IMF: Pakistan loses up to 6.5% of GDP to corruption as elite capture strangles growth
Trump’s 28-point Ukraine peace plan in full
I’ll add more interesting links; I have more of a zero-tolerance approach so low-signal, overwrought comments will either be deleted, edited or their author’s privileges revoked.
I am now going to manage the blog more actively.
Everyone please behave. I have restored all deleted comments (I haven’t read them).
I’ve also realised that the Commentariat are actually manifestly ungrateful.
I expect everyone to adhere to civility; if I don’t like the tone of a comment, I will simply trash it. This is a no-nonsense policy that applies to ALL.
Also to all authors, contributors and editors please make sure you are above board; don’t descend into the pettiness.
An internal note I sent earlier to all authors/contributors/editors: Continue reading I am back
Thirty years ago, Saeed Akhtar Mirza made his final feature film, Naseem, about an aging Urdu poet, played by Kaifi Azmi, and set in the days preceding the demolition of the Babri Masjid. The film opened with a title card which said, “That one act of demolition wrote the epitaph of an age that has passed, perhaps never to return!” “ The Babri Masjid epitomized the final collapse, you know, of an idea of India, of a sovereign, secular, democratic republic, equal for all, equality and justice. You saw it collapse in front of your eyes.” He said. “I was in despair but I was also angry when I made the film,” Mirza said in a podcast conversation with Sidharth Bhatia. He has not made any feature film since, though he still makes documentaries and has written two books. Mirza spoke about how the “Hindu-Muslim binary was stupid” and said that those who promoted it hadn’t read any history. Their idea of history is “fundamentally flawed” he said.
It makes no sense to write posts against each other here. Just do what you want in the comments (and the author can moderate those).
We will recover from this. I just deleted several posts and I hope the authors will not start it up again 🙂
And Kabir, please, try to limit yourself to one post a day. Educational and informative ones are better than daily “RSS is coming” warnings 🙂
Note: Whoever keeps deleting this post must know that I will keep re-posting it. Non-interference in other people’s threads is a sacred principle on BP.
In this episode of Saffron Siege, the anthropologist Thomas Blom Hansen and journalist Qurban Ali join Harsh Mander to examine how the RSS has triggered, enabled and executed riots, targeted communal attacks and other forms of communal violence in India over the 100 years of its existence. Qurban Ali who has reported on many of these incidents on the ground documents how many commissions have found the RSS culpable in riots dating back to Sholapur in 1967. Hansen talks about how violence is a central thesis of the RSS not only as a physical act but as a state of mind.
This opinion piece on the Print’s website lays out a familiar argument about shifting academic focus towards Indic heritage against excessive hagiographic obeisance at the altars of ‘western’ scholarship. But apart from the standard diatribes, the name Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan jumped out for me.
Where are the Radhakrishnans of our time?
YouTube link
This is a video of a Adivasi dance. I watch it often. One of my partners (late) looks like the tall woman on the left. The video
My partner Kumari of about 10 years passed before she got to 50. Diabetic complications
Her name Dona Chitrangani Sri Kumari
Sri Kumari another name for Kali.
Name was given because her parents made a vow at Muneshwaram Kovil to Kali get a child.
Her parents were killed by the LTTE when she was about 14 (1990 or so). When Kumari and I came here to this village, it was only then Kumari realized her parents had been killed by the LTTE nearby
Kumari was tall for a Sri Lankan woman, about 5’7″
[Note: I have absolutely no issue with Sairav moderating his posts the way he sees fit–this is the right of all BP authors. However, he doesn’t have the right to cast aspersions on other authors. Comments from others that I’ve “faked my degrees” are also ridiculous. I frankly have no interest in interacting with Sairav so you all are free to discuss among yourselves. Similarly, I will be deleting any comments Sairav makes on my posts.]
From my Substack:
This review originally appeared on The South Asian Idea in June 2017.
Ever since The God of Small Things was published to great acclaim in 1997, Arundhati Roy’s fans have been eagerly awaiting her next novel. It was a long wait—two decades—as Roy transitioned from being a novelist to being an activist and a non-fiction writer. Now, the wait has finally ended with the publication of The Ministry of Utmost Happiness.
The novel focuses on several characters, most of whom are outcasts from the new rising India. They include a hijra named Anjum, a Kashmiri separatist (or freedom fighter) named Musa and Tilottama, the Malayali woman who loves him. Over the course of the novel, these disparate characters encounter one another and their stories intersect, sometimes in surprising ways.
Much of the novel is set in the Kashmir Valley during the 1990s—at the height of the insurgency against the Indian state—viewed by many Kashmiris as an occupying force. Musa’s wife and daughter are killed in crossfire between the Indian Army and Kashmiri militants. Tilo herself is harshly interrogated by the Indian Army and is only let go because of her connections to an old college friend, who is high up in the Intelligence Bureau. In this section of the novel, Roy evocatively describes the brutality of life in Kashmir and the impact it has on those on both sides of the ideological struggle.
Those who have followed Roy’s non-fiction will find many resonances in this novel. Asides from the Kashmir conflict, the plot touches on rising Hindutva, the Maoist struggle in the forests of central India, and Dalit assertion against upper-caste violence. One consequence of such a large canvas is a certain fracturing of the narrative. For example, when the narrative moves to Kashmir, Anjum has to be abandoned in Delhi. Although Roy convincingly brings the characters together at the end, there is a sense of disconnect while reading the story. Continue reading The Ministry of Utmost Happiness: A Look into the Underbelly of Modern India
In the rankings of major Indian states based on per capita income, UP and Bihar have been occupying the last two places for quite a while. Their per capita incomes are approximately half and one third of the national average, which has sparked considerable discussion lately. While most people focus on usual suspects like overpopulation and corruption, some argue that the absence of coastlines also plays a significant role. This idea has appeared in this blog several times, and I will offer my two cents.
On the surface, the argument seems reasonable, given that both Bihar and UP are non-coastal states and many coastal states are doing extremely well. However, a closer look reveals a lack of empirical evidence to support this claim. To begin with, the correlation between higher per capita income and having a coastline is relatively new. Back in 1990, of the eight major coastal states, only Maharashtra was performing exceptionally well. Gujarat was above average, while Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, and Bengal were either average or slightly below. Orissa, on the other hand, was quite poor. This suggests that it was economic liberalization, rather than the mere presence of coastlines, that primarily fueled the growth in South India.
The correlation between coastal status and economic performance appears even more spurious when we examine other non-coastal states. There are eight large non-coastal states with populations exceeding 20 million, excluding UP and Bihar. Their combined per capita income is almost same as the national average. In fact, two of these states, Telangana and Haryana, rank among the top three. If being landlocked is indeed such a significant disadvantage, why doesn’t it similarly impact these other non-coastal states?
Let’s explore the coastline related industries further. India’s blue economy, which includes sectors like coastal tourism, fisheries, shipping, and offshore energy, constitutes only about 4 percent of the country’s GDP. Given that coastal states account for 55 percent of India’s GDP, it’s evident that coastlines aren’t as impactful economically as one might assume. The transport sector in India represents roughly 5 percent of the GDP, but a significant part of this involves passenger and local freight transport. The part consisting of transport between port and non-coastal states is relatively small, and the extra burden is equivalent to a tax of less than 5 percent on all imported or exported goods.
So one could probably argue that if UP and Bihar were coastal, their per capita incomes might be 5-10 percent higher. However, this doesn’t change the big picture.
Why do BJP and Narendra Modi keep winning? Why do Congress and Rahul Gandhi keep losing?: Yogendra Yadav, National Convenor, Bharat Jodo Abhiyan, a former political analyst & psephologist, answers in an interview to Karan Thapar
Also adding this video (in Hindi):
