What is news to the Hindu? Karunanidhi keeping a promise:
This promise to the people of Tamilnadu to anoint his son to the throne, the Emperor has given more responsibilites to the Prince and Hindu is all glee for the emperor has kept his promise- how noble- mere subjects we are supposed to celebrate this “Pattabhishekam”. [...]
Author Archive for kuffir
Free Binayak Sen Film Festival
Published by May 11th, 2008 in Activism, Cinema, Health and Human Rights. 0 CommentsI came across this piece of news in Struggle News:
To mark the first anniversary of the arrest of Dr Sen, on 14 May 2008 and to call for his immediate release the Free Binayak Sen Film Festival is being organised by concerned citizens and groups around the country. The package of 10 documentaries, presented in [...]
‘Gendered’ majority
Published by May 11th, 2008 in Caste, Culture, Society, Women and sexuality. 0 CommentsK.M.Venugopalan says the institution of the hetero-sexual family plays a pivotal role in ’selectively sanctifying certain kinds of economic, social and cultural activities of people‘:
The politics of claiming autonomy over bodies cannot perhaps wait, until all the fears associated with morals and culture are settled forever. It is imperative to talk about how deeply [...]
Burma?
Published by May 10th, 2008 in Democracy, Geopolitics, Human Rights, Media and Women. 0 CommentsBurma, says anonandon, is disappearing:
A friend of mine has a favourite joke about Indian media. He says, the country of Japan could cease to exist but our newspapers would be far more concerned about the pretty young Bollywood starlet who stares out of the page with mascara heavy eyes, pouting next to a headline that [...]
‘Despicable Separation’
Published by May 10th, 2008 in Democracy, India, Patriarchy, Religion, Society and Women. 0 CommentsNiven Charvet tells his Indian friends why he prefers China to India:
My belief in humanism, my love of my own language, a certain libertarian cast of mind – none of these could really explain why I am more comfortable in China than in India.
To me India is a land of separation, China a land of [...]
That’s what Chicu’s new blog promises.
Siva Rajendran has a question for you:
Some one born in Hyderabad, working in Delhi with Vijay Mallya’s KingFisher airlines, idolizes Sachin Tendulkar, ardent fan of Shahrukh Khan’s movies, has reasons to support Deccan Chargers, Delhi Dare Devils, Royal Challengers, Mumbai Indians and Kolkatta Knight Riders. Which IPL team will he support?
Sacrificing the brain dead
Published by May 8th, 2008 in Health, Human Rights and Policy. 0 CommentsMagesh probes the issue of organ transplantation: aren’t the ‘brain’ dead going to suffer if they’re clubbed together with the ‘dead’ dead?
A chennai doctor has opined that sensitizing the public on cadaver transplantation for organs like kidney would greatly address the large imbalance in the demand and supply(Ah..well, thats the kind of language they speak) [...]
Women’s reservations bill
Published by May 7th, 2008 in Democracy, India, Patriarchy, Policy, Politics and Women. 0 CommentsSome early reactions:
Premasri asks- who represents Indian women?
On average, Indian women work longer hours than men, as their day consists of a more diverse array of tasks relating both to the maintenance of their livelihoods (public sphere) and homes (domestic sphere). In rural India, this could take the form of both working in the fields [...]
Bush, India and global food prices
Published by May 5th, 2008 in Economy, Food, Globalisation, India, Media, Policy and Politics. 1 CommentRay Titus finds nothing wrong with what Bush said:
What the President was an economic fact. There was no ‘blame’, in fact his statement was a compliment to a country that is demanding better products and services for consumption. Judge for yourselves.
Arun checks reactions from across the world, including a news report from Arab News, which [...]
Female sexuality through a woman’s eyes
Published by May 4th, 2008 in Feminism, Literature, Patriarchy, Society, Women and sexuality. 2 Comments‘Is it risky for a woman writer to deal with female sexuality in India’? Sarojini Sahoo, feminist writer in Oriya, tries to answer that question:
”Yes, it is risky for a woman writer to deal with these themes in an Eastern country, and for that I face much criticism? But still I believe someone has to [...]
Yoginder Sikand examines the efforts of the Jamaat-e-Islami of India to spread madrasa reforms:
To counter widespread misconceptions about madrasas, Ahmad suggests that madrasas interact with people of other faiths who live in their vicinity and even to invite them inside. ‘Much misunderstanding about Islam and Muslims owes simply to lack of interaction between the communities’, [...]
Indian women aren’t politically aware?
Published by May 3rd, 2008 in Personal, Politics, Theory and Women. 0 CommentsBrijesh Nair says American women are more politically ‘conscious’ than Indian women:
If we take 5 Indian men and women each, at least 2 men will be politically conscious but I am sure 4 of the women will never take any interest in understanding the various political issues around them. They hate talking about politics. I [...]
Insurance for sex workers
Published by May 3rd, 2008 in Business, Human Rights, Society and Women. 0 CommentsLIC introduces an insurance scheme for sex workers- ‘let’s revel in the news’, says Premasri :
To reiterate, this represents a tremendous victory for sex workers, as it symbolizes an eventual shift towards a rights-based framework, which recognizes sex workers as workers with the fundamental right to basic services such as savings accounts and life [...]
‘White trash’?
Published by May 3rd, 2008 in Culture, Media, Prejudice, Sports and Women. 0 CommentsSandyk expresses his views on an article by Barkha Dutt in which she refers to the IPL cheerleaders as ‘white trash’:
But I can not blame her since Indian morality is a big issue with people in power and public domain. We do not like things which make us uncomfortable. We have not learnt the art [...]
When I learnt that Davis was getting married, I asked him whether he was doing that out of compulsion from his mother. He was not. The truth is, he had enough of all the unstable relationships and was wishing for some stability in his life. So here is a guy who knows his ways with [...]
Meena Kandasamy writes a letter to Tehelka’s editor:
I WAS SHOCKED to see your magazine carry the abusive word “pariah” on the cover. Though it is common knowledge that the word passed into English from Tamil, it would have been better if you remembered that it is the name of a Tamil Dalit caste. Only because [...]
A National Museum of History and Culture of Dalits
Published by April 30th, 2008 in Art, Culture, Dalit, History and Human Rights. 0 CommentsAniruddha Kulkarni says India needs to build a museum of Dalit history and culture:
But I do think some psychological displacement is at work when a magnificent Holocaust Memorial Museum, in which the criminals are not Americans, precedes a Washington institution of equivalent stature dedicated to the saga of national violence that is slavery and segregation…[...] [...]
Are those vaccines safe?
Published by April 25th, 2008 in Activism, Government and Health. 0 Comments Jo talks to Dr.Hari, a social activist who has been campaigning against the Polio vaccination programme in Kerala, about what’s wrong with vaccines:
What the government has told about polio vaccination is that it has helped to eliminate polio from our society. They also present a lot of statistics to prove this. So are you saying [...]
aristotle the geek tells you the relationship between the market and the quota system:
There is only one moral stand that can be taken on any enforced reservation - against it. All those spineless people who go about saying we are not against reservations but… should consider what Ayn Rand had to say on this behavior [...]
Mandal lives!
Published by April 11th, 2008 in Caste, Human Rights, India, Justice, Policy, Politics, Prejudice, Society and public space. 6 Comments I started out with the intention of linking to both sides: blogs that oppose reservations and those which support them. Less than two pages of Google Blog Search results yielded these reactions:
Jasdeep feels reservations won’t undo the damage done by a poor public education system:
Revolutionary changes needs to be done in Education system, But [...]
Vishv Veer Singh Sambyal says: being a patriot and a soldier has more to do with loving your country rather than hating another nation. And relates the story of an encounter between two brigadiers, an Indian and a Pakistani, to illustrate his point:
However on that fateful day, your son and I were soldiers, unknown to [...]
The children of one India
Published by April 10th, 2008 in Education, Government and Society. 0 CommentsAnouradha, of projectwhy, opines ‘the children of India - oops I should say the children of one India - have been let down by each and every one’:
One would be justified in thinking it was a joke of some kind but sadly no! The pictures actually showed children giving their Board examinations with their feet [...]
Per capita expenditure on education, healthcare and a thousand other statistics that look respectable, by international standards, on the surface: but do they tell us the whole story on how much or how little the government is doing for all of the 1.1 billion people in the country? Abhishek checks the per capita deception in [...]
What, after all, is the evidence in favor of public schools?
Published by April 9th, 2008 in Business, Education, Government and Human Rights. 0 CommentsYet, the evidence is very much there. After all, China far outperforms India on educational indicators such as enrolment and efficiency, despite having a largely public primary system. Clearly, you don’t need a private system to achieve high quality and provide universal access to education.
Closer to home, Abi at Nanopolitan shows how publicly funded Kendriya [...]
Recent Comments