ChinmayC Blog

The two-year long COVID-19 pandemic (no signal that it’s ended) has jolted the Indian economy almost out of its roots, heightened by the fact that the economy had been under a lot of strain for at least two years prior the outbreak. The normal demand-supply equation has gone bizarre—the supply chain not yet being able to resume its normal course, with some of the key sectors suffering maximum damage, in light of insufficient demand as the common people now want to hold on to their savings fearing an uncertain future. Normally, with less demand and normal supply the prices should fall and this has led many experts to expect a recession soon or already in the process. However, prices only kept on rising, crossing a whopping level of 7% in the recent quarter that’s made the Reserve Bank of India increase the Repo rate twice in two weeks. With some knowledge of economics I feel that while the customers are not spending their money enough the suppliers not still getting the normal booming t...

The Festival of Colors, Holi, began in India with the symbolic burning of Holika (a demoness of ancient times representing the evil or the Satan) effigy last night. This festival is celebrated every year in the last full moon night of the Hindu calendar year. Today, the colors are submerging the country in a spirit of joy. The Indians righteously feel and justify the celebrations across the country as they have missed this for the last two years, and after all, this signifies the victory of good over evil. For the last one month the country has seen a return to near normalcy with all restrictions except for the mask removed, the schools/colleges reopening; and just when they felt that the Pandemic had finally entered the endemic phase came the WHO (World Health Organization) warning that the pandemic is far from over and it has been spiking globally again with more than 11 million cases new cases and over 43,000 deaths in the last week. Combine this with the Russia-Ukraine war raging ...

Shreyas Iyer, one of the most promising youngsters for India in all formats, picked up his second consecutive and equally explosive half-century (in 31 balls) to guide India to a comfortable victory by 7 wickets over the visiting Sri Lanka in the second T20 International match at Dharamshala this evening, again remaining not out with a superb stroke-filled 74 in 44 balls and thus sealing the 3-match Series with an unassailable 2-0 lead. Iyer made 57 not out in just 28 balls in the first T20I match in Lucknow and combined very well with opener Ishan Kishan who came into his own with a fluent 89 runs in 56 balls helping India set a formidable target of 199/2. Sri Lanka batsmen faltered in the chase making only 137 runs losing 6 wickets. Ishan crafted a 111-run opening partnership with Rohit Sharma (44) in that match.   Today India won the toss and elected to field first perhaps because of the possible dew factor. Sri Lanka openers made a good start racing to 67 runs in the 9 t...

We must commend the constitutionally autonomous body of the Election Commission of India (ECI) for sticking to its strong resolve to make the upcoming 7-phase state assembly elections COVID-safe for all by extending the pandemic ban on rallies/roadshows till February 11 following a review for the second time today which is quite effectively done as the first phase of the elections begins on 10 th February. While announcing the dates for assembly elections in five states on 8 th January the ECI banned all public rallies, roadshows and bike or cycle marches till 15 th of that month subject to a review on 15 th January and in that review the ECI stuck to its ban, only allowing physical rallies subject to a maximum of 500 persons for the political party candidates to contest in the first phase from January 28, a date when all formalities of nominations for that phase are completed. Similarly, for the second phase the relaxed rallies to commence from 31 st January with the same restric...

We wish you all a very Happy and Prosperous New Year 2022! Let the New Year bring all the happiness, success and prosperity in your life, home, work and relationships. Most importantly, we wish you all very good and sustained health, and of course, a never-ending immunity against any intruding virus! We’ve decided to post our wishes well in advance, because the New Year is going to dawn in at different hours in different countries across the globe. And also, to avoid the last-minute hassles! Enjoy at home with your dearest members of your family!  Stay blessed!   You must be wondering that we’ve not touched the two-year-old roaring COVID-19 pandemic in a direct way at all! Well, because we want to end with a piece of good news! The Hindu Almanac calculations for the New Year ( panchang 2022 ) say that sometime during the coming year we’ll all be ‘ferried across’ (as per an interpretation by a friend of mine) which clearly means that we’ll surely overcome the curse of the pa...

It is indeed hard to believe that matters would come to a head between two friendly countries even after nearly two weeks of the United Kingdom’s unwarranted imposition of travel restrictionsfor Indian travelers . The Ministry of External Affairs of India then lodged a strong protest against such discriminatory and ‘colonial’ action and warned UK of reciprocal measures; and the UK government reportedly held extensive discussions with the Indian counterpart and decided to include Covishield, the Indian version of their own AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, in the approved list from the 4 th of October 2021, but did nothing about lifting the 10-quarantine restriction even for fully vaccinated travelers refusing to accept the Indian vaccination certification procedure and thus still keeping India in the ‘amber’ list of travel regulations. This has greatly irked the Government of India and they announced the ‘reciprocal’ measures yesterday which are plainly a ‘tit for tat’.   From the ...

For the last 3-4 days India have been registering less than 30,000 daily COVID-19 cases with daily fatalities also reducing. A lot of hope is being generated now as the country has seen less than twenty thousand cases in the last 24 hours, 18,795 to be exact, which is the lowest in six months, and the daily deaths have also come down to 179 fatalities in the same period. The state of Kerala is still leading, but the daily infections that had reached more than thirty thousand recently are 11699 in the last 24 hours and the daily fatalities that had overtaken Maharashtra crossing the 200 mark have come down to 58 in the same period. Maharashtra, the worst affected state in India with over 6 million total infections, has also registered less than 3000 cases in the last 24 hours which is the lowest since February 2021 and the deaths at 32 during the same period. Only two other states, Tamil Nadu and Mizoram, are still showing a rising trend of daily cases; all of the rest of India seem to ...

In the recent cricket Test Series between England and India the 2-1 result in favour of the visitors still hangs in balance entirely due to the fact that a few non-playing members of Team India were found COVID-19 positive which implies that the fifth and the last Test had to be cancelled only because of India’s fault even though not a single playing member of the team got the infection. Now, the change in travel regulations for Indians visiting United Kingdom could be a fallout of the cricket hanger, meaning that the Indians are feared as more prone to getting or spreading the COVID-19 virus with its variants; that India is the originator of the more infectious Delta variant which is again mutating into the Delta Plus; and perhaps also possibly that the handling of the Second Wave of the pandemic in India had been disastrous. Therefore, basically the Englishmen could be feeling insecure with vulnerable Indians loitering around in their territories after sort of achieving the feat of l...

The fifth and the last Test match between hosts England and visitors India was awaited by cricket lovers with much excitement with India taking an unbeatable 2-1 lead winning the fourth Test at the Oval, because the Indian fans wanted their team to seal the series win while the England fans wanted their team to bounce back and win the Test to share the final honors. All of them were in for a huge disappointment though. As soon as the junior physio of Team India tested COVID-19 positive on Thursday, the 9 th of September 2012, a day before the fifth Test was to start at the Old Trafford, total and clueless uncertainty enveloped the match; head coach Ravi Shastri and possibly one or two members of the team management including the senior physio (not confirmed) were already in isolation testing positive before the fourth Test. The practice session for India on that day was cancelled.   Since a physio is obviously to get involved with the players ‘physically’ there were risks of pla...

It was cruelly insensitive on the part of the Government of India to declare in Parliament that there had been no COVID-19 deaths during the second wave due to lack of medical oxygen in the country, when not only the thousands of the affected families but also millions other anxious or someway related families just cannot erase the nightmarish images of people dying gasping for breath on hospital beds, in the hospital passages/corridors/lounges, on the outside courtyards or on the streets, in the parked cars, within the four walls of homes; hospitals sending SOS for oxygen, desperate doctors even breaking down; and round-the-clock media reports and most disturbing visuals.   The reason given by the government is even more ludicrously insensitive: that the states did not report the deaths due to the lack of medical oxygen. Well, most of the states, particularly the ones ruled by the same dispensations would hardly advertise their failure or the stark lack of preparedness. The gove...

If we can assume that people are already familiarized with the concept of lockdown as it has been more than a year since the national lockdown was imposed in India in March 2020, on the basis of this assumption we can go on to opine that the present version of the lockdown in Kolkata and the state of West Bengal has been a remix. Of course, the local media here has been terming this as only a ‘near-lockdown’, and we also know the kind of ‘mixed’ approaches adopted by various states of India to lockdown, but the experience here is unique and not related to most of the other states. We have decided to call it a remix, because under this process the old is often presented in a new getup to attract and excite the common people, and the state lockdown here has been a genuine remix with continuous tweaking to make it more and more user-friendly for the larger interests of the common people of West Bengal, particularly the state capital of Kolkata.   Yes, peoples’ interests. Nothing mov...

It has been the most horribly painful and depressing week of my life. There has been the spectre of death and unimaginable sufferings of fellow countrymen across India, from which you cannot turn away; reports are there in all news channels, something even the decidedly pro-government media cannot but report, reports and personal accounts across all social media platforms, the dread of the sudden telephone calls and so on. I am reminded of the horrors suffered by Italy and Spain last year, and shiver to imagine a full repetition in a vast and densely populated country like India; the saving grace so far being that the fatality rate here is fortunately still much lower than witnessed in Italy, Spain and other European countries; but even then, in terms of population the Indian numbers in infections and deaths are numbing, and the mutants are more lethal taking toll equally on the young and the old.         The heart wrenching scenes are everywhere to behold: pe...