Will the world's 'first male birth control shot' work?
- 6 December 2019
- From the section India
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BLOOMBERG/ Getty Images
For a long time, there have been only two contraceptive solutions which rely directly on men.
They can either wear a condom, or have sterilising surgery called a vasectomy to cut or seal the two tubes that carry sperm to the penis. A male birth control pill and a contraceptive gel are still in the works.
But India says it is going to launch the world's first male birth control injection soon. Will this be the male contraceptive that succeeds?
Invented by Sujoy Guha, a maverick 78-year-old Delhi-based biomedical engineer, the drug is a single preloaded syringe shot into the tubes carrying sperm from the testicle to the penis, under local anaesthesia. The non-hormonal, long-acting contraceptive, researchers claim, will be effective for 13 years.
After years of human trials, the drug called Risug, an acronym for reversible inhibition of sperm under guidance, is ready. It is a viscous gel which inactivates the sperm. The effectiveness of a second part of the treatment - an injection which dissolves the gel, hopefully reversing the effects and allowing a man to father a child - hasn't yet been tested in humans, though it has worked in animal studies.
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Maharashtra's political theatre is 'damaging' Indian politics
- 26 November 2019
- From the section India
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EPA
Maharashtra's chief minister, Devendra Fadnavis, has resigned just after three days in power. His departure came hours after India's Supreme Court ordered him to take a vote of confidence on Wednesday. What does the crisis tell us about Indian politics?
British publisher Ernest Benn once said politics was the "art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying unsuitable remedies".
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Maharashtra: The unravelling of India's BJP and Shiv Sena alliance
- 14 November 2019
- From the section India
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Getty Images
Politics makes for strange bedfellows. And India's untidy electoral politics sometimes throws up unusual, unintended consequences.
Consider the recent elections in Maharashtra, the country's richest state.
Read full article Maharashtra: The unravelling of India's BJP and Shiv Sena alliance
Ayodhya verdict: The man who helped Lord Ram win
- 9 November 2019
- From the section India
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Mansi Thapliyal
For more than a decade, he sat in musty courtrooms, representing a Hindu God in one of the country's most contentious and deadly disputes.
In court papers, Triloki Nath Pandey is described as the "next friend" of the infant Lord Ram. The deity was one of the litigants in the long-running dispute over a plot of land in the northern Indian temple town of Ayodhya, which was decided in his favour by the Supreme Court on Saturday.
Read full article Ayodhya verdict: The man who helped Lord Ram win
Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo: The Nobel couple fighting poverty
- 15 October 2019
- From the section India
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AFP
For the past two decades, the world's most-feted economist couple has tried to understand the lives of the poor, in "all their complexity and richness". And how an inadequate understanding of poverty had blighted the battle against it.
On Monday, Abhijit Banerjee, 58, and Esther Duflo, 46, won the Nobel Prize in Economics, along with economist Michael Kremer, for their "experimental approach to alleviating global poverty". More than 700 million people live in extreme poverty, according to World Bank.
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Manu Gandhi: The girl who chronicled Gandhi's troubled years
- 1 October 2019
- From the section India
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dinodia
On the evening of 30 January 1948, Mahatma Gandhi stepped outside the house of an Indian business tycoon in Delhi where he was staying and walked to a prayer meeting in the garden.
Accompanying Gandhi, as usual, were his grand-nieces, Manu and Abha.
Read full article Manu Gandhi: The girl who chronicled Gandhi's troubled years
The hunger-striking Indians demanding US asylum
- 26 September 2019
- From the section India
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Jessica Miles
Two Indian men are expected to be released soon from an immigration detention facility in El Paso, Texas, where they were on hunger strike for 74 days.
Ajay Kumar, 33, and Gurjant Singh, 24, have spent a year in detention facilities in the US after they were apprehended on its busy southern border.
Read full article The hunger-striking Indians demanding US asylum
Kashmir crisis: How to read India's threat to Pakistan
- 20 September 2019
- From the section India
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AFP
One of the world's most protracted conflicts is getting messier.
Earlier this week, India's Foreign Minister S Jaishankar, a measured diplomat-turned-politician, said India expected to have "physical jurisdiction" over Pakistan-administered Kashmir one day.
Read full article Kashmir crisis: How to read India's threat to Pakistan
Kashmir: The complicated truth behind its 'normality'
- 18 September 2019
- From the section India
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Abid Bhat
To escape the claustrophobic tension of living under siege, people in Srinagar have found ways to unwind.
Parks in the main city of Indian-administered Kashmir are seeing a surge of visitors. Anglers sit desultorily on the banks of the picturesque Dal Lake. Others drive around in their cars, meeting friends and relatives. Knots of people gather on empty streets and shoot the breeze.
Read full article Kashmir: The complicated truth behind its 'normality'
Kashmir: Letters and landlines return to cut-off region
- 10 September 2019
- From the section India
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AFP
In neat cursive handwriting, a woman from Delhi wrote a letter to friends in Indian-administered Kashmir last month.
She had visited them on a holiday in July. Now, she was desperately trying to find out how they were doing.
Read full article Kashmir: Letters and landlines return to cut-off region
