This is a place where you can discuss or share anything you want. What was the latest movie you watched? Did you read any books recently? Got any interesting news to share? Apolitical discussions, book/podcast/movie recommendations, memes and Q&A are also permitted.

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https://reddit.com/link/1ghpjm1/video/18vwgtfnafyd1/player

i understand abt sc/st but why obc and why such high percentage?most of the obc castes historically they weren't that discriminated and they also were kings & land owners.there is no significant financial disparity b/w obc and generals,also literally 50% of population is obc

Why are there no good left wing YouTubers in India yea we know. black flag and he is great but no YouTubers like badempanada,hakim,second thought,Marxism today and yougopnik in India why is that. We only have liberal YouTubers like Druv Rathi , the deshbhakt and soch by mohak. Why is that

I have a 9 days old niece and she was terrified the whole day today. The street dogs are literally trying their best to find any hiding spot they can to cancel out some noise. The amount of noise and air pollution caused just because of this stupid tradition of bursting crackers is so horrifying. My friend's uncle lost his life because of lung cancer the day after Diwali 2 years ago. Diwali is a festival of lights not pollution and fear.

I still clearly don’t know what is liberal rightist or leftist all i know is what is wrong or right and this is right a year ago i saw few subs here they just suck they say awful things this sub have human like people tell me more subs like this

So, considering that Delhi was already suffocating, and the Government has been banning crackers for the past few years, the people keep on burning even more than the normal amount, as if to rebel against any order.

Can people literally for one minute think beyond religion, and take into consideration their own lives and health? The environment in which they're living, their children, and infants? The critically ill admitted in Hospitals across Delhi?

Now of course, this is not to say festivals can't be celebrated, and a firework can be organized by the municipality, instead of each person doing it, but that doesn't happen.

https://np.reddit.com/r/indianstartups/s/mCV0iMh6Md

What's the obsession of these mfs witch china and always blame democracy??

https://reddit.com/link/1gghwup/video/89e3g92e64yd1/player

Source https://x.com/atmanirbhar_kid/status/1851992706425200694

They did not provide info on whether his house was actually legal or not, just said: he said it's legal. PLS PROVIDE MORE INFO IF YOU HAVE ANY. thank you

https://caravanmagazine.in/politics/victim-bulldozer-justice-javed-mohammad this is the article I'm talking about, I don't have digital sub so I can't quote exactly and I'm too lazy to take a pic of the portion

Someone in my family has become very irrational and overly superstitious. He believes in many things that are extremely superstitious. Due to an excessive workload, he started experiencing overthinking and anxiety, and to escape from this, he turned to religious fanaticism. He wasn’t this regressive before, but nowadays, he has become much more so. How can I convince him that he is wrong? He is also very rigid, doesn’t change his mind, and won’t accept new opinions, especially from younger people or the younger generation.

Ps :- He is not "Rw" or like too the core religious extremist.

https://youtu.be/mrEHnfc1488?si=cjPmK0aHcHTZpUc5

Today is the 40th Anniversary of the Sikh Genocide which took place between 31st October and November 2, 1984.

On this day the Sikh community across the country, mainly in North and East India faced targetted violence following the death of Indira Gandhi (the then PM) in an assassination plot.

What happened: Sikh men were hunted down and killed, identified on basis of their turbans. Many Sikhs in U.P cut their hair and took off their turbans for safety. The turban is a symbol of respect, which India, a democratic nation failed to ensure its minorities of that day. A tale we see continuing with dfiferent targets and in different regions till this date. The ruling party put its hands behind this massacre, urging all their workers and the criminals which they released on the offer of money and alochol, to burn any man in a turban, openly, on the streets. The police assisted these mobs in finding Sikh houses, using the records they had entrusted to them as authority.

What really surprises me is the lack of acknowledgement this genocide garners. From history books to changing governments, nobody wants to speak of this terrifying event. The pain and suffering was swept under a rug, with little to no mention even now. Even the media shys from speaking of this. People often refer to this horrifying event as a riot, instead of what it actually was - a genocide. And those who committed the massacre still roam around freely, while many innocent sikhs who were arrested sit in jails to this day without trial, acknowledgement, or justice.

Now BJP has taken over the reigns of religious violence in the country. And it is because of the clean chits given before, so many times, that we have reached here once again. Nobody was held accountable in 1984, and nobody is held accountable now. There are little consequences for such actions, from Godhra and Bagalpur to the 1984 Sikh Genocide, no justice can be seen for miles. Books won't speak of this, and media only wants to celebrate "Consitution Hatya Diwas".

It is on us to remember the martrys of 1984. The women and babies murdered in cold blood, the innocent men burned on streets by hungry mobs, all deserve remembrance.

Cuba has recently seen multiple blackouts which have put the whole island in darkness. In the last 2 years, almost 5% of Cuba's population has fled to the USA and other countries. Cuba is facing both systematic depopulation and economic collapse.

Similarly, a thousand miles to the south, is Venezuela. Led by Hugo Chavez, Venezuelan Revolution denounced USA as "evil empire" and aligned with Cuba. How is Venezuela doing today? 7 million Venezuelans, 20% of the population has left in 1 decade. Maduro decisively lost the Presidential Election, with around 30% of votes only.

(Every booth prints its result, and till now not a single vote tally sheet has been found with Maduro leading over his opponent. The official results are totally fraudulent - without any breakdown - and exact to the percentage.)

This accords with the experience of East European socialist states including USSR, which went into deep stagnation from 1970, and later into recession, culminating in the collapse of the socialist states.

Whatever the theoretical merits of Socialism, the actual results are depressing - there is no getting around that conclusion.

Explain to me, a neutral person with no clear ideological orientation, why I should accept Socialism as a goal?

when the sound either us election on social media Or the sound of crackers, the bed is there to save us all, I hope everyone has a cozy week, away from all the noise that is beyond our control. https://pin.it/6xsvyoMmd

https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/army-can-now-directly-issue-notices-to-remove-online-posts-101730313177838.html

"Section 79(3)(b) erects a blocking process separate from Section 69A with a much lower threshold for issuing takedown notices and grants power to a much larger swathe of ministries, departments and law enforcement agencies."

Most religious people are more likely to donate to charity and actually improve people's lives and do more to help working class people than those who tweet against injustice online. Most homeless shelters are run by religious people .Havent religions done more to help working class people than government? Religious charities are more effective than government welfare.What are the arguments against it?

Yea im talking about Lawrence Bishnoi, nobody knew the fucker before 2022 and now everybody does, whats harrowing is that this happened while he is in jail the entire time, Vishwaguru Endia guys, where a gangster is able to scheme murders of high profile individuals organize a massive crime syndicate claim responsibility from jail and we aren't able to do shit

Hello people! I'm a meritorious savarna communist who has had all the social and material privileges, and I will always believe that I'm as much oppressed as a DBA working class person because we're from the same working class. I totally equate caste to race because I understand caste. I always believe I understand caste better than the DBA themselves because I read a lot of savarna authors on caste and they don't! And babasaheb and teltumbde don't understand caste and marxism so I don't read them. I will read anything but the lower caste authors unless I'm told by someone to read them, then I might read them if I feel like it.

Revolution in India must be lead by anyone who's capable of it. No no it's not right if strictly DBA people lead the revolution because that's identity opportunism. What do you mean a land owning savarna leading the revolution for the emancipation of landless DBA is wrong, you're an identity opportunist!

We will not attack caste first, we will attack the economic base. Caste will only go when the economic base, mode of production is changed. We will first change the economic base then only actually do something for all of the dalits and adivasis. We need unity on class basis because we believe national bourgeoisies regardless of caste will be on our side rather than DBA from all classes so we need to unite on class basis to go against imperialism and not on caste basis. We know this because we're meritorious Marxists.

Because we understand caste better we know babasaheb was wrong, the basis of caste is always land ownership! We will give land to landless DBA and then they'll be equal. What are you saying? What do you mean they still don't have the generational privilege of centuries of accumulated education and don't have the ancient social web that brings privileges. They have gotten land, and they are now equal, are you unmarxist for not understanding this lol. We will then do a cultural revolution also to eradicate brahmanism but we will decide what's brahminism and what's not.

Marxism by early (savarna) communists in India wasn't that good because they lacked research on caste and it's not because they were completely brahminical, I believe perhaps they were only a little brahminical because of those times you know. They did the land reforms, and only gave land to tenants who were shudras only, nothing wrong in that, it's called marxism you idpoler. They also give land to a few dalits see! Wdym brahminism strengthed because of such selective land ownership, brahminism strengthed because the forces of production evolved lol.

I'm the most meritorious communist ever and I understand everything and tell others to go read a book because that's what they need to do to match my intellect.

! Will post more on savarna marxism in the future, it really needs to be addressed and all the places are dominated by savarnas they do not address their savarna superiority complex that they're unaware of !<

Taken from this article by theWire

India is going to miss the 2025 target for tuberculosis elimination that the Narendra Modi government had set for itself, the Global Tuberculosis Report 2024 report has revealed. The World Health Organisation, which has prepared this report, has set a global deadline of 2035.  

Like all other countries, India has made improvements on many elimination indicators. But a close analysis of numbers presented in the report clearly indicates that India has missed the goals set for two out of three interim milestones for 2025 and is far from keeping to both the Indian government’s own elimination deadline of 2025, as well as the WHO’s deadline of 2035.

Although this trend is visible for a majority of the countries around the world, India is the only country which had set an ambitious deadline of 2025. Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced this target at a public rally in Varanasi in 2023.

There are three major milestones necessary to be achieved for the ‘TB End Strategy’ which the WHO has set for all countries. India’s parameters for elimination by its own deadline are also the same. The WHO has set final targets for 2035 and two sets of interim targets to be achieved till 2020 and 2025.

They include a reduction in TB deaths by 95% from deaths in 2015. Similarly, the incidence of TB has to go down by 90% as compared to the 2015 rate. The number of TB patients who incur ‘catastrophic expenditure’ on TB treatment has to brought down to zero. 

India’s performance is as follows.

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India’s burden

Historically, India has always had the highest burden of TB cases around the world. As per the current report, India accounts for 26% of all TB cases in the world. The countries that follow India are Indonesia (10%), China (6.8%), the Philippines (6.8%) and Pakistan (6.3%).

At present, the estimated number of TB cases in India are 20 lakh – the highest in the world. 

The current incidence rate of TB in India is 195 cases per 1 lakh people, as against the WHO’s target of 55 cases per 1 lakh people by 2025, the interim target.

The world was already not on track to achieve these targets but the COVID-19 pandemic made the task much more difficult as services for TB control were badly hit during that period. This led to some sort of a reversal of progress made in the previous years. 

However, no country other than India has fixed the target of achieving TB elimination by 2025. It was not clear whether the Indian government took the reversals into account before deciding on an ambitious target year. 

Source: Global Tuberculosis Report 2024.

The reduction in TB deaths is another important indicator. India reduced deaths by 24% in 2023 as compared to the number of deaths in 2015. It failed to achieve the target set even for 2020 – which is a 35% reduction. Going by the current trajectory, it is more than likely that India will miss the interim and the final targets. 

Source: Global Tuberculosis Report 2024.

Though the world as a whole also missed the death reduction target for 2020, at least 43 countries reached or surpassed this particular milestone set for the given year. India accounts for the highest number of TB deaths per year.

The third indicator is the amount of money spent on TB treatment. A household usually incurs significant expenditure on TB treatment – a spend of more than 20% of a household’s annual income for the purpose is considered a ‘catastrophic expenditure’. These include direct costs like treatment and diagnoses or indirect costs like transport and lodging, as per WHO.

The loss of income on the part of the patient and family members who accompany the patient to a TB treatment centre for treatment purposes also come under indirect cost. 

“These pose barriers that can greatly affect their ability to access diagnosis and treatment, and to complete treatment successfully,” the report states. 

In India, out of all households which have TB patients, at least 20% of them face catastrophic expenditure – a significant section if absolute numbers are considered.

The global average of such households in 49%. The TB elimination target had envisaged that the proportion of such families should have been reduced to zero by 2020 itself. 

Governments usually get international funding in addition to incurring domestic expenditure to fight TB.

The domestic expenditure of the Indian government has been continuously rising since 2020. However, it is yet to reach the pre-pandemic levels of 2019. In other words, the domestic expenditure in 2023 was US $ 253 million, while in 2019, it was more than US $345 million.

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One of the major challenges with TB elimination is the number of TB cases that are missed. A significant proportion of TB patients remain either undiagnosed or unreported, officially. Cases which fall through the cracks severely affect the fight against TB because the infection spreads from one person to another. An untreated person can pass on her infection to another, in that case, thus increasing the TB burden further. 

The measure to understand what proportion of cases are being missed is to look at the notification rate of patients. The higher the notification rate, the better it is. During the COVID-19 years, the notification rates of a majority of countries, except for some in the African region, went south. The current report says notifications in most of the 30 high TB-burden countries has recovered to pre-COVID levels or beyond. 

India and Indonesia contributed the highest numbers in this recovery in 2022 and 2023, accounting for 45% of the total increase in reporting in the past three years.

Despite this achievement, there is a gap of around five lakh between reported and unreported cases in India, stymying the overall progress, the report says. It is the biggest gap registered by any country. 

A similar and significant gap exists in the case of drug-resistant TB patients.

Patients who become resistant to the first line of drugs are known as multi-drug resistant (MDR) TB patients. Those who become resistant to the second line of treatment as well, are known as extensively drug resistant (XDR) TB patients.

Ten countries accounted for about 75% of the global gap. India leads this category too, followed by the Philippines, Indonesia, China and Pakistan.

The resistance to drugs usually happens when a patient stops taking drugs. This may happen either due to their own volition or a shortage of drugs. 

India has been battling a shortage of drugs for MDR-TB, intermittently, in the last two years. Although the Indian government has consistently denied claims of any shortage.

Replying to The Wire‘s query in a virtual presser on October 29, WHO’s TB division head Tereza Kasaeva said the WHO is aware of the Indian problem of MDR TB drug shortage.

“Our regional representatives were closely following the situation and tried to support the Indian government. These are purely managerial issues. We hope it will be effectively mitigated and avoided in future because its extremely sensitive,” she added.

The problem still continues to exist. “At least two states – UP and Bihar are still facing a shortage of MDR TB drugs,” Ganesh Acharya, a TB survivor and treatment advocate told The Wire.   

To attest to the gap between the actual number of TB cases and the ones which get reported, the governments, including India’s, need to up their game with diagnostic tools.  

For the detection of non-drug resistant TB, the WHO has been recommending since 2011 the adoption of rapid molecular tests as against the traditional culture and microscopy methods. The latter not only take more time in giving final results, but are also less accurate than rapid tests. 

However, in India, only 20-30% of all TB cases are diagnosed through molecular tests, the report says.

Since TB can be transmitted from one person to another, the WHO recommends giving preventive treatment to the families of patients who have tested positive for TB. India has covered only 31% of such contacts of TB patients. 

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The WHO also recommends addressing the causes of TB. In the case of India, the elephant in the room is undernutrition. Undernutrition weakens the immune system of the body thus making healthy patients, especially contacts, vulnerable to TB infections. Those suffering from TB also need a healthy diet to improve treatment outcomes.