Govind Gujar: entomologist's journey to understand the Society we live in

  31 March 2022 Russia is waging a war with its neighbour, Ukraine. This began on 24 February as the Russian troops invaded it. For a long time, there were talks between two countries. Russia was and is wary of Ukraine joining the western powers in the power struggle between two blocks of Europe, viz., Russian and the rest of European. The latter transcends into a military alliance of most European states and Canada and the United States in the form of North Atlantic Treaty Organization, popularly called NATO to protect against the invader. NATO represents democratic, free states and is ideologically opposed to Russia which is communist, autocratic and closed society. Russia as a super power had ruled many of its neighbourhood countries in its last avatar, the United Soviet Socialists Republic (USSR). After the break-up of USSR in early 1990s, many of these states experienced freedom and charted the course in the form of government that they liked. As a fledgling democracy, Ukraine has

                             19.03.2022 Recent controversy over wearing of hijab (head scarf to cover hairs, shoulders and neck), burka or nikab (whole body cover with mesh over face or small slit like opening for eyes) in the Indian state of Karnataka reminds me back of my association with muslim community during childhood.                                                  Muslim women wearing hijab, with cows nearby in the town of Karanja (Lad)   I lived in the locality in the home town of Nandura, where there were sizeable numbers of muslims. In fact, the name of locality used to be Kacheri Mohalla. Close to our home on the river side, there was a mosque and some muslim houses. Some 500-600 metres on the right side were more than a dozen houses. And one shop that I often visited for buying toffees is that of Ataullah. During my childhood, I never ever felt any kind of tensions despite the fact those were days of 1962 and 1965 when we had Indo-China and Indo-Pak war, respectively.

  12 March 2022 A few days back, there was TV news about our medical students in the war-torn Ukraine wanting to return home. About 18,000 students are studying medicine there. Obviously these students did not do well in the NEET examination to qualify for the seats in the Government-aided medical colleges in India. There is a great shortage of medical seats in India as compared to the number of aspirants. The Medical Council of India (now National Medical Commission) had even brought down a few years ago the cut-off marks required to get more admitted in the medical colleges, so that those who do not get into the Government-aided colleges find admission into the private ones. However, here is a catch. It is only those who can pay the hefty fees running into millions can get admission in the private medical colleges. It is said that tuition fees in such colleges are as high as INR 15-20 million over the whole course. This turns out to be more than 5-10 fold costlier as compared to