Anu Kumar
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Articles by Anu Kumar
Multi-agent systems: when splitting an agent helps and when it just costs more
Splitting one agent into several is one of the most popular moves in agent design, and often the most expensive one. It helps in a specific situation. Outside it, you pay more for a system that's harder to debug. What multiple agents actually buy The real benefit is separate context windows. A subagent researching one question works in a clean context that holds only that question, its tools and its findings.
Multi-tenant architecture: shared schema vs database per tenant
Every SaaS product has to decide where one customer's data stops and the next one's starts. There are three common answers. On a good day they look much the same. They differ in what happens on a bad one. The three models Shared schema: One database, one set of tables, and a tenant_id column on every row. Cheapest to run and simplest to migrate. Isolation depends on every query filtering by tenant_id. Schema per tenant: One database server with a separate schema for each tenant.
Human-in-the-loop AI agents: where approval gates belong
Most agent demos add a human by putting a confirm button at the end. By then the agent has already sent the email or written the row. A useful approval gate sits inside the loop, right before the one step that changes the outside world. Gate side effects, not answers An agent does two kinds of work. It reads: searches, retrieves documents, calls APIs that only return data. And it acts: sends messages, updates records, moves money, deletes things.
FROM LABORATORY TO VILLAGE: CAN BIOTECHNOLOGY MAKE HEALTHCARE TRULY AFFORDABLE?
THE REAL SUCCESS OF BIOTECHNOLOGY WILL NOT BE MEASURED BY HOW ADVANCED OUR LABORATORIES BECOME, BUT BY HOW EFFECTIVELY THEIR DISCOVERIES REACH ORDINARY PEOPLE. By Dr. Anu Kumar Healthcare is entering a remarkable technological era. Scientists can now read genomes, develop advanced vaccines, engineer microorganisms, create rapid diagnostic tests and use artificial intelligence to analyze complex biological information.
How a British police officer turned his Indian postings into pulp fiction
As his 30-year career in the British Indian police drew to a close, Edmund Cox found himself confounded by a wave of burglaries rippling through the Bombay suburb of Bandora, now Bandra. The houses being broken into belonged to wealthy families who had abandoned them during the plague of 1896-’97. For some time, the police had no idea who was responsible. Then, two thieves were caught in the act. Their confession, Cox recalled, stunned the police.
When Gandhi and other Indian thinkers joined the world to take on the race problem
In July 1911, more than 2,000 delegates from 50 countries and 22 governments gathered at the University of London for what was a truly ambitious international conference. The Universal Races Congress, as it was called, had set itself no ordinary task.
The Indian freedom fighter who ended his career as a captain on ‘Star Trek’
Reginald Lal Singh’s most memorable screen appearance came at the very end of his acting career. In 1967, he played Captain Chandra in Court Martial, an episode of the original Star Trek series. It was a fittingly unusual final role for a man whose life had already seen adventures that rivalled the fictional worlds of Hollywood. From the early 1950s onward, Singh appeared in a succession of Hollywood productions, usually in minor roles.
राष्ट्रीय स्वास्थ्य के लिए चुनौती बनी छिपी भूख
Home / टिप्पणी / राष्ट्रीय स्वास्थ्य के लिए चुनौती बनी छिपी भूख छिपी हुई भूख का अर्थ है शरीर में आवश्यक सूक्ष्म पोषक तत्वों की कमी, जैसे आयरन, विटामिन बी12, विटामिन डी, जिंक, आयोडीन और फोलिक एसिड। यह कमी थकान, बार-बार संक्रमण, कमजोरी, ध्यान की कमी, हड्डियों की समस्या और रोग प्रतिरोधक क्षमता में गिरावट जैसे लक्षणों के रूप में दिखाई देती है। आज का भारत एक विसंगति दौर से गुजर रहा है। एक ओर देश तेज़ी से आर्थिक प्रगति कर रहा है, बाज़ारों में खाद्य सामग्री की कोई कमी नहीं है और स्वास्थ्य सेवाएं भी...
CAN SCIENCE MAKE OUR FOOD SAFER? A QUIET TECHNOLOGICAL SHIFT WE MUST NOTICE
By Dr. Anu Kumar Food safety is no longer a distant concern discussed only in laboratories or regulatory offices. It is now a daily household issue. From pesticide residues in vegetables to microbial contamination in packaged foods, the Indian consumer often eats with uncertainty rather than confidence. Over the years, as a teacher and researcher in biotechnology, I have seen how quietly science works in the background—long before it reaches the public eye.
Remembering the journalist expelled from India for taking on the East India Company
In June 1818, when James Silk Buckingham arrived in Calcutta as captain of the Humayun Shah, he did not anticipate that his seafaring career was about to end. The ship’s owner, the Imam of Muscat, ordered him to transport enslaved people from the East to Zanzibar. Buckingham, a committed opponent of slavery, refused outright. The refusal left him stranded in Calcutta without employment. Rather than return to England, he decided to remain in India.
A career forged in Calcutta journalism ended in disgrace for Sandford Arnot
In his short yet eventful life, Sandford Arnot worked in a striking range of occupations. He was at various times a trader, journalist, pamphleteer, teacher, translator and secretary to one of the most influential Indian reformers of the 19th century, Ram Mohan Roy. His career unfolded across Calcutta and London, shaped by ambition, controversy and the tightening grip of the East India Company over both commerce and speech. Arnot first made his name in India as a journalist.
How the Indian dancer and psychic became sculptor Jacob Epstein’s muse
In 1925, British newspapers announced that the eminent sculptor Jacob Epstein had found a new muse. She was neither English nor European. The Daily Record described her as beautiful “in a way that perhaps only women of the east can be beautiful”, praising the inscrutability of her expression, the “symmetry of [her] form and dignity of mien”. Her name was Sunita Devi and she had arrived from India with a small child, an older sister and a past that has now blurred into legend.
GUT HEALTH, IMMUNITY, AND THE SCIENCE WE OFTEN IGNORE
By Dr. Anu Kumar For generations, Indian households intuitively understood the value of fermented foods. Curd, buttermilk, kanji—these were not dietary trends but daily habits. Modern science has now given these traditions a name: gut health. What is less widely known is that the gut plays a central role in immunity, metabolism, and even mental well-being.
‘More about psychological and social challenges now’: Author Bharti Kirchner on diaspora writing
Bharti Kirchner (formerly Bharati Nandi) was born in Kalimpong, northern West Bengal, and studied mathematics at Presidency College, Kolkata. She moved to the US for post-graduate studies and was among the first systems engineers of her generation. She first worked for a railroad company, and later with Bank of America and IBM.
FOOD WASTE, PLASTIC POLLUTION, AND A SCIENTIFIC OPPORTUNITY INDIA CANNOT IGNORE
By Dr. Anu Kumar India faces a paradox. We waste enormous amounts of food, yet struggle with food security. At the same time, plastic packaging—used to protect food—has become a major environmental threat. These two problems are often discussed separately. They should not be. Advances in biotechnology now allow us to rethink food packaging itself. Materials derived from natural and microbial sources can replace conventional plastics.
In Manila, a Singular Home With Global Influences
The decorator Junie Rodriguez has created a space for his sister in the Philippines that reflects many cultures and traditions — but most of all his own. In the living room of the home that the Manila-based Junie Rodriguez decorated for his sister Mary Faye Garcia, a vintage rattan settee, a cabinet made of stained concrete and salvaged steel plate scraps, a Moroccan pouf and an Anglo Indian thatha chair.
The Indian raja who gave away his powers to the praja
On August 11, 1940, Mahatma Gandhi wrote a short article in his weekly magazine Harijan, beginning it with high praise: “Who does not know little Aundh? Little it is in size and income, but it has made itself great and famous by its Chief having bestowed, unasked, the boon of full self-government on his people.” Gandhi was referring to a remarkable decision by the Raja of the princely state of Aundh.
‘The Silversmith’s Puzzle’: An action-packed, colourful murder mystery set in 19th-century Bombay
Detectives come with many a quirk, but they invariably share something in common: they are all outsiders, marked by certain kinks and eccentricities. Holmes played his violin and “smoked recreationally”, among other things, whenever he put his mind to work. Poirot’s grey cells remain equally famous, as his fussiness about dressing and perfectionism for other sundry matters.
When a unique university on a ship sailed up to India for ‘cultural immersion’
In January 1927, a large contingent of American students from the Floating University travelled by train from Bombay to Agra, a journey of two nights and one day, to see the Taj Mahal. When Dewitt Reddick, a 23-year-old newly-minted journalism graduate, got his first glimpse of the Mughal monument, he said it was “gleaming in the morning sun...like a dream palace from the Arabian Nights”.
"SUPERBUGS AND SILENT WARS: THE URGENT CALL TO FIGHT ANTIMICROBIAL RESISTANCE"
By Dr. Anu Kumar In the quiet corners of hospitals, inside ordinary homes, and even in our food systems, an invisible war is being waged—a war against microbes we once controlled. Antibiotics, hailed as miracle drugs in the 20th century, are now losing their power. The rise of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is one of the most urgent and under-discussed public health threats of our time.
Fermented Functional Foods as Potent Antioxidant Sources: Recent Advances and Future Prospects
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When cars were still rare, two US women decided to experience India from behind the wheel
In 1904, Margarita Grace Phipps and her husband John ‘Jay’ Schaffer Phipps were spending their unusual honeymoon in India, driving through the country, camping in the wilderness, when they encountered a tiger. The scene is described in an article in The New York Times on March 20, 1904.
My endless quest to understand Bhagwan Singh and Bhogwan Singh
It was in the summer of 2016 that I first came across Bhagwan Singh. He was a popular “turban-wrapper” in 1930s Hollywood who shared his name with a revolutionary-turned-lecturer who too lived in Los Angeles. Bhagwan was a common enough name, so I surmised these were two very different men: Bhagwan Singh and Bhagwan Singh. I was right – and wrong. Soon enough, I gathered that their names were spelled differently.
A Beach House in the Philippines, Unlike Anything Else on the Islands Original
IN THE QUIET Philippine province of Pangasinan, about three hours north of Manila, depending on the city's often heavy traffic, there was once a small beach house - an open-air bamboo-and-mahogany pavilion with walled-off bedrooms and a thatched roof - on 50 or 60 acres of otherwise empty oceanfront land.
The complex story of the first British Indian to win an Olympic medal
As a star athlete and skillful actor, Norman Pritchard was intimately aware of the vagaries of fame. “There is nothing to the fame that blazes one’s name aloft in electric letters overnight,” he said. “One is quite apt to awaken one day and find that the electric letters spell failure where they once spelled success.” Both success and failure had courted him at different times.
When the US was panicking over Indian immigration in 1910s, this man tried to assuage its fears
In February 1914, Sudhindra Bose appeared before a congressional committee in Washington DC to depose about a burning question of the time: the “Hindu labour immigration” to the United States. Bose had recently begun teaching political science at the State University of Iowa and was the president of the Hindusthan Association, a collective of Indians studying in the US. He took his place before the committee armed with copious facts.
The ugly history of Boer prisoner-of-war camps in India
In December 1991, when Enuga Srinivasulu Reddy, a UN official, visited St Paul’s war cemetery in Ambala, Haryana, the decay was unmissable. The church still bore signs of the heavy damage it suffered during the 1965 India-Pakistan War and the cemetery had a forlorn look. Tall weeds grew around the grounds. Amid them, Reddy found a gravestone marking the resting place of 20 Boer prisoners of war who had died in Ambala.
How BRAC, Governments, and the World Bank Scale Innovations to Combat Poverty - World Bank
The World Bank Group originally published this feature story on November 11, 2024. By Rasha Natour, Senior Specialist, Policy and Partnerships, BRAC’s Ultra-Poor Graduation Initiative The number of people living in extreme poverty continues to be alarming and disheartening. The World Bank estimates that around —a number that will likely increase due to ongoing threats of climate change, conflict, and inequality.
How an Indian journalist ended up playing a role in the history of three countries
Catching his audience’s attention must never have been hard for Karim Ghani. He was “a tall, thin, slender man, with unmanageable jet black hair and large dark eyes that stared with a hint of fanaticism at people he spoke to,” writes researcher-journalist Haja Maideen.
As a fighter and a peace broker, an Indian played a memorable role in Indonesia’s freedom struggle
When TD Kundan migrated to Surabaya in present-day Indonesia in 1931, he could not have foreseen what life had in store for him. Like other Sindhis in Surabaya, Kundan had wanted to be a trader – to set up his own business and tend to his family.
The British writer who found inspiration in India and the Great Game
Rattray Carington knew something was off as soon as Albert Mueller stood up from the hammock chair. In Mueller’s salutation there was a distinct “stamp of birth and breeding” that did not match his surroundings. In that moment Carrington, the superintendent of police of Nymoorie, decided to investigate. Mueller had moved to India from Austria seven years earlier, making “the free British Government” the ruler of his choice.
The Right’s Anti-Abortion Agenda Could Have Impacts Around the World
If implemented, Project 2025 would reinstate the infamous Global Gag Rule blocking discussion of abortion.
Project 2025 Would Clamp Down on Global Abortion Rights, Too | Common Dreams
It has been two years since the U.S. Supreme Court blew up federal protection for abortion, handing states the power to enact abortion bans and realizing the decades-long fever-dream of anti-rights actors. Though a minority in the U.S., these extremists are loud and determined and won’t stop at our borders.
The secret, political mission behind a woman pioneer’s exploration of the Himalayas
In November 1869, as the rains ended in Darjeeling, Nina Mazuchelli set out with her husband, a friend she called C and a team of nearly 90 coolies towards the eastern Himalayas, or as she called them, “the Indian Alps”. It was an arduous journey that took them through steep mountain crossings, narrow gorges and treacherous ravines. Uncertainty could stalk them anytime, anywhere.
From Poverty to Prosperity: How Scaling Ultra-Poor Graduation Programmes Drive Sustainable Change - Oxford Martin School
This article was originally published on the Oxford Martin School’s blog on July 12, 2024. With around 700 million people globally living on less than $2 per day, there is an urgent international agenda to eliminate extreme poverty. The Ultra-Poor Graduation (UPG) approach, first launched by the international development organisation BRAC in the early 2000s, has emerged as a powerful and proven strategy to address this issue.
How a tailor found himself in years of captivity while seeking the origin of the Brahmaputra river
Kinthup had shown himself to be a reliable companion and helper. He was already familiar with the Tsangpo’s route from Lhasa to Chetang, and as far as Gyala Sindong. Kinthup could easily have been an explorer in his own right, but he had neither been schooled nor trained to record field observations methodically. As things turned out, it was Kinthup’s phenomenal memory and his accurate description of places that helped early surveyors pin down quite a bit of the Brahmaputra mystery.
Rock solid identity proofing: Combining multiple checks in a single workflow
Data & Analytics Insights Ongoing digitalisation and rising financial crime levels, coupled with a strict regulatory environment, mean that organisations need to adopt a robust, holistic approach to risk management – and a core element of this revolves around identity verification. Rather than relying on individual signals to verify identities, combining multiple methods – including document, biometric and database checks – can help establish greater levels of trust.
Life in a heatwave: What it's like, and what we need to do
Hundreds of people died across Asia in April and May 2024 as the region sweltered under blistering temperatures. It was so hot that schools had to be closed for millions of children in Bangladesh, along with in the Philippines, the Indian state of Tripura and South Sudan.
The climate crisis is a sexual health and reproductive rights emergency Original
In the wake of Earth Day, West Africa is facing a historic and deadly heatwave, last month was the tenth hottest month in a row in the U.S., and Americans and people across the globe are already bracing for what scientists are predicting will be yet another record-breaking summer with more extreme heat and weather events in store. Those of us paying attention know it to be true: the climate crisis is here.
In Japan, a Place for a Famous Artistic Director to Hide by the Sea Original
The designer and record producer Nigo has built a minimalist retreat where the Pacific Ocean itself is practically an architectural feature. AS THE FOUNDER of the streetwear brands A Bathing Ape and Human Made and the artistic director of the French luxury brand Kenzo, the designer and record producer Nigo has, over 30 years, asserted himself as one of the most revered aesthetic talents in Japan.
Arley Munson’s words are a troubling reminder of how Kipling’s India treated women
When Arley Munson was young, she read a book that moved her profoundly. In the book there was a picture of a “Hindu child” being “offered as sacrifice to a crocodile”. The image first shocked, then inspired Munson. It was in that moment that she resolved to work to ease the world’s suffering. Munson became a doctor and practised in the United States, France and India, where she was particularly troubled by the state of women’s health.
One visit to India was enough to inspire writer Lawrence Blochman for a lifetime
Terence O’Reilly was a quintessential thriller hero. First introduced by writer Lawrence Blochman in 1936 in the short story The Zarapore Beat, he was described as a towering New York policeman with big shoulders and big feet. Smarts he had in plenty. Deputed to a visiting Indian prince as a “marshal of personal safety”, he accompanied his charge to Zarapore, a fictional kingdom in north India, and saved the day with his quick thinking.
India deeply disappointed writer Frieda Hauswirth but she never gave up writing about it
When Frieda Hauswirth arrived in Bombay in 1920, she was brimming with anticipation and eagerness. India had always been a fascination of hers: she had read its epics, met its freedom fighters, been familiar with its thoughts. By her side was her Indian husband, an agricultural scientist who wanted to set up a sugar plant in his homeland. Hauswirth was convinced that her “significant” inter-racial marriage would “tear down human barriers”, further “tolerance, and human understanding”.
An American helped set up India’s first aircraft factory before he became a CIA spy
In October 1939, two entrepreneurs found themselves on the same Pan American flight from Honolulu to Hong Kong. One was William Douglas Pawley, the president of one of the largest aviation companies in East Asia. And the other was Walchand Hirachand, the chairman of the first swadeshi shipping firm, Scindia Steam Navigation Company, who had business interests in construction, insurance and sugar industries. The two got talking about their shared interest: aviation.
President Biden says he’s fighting back against abortion bans. He’s ignoring the oldest one
We are in the midst of a monumental reckoning for last year’s Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade. Abortion rights have won in every election since the ruling, and politicians are scrambling to respond to a popular constituency that they neglected for years.
How an American woman built one of India’s most prestigious medical schools
The story of how Ida Sophia Scudder became a doctor is as poignant as it is disquieting. Sometime in 1890, a late-night knock on her door in Tindivanam in present-day Tamil Nadu woke her up. There was a man standing outside, begging for help for his 14-year-old wife, who was about to give birth. Scudder told him she was no doctor, her father was. The man’s face turned stony: tradition didn’t allow his wife to be examined by a male doctor.
A Photographer’s House of Shadows
T Magazine|A Photographer’s House of Shadows https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/18/t-magazine/bill-henson-melbourne-australia-house.html home and work In his home and studio, as in his art, Bill Henson plays with the balance of light and dark. In the photographer Bill Henson’s studio, a William and Mary wing chair, an 1870s Australian cedar table and a Renaissance marble replica of a first-century Roman torso fragment.Credit...Anu Kumar Oct.
A Photographer’s House of Shadows
T Magazine|A Photographer’s House of Shadows https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/18/t-magazine/bill-henson-melbourne-australia-house.html home and work In his home and studio, as in his art, Bill Henson plays with the balance of light and dark. In the Northcote suburb of Melbourne, Australia, an enclave known for its coffeehouses and music clubs, the residential streets are mostly lined with century-old wood houses.
The Man on the Motorcycle
The online edition of the Oxford English Dictionary defines eve-teasing as “the making of unwanted sexual remarks or advances by a man to a woman in a public place.” It dates from the sixties and is a word of Indian origin. …. Twenty years after I had left the town of C, I looked for it again on google maps. I had had no idea till then that the town of C was actually very small, and remained so, even after I zoomed in several times on my screen.
Australia’s support for safe abortion globally
Last month, Western Australia passed landmark reforms removing barriers to accessing abortion, bringing it into line with other states in Australia. While there are still practical barriers to access, particularly for marginalised groups, every state and territory in Australia has now decriminalised abortion, and the National Women’s Health Strategy lays out a framework for universal access by 2030. Globally, the picture is very different. Half of all pregnancies worldwide are unintended.
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