Hindi Aftermath, Part II: The Sequel to the Bestselling Novel by R.K. Narayan

The end of an era, playwright Arthur Miller had once remarked, is marked by the exhaustion of its basic illusions. That partly holds true for the political engagements of Hindi films after the passing away of Jawaharlal Nehru in 1964. But, did that imply that the following period had to invent new illusions to distinguish political narratives of a new era on the silver screen? Alternatively, did that mean that the disillusionment and the resultant anger itself became the key political conversation in Hindi films? Such questions also entail the accounts of how the emerging power configuration and policy initiatives intersected with lives of individuals- both as material beings and as social creatures.

Though the scientific approach to agriculture was evident in the advent of green revolution in the later part of the decade, the resurrection of the farmer as the flagbearer of national development was a definite point of departure in how films interpreted state goals. The film ends with a scene in which an injured soldier finds a new purpose in life as his foreign-educated brother is reconciled to working on his farm land with the possibilities of high productivity. The new-found confidence in the Green Revolution leading the country to food self-sufficiency is obvious in the scene as it ends with reorienting patriotic energy with mere desh ki dharti.The film is somehow hinged on a plot to put modernity advocated by Nehru at the service of the Gandhian idea of a self-sufficient village in which a soldier gets his due, thanks to the country abandoning pacifist polemics in the light of recent experiences.

hindi Aftermath, Part II

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In the final scene, the protagonist and his son, played with remarkable grace by Balraj Sahni and Farooq Sheikh, respectively, on their way to leave for Pakistan after years of dilemma, realise the universality of political context as they end their isolation by participating in a march demanding jobs. They seek association with the human condition of material deprivation in a politically structured society, thus forming new contracts of citizenship with millions of people across identities.

At 11.00 PM on December 2 1984, while most of the one million residents of Bhopal slept, an operator at the plant noticed a small leak of methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas and increasing pressure inside a storage tank. The vent-gas scrubber, a safety device designer to neutralize toxic discharge from the MIC system, had been turned off three weeks prior [3]. Apparently a faulty valve had allowed one ton of water for cleaning internal pipes to mix with forty tons of MIC [1]. A 30 ton refrigeration unit that normally served as a safety component to cool the MIC storage tank had been drained of its coolant for use in another part of the plant [3]. Pressure and heat from the vigorous exothermic reaction in the tank continued to build. The gas flare safety system was out of action and had been for three months. At around 1.00 AM, December 3, loud rumbling reverberated around the plant as a safety valve gave way sending a plume of MIC gas into the early morning air [4]. Within hours, the streets of Bhopal were littered with human corpses and the carcasses of buffaloes, cows, dogs and birds. An estimated 3,800 people died immediately, mostly in the poor slum colony adjacent to the UCC plant [1, 5]. Local hospitals were soon overwhelmed with the injured, a crisis further compounded by a lack of knowledge of exactly what gas was involved and what its effects were [1]. It became one of the worst chemical disasters in history and the name Bhopal became synonymous with industrial catastrophe [5].

The toxic plume had barely cleared when, on December 7, the first multi-billion dollar lawsuit was filed by an American attorney in a U.S. court. This was the beginning of years of legal machinations in which the ethical implications of the tragedy and its affect on Bhopal's people were largely ignored. In March 1985, the Indian government enacted the Bhopal Gas Leak Disaster Act as a way of ensuring that claims arising from the accident would be dealt with speedily and equitably. The Act made the government the sole representative of the victims in legal proceedings both within and outside India. Eventually all cases were taken out of the U.S. legal system under the ruling of the presiding American judge and placed entirely under Indian jurisdiction much to the detriment of the injured parties.

The tragedy of Bhopal continues to be a warning sign at once ignored and heeded. Bhopal and its aftermath were a warning that the path to industrialization, for developing countries in general and India in particular, is fraught with human, environmental and economic perils. Some moves by the Indian government, including the formation of the MoEF, have served to offer some protection of the public's health from the harmful practices of local and multinational heavy industry and grassroots organizations that have also played a part in opposing rampant development. The Indian economy is growing at a tremendous rate but at significant cost in environmental health and public safety as large and small companies throughout the subcontinent continue to pollute. Far more remains to be done for public health in the context of industrialization to show that the lessons of the countless thousands dead in Bhopal have truly been heeded.

After liberation, many Jewish survivors feared to return to their former homes because of the antisemitism (hatred of Jews) that persisted in parts of Europe and the trauma they had suffered. Some who returned home feared for their lives. In postwar Poland, for example, there were a number of pogroms (violent anti-Jewish riots). The largest of these occurred in the town of Kielce in 1946 when Polish rioters killed at least 42 Jews and beat many others.

The Jewish Brigade Group (a Palestinian Jewish unit of the British army) was formed in late 1944. Together with former partisan fighters displaced in central Europe, the Jewish Brigade Group created the Brihah (Hebrew for "flight" or "escape"). This organization that aimed to facilitate the exodus of Jewish refugees from Europe to Palestine. Jews already living in Palestine organized "illegal" immigration by ship (also known as Aliyah Bet). British authorities intercepted and turned back most of these vessels, however. In 1947 the British forced the ship Exodus 1947, carrying 4,500 Holocaust survivors headed for Palestine, to return to Germany. In most cases, the British detained Jewish refugees denied entry into Palestine in detention camps on the Mediterranean island of Cyprus.

The social and economic upheaval that followed World War I gave rise to many radical right wing parties in Weimar Germany. The harsh provisions of the Treaty of Versailles led many in the general population to believe that Germany had been "stabbed in the back" by the "November criminals." By "November Criminals" they meant those who had helped to form the new Weimar government and broker the peace which Germans had so desperately wanted, but which had ended so disastrously in the Versailles Treaty.

Vernunftsrepublikaner ("republicans by reason"), individuals like the historian Friedrich Meinecke and Nobel prize-winning author Thomas Mann, had at first resisted democratic reform. They now felt compelled to support the Weimar Republic as the least worst alternative. They tried to steer their compatriots away from polarization to the radical Left and Right. The German nationalist Right promised to revise the Versailles Treaty through force if necessary, and such promises gained traction in respectable circles. Meanwhile, there was fear of an imminent Communist threat following the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and short-lived Communist revolutions or coups in Hungary (Bela Kun) and in Germany itself (e.g., the Sparticist Uprising). This fear shifted German political sentiment decidedly toward right-wing causes.

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According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) surveillance report of traumatic brain injuries, about 2.87 million TBI-related ED visits, hospitalizations and deaths occurred in the United States in 2014. Each year, more than 800,000 children are treated for TBI at emergency departments in the U.S. The highest incidence of TBI occurred in people over the age of 75, children aged 0-4 years and individuals aged 15-24 years.

University of Pittsburgh's Brain Trauma Research Center reports more than 300,000 sports-related concussions occur annually in the U.S. Additionally, the likelihood of suffering a concussion while playing a contact sport is estimated to be as high as 19% per year of play; in other words, almost all athletes of contact sports suffer from a concussion within five years of participation. It has been reported that more than 62,000 concussions are sustained each year in high school contact sports. Among college football players, 34% have had one concussion and 20% have endured multiple concussions. Estimates show that 4-20% of college and high school football players sustain a brain injury over the course of one season. The risk of concussion in football is three to six times higher in players who have had a previous concussion.

A study conducted by McGill University in Montreal found that 60% of college soccer players reported symptoms of a concussion at least once during the season. The study also reveals that concussion rates in soccer players were comparable to those in football. According to this study, athletes who suffered a concussion were four to six times more likely to suffer a second concussion. Research such as this has led to greater interest in developing protective headgear for soccer participants, but it is not clear that such headgear actually reduces the risk of concussion. 2ff7e9595c