Rashmi Bansal offers some insights:
Actually, back in March, the Economic Times had reported on this issue as follows:
The growing number of attacks on Indian students in Australia has become a big cause for concern at the Indian High Commission in Canberra. A senior diplomat at the High Commission told ET that in the last six [...]
Archive for May, 2009
More on attacks in Australia
Published by May 31st, 2009 in Education, India, Indiaspora, Prejudice, Racism, Violence and World. 2 CommentsKamala Das, RIP
Published by May 31st, 2009 in Books, Culture, Literature, Patriarchy, Poetry, Society and Women. 1 CommentGift him all,
Gift him what makes you woman,
The scent of
Long hair, the musk of sweat between
The breasts.
The warm shock of menstrual blood
And all your
Endless female hungers. Oh, yes,
Getting a man to love is easy but living
Without him afterwards may have to be faced.
Don Suseelan remembers Kamala Das:
Madhavikutty, Kamala Das, Amy, Kamala Suarayya. Each equally hated [...]
Attacks on Indian students in Australia
Published by May 30th, 2009 in Caste, Education, Indiaspora, Prejudice, Racism, Violence and World. 173 CommentsSome bloggers seem to think they’re racially motivated.
Sanjeev Sabhlok, in a long detailed post, disagrees:
I agree that more can be done to ensure the safety of Indian students. But I am personally outraged at the unsolicited allegation being made about Australian racism by the Indian Foreign Minister (and India’s High Commissioner as well). This amounts [...]
‘..sensitivity of the local populace’
Published by May 30th, 2009 in Culture, India, North East, Prejudice, Racism and Women. 3 CommentsJune talks about racism in India:
In Bombay, racism manifested itself in ‘CHINA’ carved on my door- this in the posh Pali Hill neighbourhood, home to the rich and famous. At business meetings, people would ignore me and talk to my assistants, on realisation that I was the boss, their faces would first drop with surprise [...]
Mridula Koshy on knowing writers:
I think knowing the writer can shrink the work. The best kind of knowledge, best in the sense of it aiding a good reading of a work, is one in which the reader has access to the socio-political-economic picture of the times the writer lived in. Ideally from the distance of [...]
One world, different crises
Published by May 29th, 2009 in Capitalism, Development, Economy, India, Regulation and World. 0 CommentsWhy has the global financial crisis not generated any ‘existential angst about capitalism’ or any ’serious questioning of the role of the market’ in developing countries like India, unlike in the west? Arvind Subramanian offers some great insights:
There is a gradual realization that the diagnostic spotlight must shine on the revolving door between Wall Street [...]
Film Telangana 2009
Published by May 29th, 2009 in Culture, Development, Globalisation, History, Human Rights, India, Language and Politics. 1 CommentInteresting site, seems to have been started to co-ordinate a film contest for short films on Telangana Culture, Resources, Issues, Places, People, History & Struggles, which is scheduled to end on 31st May, 2009. Some interesting films have been submitted. I liked the page Telangaanam which features clips with popular ballads by Yadagiri, Suddala Hanumanthu, [...]
‘So why do women like Shahrukh Khan?’
Published by May 28th, 2009 in Cinema, Society, Theory and Women. 15 CommentsIndian Home Maker tries to answer that:
Simi Garewal like many of us believes that Mamta Banerji, Kiran Bedi, my maid who dragged her neighbour off the water tanker with his hair, my other maid who has been thrown out of her house, Mayawati, my grandmother who read Ramayana every morning, Sushma Swaraj, Sonia Gandhi, Pooja [...]
Intelligent Design for Dummies
Published by May 28th, 2009 in Humour, Politics, Religion and Science & Technology. 0 CommentsJigar Patel explains Intelligent Design for dummies:
In the beginning, there was no life, and then;
POOF!
There it was.
Oops.. There was not a single poof. In fact, there were seven poofs spread over a period of seven days that created everything.
Creationism states that in 4004 B.C., God poofed everything into existence in a week using the highly [...]
Amit Verma answers some FAQs about My Friend Sancho, his first novel:
On Indian writing in English, and where MFS fits in
There is an unfortunate gap in India between popular fiction and literary fiction. Readers of literary fiction look down on popular fiction and think of it as infra dig; and readers of popular fiction are [...]
Why the Green Revolution wasn’t such a blessing
Published by May 28th, 2009 in Caste, Dalit, Development, Economy, History, Indiaspora, Politics, Prejudice, Religion and Violence. 0 CommentsVidya Bhushan Rawat looks at the roots of the current conflict in Punjab:
Problem is in our perception about Punjab as a casteless society where Sikhism grew. The fact is that inspite of great preaching in the Guru Granth Saheb and their own sacrifices, the leadership that emerged in Punjab is upper caste dominated feudal Sikhs. [...]
Violence in Vienna
Published by May 27th, 2009 in Caste, Dalit, History, Indiaspora, Prejudice and Religion. 1 CommentAmardeep Singh reflects on the violence in Vienna and tries to ‘imagine a narrative that led to these events’:
Then, when a new temple opens, many of the heterodox members of the congregation jump at the chance for a different kind of experience. The new temple is run by heterodox Ravidasias, who do things slightly differently [...]
Aditi Machado interviews Mridula Koshy, who recently published her collection of short stories, If it is Sweet:
AM: In a recent interview, Kazuo Ishiguro said that most collections of short stories are “basically a rag bag of stories they’ve had sitting around for the last 30 years.” Your stories seem, however, to fall into an overarching [...]
‘The Mind is not a vessel..’
Published by May 27th, 2009 in Books, Children and Education. 0 CommentsAG feels ‘the best mathematics books in terms of developing a student’s liking and insight into the subject’ are never used in our schools and colleges:
But if you ask me, the other perspective, the way mathematics is taught in most Indian pre-college institutions can never make it a likable subject. Most of you must have [...]
Check the inaugural issue of Wide Screen, ‘a peer-reviewed, open access journal’ devoted to the ‘critical study of cinema from historical, theoretical, political, and aesthetic perspectives’.
I am just wondering why this video, by the Israeli arms dealer Rafael, hasn’t made much noise in India, both in the patriotic sense and through a gender point of view. From Nonna Gorilovskaya of Women and Foreign Policy:
In this Israeli video, a man decked out in a black leather jacket (clearly, Israel) serenades a [...]
Women’s representation in parliament
Published by May 26th, 2009 in Caste, Democracy, Gender & Sexuality, General Elections 2009, Human Rights, Justice, Patriarchy, Policy, Politics, Prejudice, Society and Women. 0 CommentsDeepali Gaur Singh writes on the unfinished business of women’s representation in parliament:
India ranks 115th of 162 countries in terms of gender development. Lack of representation directly translates into a de-sensitized political leadership that is completely cut-off from the issues facing half the population of the country. It also results in disproportionately less legislation empowering [...]
Just how big an issue is incest in India?
Published by May 26th, 2009 in Children, Human Rights, Society, Violence and Women. 4 CommentsA report produced by the BBC a decade ago had opined citing research sources that Close-knit family life in India masks an alarming amount of sexual abuse of children and teenage girls by family members. It said that that disbelief, denial and cover-up to preserve the family reputation is often put before the individual child [...]
The Carvakas
Published by May 25th, 2009 in Culture, History, India, Literature, Religion and Secularism. 0 CommentsNamit Arora throws some light on the Carvakas, the tradition of materialistic thought in ancient India:
According to the Carvaka, the soul is only the body qualified by intelligence. It has no existence apart from the body, only this world exists, there is no beyond—the Vedas are a cheat; they serve to make men submissive through [...]
‘Paper saves lives’
Published by May 25th, 2009 in Activism, Adivasi, Business, Development and Women. 0 CommentsAnuradha Parekh talks about TARA, an NGO that changed the lives of women in an Adivasi community in Madhya Pradesh:
Sahariya tribe is a nomadic tribe in Madhya Pradesh that deals with poverty of the magnitude that mothers buy saris and tear them in half so that their daughters have something to wear. These people have [...]
Indian Government Eliminates Misery of Slum Children – in Films
Published by May 25th, 2009 in Children, Cinema and Humour. 0 Comments“It is the job of any government, and this government is fully committed to the maxim, that no child — depicted in any film — should suffer. All children — playing any role in any movie — will be fully protect from abuse by policemen, or violence from parents or neighbours. Children likely to act [...]
Obama and outsourcing
Published by May 25th, 2009 in Business, Economy, Globalisation, IT, Policy, Politics, Regulation and World. 0 CommentsJoyeeta Biswas looks at Obama’s new policy initiatives on curbing outsourcing:
And even at one fifth of the salary of the American workers, Indian workers in the IT and BPO services still account for 5-7% of India’s GDP, bringing about a huge impact on cities such as Bangalore, the centre of the industry. Needless to say, [...]
Yet another farce?
Published by May 24th, 2009 in Adivasi, Caste, Dalit, Democracy, Education, General Elections 2009, Health and Politics. 0 CommentsKarthik RM asks questions that weren’t raised in the recent polls:
For the poor, however, the polling booth is one place – in my opinion, the only place where democracy functions. This again, when you exclude cases of booth capturing or rigging. Democracy, otherwise, doesn’t exist for the underprivileged in India. The country’s healthcare sector is [...]
An interesting blog focussing on, as the name says, Indian Tribals.
Have Dalits rejected Mayawati’s sarvajan formula?
Published by May 23rd, 2009 in Caste, Corruption, Dalit, General Elections 2009, Policy and Politics. 0 CommentsSR Darapuri analyses why Dalits ‘have slammed Mayawati’s sarvajan formula’:
This alliance with BJP not only confused the dalits but Muslims also moved away from BSP as they consider BJP as their bitterest enemy. During the first tenure of BSP rule in 1995 some land was distributed to empower the dalits because till then the party [...]
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