Tag: social media

30 seconds please

1. Anand rangarajan, a biochemistry professor from jnu , has popularized this 30 second interjection on prime TV debates. He is fearless in questioning beliefs of abrahamanic religions.

2. Shahazad poonawalla a popular spokesperson for BJP has resigned and is hinting a sabbatical from politics. Seems bit fishy.

3. Modi comming on instagram is increasing looking like an all advising ‘ society uncle’. He should expose himself less and concentrate on legislation.

4. Sadly rahul Gandhi is not taking much advantage and is acting in ajit prop style street plays in front of parliament. Crazy.

Admin Note: I’m adding this to sort of demonstrate the direction of travel where BP is going. We are building Community now and if it means a decline of traffic so be it.

Reading Dawn in Delhi.

Notes on the closing talks of “Divergent Voices of South Asia: Rethinking Partition, Reimagining Peace”; Mela Nordic, Filmcentrum Riks, Stockholm, 4 July 2026. Second of two parts.

Part I of this essay took Anuradha Bhasin’s blueprint, cross-border journalism, a shared archive, the arts as empathy machines, and held it against the graveyard of prior attempts: Aman ki Asha, decapitated after 2014; Himal Southasian, strangled in 2016 by withheld paperwork.

As an aside Himal Southasian was re-registered in Colombo and continues to bring out a bold digital publication under its dynamic editor Roman Gautam.

The woman who followed Bhasin to the podium is, conveniently, the field test. Beena Sarwar, Boston-based journalist, documentary filmmaker, journalism teacher, helped run Aman ki Asha from the Jang side through its best years; the campaign’s achievements are credited in large part to her stewardship. She watched it stall. And in March 2021 she co-founded Sapan, the Southasia Peace Action Network, explicitly on the lessons learned, followed in August 2021 by Sapan News, a syndicated features service. The arc from mega-campaign backed by two media conglomerates to volunteer-driven network is not a decline; it is an adaptation to the kill mechanism. Her talk, “Think like a Journalist, Build Peace,” was the day’s answer to its own hardest question.

The minimum common agenda

Continue reading Reading Dawn in Delhi.

The Philippines Birth Rate Crash

Precedent. Every Brown Pundits post, new ones included, must be at least 70 percent original to BP. Reposts from other sites are allowed, but the reposted portion must not exceed 30 percent of the post.

 

The Philippines has just recorded one of the fastest fertility declines in modern history, and almost nobody saw it coming.

In 1993 the average Filipino woman had 4.1 children. By 1998 it was 3.9, by 2013 around 3.0, and by 2017 it was 2.7. Then it fell off a cliff. The 2025 National Demographic and Health Survey put the figure at 1.7, well below the 2.1 a population needs to replace itself. That is a 37 percent drop in about eight years, the steepest the country has ever recorded. In the early 1950s, Filipino women were having more than seven children each.

At 1.7 the Philippines is not yet as low as East Asia. It still sits above Japan at 1.2 and well above South Korea at 0.8. What unsettles demographers is not the level but the speed, and the direction, which is the same one every developed Asian society has already taken.

Why nobody expected it

Continue reading The Philippines Birth Rate Crash

Brown Pundits