SCIENCE & DEVELOPMENT

The Bloody Rise of the West – Part 2

THE impact of the West’s encounter with the Americas was devastating for its people. The population of the Americas before Europe’s “discovery” has been estimated to be anything between 2 to 100 million people. The figures of genocide also depend not only on different estimates of the Indigenous population of the Americas but also on what numbers should be excluded in the counting of victims of genocide. Do we include those who died of diseases as their societies and the productive basis of their societies were destroyed?

The Bloody Rise of the West – Part I

ON Independence Day – August 15th – we generally take stock of the path we have travelled since 1947. Today, I will take a different tack and focus on how or why a handful of European countries end up controlling major parts of the world.Before the rise of colonial empires, India and China were the biggest economies in the world. That is not surprising, as probably 90 per cent of the world's economy was in agriculture.

Wars Fuel Epidemics and Pandemics

WARS often create conditions ripe for the spread of epidemics and pandemics. These conflicts benefit the arms industry and uphold power structures in capitalist economies. But they also cause immense collateral damage to civilian populations, extending suffering beyond the battlefield. The relationship between warfare and the spread of infectious diseases is complex and historically significant, with many conflicts facilitating disease transmission and leading to widespread health crises.

What We Can Learn from the Global Microsoft Outage?

A GLOBAL IT outage on July 19th, 2024, affected more than 8.5 Million Microsoft computers worldwide, disrupting airlines, hospitals, banks, train services, and even government agencies. The outage was caused by a faulty update from the cybersecurity provider, CrowdStrike, which caused Microsoft Windows machines to crash and get stuck in the infamous “blue screen of death” booting loop.

The Importance of Being Julian Assange

ON June 25th, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange walked out of Belmarsh high-security prison in London, where he had spent the last five years fighting extradition to the US on charges under the Espionage Act which if convicted could have sent him to prison for more than 170 years. Before that, he was confined to the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since 2012 where he had taken asylum.The hounding of Assange had started even before that. He was first arrested in London in 2010 based on an arrest warrant issued by Swedish police for rape allegations by two women.

Victory over Doloo Airport

DOLOO is a nearly 200-year-old tea garden near Silchar city in Cachar district of lower Assam. A substantial part of the plantation area had been sold by the Doloo Tea Company to the Airports Authority of India (AAI) for building a new airport. Tea plantation in this estate is spread over more than 1200 hectares and has four divisions namely Doloo, Moinagarh, Lalbagh and Murlidha. The Barak valley in Assam houses many such large tea gardens contributing a sizable quantity to tea exports from India.

Heat Wave: India Burning, a New Normal

THE year 2023 has officially been declared the hottest year ever since global temperature records were kept in 1850, breaking the previous highest set in 2016. This was not a flash in the pan. Ten of the hottest years ever have been in the decade 2014-23. Average global temperature in 2023 was 1.18 deg C (degrees Celsius) higher than the 20th century average, and about 1.4 deg C higher than the late 19th century average, almost touching the dreaded 1.5 deg C limit set by the Paris Agreement and beyond which several changes in climate may become irreversible.

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