https://www.scmp.com/rss/324134/feed en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com Mechanical engineer Vimal Govind, 29, remembers the grisly photograph that sparked the idea for his start-up’s robotic device. Three men in 2016 had died in a sewer in Kerala, and a newspaper that covered the tragedy ran a picture that would change his life. “Only the face of the man was visible, the rest of his body was in the manhole; the slime glistening black inside,” said Govind, who was still in university then. “I had never realised until then that human beings do this work. We have sent... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/health-environment/article/3212248/india-sewer-cleaning-robot-aims-prevent-dalits-dying-manholes?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/health-environment/article/3212248/india-sewer-cleaning-robot-aims-prevent-dalits-dying-manholes?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 04 Mar 2023 08:00:16 +0000 Indian liver doctor Dr Cyriac Abby Philips’ Twitter account was once mainly populated with photos of his family and favourite food, and used to catch up on the news. It took a viral thread on the diet supplement company Herbalife for the Kerala doctor to realise that social media was an important platform in his effort to raise awareness about the harmful impact of poorly regulated traditional medicine and popular nutritional supplements that cause liver damage. In August 2018, Philips published... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/health-environment/article/3209036/indian-doctor-lifts-lid-dark-side-indias-wellness-traditional-medicine-sector?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/health-environment/article/3209036/indian-doctor-lifts-lid-dark-side-indias-wellness-traditional-medicine-sector?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 05 Feb 2023 06:00:16 +0000 For years, Bollywood has operated on the premise it is the default Indian film industry. Bigger and older than America’s Hollywood, Hindi cinema is a heavyweight pop culture force that generates billions in ticket sales annually and has birthed megastars such as Shah Rukh Khan, but the films have also typically projected the politics and sentiment of the ruling party in New Delhi. But something has changed in the market. Telugu films like Baahubali and RRR; Kannada film KGF Chapter 2; and Tamil... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3198126/india-rising-success-tamil-and-telugu-films-are-challenging-modis-hindi-push?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3198126/india-rising-success-tamil-and-telugu-films-are-challenging-modis-hindi-push?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 04 Nov 2022 02:00:16 +0000 A groundbreaking judgment in late September by India’s Supreme Court that extended the right to safe and legal abortion up to 24 weeks of pregnancy to all women irrespective of their marital status is seen as a major step forward in safeguarding reproductive rights even as the country slips backwards on personal liberties. “The social stigma surrounding single women who are pregnant is even greater and they often lack support from their family or partner,” a bench of Justices DY Chandrachud, AS... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3195143/india-supreme-courts-progressive-abortion-ruling-offers-glimmer?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3195143/india-supreme-courts-progressive-abortion-ruling-offers-glimmer?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 08 Oct 2022 01:00:12 +0000 Noted Hollywood director Martin Scorsese once said the four most influential auteurs of the 20th century were India’s Satyajit Ray, Japan’s Akira Kurosawa, Italy’s Frederico Fellini and Swedish director Ingmar Bergman. With the death of star actor Soumitra Chatterjee of complications from Covid-19 in Kolkata on Sunday, the last living association to that classic age of the art film is gone. The 85-year-old Chatterjee, one of Indian cinema’s most famous faces, collaborated closely with Ray, whose... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3110014/indian-cinema-legend-soumitra-chatterjees-death-spotlights-end?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3110014/indian-cinema-legend-soumitra-chatterjees-death-spotlights-end?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 16 Nov 2020 07:00:09 +0000 On July 28, World Hepatitis Day, the New Delhi health ministry asked Loon Gangte and members of the Delhi Network of Positive People (DNP+) – a group of people and advocates who live with HIV – to come to the capital’s Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Hospital. Gangte, the president and a founding member of the DNP+, knew the group had not been invited for a government event to mark the occasion – not once in his 20 years of activism as a HIV-positive person had he been asked to attend one. Rather, he had... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/health-environment/article/3097278/modis-india-wants-control-hepatitis-why-are-police?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/health-environment/article/3097278/modis-india-wants-control-hepatitis-why-are-police?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 14 Aug 2020 01:00:18 +0000 On the river banks in Barrackpore, a sweltering town some 30km from Kolkata, the statues of 13 dead British men stand high above the ground on brick-red plinths. One is made of marble and 12 are made of metal, but they all have the identical distant gaze – instantly recognisable to every Indian as the contempt with which government service officers treat them. In 1969, 22 years after India’s independence, these statues were taken down from their pedestals at the intersections of the busiest... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/lifestyle-culture/article/3091791/statue-politics-how-india-quietly-removed-colonists?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/lifestyle-culture/article/3091791/statue-politics-how-india-quietly-removed-colonists?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 05 Jul 2020 09:00:18 +0000 In the days since Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a complete lockdown to curb the spread of Covid-19 in the country, development sector professional Sohini Sarkar has noticed something new on her mother’s face when they speak on FaceTime. Fear. Her mother, 73, is a retired professor who lives alone in Kolkata and suffers from a chronic kidney condition that has flared up over the past week. Sarkar lives in Washington DC in the United States. Her mother has part-time help and a... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/health-environment/article/3078129/coronavirus-lockdown-leaves-many-indias-elderly?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/health-environment/article/3078129/coronavirus-lockdown-leaves-many-indias-elderly?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 02 Apr 2020 10:00:15 +0000 In school, the New Delhi board-designed syllabus of the Indian Council of School Examinations did not mention the special status of the state of Jammu and Kashmir, the only Muslim-majority state in India. There are separate Indian state boards as well. I studied under a central board. We did not learn about the circumstances under which the state joined the Indian Union, nor that Kashmir is the most militarised zone in the world in terms of the number of armed forces personnel per square km of... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3022930/bollywood-teaches-more-about-kashmir-indias-schools?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3022930/bollywood-teaches-more-about-kashmir-indias-schools?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 15 Aug 2019 08:02:12 +0000 If India’s parliament passes a proposed new Surrogacy Regulation Bill, cases such as that of Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan, who had his third child via surrogacy, would no longer be possible. The strict new bill being considered by lawmakers permits only Indian couples, married for at least five years and childless, to opt for surrogacy. It states that surrogate mothers must be “close relatives” of the recipients and carries strict criteria for surrogate mothers, genetic parents, fertility... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/3021504/surrogacy-bill-end-indias-us2-billion-rent-womb-industry?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/3021504/surrogacy-bill-end-indias-us2-billion-rent-womb-industry?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 06 Aug 2019 01:00:13 +0000 When a team of researchers in India and the US led by Professor Vimal Mishra reconstructed the soil samples for Bengal in 1943, a period in which 3 million Bengalis died from famine, they found moisture levels in the soil were more than the normal. For five other periods of famine, from 1870 to 2016, Mishra and his colleagues found evidence of drought in the soil samples they created, using meteorological data. But the 1943 famine was due to “complete policy failure”, they write. The study... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3005838/churchills-real-darkest-hour-new-evidence-confirms-british?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3005838/churchills-real-darkest-hour-new-evidence-confirms-british?utm_source=rss_feed Fri, 12 Apr 2019 05:00:16 +0000 On February 27, a day after the Indian Air Force carried out air strikes targeting the town of Balakot in Pakistan, the influential Indian television journalist Faye D’Souza sent a telling tweet. “We are slowing down the news updates at @MirrorNow to carry only what is confirmed,” she wrote. “Our viewers may find us slower than the others today.” We are slowing down the news updates at @MirrorNow to carry only what is confirmed. Our viewers may find us slower than the others today. — Faye... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2188748/does-indian-media-have-love-affair-military?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2188748/does-indian-media-have-love-affair-military?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 05 Mar 2019 11:06:29 +0000 It takes a little more than an hour of its 121-minute running time for February release Ek Ladki ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga (“When I saw a girl, a I felt that way”) to come to the point: this is not a typical boy-meets-girl romance, this is a lesbian love story. In fact, it’s the first time that Bollywood, the second largest film industry in the world and a distinct cultural form, has made a full-fledged film about romance between two women – replete with song-and-dance and well-known stars. The... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2187347/bollywood-makes-song-and-dance-about-lesbian-romance-last?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2187347/bollywood-makes-song-and-dance-about-lesbian-romance-last?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 24 Feb 2019 09:00:39 +0000 In May 2014, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won a commanding majority at a general election after 30 years of coalition governments, an Indian magazine called Open published a cover story about the victory headlined “Triumph of the Will”. This is also the name of a 1935 propaganda film by German auteur Leni Riefenstahl that was commissioned by none other than the leader of the Nazi Party, Adolf Hitler – whose name even appears in the opening credits. If the... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2184614/triumph-modi-propaganda-bollywood?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2184614/triumph-modi-propaganda-bollywood?utm_source=rss_feed Tue, 05 Feb 2019 06:00:15 +0000 At the 106th edition of the Indian Science Congress in January, inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a delegate called Dr K.J. Krishnan claimed Isaac Newton had not understood gravity in full because he had been unable to explain the “gravitational repulsive force”. In the future, Krishnan said, gravity would be understood in the new light provided by his theory, and “gravitational waves” would be renamed Narendra Modi Waves. Krishnan identifies himself as a senior scientist with the... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2181752/bowel-cleanse-better-dna-nonsense-science-modis-india?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2181752/bowel-cleanse-better-dna-nonsense-science-modis-india?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 13 Jan 2019 08:00:00 +0000 When Sanjay Mallick was eight years old, his class teacher Mrs Mukherjee summoned his father to school for a meeting. It was the first time Mr Mallick had been called to his children’s school, and he was worried. His three elder boys had never made trouble, and Sanjay, the youngest, was no worse than other eight-year-old boys. “Mrs Mukherjee had asked the class to describe what our fathers did,” Sanjay recalled. “I stood up and said, ‘My father picks up dead bodies.’” In her meeting with... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2178071/keeping-death-family-untouchable-caste-india-vital-kolkatas?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2178071/keeping-death-family-untouchable-caste-india-vital-kolkatas?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 16 Dec 2018 05:00:45 +0000 In the 1990 film Ganashatru, director Satyajit Ray tells the story of a doctor who finds himself unemployed and ostracised when he speaks about the contaminated water supply in his town. The doctor traces the growing cases of jaundice and hepatitis in the town to the poison in the water. He gets blowback from the municipality, though the chairman is also the good doctor’s brother. The story was adapted from Henrik Ibsen’s play Enemy of the People set in a Norwegian resort, but Ray told The New... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2122517/india-do-not-ever-say-dengue?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2122517/india-do-not-ever-say-dengue?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 23 Dec 2017 05:01:48 +0000 I was not familiar with the Kannada and English-language journalist Gauri Lankesh’s work, unfortunately. But when news broke late on the night of September 5 that she had been shot dead outside her home, it felt familiar. It felt part of a pattern that I had been tracking the past two years. What is that feeling when something you have been talking about turns out as predicted, but there is no joy in being proved right, only a heaviness in your stomach? I felt that. Less than two weeks after... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2112486/inconvenient-truths-murder-journalism-india?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/2112486/inconvenient-truths-murder-journalism-india?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 23 Sep 2017 06:03:06 +0000 Early this March, towards the end of an unexpectedly helpful telephone conversation, an officer of the Kolkata Police offered lessons on how to tell a good lie. He was speaking about the bridge that had fallen in Kolkata a year ago. On March 31, 2016, an under-construction flyover collapsed, crushing 26 people to death and injuring 20. More than a year later, the criminal trial into the accident has yet to begin. The 16 people arrested are all out on bail. The Kolkata Police, who are in charge... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2095398/truth-about-kolkata-bridge-collapse-and-how-indian-state-tried?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/geopolitics/article/2095398/truth-about-kolkata-bridge-collapse-and-how-indian-state-tried?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 24 May 2017 03:11:55 +0000 When big-ticket Bollywood filmmaker Karan Johar announced last week that he had become a father to twins birthed through a surrogate mother, it felt like a moment he had built up to for years in both his cinematic work and his public persona. His films have often touched on gay characters and themes, and in his public image, he has riffed on gay jokes, most often directed at himself. Now, with the birth of Yash and Roohi, a boy and a girl, Johar is thought to be the first gay, single man in... https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2077915/what-bollywood-icons-fatherhood-says-about-indias-attitude?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/society/article/2077915/what-bollywood-icons-fatherhood-says-about-indias-attitude?utm_source=rss_feed Sun, 12 Mar 2017 06:00:45 +0000