Lions Club hands over insulin cartridges to welfare society
This was in response to a recent news report in The Hindu, which highlighted the concerns of the children and their parents in view of some changes in the 'Mittayi' scheme of the Kerala Social Security Mission.
The resources were mobilised by a team led by district governor Ravi Gupta, and Avni Skandhan, chief district coordinator for diabetes.
The insulin cartridges were formally received by T.R. Vijesh, president, and B. Roopesh, secretary, of the association, in the presence of businessman Gokulam Gopalan, at an event held at Sree Gokulam Convention Centre, Balussery, recently.
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The Hindu
11 hours ago
- The Hindu
CET and NEET: 26,555 seats in professional courses left unallocated this year in Karnataka
The admission process for professional courses, including engineering and medicine and others for the academic year 2025-26, has begun, and 26,555 seats remain un-allocated this year due to various reasons, including the option entry with emphasis on only limited colleges. The final result of the seat allotment for professional courses was announced by the Karnataka Examinations Authority (KEA) on August 2. Accordingly, a total of 1,35,954 seats in various professional courses are available for allotment through KEA for the current academic year in Karnataka. Out of these, only 1,09,399 seats have been allotted to candidates. Many seats remain unallocated in the Nursing course. Out of the total 31,726 seats available in Nursing, only 15,186 seats have been allotted, and 16,540 seats are yet to be allotted. Out of the 77,140 seats available in engineering courses, 71,813 seats have been allotted, leaving 5,327 seats unallocated to any student. Out of the 9,263 seats available in medical courses, 8,321 seats have been allotted, leaving 942 seats pending. In Allied Health Sciences, 1,329 seats are yet to be allocated. Why did this happen? 'Without checking their ranks and cut-off marks, students have taken option entry for only four to five colleges as their first choice in the hope of getting a seat in top colleges. Due to minimum number of colleges being selected, thousands of students, despite having good rank in Common Entrance Test (CET), have not got a seat in any college. In the wake of such option entry with emphasis on limited colleges, when the mock allotment result was announced, about 51,935 students were not allotted a seat in any college,' according to a KEA official. Also, while a small number of candidates have applied for special category quota seats, including rural, Kannada medium, Non-Resident Indian (NRI) quota and others, those quota seats have also remained vacant without being allotted to any student, KEA sources said. H. Prasanna, Executive Director of KEA, told The Hindu, 'Since students have given option entry to only a limited number of colleges, the number of seats remaining unallotted ranges between 35% and 40%. We have been advising students to give option entry to more colleges since the beginning, but they have not followed it. Otherwise, seats under various quotas remain unallotted due to non-availability of candidates. For example, most of the seats remaining unallotted in medical seats are NRI quota seats.' 'The unallotted seats in the first round will be given for the option entry in the 2nd and 3rd rounds. The various quota seats not allotted to any candidates will be converted into general merit seats in the final round, and option entry will be given. For example, if there are no candidates available for rural and Kannada medium quota seats, those seats will be converted into general merit seats. SC/ST rural quota seats will be converted into SC/ST regular seats, and option entry will be given. This will fill almost all the seats,' Mr. Prasanna explained.
The Wire
2 days ago
- The Wire
Starve, Silence, Disable: New Weapons in Israel's Genocidal War
Rights This is not 'collateral damage'. It is the deliberate, systematic creation of disability. An injured man is taken to the Al-Ahli hospital following overnight Israeli army airstrikes across the Gaza Strip, in Gaza City, on March 18. Photo: AP/PTI. "Give me a voice of thunder that I may hurl imprecation upon this cannibal, whose gruesome hunger spares neither woman nor child." – Rabindranath Tagore In Gaza, the cannibal devours relentlessly – its hunger insatiable, its thirst for blood unquenched. The savagery unfolding is unprecedented, more brutal than anything recent memory can bear. Its crimes are so grotesque that one would be tempted to draw parallels with those tried at Nuremberg. The thunderous plea of Tagore seems to pale when faced with the indescribable and unsurmountable suffering that Gazans are subjected to. One must be a heartless monster to remain unmoved by the cries of children undergoing amputations without anaesthesia, lying on blood-soaked floors in overcrowded spaces. Writing in The Hindu of October 5, 2024, Farhat Mantoo of MSF-Doctors without Borders, South Asia Chapter, narrates the story of 15-year-old Abdul, who ventured out on February 10, 2024, to surprise his mum with some 'salt or flour' amid the devastation in northern Gaza. As he scoured abandoned homes, he was grievously injured during an Israeli airstrike. Abdul crawled for more than an hour before help arrived and he was taken to a hospital. With hospitals overwhelmed with casualties and critical supplies lacking, doctors were forced to perform surgery on Abdul without anesthesia. The situation has far worsened now. Denied wheelchairs and other assistive devices and robbed of caregivers, the disabled are forced to flee from one bombardment zone to another on foot – many of them crawling, dragging their bodies maimed by the violence. Homes, hospitals, rehabilitation centres – any building in the path of the Israeli Defence Forces – are reduced to rubble. This is not "collateral damage." It is the deliberate, systematic creation of disability. As a powerful submission to the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD Committee) to its hearing in August 2025, argues, this is the "mass production of disability." The submission, by Women Enabled International (WEI) endorsed by several global organisations, including India's National Platform for the Rights of the Disabled (NPRD), documents an appalling reality: "Thousands have been made newly disabled due to amputations, traumatic injuries, psychological trauma, and the denial of essential medical care." According to a UNICEF/WHO update in early 2025, between 3,105 and 4,050 limb amputations were reported since October 7, 2023, in Gaza. Approximately 25% of these victims were children, equating to around 780 to 1,000 child amputees. A May 2025 report from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) and Christian Aid Ireland cites the total number of amputations as 4,700, with 850 of those being children. The bombs maim bodies; the siege prevents treatment; trauma decays the spirit. Disability here is not an unforeseen tragedy – it is an intended outcome, a weapon in the arsenal of genocide. Oldest logic of genocide: Target the disabled first What is unfolding in Gaza is not an isolated tragedy – it is part of a grim historical legacy. In 1994, in Rwanda, persons with disabilities were locked in churches and burned alive. In Srebrenica (Bosnia, 1995), the elderly and disabled were abandoned to die. But the most horrific was what happened in Nazi Germany where disabled individuals were the first to be exterminated, targeted under the concocted logic of racial hygiene. Under Aktion T4, an estimated 2,00,000 disabled individuals were annihilated. This program, which began in 1939, was a precursor to the Holocaust, marking the first phase in the Nazis' campaign of "racial purification". The disabled were considered "unworthy of life', a 'burden on earth' and were sent to gas chambers before the mass slaughter of Jews and other "undesirables". The submission to the CRPD Committee notes: 'History has shown that persons with disabilities are disproportionately impacted by genocides, yet they remain perpetually excluded from protection, recognition and remembrance.' In Gaza, disabled bodies are not mere casualties of war – they are actively targeted. Bombs destroy rehabilitation centres; sieges prevent access to wheelchairs; orders to displace people render the disabled incapable of fleeing. Starvation as a weapon of reproductive genocide The submission bears witness to horrors that words can scarcely capture: "Mothers must deliver babies without anesthesia. Doctors use cellphone flashlights to conduct operations. Mothers who are starving cannot produce milk. Babies die prematurely because there is no fuel for incubators." For women with disabilities, this nightmare is compounded. They are unable to flee, deprived of privacy, and at heightened risk of sexual violence. Reproductive care is denied, amplifying the terror. The Palestinian Feminist Collective has named this for what it is: 'reproductive genocide'. Occupation as a machine of disablement Even before the current onslaught, Israel's prolonged occupation of Palestine was a monstrous machine producing disability. Settler violence, home demolitions, military checkpoints and apartheid-like healthcare systems have been a form of daily warfare for Palestinians. The current destruction only deepens this crisis: "Disability-based dispossession is entrenched by the occupation. Impairment is worsened through violence, deprivation, and denial of access to care, education, and freedom of movement.' In the West Bank, disabled women and girls live under constant threat of settler violence. Hospitals are either blocked or destroyed, further exacerbating the ongoing crisis. The genocide is not only impacting people with disabilities, especially women, girls and gender diverse people with disabilities, in unimaginable ways, but the genocide has also been a mass disabling event. It has produced large scale disability – both visible and invisible. An unending mental health crisis In Gaza, mental health has collapsed under relentless siege. Continuous bombardment, loss of loved ones, forced displacement, and witnessing unspeakable horrors have pushed entire communities into collective trauma. Children and adults alike wake screaming from nightmares that never end; parents mourn silently, numb with grief. The destruction of hospitals and the shortage of mental health professionals mean that psychological wounds go untreated, deepening despair. Anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress have become widespread, yet there is no safe space to heal. Here, trauma is not a moment – it is daily life, passed from one generation to the next in an unbroken cycle. Numbers that the world refuses to see A report in Al Jazeera, dated July 24, 2025, records the death of over 59,000 Palestinians and injuries to 1,43,000 in Israeli attacks. According to Harvard Dataverse, an estimated 3,77,000 people have "disappeared," buried under rubble and left uncounted. Among them are the disabled, who are left to die because they could not escape. "Due to the actions of Israel, it is close to impossible to obtain accurate and timely data,' the submission warns. Erasure, too, is a weapon. Profiting over bodies The economy of genocide – as described by UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese – is built on the dispossession and disablement of Palestinians and disability justice helps us understand and name how war, surveillance, and militarism profit from the destruction of bodies and communities. International arms sales, border militarisation and the blocking of humanitarian aid are capitalist ventures that produce and sustain disability on a mass scale. Israel's bombardment of Gaza serves as a live testing ground for AI-guided weapons, surveillance technologies and riot control tools – all of which are then exported worldwide including to India. As the submission notes: "War, surveillance, and militarism profit from the destruction of bodies and communities." From Nazi doctors conducting experiments on disabled prisoners to modern arms manufacturers boasting of "battle-tested" weapons, genocide and capitalism have always walked hand in hand. Not to speak of the 'Riviera of the Middle East' that someone is dreaming of. Convention betrayed Israel ratified the CRPD, thereby obligating itself to protect persons with disabilities, particularly in conflict. The Fourth Geneva Convention demands medical care and protection for civilians. Yet, hospitals are bombed, aid is blocked and disability services are wiped out. "Non-compliance with these obligations may constitute grave breaches of international law and warrants independent investigation and accountability." Yet, bombs continue to fall, and words like "proportionality" fill press releases. How many more? In Gaza, children wake to find their limbs gone. Mothers bury babies – premature and stillborn. Disabled women crawl across a wasteland where homes and rehabilitation centres once stood. From Aktion T4 to Srebrenica, from Rwanda to Gaza, genocide begins by marking some lives as disposable. "Persons with disabilities are disproportionately impacted by violence yet are consistently excluded from protection and remembrance." History asks us: how many more limbs, wombs, and futures must be shattered before we say enough? The silence that speaks: India's disability movement and Gaza The Indian disability movement has been strikingly silent on the unprecedented suffering of disabled Palestinians in Gaza. While global disability organisations have condemned Israel's deliberate targeting of persons with disabilities and joined calls for a ceasefire, most prominent Indian disability groups continue to look away. This silence is disturbing. It not only betrays the foundational principles of the disability rights movement – supposedly built on the rejection of hierarchies of whose lives matter – but also echoes the position of India's current ruling establishment to side with Israel. Many have been unequivocal supporters of the neoliberal trajectory and stand compromised. The disability community, which has historically stood against state violence and exclusion, now risks complicity by omission. Moreover, by refusing to engage with the mass production of disability in Gaza – children losing limbs in bombardments, denial of assistive devices, starvation used as a weapon – the movement distances itself from global disability justice. In doing so, it inadvertently affirms an unequal valuation of lives: solidarity, it seems, is not extended to Palestinians – disabled or otherwise. This selective empathy undermines both credibility and conscience, exposing a silence that itself becomes a form of violence and complicity. Muralidharan is general secretary, National Platform for the Rights of the Disabled (NPRD). The Wire is now on WhatsApp. Follow our channel for sharp analysis and opinions on the latest developments.
The Hindu
4 days ago
- The Hindu
The Hindu's latest e-book does a deep dive into all aspects of geriatric care
Even though India has the world's youngest population and is set to harness its demographic dividend, it is still greying rapidly: by 2050, just 25 years from now, the population of those above the age of 60 is expected to reach 347 million, and this cohort will make up about 20% of the country's population. The total fertility rate is falling, life expectancies are increasing, and despite differences across States, this is a scenario that will play out in every part of India, sooner rather than later. And with this, will come rising healthcare costs as well as the social and economic costs of an ageing nation: one that is already seeing household savings straining while a potentially shrinking workforce could slow overall growth. How prepared is India to deal with its greying population? Are our healthcare systems prepared? Is our public infrastructure up to the mark? Are our pension and other care systems geared? Have we trained an adequate number of personnel? The Hindu's e-book 'Shades of Grey: Geriatric Care and its Social and Economic Facets' looks at all of these aspects and more, with in-depth and detailed articles from medical and media professionals. The digital book is available free for subscribers of The Hindu's online edition, and non-subscribers can purchase the e-book on Amazon.
