Hi Hafta Team,

My two cents on the swearing-in: While I agree with Anand that Parliament may be the last institutional space being governed by a non-religious protocol (which I believe institutional spaces ought to have), I disagree with the use of this argument to explain what happened at the swearing-in ceremony.

Indians display their religiosity publically because of their strong belief in God and not to provoke the other groups. Public spaces don’t witness a Hindu shouting Jai Shree Ram in faces of Muslims to tick them off, and vice versa Muslims teasing Hindus with Allahu Akbar. Whenever that happens, the intention is to get into a fight and not as an act of religiosity. What happened in Parliament was not a display of belief and faith in God, but a vulgar use of religion for politics and intimidation. Parliament can allow the use of personal religious symbolism if rules are amended, what happened can’t be allowed. It shows the moral corruption of this new breed of MPs.

Harsh Kumar

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Hi Team,

Abhinandan made a point that he is not aware of anybody he knows who has AIDS. You are not wrong. But I just wanted to point out why. I do remember that NL itself had some stories about how the fantastic National AIDS Control Programme has now been diluted of sorts.

It would be great if you watch and review this 5-year-old documentary: Fire in the Blood. It’s available on Netflix. This is a must-watch for two reasons:

1) India’s contribution to the world (Africa especially) in the form of generic drugs.

2) Why India needs to continue (not change it’s patent laws) and we need to have an outrage and news coverage to ensure India does not cower to US pressure to sign the WTO agreement on generic drugs.

WE NEED A STORY on THIS as well as AWARENESS. Indian Pharma (despite Bottle of Lies) is the lesser evil than the American ones.

Or else when the next epidemic of the type of AIDS comes in, we might not be able to say: “I don’t really know anyone who suffers from it” because these pharma companies will make it so expensive that we will die because we don’t have the money!

These two Netflix series will make my point: Bleeding Edge and Dirty Money (Episode 3 – Drug Short).

I don’t think you would need to send reporters out of Delhi for this story since there is AIIMS in Delhi and a good number of hospitals which would provide input. So does the Indian Medical Council. And “Mr Trehan” could be of great help as well as medical practitioners who are your subscribers.

Hope to get a great story soon. And as I have written before, always ready to contribute to NL Sena.

Best regards,
Dhiraj