridge leading to Pontasaheb was inaugurated on the 12th of July. By the 27th, a part of it had crumbled. This is not an exception; this is the new normal of Indian infrastructure. A bridge that was supposed to connect people now connects only to a sense of betrayal, paid for by taxpayers who are being told every day that India is on a bullet train to ‘Viksit Bharat’. But look down: the tracks beneath are made of air.

Welcome to the chronicle of India’s spectacularly short-lived public works, where the distance between a ribbon-cutting ceremony and a structural failure is now shorter than the length of the red carpet. The examples from 2026 alone read like a dark comedy script—except the joke is on the citizens, and the punchline is always their money.

The Dehradun Hole: A Portal to Reality

On 12 July 2026, a bridge was unveiled with the usual fanfare. Within fifteen days, a massive breach appeared at its very start. Not a crack, not a superficial fissure—a big, gaping hole, as if the earth had yawned at the absurdity of the project. Sixteen crore rupees: that is the officially declared cost. The per-day value of that bridge comes to over one crore rupees, assuming it was meant to last decades. Instead, its useful life was fifteen days. If a consumer product failed this fast, the company would be sued into oblivion. But when a government project collapses, an invisible shield descends. No minister resigns. No contractor is named. No criminal case is filed. Silence spreads like a fresh layer of asphalt over the ruin.

The Expressway That Could Not Express Itself

If Dehradun gave us a hole, Uttar Pradesh served up a full-fledged structural confession. The Lucknow-Kanpur elevated expressway—a 4,200-crore-rupee project, inaugurated with heightened television coverage on 13 July 2026—developed major cracks just twelve days later. Twelve days. The speed of deterioration outpaced even the rhetoric of ‘double-engine growth’. The trinity of power was present at the inauguration: Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, and Union Road Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari. Three faces of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s ‘vikas’ messaging stood together, promising a future of seamless connectivity. The expressway, unfortunately, chose to become a metaphor for that promise itself—seamless only until you look closely, and then the cracks are undeniable.

The optics were perfect: three senior leaders representing the triple engine of Modi at the Centre, Yogi at the state, and an ambition that is supposed to be turbocharged. Yet the concrete could not bear the weight of its own hubris. Four thousand two hundred crore rupees—a sum that could run hundreds of primary health centres, thousands of schools, or a robust public transport system for an entire city. Instead, it now stands as a monument to crony capitalism, festooned with cracks that mock every inauguration-day selfie.

Mirzapur: A Bridge Splits, Faith Does Not

Earlier in April 2026, in Mirzapur, a bridge that connected villages and towns to a major religious site split into two, also just fifteen days after its inauguration. The irony is not lost: devotees who walked in faith to the temple found their path broken, not by divine intervention but by human greed and negligence. The bridge was meant to ease pilgrimage, but it ended up testing the pilgrims’ patience. Disruption became a ritual. No explanation was offered that matched the scale of the collapse. No public audit was demanded by the same television channels that had carried the inaugural event with headlines like “Vikas Ki Nayi Ibarat.” The bridge was new, the division was clean, and the message was clear: what is built with stolen cement and compromised inspections cannot hold even the weight of prayer.

Bihar’s Gopalganj: The Bridge That Could Not Even Be Born

Perhaps the most honest of all these episodes came from Bihar’s Gopalganj district. On 26 February 2026, a bridge under construction over the Goghari River collapsed under its own weight. It had not been inaugurated. It had not been named after a political icon. It simply gave up while still being built, as if it understood its destiny and decided to save everyone the trouble of a ceremony. This is the state of affairs: structures cannot even survive their own creation. How does a bridge collapse under its own weight? By what miracle of engineering does gravity become a revelation? The answer lies in the unholy alliance of political patronage, contractor cartels, and the complete absence of fear among those who sign off on these projects. When accountability is a ghost, even an unborn bridge will choose to fall rather than stand in shame.

The Table of Shame

These incidents are not isolated. They form a pattern that spans states, budgets, and political parties, though the dominant colour in nearly all these geographies is saffron. A simple comparison lays bare the absurdity:

Project Cost (in Crore Rupees) Inauguration/Status Failure/Damage Time to Failure Key Leaders Present
Pontasaheb Bridge (Dehradun) 16 12 July 2026 Gaping hole at start of bridge 15 days Not specified, but government functionaries
Lucknow-Kanpur Elevated Expressway 4200 13 July 2026 Multiple large cracks 12 days Yogi Adityanath, Rajnath Singh, Nitin Gadkari
Mirzapur Bridge (Uttar Pradesh) (Significant public funds) Early April 2026 Split into two parts 15 days Local administration
Gopalganj Bridge (Bihar) (Under construction) Not yet inaugurated Collapsed under own weight during construction Before birth None—it collapsed pre-inauguration

This is not a chronicle of 2026 alone. In 2025, 2024, and every year before, bridges and flyovers have crumbled with laughable regularity. The Morbi bridge tragedy of 2022 still haunts; it was a bridge reopened after renovation, only to take 135 lives. The difference is that those deaths made national news; these collapses are quickly buried under a fresh layer of prime-time propaganda about rising GDP and digital infrastructure. The dead are mourned, but the living keep paying for the same mistakes.

The Political Theatre of Inaugurations

There is a ritual now. A minister arrives by helicopter, a massive garland is placed, a plaque is unveiled, and a speech is delivered praising the “visionary leadership” and “unprecedented pace” of development. Cameras roll. Social media handles release clips. The word “historic” is used with such abandon that it has lost all meaning. Then, within days or weeks, the structure speaks the truth that no official will utter. And no channel that celebrated the inauguration runs a prime-time debate on the collapse. The minister does not return to face the hole. The contractor, often a repeat offender, is quietly given another project in another district. The taxpayer is handed a receipt with no refund option.

Consider the Lucknow-Kanpur expressway ribbon-cutting. With Rajnath Singh and Nitin Gadkari sharing the stage, the message was that both the central and state governments are aligned in delivering “ease of travel.” But what is the ease when the road cracks before the first month’s EMIs are paid? What message does it send about the Union Road Transport Ministry that such a high-profile project—with Gadkari himself present—fails within a fortnight? If this were a product sold in a market, the ministry would be liable for criminal negligence. But in the politics of ‘New India’, the very same leaders will soon be inaugurating yet another project, and the cameras will obediently return to them.

Where Does the Money Go?

The projects mentioned here total over 5,000 crore rupees. That is public money, extracted through the nose of every salaried employee, every small business, every indirect tax on daily essentials. The government’s narrative of fiscal prudence evaporates when you ask a simple question: who audits the auditors? The Comptroller and Auditor General’s reports are discussed in Parliament, but the contractors remain unnamed, the blacklisting remains a fantasy, and the political executive emerges unscathed. The chain of corruption is well-known: inflated costs, substandard materials, politicised tender processes, and a media ecosystem that is too busy amplifying the Prime Minister’s next foreign trip to examine the concrete crumbling back home.

It is not as if India lacks engineers. The country produces thousands of brilliant minds every year, many of whom build bridges in West Asia and Europe that stand for decades. The fault is not in technical capacity; it is in a governance model that rewards loyalty over competence, that treats infrastructure not as a public good but as a campaign tool, and that has perfected the art of converting disaster into an occasion for another speech about ‘resilience’.

The Great Silence of the Ministry of Accountability

If we were to search for the ministry responsible for answering why these collapses happen, we would find only a phantom. No leader has delivered a statement in Parliament detailing the forensic audits. No white paper has been issued on the systemic reasons. Instead, local officials mumble about “settling” and “technical glitches”. The word “settling” has become the official euphemism for criminality. A bridge does not “settle” into a gaping hole; it is sabotaged by greed, supervised by indifference, and protected by a wall of silence.

And the media, with very few exceptions, plays its designated role. It covers the inauguration as a ‘big breaking story’ but covers the collapse as a minor news item, if at all. The anchors who grill an opposition spokesperson for two hours will not ask a single follow-up question about the fate of those 16 crores. The studio discussions about ‘development’ will conveniently skip the fact that the development is literally falling apart.

Criticisms

Here, then, are the truths that are systematically buried. They are expressed not as accusations but as observations of what is never demanded, never remembered, and never allowed to surface.

  • It is never asked why Nitin Gadkari, after personally inaugurating an expressway, did not order a high-level probe when cracks appeared in 12 days.
  • It is never demanded that the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, who stood on the stage of that expressway, explain how a 4,200-crore project could fail faster than a roadside tea stall’s temporary shed.
  • It is not revealed which contractors have been repeatedly favoured with infrastructure contracts despite a history of failures.
  • It is not disclosed how many contractors have been blacklisted in the last five years by the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways.
  • It is ignored that the same political faces who fail to deliver durable roads are the ones who lecture the nation about ‘ease of doing business’.
  • It is not remembered that the ‘double engine’ government’s engine seems to run on fuel that corrodes the very track it travels.
  • It is never scrutinised how the cost of a collapsed bridge is eventually written off and a new tender is floated without recovering a single rupee from the culpable.
  • It is not asked of the media barons why prime-time hours are dedicated to communal debates while bridges fall and crores vanish.
  • It is not demanded that the Central Bureau of Investigation or the Enforcement Directorate look into the systematic siphoning of funds in infrastructure projects the way they are deployed for political vendettas.

These are not rhetorical questions. They are the pillars of the accountability that the system deliberately erodes. When a bridge falls, it is not merely concrete that gives way; it is the trust of a citizen who is told that his taxes are building a nation, when in fact they are building personal fiefdoms camouflaged as public works.

India’s infrastructure story is now a narrative of crumbling promises. The government will continue to claim that India is building the world’s highest this, the longest that. But the ordinary citizen, who crosses a river on a newly inaugurated bridge and sees a hole, or drives on a brand-new expressway and feels the shudder of a crack, knows the truth that no television channel will speak. The edifice of ‘Vikas’ is a prop. And props, by definition, are not meant to last. The question is, how many more holes will it take before we stop clapping at the show?

The Cockroach Effect: Modi vs India’s Gen Z | The Listening Post

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The Cockroaches Are Coming: When Satire Bites the Hand That Feeds It Lies

In the theatre of Indian politics, a new player has crawled onto the stage, and it carries a name that makes the mighty wince. The Cockroach Junta Party (CJP) was born not in a backroom deal or an ideological seminar, but in a moment of supreme official contempt. A Supreme Court judge, speaking from a bench meant to dispense justice, looked at millions of unemployed young Indians and called them “cockroaches.” The insects listened. They did not scurry away. They organized. Within hours, a satirical online handle began churning out memes that cut sharper than any parliamentary speech. Within weeks, it had more followers on Instagram than the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). A movement that began as a joke had become the most visible expression of a generation’s rage—and the government’s response, tear gas and lathi charges, only proved that the joke was on those who still pretend all is well.

This is not a story of a stray comment. It is the product of a carefully constructed edifice of faceless governance, a media that barks on command, and a structural betrayal of India’s youth that has been years in the making. To understand why the CJP matters, we must follow the trail of leaked papers, manufactured headlines, and a Prime Minister who communicates in carefully manicured silence.

The Exam Leak Bonanza: A Seven-Year Data Point of Systematic Rot

In early May, more than two million young Indians saw their futures cancelled. Examinations for coveted university seats and government jobs—tests they had spent years preparing for, often at immense financial cost—were scrapped because the question papers had been stolen, sold, and circulated on WhatsApp. This was not an aberration. By conservative counts, India has recorded at least 70 major paper leaks over the last seven years. The figures, when laid out plainly, describe a systemic hemorrhage:

Year Reported Major Exam Leaks Affected Candidates (approx.) Government Action
2017 8 300,000 Exams cancelled, no systemic reform announced
2018 12 500,000 Police investigations, low-level arrests
2019 9 400,000 Few convictions; coaching mafia continues
2020 11 1,200,000 COVID-era leaks; exams postponed
2021 6 800,000 Minimal ministerial accountability
2022 15 1,500,000 Protests, but no national anti-leak law
2023–early 2025 9 2,000,000+ Cancellations, compensation dismissed

Source: Compiled from public interest litigation records, parliamentary questions, and media reports (2017–2025).

These are not just numbers. They are the compressed ambitions of families who sold land or took out loans to fund coaching fees. They represent a government that has mastered the art of performing concern—the Education Minister, Dharmendra Pradhan, will issue a stern warning, a sub-inspector will be suspended—while the structural rot deepens. No national anti-paper-leak law with deterrent punishment has been enacted. The coaching mafia and the leaking syndicates often operate with political protection. And when the students finally broke, it was because they had been left with nothing but their anger.

The Prime Minister’s Silence: A Record of Disappearance in Crisis

Narendra Modi, a politician who has built his image on omnipresent accessibility through his monthly radio address “Mann Ki Baat” and a meticulously curated social media feed, waited three full days before acknowledging the streets of Delhi on fire. This is not a new habit. During the 2020 Delhi riots, when dozens were being killed less than an hour from his residence, Modi was hosting a lavish welcome for then-US President Donald Trump in Ahmedabad, smiling for photo-ops. The pattern is consistent: when the city burns, the Prime Minister finds an alternative reality to inhabit.

He never gives press conferences. He has never, in over a decade as Prime Minister, faced an open, unstructured questioning by journalists. The image of a leader who “always seems so well manicured, so well put together, but never accessible” (as one commentator noted) has been the façade. But every fire exposes the cracks. Social media has begun to stitch together the visuals of police thrashing students with the old photographs of Trump’s reception and the golden temple of the new Parliament. The meme of Nero fiddling while Rome burned now has an Indian iteration, and it travels because it is rooted in a long, undisputed record.

The Godi Media: When News Becomes a Government Spin Machine

Much of India’s mainstream television news—nearly 400 channels that operate 24/7—has spent the last decade perfecting a single product: manufactured consent for the BJP’s agenda. The Hindi word “Godi,” meaning lap, has been aptly attached to these outlets by critics. The Godi Media is not a conspiracy theory. It is a business model. Media owners run diverse conglomerates that depend on government contracts, spectrum allocations, and advertising revenues from state-owned enterprises. When the government’s share of advertising in print and television runs into thousands of crores, editorial independence becomes a nostalgia item.

So, when the CJP protests erupted, these channels did not explain the exam leaks, the unemployment crisis, or the complete absence of an education policy that serves the poor. Instead, they focused on the spectacle. Stone-pelting by “anti-nationals.” The disruption of traffic. Violence against police. A talking head on one of the most-watched Hindi news channels asked, infamously, “Is it necessary to use violence against students? Or is it necessary to throw stones at them?” The question has its own dark logic: dissent is already guilty, only the degree of punishment needs calibration.

Journalists from these outlets have been heckled at protest sites, and some have been attacked. The CJP, in its satirical manifesto, demanded the “cancelling of Godi Media.” But the anger at the individual reporter, while viscerally understandable, misdirects the blame. The real culprit sits in the boardroom, not the newsroom. The working journalist who must feed a family by peddling the party line is a symptom. The disease is the concentration of ownership and the weaponization of advertising money to silence criticism.

Gen Z and the Nihilism of a Closed Future

The young people who have flocked to the CJP online and on the streets do not fit the lazy labelling of “misguided” or “anti-national.” They are, as one observer put it, a generation for whom news has always been rhetoric, and the ecosystem has always been filled with hate and disinformation. They do not know a pre-Modi India. They have only seen a system where jobs are scarce, paper leaks are routine, and the education minister’s response is to blame “the kids.” They are not apolitical; they are nihilistic. They believe the end of the world is possible, but the end of the BJP is not.

This despair is political. The CJP’s Instagram following of 25 million, surpassed the BJP’s in under a week, is less a vote of confidence in an organized party and more a scream for visibility. The movement’s demands—the resignation of the education minister, compensation for students’ families—are modest. But the underlying cry is profound: “See us. The system is not working. Do something.” The state’s response has been to see them as a law-and-order problem. That is a strategic mistake.

The Backdrop: A Pentagon in Lockdown and a Climate on Fire

While India’s students fight for their future, other stories of narrative control play out globally. In the United States, the war with Iran has been conducted behind a new wall of secrecy. The last full Pentagon press briefing was three months ago. Since then, updates arrive via written statements and social media posts. When reporters from the New York Times and Washington Post revealed undisclosed Iranian attacks and higher US casualties, the response was not clarification but prosecution. Secretary of War Pete Hexeth announced a task force to identify and prosecute leakers, calling out “fake news reporters” whose goal, according to the Pentagon, is “to get clips online to promote themselves.” The gap between official claims—Iran’s military “obliterated,” the war costing $40 billion—and the ground reality is as wide as it is dangerous.

Across the Atlantic, a different kind of visual deception is underway. Europe has been sweltering through record-breaking heatwaves. Over 14,000 people have died. Scientists warn that the Mediterranean is warming 20% faster than the global average. Yet, switch on any major European news channel, and the images are of beaches, ice cream, and splashing in fountains. This “fun in the sun” framing is not incidental. Researchers find that such positively valenced visuals, when paired with text about heat risks, reduce public concern. The message is clear: extreme weather is a holiday, not an alarm bell. Meanwhile, in India or Brazil, when heatwaves strike, the visuals show exhausted, sweating bodies, and the narrative rightly speaks of danger. Europe’s media is still treating climate change as a seasonal postcard, and some of its biggest outlets—like CNews in France—dismiss it as nothing unusual. The disconnect between visual language and scientific emergency is a moral failure of editing suites, not a lack of evidence.

A Mayor’s Moral Clarity: Netanyahu Called a War Criminal

In a world where political speech is often shredded by legalistic hedging, the newly elected mayor of New York, Zoran Mamdani, did something simple: he answered a question. When asked if he would arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes, should he visit New York, Mamdani first clarified his jurisdictional limits, then called on the federal government to execute the ICC warrant. He then stated the obvious: “Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal.” That two-and-a-half-minute video garnered over 200 million views across platforms. It points to a public hunger for leaders who name what they see, without fear.

Criticisms

  • A strategy of willful absence from press conferences has been maintained by the Prime Minister, denying citizens the right to question their elected leader directly.
  • Over 70 exam paper leaks have been documented in seven years, yet a national anti-leak law with deterrence has not been enacted.
  • The classification of unemployed youth as “cockroaches” by a Supreme Court judge has been allowed to stand without institutional rebuke.
  • Tear gas, baton charges, and mass arrests have been deployed against student protesters, while their demands for educational reform and compensation remain unaddressed.
  • Mainstream television news in India has been transformed into a propaganda arm, prioritizing the framing of dissent as anti-national over journalistic investigation of corruption.
  • Government advertising budgets have been weaponized to silence independent media, creating a business dependency that chokes editorial freedom.
  • The US Pentagon’s press briefings have been restricted, and a task force has been formed to prosecute officials suspected of leaking information to journalists, burying the true cost of the Iran war.
  • European newsrooms have been shown to consistently use “fun in the sun” imagery during deadly heatwaves, trivializing thousands of deaths and failing to connect extreme weather to the climate crisis.
  • Senior climate scientists’ repeated warnings to broadcasters about the absence of a clear link to fossil fuel causes have been ignored, lowering public perception of urgency.
  • The BJP government’s refusal to engage substantively on the exam leak crisis has been perceived as an abandonment of the demographic majority—under-35s—that forms over 65% of India.

The Minister Who Learns 'On the Job': Prahlad Joshi, RSS, Bilkis Bano, and the Great Indian Education Farce

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The Minister Who Learns 'On the Job': Prahlad Joshi, RSS, Bilkis Bano, and the Great Indian Education Farce

Prahlad Joshi, India's new Education Minister, entered Shastri Bhawan and, in the way of our times, released photographs of his first meeting with officials. “This is a new subject for me,” he was quoted as saying. “I am familiarizing myself with it.”

Fair enough. A minister need not be a subject expert. But when the person who will shape the minds of an entire generation admits the entire portfolio is alien territory, the country has reason to pause. And when that same person, just a few years ago, defended the release of eleven convicts in a gang rape and mass murder case, saying “it happened as per the legal process,” the pause must become a long, uncomfortable silence. A silence that is, of course, filled immediately by the noise of Godi media hagiography and the casual violence of political convenience.

The Bilkis Bano Shadow: “I Have No Objection”

Let us rewind to August 15, 2022. Eleven men, convicted for the gang rape of Bilkis Bano and the cold-blooded murder of fourteen members of her family during the 2002 Gujarat pogrom, walked free from prison. They had served fourteen years of their life sentence. The Gujarat government—then under the BJP—granted remission. On that day, BJP leaders greeted the convicts with flower garlands and distributed sweets. Photographs of a senior BJP MLA sharing a dais with one of the released men later surfaced. It was a celebration of impunity.

At that time, Prahlad Joshi was a minister in the Modi government. When asked about the early release, he told NDTV’s Srinivasan Jain in a 2022 interview: “It happened as per the legal process. Therefore, I have no objection to their release.” He repeated the same line to The Indian Express, adding that the convicts’ behaviour in jail was “found good.”

In January 2024, the Supreme Court of India cancelled the remission. Justice B.V. Nagarathna and Justice Ujjal Bhuyan’s bench ruled that the Gujarat government had no legal authority to decide on early release because the trial and conviction took place in Maharashtra. The remission order was “non est in law.” Yet, Prahlad Joshi, the man now entrusted with the nation’s education, had already given his moral seal of approval. When Priyanka Gandhi raised this exact point in the Lok Sabha, she was expunged and asked to leave. Rahul Gandhi’s statement outside the House met no constructive rebuttal. Instead, the spotlight shifted to Joshi’s “stellar organizational skills.”

The RSS Hand: Education as Ideological Weapon

Prahlad Joshi is the fifth Education Minister of the Modi government. Before him came Smriti Irani, Prakash Javadekar, Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’, and Dharmendra Pradhan. Each brought their own flavour of emptiness, but the ministry’s real controller never changed. As Rahul Gandhi put it bluntly, “Dharmendra Pradhan never ran the Education Ministry. The man and the organization that runs it is called the RSS. An OSD sitting in the minister’s office actually runs it.”

One need not take a politician’s word. Look at the vice-chancellors of central and state universities across India. Year by year, they have been replaced with individuals affiliated with the RSS. The National Education Policy 2020 was drafted under the long shadow of the Sangh. Students who ask uncomfortable questions are branded anti-national. Those who follow their passion are told to worship a fantastical history. Universities, once spaces of argument, have become factories of ‘andh bhakts.’ Prahlad Joshi’s appointment is not a new chapter; it is a continuation of a deeply ideological project.

The Hagiography Factory: Crisis Manager? Low Profile?

Every time a BJP leader takes a new portfolio, a familiar genre of journalism springs to life. The minister is described as a “crisis manager,” a “soft-spoken man with a low profile,” a “confidant” and “blue-eyed boy” of the party. Dharmendra Pradhan got these adjectives. Prahlad Joshi is getting them now. Profiles gush about his ability to suppress his ambition to become Karnataka CM, his “organisational hold,” his “election mastermind” image.

But what did Prahlad Joshi deliver for Dharwad, the constituency he has represented five times since 2004? The Dharwad-Belagavi railway line, a stretch of 73 km, was approved in 2019. By September 2025, as a Deccan Herald report by Srinidhi R noted, 533 hectares of land had still not been acquired, and the project was stuck. Joshi blamed the state Congress government. Yet the BJP was in power in Karnataka until July 2021. Why did land acquisition not happen then? There is no answer.

Instead, you will read that in 2023, after the BJP lost the Karnataka assembly election, several leaders accused Joshi of faulty ticket distribution. Former MLA Chikkangoudar, former CM Jagadish Shettar, and others publicly held him responsible. The media report that Joshi’s brother and nephew later filed an FIR in a ticket-selling scam—a man named Shekhar Nayak allegedly paid Rs 5 crore by cheque and Rs 25 lakh in cash to Joshi’s brother. Joshi’s response: he had not spoken to that brother for 30 years. The Karnataka High Court later quashed the case against the brother. Meanwhile, the journalist Gauri Lankesh, who wrote two critical articles about Joshi, was sued for defamation by Joshi’s personal assistant. She was convicted and fined. This is the man the media calls “soft-spoken.”

The Making of a Career: Hubli Idgah and Communal Politics

Joshi’s political rise is inseparable from the 1994 Hubli Idgah flag-hoisting incident—an event known as “Karnataka’s mini-Ayodhya.” Uma Bharati and RSS workers broke curfew to unfurl a Tiranga on the Idgah ground. Police firing killed six people, and riots engulfed Hubli. The BJP, which had won only 4 out of 224 assembly seats in 1989, captured 44 seats in the very next election. Joshi’s active role in that movement cemented his place in the BJP’s communal laboratory.

According to the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) portal MyNeta, four criminal cases were registered against Joshi between 1995 and 1998. Yet in his 2024 election affidavit, he declared no pending cases. In 2018, a fresh FIR was filed after Joshi compared the Sadar Sofa area of Hubli to Pakistan, claiming mosques there stored weapons. The charges: promoting enmity between religious groups and wounding religious feelings. The case seems to have vanished without any public resolution.

Energy Minister with a Broken Grid: A Triumph of PR

Before education, Prahlad Joshi held the Renewable Energy portfolio. In 2025, TIME magazine listed him among the world’s 100 most influential climate leaders. It praised his “green energy push” and claimed India had met its 2030 targets a year ahead. This is the official narrative. Now, look at the ground.

In the same month that this global recognition arrived, The Indian Express’s Pratush Deep reported that India’s grid lacked the capacity to store solar power. Between April and June 2025, a staggering 8,133 Gigawatt-hour (GWh) of solar energy could not be absorbed and was simply wasted. That is enough electricity to power lakhs of homes. A Dhwair report by Vaishali Basu Sharma added that in 2025, 2.3 Terawatt-hour (TWh) of power was squandered because the grid couldn’t absorb it. Renewable energy is being generated—yes—but there is no basic infrastructure to deliver it. Who gains from this chaos? Private players who sell storage solutions? The same ones who donate to political parties? The question hangs in the air like the wasted electrons.

Educated in a Ruin: The Minister’s College and Your Children’s Future

Prahlad Joshi’s educational qualification is a Bachelor of Arts from Shri Kadasiddheshwar Arts College, Hubli, under Dharwad University. If you visit the college today, you will find buildings. What you will not find is the soul of a place of learning: no academic reputation, no research output, no vibrant intellectual life. It is a shell—a representative specimen of the hollowing out of India’s higher education. It is the same hollowness that produces millions of unemployable graduates every year, even as the government celebrates education budget cuts.

Meanwhile, the education budget itself tells a brutal story. While India’s overall budget has been growing by roughly 10% annually since 2009-10, education expenditure in 2025-26 slipped to just 2.5% of GDP. Compare this to 2014-15, when it hovered around 4%, and you see a steady, unremitting decline. The numbers below are approximations drawn from Union Budget documents and various parliamentary standing committee reports:

Financial Year Education Budget as % of GDP (approx.)
2014-15 ~4.1%
2019-20 ~3.1%
2025-26 ~2.5%

During the same period, Prahlad Joshi’s personal assets grew from Rs 11 crore to Rs 21 crore (an 89% jump in five years), as per his own election affidavits. He is not an exception; he is an embodiment of the system.

During the Russia-Ukraine war in February-March 2022, when thousands of Indian students were stranded in Ukraine, then-Minister Joshi made a remark so insensitive that students and the opposition alike condemned it. It was dismissed as a “misstatement,” but it reflected a habit of mind: detachment from the lives of the young this government claims to serve.

Criticisms

These are points of criticism, delivered without softening because the nation's children deserve better—and because silence, at this hour, is complicity.

  • The Education Ministry is handed to a person who publicly defended the release of convicted rapists and murderers.
  • The education budget is continuously slashed while political leaders’ personal wealth multiplies unchecked.
  • Under this minister’s watch, renewable energy is generated but allowed to go to waste because the grid infrastructure is deliberately neglected.
  • A criminal record, including cases of communal hate speech, is conveniently omitted from election affidavits, and the media fails to investigate.
  • Journalists who criticize such a minister are dragged to court, fined, and silenced through legal harassment.
  • The RSS’s ideological stranglehold over universities is deepened through the appointment of vice-chancellors from its ecosystem, strangling academic freedom.
  • Railway projects meant to connect constituencies remain incomplete for 22 years, yet the MP is hailed as an organisational genius.
  • The ‘crisis manager’ label is manufactured by media outlets that have outsourced their editorial judgment to the ruling party’s publicity wing.
  • Ministers are allowed to treat portfolios as mere postings—openly admitting the subject is new to them—without any accountability for previous failures.
  • The celebration of raw communal politics (Hubli Idgah) is sanitised and rebranded as ‘nationalism,’ while students are punished for asking hard questions.

This is not a person. This is a pattern. And the pattern is eating the country alive.

The Architecture of Dying: What India's Healthcare System Refuses to Learn

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The Architecture of Dying: What India's Healthcare System Refuses to Learn

In a world that worships longevity but fears the decay that precedes it, we have forgotten how to die. BJ Miller, a palliative care physician who lost three limbs to an electrical accident, reminds us that dying is not just a medical event — it is a design problem. His TED talk, a quiet manifesto for reimagining the end of life, lands with the force of a snowball in a burn unit: cold, startling, and strangely beautiful.

But what happens when you transplant Miller’s insights into the brutal, underfunded, and often indifferent healthcare machinery of India? The answer is a mirror held up to a government that has systematically designed suffering into the lives of the poor, while exporting a fantasy of "Ayushman Bharat" as universal care. This is not about the absence of empathy among individuals — most doctors and nurses, as Miller notes, mean well. It is about a system, and the political class that architects it, that places disease at the center and pushes human dignity to the periphery. Let us walk through Miller’s three design cues, and see how the Modi government has inverted every one of them.

The First Cue: Tease Out Unnecessary Suffering

Miller distinguishes between necessary suffering — the existential pain that comes with loss, the "cosmic right-sizing" — and unnecessary suffering: the kind "invented" by bad design. In India, unnecessary suffering is not an accident; it is a policy outcome. Over 70% of healthcare expenditure is out-of-pocket, pushing an estimated 55 million Indians into poverty every year (Lancet, 2018). When a terminal cancer patient in a district hospital is told there is no morphine because the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act deters even legitimate pain relief, that is invented suffering. When a family sells its land to pay for ICU care that will only prolong agony, that is a design failure.

The government’s response has been a raft of insurance schemes that funnel public money into private players. Ayushman Bharat, with its grandiose promises, covers only hospitalisation — it does not reimburse outpatient care, medicines, or diagnostics. For the dying, who often need palliation, not intervention, the scheme offers a loud silence. As Miller says, "Justice for acute trauma and treatable illness. They’re no place to live and die." Our public hospitals, starved of funds and staff, have become triage centres that can only offer numbness — or death in a corridor.

The Paradox of Indian Healthcare Spending

Consider a comparison. India’s public health expenditure hovers around 1.28% of GDP (Economic Survey 2022-23), against a global average of 6%. The government’s own National Health Policy 2017 had promised 2.5% by 2025; the pandemic was used as an excuse to abandon even that modest target. The table below shows just how miserly India’s spending is, and how little reaches the most vulnerable:

Public Health Expenditure as % of GDP and Palliative Care Access
Country Public Health Expenditure (% GDP, latest) Palliative Care Integration (0-100 scale, WHO) Morphine Consumption per Cancer Death (mg, 2019)
United Kingdom 8.0% 93 68,000
Canada 7.5% 90 58,000
India 1.28% 1.5 1.2
Bangladesh 0.8% 2.0 0.8

The numbers are an indictment. India, a nation that prides itself on being a pharmacy to the world, leaves its dying in agony because the drug control regime, driven by a punitive mindset, treats even terminally ill patients as potential addicts. The Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act amendments in 2014 were supposed to ease access to opioids for medical use. Yet, implementation has been patchy — states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar have virtually no palliative care infrastructure. Unnecessary suffering is not just tolerated; it is legislated.

The Second Cue: Dignity through the Senses

Miller’s second design cue is about tending to dignity "by way of the senses, by way of the body, the aesthetic realm." He speaks of a snowball brought into a burn unit, the smell of cookies in a hospice kitchen, a woman with ALS who wants to smoke French cigarettes again. These are not indulgences — they are reclamations of humanity. In India’s healthcare landscape, where the public system often treats patients as bodies to be processed, such sensory grace is an unimaginable luxury.

The government’s obsession with "smart cities" and "digital health" betrays a conviction that technology alone will solve systemic rot. The National Digital Health Mission envisions electronic records for all, while primary health centres lack running water and basic analgesics. The aesthetic dimension — natural light, gardens, spaces for families, the ritual of parting — is dismissed as Western frippery, when in fact it is rooted in India’s own traditions of care. Where is the government’s investment in community-based palliative care, in training panchayats to support the dying? It is non-existent. The Ayush revolution the state promotes — yoga, Ayurveda — is about branding, not about integrating holistic, patient-centred approaches into the mainstream.

Miller’s Zen Hospice Project sprinkles flower petals on the dead as they are wheeled out, a small ritual to "usher in grief with warmth rather than repugnance." In India, bodies are often handed over in corridors, with families scrambling for ambulances. Dead bodies of COVID victims were treated as biohazards, not as beloved human beings. The government’s guidelines for disposal during the pandemic were a masterclass in dehumanisation — no touch, no ritual, no time. The aesthetic, in the truest sense, is the opposite of anaesthetic. But a system that equates efficiency with speed can only offer the latter.

The Kitchen as the Centre of Care

Miller finds the most poignant room in the Zen Hospice to be the kitchen, where cookies are baked even for those who can barely eat. In India, the notion that a government facility would allow a kitchen for families, let alone bake cookies, sounds like science fiction. Hospital kitchens, where they exist, are notorious for corruption and neglect — the infamous "rat in the mid-day meal" stories are just the tip. The Public Distribution System ensures that even the grain meant for the poorest is often adulterated or stolen. When the state cannot provide the basic grammar of sustenance, can we speak of a caring society?

Yet, the Indian cultural memory is rich with caregiving traditions — the langar in gurudwaras, the community kitchens in temples, the haldi-doodh brought to a sick neighbour. The government has systematically dismantled community solidarity through divisive politics and centralisation, then wonders why families dump their elderly in overburdened city hospitals. The kitchen of care is not a building; it is a social fabric. That fabric is in tatters.

The Third Cue: Play, Adaptation, and a Life More Wonderful

Miller’s final cue is radical: we must set our sights on wellbeing, not just the absence of horror. He calls it "play" — the creative, generative impulse that turns the need for cover into architecture, the march of time into music, and the fact of death into something we design towards. This is the hardest lesson for a government that thinks in terms of schemes, targets, and electoral cycles. Palliative care, in its true form, is about helping a person say, like Frank, "I want to raft down the Colorado River," and then enabling that, even if it carries risk. It is about Kate wanting to feel her dog’s cold muzzle against her dry skin instead of more chemotherapy.

In India, the discourse on health has been captured by two extremes: cure or abandon. The government’s fit-india, eat-millet, do-yoga campaigns are a moralistic drumbeat that blames the individual for systemic failures. If you get cancer after surviving on a polluted diet in a smog-choked city, you are told to crowdfund your treatment. The state does not ask what would make your remaining life meaningful, only whether you can be saved or not. The Ayushman Bharat cards become a lottery ticket for the lucky few; for the rest, death is a bureaucratic process. The National Programme for Palliative Care, launched in 2012, remains a ghost — barely funded, unknown to most district officials. The government’s refusal to integrate palliative care into medical education ensures that generations of doctors will continue to see death as failure, not as a stage of life requiring its own art.

What Would a “Designed” Indian Death Look Like?

To design for death is to design for life — to ensure that every person, regardless of wealth, can die with dignity, in the presence of loved ones, free of pain, and with a sense of having mattered. Miller’s talk offers a blueprint: distinguish necessary from unnecessary suffering, soothe with the senses, and make room for play. What would that look like here? It would mean a national health policy that allocates at least 3% of GDP to public health, with a dedicated stream for palliative and geriatric care. It would mean a complete overhaul of the NDPS Act to treat morphine as essential medicine, and training thousands of community nurses to deliver pain relief at home. It would mean hospitals with windows, gardens, and spaces for ritual — not just “spiritual centres” inaugurated by ministers in corporate chains. It would mean a government that stops building statues and starts building hospices.

None of this is imminent, because the current dispensation is not interested in designing a society of care. It is interested in projecting power. The prime minister’s photo on vaccine certificates, on ration bags, on everything — that is the aesthetic of a regime that has no room for the intimate, vulnerable space of dying. The digital health ID is a tool of surveillance, not of comfort. The import of "wonderment" cannot be measured in GDP, so it has no place in the New India narrative of bullet trains and unicorns.

Criticisms

  • A health budget of 1.28% of GDP is consistently maintained, while corporate tax cuts and billionaire bailouts are prioritised.
  • The Ayushman Bharat scheme is promoted as universal healthcare, though it excludes 70% of the population from cashless outpatient care, medicines, and palliation.
  • The NDPS Act is kept so restrictive that terminally ill patients are denied morphine, while state governments are not held accountable for non-implementation of the 2014 amendments.
  • Palliative care is largely ignored in medical curricula, and the National Programme for Palliative Care is left unfunded and unmonitored.
  • Primary health centres are starved of resources, while large sums are diverted to private hospitals through public insurance models, enriching corporate interests.
  • During the COVID-19 crisis, guidelines for handling dead bodies were framed in a manner that stripped families of necessary rituals, under the garb of safety.
  • Sensitive caregiving traditions are eroded by communal polarisation and the systematic dismantling of community bonds, with healthcare being reduced to a transactional, state-centric model.
  • The government’s wellness campaigns are used to burden individuals with responsibility for illnesses caused by environmental degradation and policy failures.
  • Aesthetics, dignity, and sensory care are treated as irrelevant in public hospitals, which remain overcrowded, windowless, and dehumanising.
  • The National Digital Health Mission is advanced as a solution while basic infrastructure like water, electricity, and painkillers is still missing from rural health facilities.

Miller ends his talk with a line that should echo in every planning commission chamber: "Let death be what takes us, not lack of imagination." India’s healthcare tragedy is, at its core, a failure of imagination — a failure to see suffering as something that can be redesigned. The cure is not just more money, though money is essential. It is a shift, a thousand small shifts, away from the edifice of a boastful state and towards the quiet, persistent work of making life, and death, more wonderful. The snowball is melting, as it always does. The question is whether we will learn to hold its coldness and be transformed, or whether we will simply let it drip away, blaming fate and the unfortunate poor.

Original talk by BJ Miller at TED, "What really matters at the end of life," March 2015.
Data: WHO Global Atlas of Palliative Care, 2020; Lancet Commission on Palliative Care and Pain Relief, 2018; National Health Accounts, India, 2020-21.

Saturday, August 1, 2026

math-eight Related Tasks (2026 Aug 1)


My Meditations    « Previously    Next »
  • UI Issues
    — How apps render on :
    — Phone (landscape)
    — Phone (portrait)
    — Desktop / Laptop
    — Micromax / Samsung / Android [TV]

  • UI Issue : Whether to pop-out the app-div
    OR: to hide Blogger UI elements

  • SUGGESTION
    Have a three part design of an activity :
    — Learning page / screen / SPA
    — Assessment page
    — Report (evaluation) page

** BACKED BY FLASK APP AND A COMMON SQLITEBASED DB **
This DB is common for all apps.

  • AI BASED SOFTWARE TESTING FRAMEWORK / PLATFORM FOR THESE APPS.