With the year 2013 coming to an end, yet another volume of Sankalp Patrika will wind up being archives and a legacy of the change it has been trying to bring in the blood banking scenario across Karnataka. As Sankalp Patrika enters 4th year of publication, this is a good time to recollect the good and the bad, the highs and the lows of the journey we have had together in the previous year.
How does it feel if half of the buses and trains supposed to be running are canceled at random? And how long will we stand such disruption? At most a day or two, maybe. Well, a similar disruption in the daily lives of children has been happening quietly for years. About half of the time, there is no teaching going on in government primary schools, while these voiceless students suffer.
Barely two decades ago, India held more than half of world’s polio cases. In February last year, India's name was struck off the list of polio-endemic countries as there was no case of polio reported in the country for over a year. In three months from now, India will be declared a polio-free nation.
It's been years since we organised the very first emergency wing training - but it still is as refreshing and as enchanting as it used to be. The send half of 2nd October was well spend with the emergency team decoding the intricacies of blood and emergency request handling. Each year the emergency team gets its own quota of new volunteers. Gradually these volunteers transition from people who do not know what to do when someone needs blood into people who can help with the most critical blood requests. It requires immense effort to learn, understand and ask.
The Jatropha Curcas, also known as 'danti', is a strange species of flora. It's leafy and green - sometimes it takes the form of a shrub, but it can also become a tree up to six meters tall. It came from the tropics of Central America and can thrive in semi-arid climates with low-nutrient soil. Jatropha plants bear a poisonous little fruit - inside each are several black seeds.
Nothing comes for free. Never. Someone needs to pay the price. Independence of our nation does not imply that this nation will transform by itself. Someone, somewhere will have to desire, strive for and achieve every little step in the direction for betterment of this nation. The sentiment is high in media and on social networks. The opinions are getting more articulated in the educated section of the society. But let it be known and well understood that no amount of opinion and wish-list counts. What counts is the conversion of thoughts into actions.
Mian Akbar Shah, the recipient, had never got a telegram from the Supreme leader. He is excited. Palpitating. But he knows better than sharing this news with anybody.
On June 13, 2011, the day after Baba Ramdev broke his 9 days fast under media arc lights, another sage, admitted in the same Himalayan hospital in Dehradun, Swami Nigamananda passed away. He was on a fast since February 19th, to save river Ganga from illegal sand mining and stone-crushing in Uttarakhand.
The Chotanagpur region is the adivasi dominated plateau in eastern India, which covers much of Jharkhand as well as adjacent parts of Odisha, West Bengal, Bihar and Chhattisgarh.
Dashrath Manjhi was born into a poor labourer family in Gahlour village near Gaya in Bihar, India.He is also known as Mountain Man. Manjhi's wife, Falguni Devi, died due to lack of medical treatment because the nearest town with a doctor was 70 kilometres away from their village in Bihar, India.
