Let them adeau this world in peace

What can we do when we find our loved one suffering from an incurable disease? We know that we are going to loose our loved one, soon, very soon. We can see and feel the physical pain and mental agony he/she is suffering. And yet we can do nothing, because medical science doesn’t have a cure. Our loved one is lying in the hospital bed counting his/her last days. We knew death is inevitable, didn’t know it is such painful, for our loved one, for us. Is there no way to see our loved one leaving this earth happily?

Here comes the concept of hospice care. Hospice care is for people who are nearing the end of their lives. Hospice care is designed to relieve or decrease pain, or other symptoms, and provide as much quality time as possible with family and friends. But unlike other medical care, the focus of hospice care is no longer on curing or treating the underlying disease. The goal of hospice care is to offer as high a quality of life as possible during a person's final days.

Until the 20th century, most people spent their last days at home, surrounded, cared for, and comforted by family and friends. That tradition faded as hospitals became places of healing in many Western countries. Hospice care began in England as an inpatient facility providing care and comfort for the dying. In the United States, people usually receive hospice care at home, since most Americans prefer to spend their final days at home.
With hospice care, instead of spending your last weeks or months in a hospital, you're with loved ones in the home or a homelike setting. Although 90 percent of hospice care is provided at home, hospice is available wherever you actually live, including nursing homes or assisted-living residences. Some residential hospices designed specifically for hospice care also exist.

Many people receiving hospice care have cancer, but hospice is available for people with any terminal illness such as heart disease, dementia, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or any other condition.

Most hospice programs are run by nonprofit, independent organizations. Some are affiliated with hospitals, nursing homes or home health care agencies, and some are for-profit organizations. Hospice care services offer a multidisciplinary team of professionals that work to maximize comfort for the terminally ill person and to help support the family members and loved ones. A hospice care team usually consists of doctors, nurses, Home health aides, spiritual councilors, social workers and volunteers.

A hospice addresses two big fears a dying person may have — the fear of pain and the fear of being alone. The hospice staff administers appropriate pain relief, provides nursing care, and offers plenty of reassurance and support to your loved one and family members. Together, you can see to it that your loved one isn't alone during this last and important phase of life.

However, in India, such a service is almost unheard of. It is not that such a service is not available in the country. Though few in number, they can be found in Pain and Palliative Care Society, Calicut, Institute of Palliative Medicine in Cochin, and Regional Cancer Center Thiruvananthapuram.
However the awareness about the availability and existence of such a service is extremely low in the country. This calls for more awareness campaigns in the form street plays, newspaper articles, and other media coverage.

ALL ABOUT A NAME

We all love children. We all try to suggest a name for the newborn. Because, a name is an identity for a newborn which is perhaps more significant than its voter I card, ration card, or driving license. This is because, a name will cling to its existence all through its life.

We no longer suggest names that are somewhat old fashioned like Shyamaprashad, Gopinath, Gourishankar, or Purushuttam to ensure that they do not face embarrassment in the future because of their name. (Remember Khosla Ka Ghosla?) We may consult the mumerologist to add the extra ‘K’ to its name that will bring everlasting happiness in life. We consult numerous booklets and websites to gift the newborn an unique name that helps it to enlist itself in the universe’s directory.

But there are certain factors beyond our control which has the potential to make or break a name. Only time can say whether a name will be respected or ridiculed in the future. No I am not talking rubbish. Let’s take an example. I remember my school friend Kohinoor, named after the famous and precious diamond. He was expected to shine in his life like the wonder stone. But as he grew up, he was nicknamed ‘ultra thin’ by his classmates because of the obvious reason requiring no explanation. And no doubt, he became the laughing stock among his friends, and now, among his colleagues. Even in his campus recruitment interview, the interviewer gave a dirty grin hearing his name. Obviously, nobody had any idea about his future misfortune while naming the boy, as the condom manufacturer was nowhere in the scene then.

In our school bus, there was an identical twins named Rahul and Hrithik. Initially Rahul was famous among his classmates because of the back-to-back releases of the Shah Rukh Khan movies, whereas Hrithik was an ordinary name then. But the release of the film Kaho Na Pyaar Hai suddenly changed everything. Suddenly Hrithik became more popular.

I also remember that somebody named Hari Sadu lodged a defamation suit against the agency that made the Timesjobs advertisement.

So, a name has the potential to make or break one’s personality. Although one can make their names popular by their own deeds like SRK and Hrithik, the names of the poorer souls are at the mercy of the circumstances. I wonder what has happened to the girls named Chameli, Bubly or Madhubala. Either they have adopted a different name, or are still fighting a loosing battle.

So giving the best possible name to a newborn is as much a part of research as it is a matter of sheer chance. Who knows what comes out in the future that can boost or demolish one’s name. So let’s hope we don’t have to run after the lawyer for an affidavit.

Why Parents Are Sending Their Children on a Date

Today, suddenly more and more parents in our neighborhood are encouraging their children to fall in love! Yes, they no longer escort their daughters to the tuition classes. Most of them send their children to co-ed schools and colleges. They no longer threat their children with dire consequences if they are caught having an affair (unless it is with the same sex). And most importantly, they are increasingly giving their sons and daughters the freedom to choose their life-partners themselves. Is this the reason of their changed outlook? Can there be some economics behind this? This article actually hunts some economic rationale behind these changes in attitude.
I am heavily inspired by the paper, "The Market for Lemons: Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism" by economist George Akerlof. It discusses information asymmetry, which occurs when the seller knows more about a product than the buyer. The paper is discussed below in brief in order to develop the idea.
The paper by Akerlof describes how the interaction between quality heterogeneity and asymmetrical information can lead to the disappearance of a market where guarantees are indefinite. In this model, as quality is undistinguishable beforehand by the buyer (due to the asymmetry of information); incentives exist for the seller to pass off a low-quality good as a higher-quality one.
The buyer, however, takes this incentive into consideration, and takes the quality of the good to be uncertain. Only the average quality of the good will be considered, which in turn will have the side effect that goods that are above average in terms of quality will be driven out of the market. This mechanism is repeated until a no-trade equilibrium is reached.
As a consequence of the mechanism described in this paper, markets may fail to exist altogether in certain situations involving quality uncertainty. Examples include the market for used cars, the dearth of formal credit markets in developing countries and the unavailability of health insurance for the elderly. We encountered such a mechanism in India in 1970 in the market for fresh milk. Because so many merchants watered down their milk to increase their profits, buyers could not assess the milk’s butterfat content, the low-quality milk drove out the high-quality milk. The Indian National Dairy Development Board provided machines to measure butterfat content and created brand names to build buyers' trust in the milk they were buying. As a result, the quality of milk available in India improved.
But can this mechanism be applied to the ‘Marriage market’ in India? Certainly, the same economics’ keywords cannot be used for this market, and even ‘Marriage market’ may sound insulting. Leave alone the terms ‘buyers’, ‘sellers’, and ‘used’. However the general theme can be interpreted and compared with the mechanism described above. We proceed keeping these facts in mind.
Let us assume that a boy or a girl can get married in two different ways. They can fall in love with her school/college/workplace sweetheart and can choose them as life-partner in period 1. If they do not fall in love in the first period, then in the beginning of the second period a prospective partner is selected for the boy/girl whom they marry (arranged marriage, that is). We rule out all the intermediate cases and arranged marriage for the bride and groom in period 1.
We also assume that a boy and a girl falls in love with each other and gets attracted to the opposite gender on the basis of certain characteristics like physical attributes, culture, attitude, occupation, family background and others. Also let these be the same attributes that the prospective brides and grooms consider for an arranged marriage. Based on these attributes the boys and girls of marriageable age can be categorized into two classes, H and L, where H refers to the categories of boys and girls possessing the superior attributes compared to their less gifted counterparts L. One needs sufficient amount of time and interaction to assess which the type to which another person belongs. Both the type of boys and girls will wish to marry the H category boys and girls off course.
Now, if the boys and girls could not find their life partner in period 1, they are subjected to arranged marriage in period 2. But, in case of arranged marriage the prospective bride and grooms may belong to any category H or L. And unlike in love marriage, the prospective brides and grooms cannot know the exact category or type of their prospective life partner, because they do not get sufficient time to assess their type. Thus chances are there that the L type may masquerade themselves as H type. But the prospective brides and grooms are aware of this fact and H type will not be willing to go for arranged marriage, and would rather go for love marriage. Ultimately, this will drive all the H type boys and girls from going for arranged marriage, who would be better off marrying their own choice in period 1. So only the L categories will be left for the arranged marriage.
This may be a reason, why more and more youth are going for a love marriage, and are getting the support from their parents. So now we have another reason for falling in love…