A HARROWING MEDICAL CRISIS. A DOCTOR IN THE EYE OF THE STORM. HIS ACCOUNT OF WHAT REALLY HAPPENED. On the evening of 10 August 2017, liquid oxygen ran out at the state-run Baba Raghav Das Medical College’s Nehru Hospital in Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh. Reportedly, over the next two days, more than eighty patients – sixty-three children and eighteen adults – lost their lives. In the intervening hours, Dr Kafeel Khan, the junior-most lecturer at the college’s paediatrics department, went to extraordinary lengths to secure oxygen cylinders, perform emergency treatment and rally the staff in order to prevent as many deaths as possible. As the news of the tragedy grabbed national attention, Khan was called a hero for working ceaselessly to control the crisis and drawing attention to a healthcare system in dire need of repair. But a few days later, he found himself suspended and that an FIR had been filed against nine individuals, including him, for corruption and medical negligence, among other grave charges. Soon after he was summarily carted off to jail. The Gorakhpur Hospital Tragedy is Kafeel Khan’s first-hand chronicle of the events of that fateful night in August 2017 and the gut-wrenching turmoil that followed – a suspension without end, an eight-month-long incarceration and a relentless fight for justice in the face of extreme apathy and persecution.

When, on February 22, 1790, a French barge by the name of ‘Bienvenue’ came ashore Pondichéry with the news of the events in Paris around the meeting of the Estates General, the storming of the Bastille and the abolition of feudal rights; it sent out a wave of topsy-turving repercussions amongst both the French and the English colonial administrations in India. Excited with the newly found principles that were inherent in the cries of the Revolution in France, yet, not knowing their precise socio-political extents and implications, each of the five French settlements on the Indian subcontinent came to create their own individual ‘revolutions’ – periods of mostly confusing and sometimes violent socio-political upheaval. Wellesley, on the other hand, fearing the influence of the principles of the French Revolution on the employees of the English East India Company, asked his superiors in London for the establishment of a college in Fort William in order to train men in the service of the Company against such ‘erroneous principles’. How do these revolutions in each of the French settlements in India – in some ways, mirror events of the 1789 Revolution in the metropolis – unfold? Where, exactly, did the universalist values of the Revolution find its boundaries when applied in contemporaneous colonial India? And how were the diametrically opposite values of imperial and republican France sought to be accommodated in such a context? Labernadie’s intricately detailed narrative from 1930 developed out of a privileged access to the French colonial administrative (yet unpublished) archives and correspondences based in Pondichéry, along with the contemporary interventions of Jacques Weber and Hari Shankar Vasudevan ensure a volume that is not only rich in material resources, but also intellectually nourishing; compelling its readers to reflect on questions of transcolonial experiences and mixed modernities in colonial India, as much as the very consequences of a revolution that fundamentally changed the manner in which politics came to be thought of thence.

The discourse traces the path that China traversed from 1840-1969. In the first phase feudal China was transformed into a semi-feudal and semi-colonial China. In the second phase, the teeming multitude of the world over saw how the country, the happy hunting ground of different imperialist powers, was transformed means.

At first sight, the following four real incidents that happened in India seem unrelated to each other. “Due to lack of oxygen supply, at least sixty infants allegedly die in a government hospital” – Gorakhpur, August 2017 “Treatment for Dengue infection costs Rs 15 Lakhs in a corporate hospital" – Gurugram, November 2017 “I want to become a heart specialist and offer free treatment to poor people” announces Twelfth standard exam topper – Odisha, June 2019. “Doctor brutally attacked and hospital vandalised by aggrieved relatives after patient in ICU dies”– Latur, July 2020 But the harsh reality is that they are very much inter-linked to one another. Somewhere between losing innocent children to lack of basic infrastructure, and shelling out huge sums in private medical behemoths, our healthcare system seems to have lost its way. Somewhere, between the transition of an exemplary student into an ethical doctor, to his killing by furious citizens, we have lost a noble soul. Who is at fault – the individual, the society or the system? This fictional story endeavours to identify the actual problems maligning our healthcare system. The Phoenix Doctors is a medical drama based on multiple, real life incidents. Karthik and Meera, the main protagonists, are intelligent, meritorious and empathetic doctors. The story takes us through their gruelling days of medical education and later their tenures in an inadequately maintained government hospital and a private multi-specialty hospital run by an industrialist. Unable to bear the avarice of the hospital’s administrators, they set out to start an affordable, high-quality healthcare initiative of their own. But do their noble intentions see the light of the day? How far would bureaucracy, red-tapism, and capitalism go to stymie their growth?

Papers presented at a seminar organized by the Ramsaday College, Howrah.

First Published in 1977. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This manual provides a quick revision of good pediatric history taking and examination in a very simple manner. It contains numerous mnemonics, tables, charts, diagrams, formulas and easy to remember principles to enable easy registration and recall of the clinical aspect of pediatrics. In this edition many sections have been revised and enlarged such as growth and development, nutrition, immunization, neonatology, common and essential used drugs, instruments, and X-rays. This pocket-sized clinical manual is very handy to carry in the ward and refer to immediately when required. It is a concise yet comprehensive, easy to use, manual designed to serve the felt needs of undergraduate students and residents.

A wide-ranging survey of the Indian sub-continent, Modern South Asia gives an enthralling account of South Asian history. After sketching the pre-modern history of the subcontinent, the book concentrates on the last three centuries from c.1700 to the present. Jointly written by two leading Indian and Pakistani historians, Modern South Asia offers a rare depth of understanding of the social, economic and political realities of this region. This comprehensive study includes detailed discussions of: the structure and ideology of the British raj; the meaning of subaltern resistance; the refashioning of social relations along lines of caste class, community and gender; and the state and economy, society and politics of post-colonial South Asia The new edition includes a rewritten, accessible introduction and a chapter by chapter revision to take into account recent research. The second edition will also bring the book completely up to date with a chapter on the period from 1991 to 2002 and adiscussion of the last millennium in sub-continental history.