Unless citizens are motivated to live in ways not imagined before, the death of Indian cities will be rapid Last month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone for a new metro system in Pune. He also gave financial approval for a Shivaji statue in the Arabian Sea off Mumbai. Earlier, he sought Cabinet approval for highway projects in Odisha and Punjab; in June, his Smart Cities Mission launched 83 projects throughout India, including several for new city roads, sports infrastructure, Bus Rapid Transit systems and waste management. The city is never a function of concrete objects assembled in space, but rather, how people live together, prosper and create better lives for themselves. Though Mr. Modi's intentions cannot be questioned, there is little evidence to suggest that he will meet these objectives. The history of urban renewal does not speak well of a city’s expansionist ideas. Uncontrolled growth Over the past decade, despite flow of funds for infrastr...
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The ceasefire in Syria and the upcoming peace talks in Astana could be the beginning of the long denouement in the war-torn country The Syrian Arab Army now controls Aleppo, which means that the Syrian government once more is in charge of the main population centres in the country. Opposition armed forces are hemmed in around Damascus and in Idlib, while the Islamic State (IS) still holds the northern city of Raqqa. These forces, including IS, are on the back foot, disorganised, weakened logistically and disoriented. Largely abandoned by their benefactors — the West, the Gulf Arabs and Turkey — these fighters have either moved to great desperation in their violence or to near surrender. A ceasefire brokered on December 30, 2016 holds in most parts of the country. Peace talks are to begin on January 23 in Astana (Kazakhstan). Iran, Russia, the Syrian government, sections of the Syrian opposition, Turkey and the United Nations will have seats at the table. The United States and the Eu...
December 11, 2016 marks three years from the day on which the Supreme Court delivered amongst its most widely criticised judgments since the turn of the century: Koushal v. Naz Foundation . With the stroke of a pen, India’s LGBT community was cast back into the shadows of illegality after a judgment of the Delhi High Court, reading down Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, was reversed in appeal. The process was as painful as the outcome, for the Supreme Court observed that the LGBT community was a “minuscule” minority that did not deserve the court’s time or protection. Despite the court’s observations, there was little doubt about whether this judgment represented the collective view of the judiciary. In an article published in this newspaper two years ago, I explained that courts across the country had begun narrowing the impact of the decision in the months after it was made. The Gujarat High Court intelligently skirted the Supreme Court’s decision on Section 377, h...
It is only rule-based capitalism combined with clean government that can transform India The critics of demonetisation are absolutely right about the adverse short-term impact of the policy. It has caused major inconvenience to a vast majority, particularly to those who have the least financial resources. Of course, it will shave off some amount of GDP growth for anywhere between a quarter and three quarters because of the economic disruption it has caused in different sectors of the economy. According to some, including the venerable Dr. Manmohan Singh, this alone is sufficient to damn demonetisation. After all, the short run is all that matters because in the long run, as Keynes famously said, we are all dead. While that proposition may be true for individuals, it certainly isn’t true for nations. India has a long-term future even if you and I don’t. Also, there is a medium term, longer than an electoral cycle or two (certainly longer than a quarter or two) but shorter than a ...
It was the eighteenth century satirist Joseph Addison who said his task was “to enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality”. For veteran journalist, satirist and playwright ‘Cho’ Ramaswamy, the task may well have been “to enliven politics with wit, and to temper wit with political analysis”. Cho was a lawyer, writer, dramatist, comedian, journalist and commentator, but will chiefly be remembered as a playwright for his 1968 satire Muhammad bin Tughlaq , and as the editor of Thuglak magazine for his refusal to be cowed down by the Emergency. Many looked up to him for political analysis and even voting guidance. Often moving beyond the journalistic role, he utilised his numerous political friendships to bring together parties and leaders and sought to influence major developments. Seen as an upstart when he founded Thuglak in 1970, Cho managed to reflect the unspoken angst of the middle class, which held a dim view of politics and pol...
A bucket list of points to make the most of the daily life experience and ensure the right choices all the way Life is fun every day during our school and college days, as we enjoy them with our friends in different ways. But one fine day things start changing. We get into a job for a living. We get married. We have children. The challenges around handling the people in our lives start coming up. The people we interact with daily in our professional life do not always treat us the way we want them to. Some of them even hurt us, knowingly or unknowingly. Some of our managers do not treat us with fairness. Our peers try ways to show they are better than us. Our relationships that are to last all our life don’t work to our expectations. The spouse is not understanding enough. Parents keep complaining about silly things. We struggle day and night to understand how we can satisfy the people around us, how we can change them, and live the life of our dreams. This was definitely not the life...
There are multiple forms of learning in journalism. From being a student in a J-school to learning on the job, each of these strands brings in a set of specialised skills. However, this office has discovered a much more basic, yet profound, form of learning about this complex profession over the last five years. The roots of our learning draws from the assumption proposed by Walter Dean and Tom Rosenstiel for their “Journalism Essentials” section of the American Press Institute’s website. “The wisdom of decision-making by an interlocking public is embedded in the notion that government ‘by the people’ means citizens have the duty to keep themselves informed,” they argue. The central theme of their postulate is that the diversity and magnitude of the public is its strength and a mix of peoples is usually much wiser than a public comprised of just the elite or one special interest segment. This office recognised that the only way to respect diversity and understand the wisdom of a mix o...
If Fidel Castro’s regime dispensed with civil and political rights, the U.S. denied its people the substantive socio-economic rights Cuba put in place for its entire population The passing of Cuban leader Fidel Castro at 90 is a moment to reflect on what he did and did not do for his country, but also what the United States might learn from the Cuban example in spite of its many problems. That Castro’s regime dispensed with civil and political rights is a well-known fact, one which many across the world and especially in the U.S. took as a clarion call for isolating and indeed invading Cuba. Having been spurned by the big daddy of a land ninety miles to the north, Castro embraced the Soviet Union to a fault, applauding their repression of Eastern Europe, not to mention allowing their missiles on Cuban soil. The Soviets were his bread and butter, and also his security blanket, his only way of keeping the pigs at bay. Cuba had many faults, including its culture of local surveillance, it...
In creating a sanitary idea of citizenship, modern education has amputated our primordial affinity with the world around us I cannot think of a morning without birds. I always need a piece of nature, before my coffee and the newspaper. If the first two are odes to culture, birds capture nature for me. Between walking and watching birds, my sense of the cosmos is renewed. There is an everydayness to birds which is fascinating. For me they do not merely greet the morning, they are the morning. They are the morning rituals of play and therapy where nature reminds you of the enchantment of life. There is an eccentricity about each of them that I found fascinating. My bird of the month is the stork. For gluttons, they are graceful in fight and walk and I confess I find their watch therapeutic. The stork walking the grass, stacking worms has a touch of the comic. It seems to be perpetually rehearsing its steps, imitating itself to see if it can do better. If they realise the lawn is ...
The Supreme Court’s ruling on the national anthem is yet another instance of the movies being a soft target for tokenistic measures Why is it always the movies? Take smoking. There are many ways to bring it down. You can stop the sale of single sticks, force people to buy a pack every time they feel like lighting up. You can raise the cost of packs. What we get instead is a disclaimer at the bottom of the screen every time the villain’s henchman is caught chomping on a bidi . There is an artistic argument against this imposition. Woody Allen refused to allow Blue Jasmine to be screened in India with this disclaimer, saying that “when the scroll comes, attention goes to it rather than the scene”. But brush aside artistry and just consider logic. If the reasoning is that films are widely seen and that this tiny print at the bottom is an educational measure against a harmful act, then why not a disclaimer every time a rape occurs on screen? Or every time a man stalks a woman, trying to g...