Editorial

Cancer can be contained, and it can be beaten as well — that’s the belief driving the comprehensive and many-hued efforts of the Tata Trusts to help India cope with a burden of tragic proportions. Our cover story details the different components in the cancer care programme of the Trusts, from the ‘distributed care’ model to partnerships to the setting up of cancer centres big and small in underserved regions.

This is a programme built on the pillars of affordability, accessibility, high-quality care and awareness-building. Easing the suffering of patients and their caregivers, particularly the poor among them, is one of the primary objectives of an initiative that has been strengthened through a range of partnerships, with governments and institutional bodies, with private sector enterprises and philanthropies. We have highlighted one such partnership, with Federal Bank, which provides funding to needy patients at hospitals supported by the Trusts.

Social scientist Archana Mehendale is our interview personality in this edition of Horizons. With an expertise in education and child rights built over more than three decades of research and advocacy, Ms Mehendale offers a fresh perspective on the state of schooling in India, and the necessity of giving children their due in the country’s development agenda. In our ‘opinion’ section, Arnab Mandal of the Tata Trusts examines artificial intelligence in the context of social development.

Also in our coverage spread is a feature story that swings to the beat of an exceptional endeavour based in Wayanad in Kerala. The Earthlore Fellowship programme celebrates tribal musicians, their traditions and heritage in an environment where the lines between tutors and learners are non-existent.

Images tell the story in our showcase segment, which this time out focuses on a subject that in many parts of India continues to evoke stigma and silence. The ‘menstrual hygiene management’ (MHM) programme of the Trusts has touched the lives of women and adolescent girls — and men and boys, too — in seven states. Its message is simple and potent: menstruation is a natural and healthy physiological phenomenon, to be managed with dignity and without fear.

Christabelle Noronha

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