Brijesh 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 [...]
Archive for the 'Theory' Category
Indian women aren’t politically aware?
Published by May 3rd, 2008 in Personal, Politics, Theory and Women. 0 CommentsThe fallacy of school choice
Published by April 3rd, 2008 in Democracy, Education, Human Rights, Policy, Politics, Poverty and Theory. 0 CommentsDweep Chanana joins the debate on privatization of education and vouchers:
The argument for privatization is at once political and ideological. It is political because it reflects how societies feel about the role of the state in providing “public” services such as healthcare and education. It is ideological because proponents often supplement demands for privatization [...]
Man’s pleasure over woman’s need
Published by March 21st, 2008 in Feminism, Patriarchy, Theory, Women and sexuality. 1 CommentAvishek has a theory- he suggests that women ‘themselves have contributed to their sufferings because of their non-confrontational attitude‘:
The movie also briefly mentioned an egregious incident from India. It referred to an incident where five government-run mental institutions sought hysterectomy for 330 mentally retarded girls and women (In 1994, hysterectomies were performed on 17 girls [...]
The Growth ‘Miracle’
Published by February 27th, 2008 in Development, Economy, Education, History, Policy, Spotlight Series and Theory. 0 Comments[ This is Essay # 20 in our Spotlight Series. Click here for the archives.]
The Growth ‘Miracle’
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Shromon Das
‘Growth’ is an issue that gains importance in almost any context; firms worrying about business growth, teenagers worrying about how tall they can grow, and of course, economists worrying about economic growth. One of the most fascinating case [...]
The subaltern cannot speak
Published by February 5th, 2008 in Caste, Dalit, Religion, Theory and Women. 15 CommentsAt Subaltern Studies, Kishore Buddha responding to Daipayan’s series of posts (we had linked to one of them earlier) on subalternity in India, offers his views on why Dalits cannot speak as long as they use religion as a basis for social formation:
Here I would like to turn to Gayatri Spivak, who informs us of [...]
Gandhian economics
Published by February 3rd, 2008 in Capitalism, Community, Development, Economy, Environment, History and Theory. 0 CommentsHow practicable an economic philosophy was Gandhian economics? Rob Staley offers his views:
The tagline that stuck was this: “Production by the masses instead of mass production.” This roughly summarized his opinion on the direction in which India’s young budding economy should take as they pulled away from the British in the 40s. The idea was [...]
A Walk Down Hubbert’s Peak
Published by January 1st, 2008 in Energy, Science & Technology, Spotlight Series, Theory and Videoblog. 1 Comment[This is essay #10 in our Spotlight Series. Click here for archives.]
Ninety nine percent of our energy comes from the Sun. The commercial energy that we pay for is about one percent of the energy we use. Commercial energy mostly (82 %) comes from non-renewable sources like oil (32%), coal (21%) and natural gas (23 [...]
A Devil’s Chaplain
Published by December 15th, 2007 in Books, Religion, Science & Technology and Theory. 1 CommentRemigius De Souza’s second attempt to read Richard Dawkins’ ‘A Devil’s Chaplain’ fails:
Typically, like the western, and later the westernized societies, the book, too, boasts, as if no science did exist in the bygone eras before the Industrial Revolution.
The image of the engraved bone plaque illustrated here is 30,000 yBP old, from Blanchard, France. [...]
Of pirated books
Published by November 20th, 2007 in Books, Capitalism, Culture and Theory. 0 CommentsRimi B. Chatterjee examines a pirated book she bought at an intersection in Delhi.
Look also at the maths. A cover price of Rs 295 (the same as City of Love) yields to the publisher only about Rs 180 since booksellers buy at heavily discounted prices. If we remove from this price the author’s royalty (since pirates [...]
A Dialectical Islamist
Published by November 13th, 2007 in Politics, Religion and Theory. 0 CommentsAt Pak Tea House, Shaheryar Ali recalls the prominent Iranian intellectual, Ali Shariarti’s attempts to fuse Marxist- Hegelian thoughts with Islam in the 1960s. Unlike liberation theology in Latin America, this attempt to retrieve ideology from religion was crushed even before it could become popular.
While those who cut heads of people in Sawat, Iraq and [...]
Bobby Jindal vs Indira Nooyi
Published by November 10th, 2007 in Culture, Indiaspora and Theory. 0 CommentsSimarprit divides Indian Americans into two broad classes- Conformists and Preservers:
What does Bobby mean to India. Americans would see Indians as Bobby clones, opportunists and self centered. World would see Indians as trying to dominate the world and push them down. Preservers among Indians would see him as a shame. Conformists among Indians would see him as an [...]
An academic in America
Published by October 25th, 2007 in Culture, Theory, Travel and sexuality. 0 CommentsAniruddh Vasudevan is visiting the US and has an interesting account of his experiences as “the quintessentially exotic Other: dancer, Indian, queer”
What I am saying is that, I begin to feel that even when one travels for the first time somewhere, that romantic sense of “happy anonymity” that I used to believe in, is not [...]
Equality, Equality of Outcome, Equality of Opportunity
Published by August 30th, 2007 in Dalit and Theory. 1 CommentRefractor examines certain ideas espoused in a recent Chandra Bhan Prasad article:
The only social logic available to untouchables is that they have to live with inequality and live at the mercy of Mai Baap upper castes. Here in fact CBP is admitting the strength of caste system. The caste system seems to be impenetrable. [...]
Kerala is now a ‘middle class society’ says B.R.P.Bhaskar who is surprised that ‘many people discuss contemporary political and economic developments without understanding this’:
If these figures are correct, those engaged in agriculture and industry do not add up to even five million. In other words, less than a quarter of the work force of 20 [...]
Maverick believes ‘trade’ in nuclear technology is mostly about economics:
This is how I see it.
The NSG and others like it are a technology control cartel. The IAEA is a forum for airing views or exchanging on how the cartel should function most efficiently. The functioning of the cartel is dictated by the rules of economics [...]
Aaditeshwar Seth thinks ’social entrepreneurs’ are Sisyphus-like:
They are the people who work with social development organizations for your good — not for their own, but for the good of others. They are the people who help educate the illiterate, who help the poor fend for themselves, who try to convince the governments to do something [...]
Aradhana D may visit ‘Marxism 2007: A Festival of Resistance is a four day conference of over fifty workshops, artistic displays and performances’ in Toronto:
Okay, to be completely honest - I went to this conference two years ago and was extremely disappointed by MOST (not ALL) of the presentations. I might try it out this [...]
Conspiracy theories are very popular because of the sense of intrigue they generate. In fact, one of my favourite comic strips talks about them today. As the comic says, some of them are true and quite a few of them have some element of truth in them. The recent expose of Vanzara centred fake encounter [...]
Kesav explains:
On the communitarian view, democracy requires that individuals embody the virtues that make them capable of the true freedom of self-government, and that these virtues can be properly nurtured only within the context of a proper community. Therefore, the state in a democratic society must undertake the project of forming its citizens’ characters by [...]
Sudipta attends a lecture about blogs by Dr. Scott Nowson from the Centre for Lanugage Technologies at Macquaire University in Australia and finds out the answer (or at least parts of it).
Blog A has written of the various methods which people have suggested that children be taught, or learn. The post, being only an introduction, merely touches the surface of the various strands of thought- from Rousseau to Neill and Holt. (For instance, the book that he cites by Holt is How Children Fail. This was [...]
His ordinary moustache indicates his complete identification with the ordinary Indian peasant and workmen. But for his moustache, he could never aspire to become the Mahatma Gandhi that we all know of now.
Ajith gives Gandhi’s moustache some serious thought.
Madhur compares the ‘liberal humanist’ approach with the structuralist, as he reads French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan:
i like the nested paradox though, Barthes writing an essay titled ‘death of an author’ which claims that no piece of text can be attributed to it’s immediate author, almost like an Escher painting.
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