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My responses to Venkat’s responses to politics of tears
For others’ convenience: Here is Venkat’s Original article. Here was my earlier response. To my response, Venkat added a new article. Below is my response: 1. In my reverence of America’s founding fathers, Venkat raised a number of questions about those fathers. Let us remember that I did not mean...
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The politics of tears
It is bad enough that I have to discuss an essential American issue in a blog-site that seeks to start a conversation about center right viewpoint relevant to Indian situation. The context here is the unfortunate shooting in a Newtown (Connecticut) school and death of twenty children and six adults....
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Rhetorical Swiss-knives: Part 3
Hammer of Intellectualism Let us begin with a quote: But I would go further. One of the principal lessons of our tragic century, which has seen so many millions of innocent lives sacrificed in schemes to improve the lot of humanity, is-beware intellectuals. Not merely should they be kept well...
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Rhetorical Swiss-Knives : Part 2
Conspiracy Theory At first glance, there was nothing wrong with that man in the village. He was a Panchayat member from a political party that long earned the fearful acronym “the party”. He was a dedicated worker who actually believed in the regular propaganda that is distributed in the name...
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The Rhetorical Swiss-knives – Part 1
It was in 2001, I was watching some kind of talk show in Doordarshan. There were three intellectuals invited, all of them were introduced as secular liberals who are doing their level best to fight the oppression by the “powerful” and promoting the voice of the poor and weak. At...
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Secularism – Retold
Introduction Secularism is a code of duty pertaining to this life founded on considerations purely human and intended mainly for those who find theology indefinite or inadequate unreliable or unbelievable. Its essential principles are three 1 The improvement of this life by material means 2 That science is the available...
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Let Us Legalize Paid News
Have you gone insane? I am expecting this very question from my readers. No, I am not. Am I also proposing to legalize bribe, prostitution or theft? No, not yet. The focus of this short post is to simply propose and justify that every body is a winner in legalization...
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Summer Blues and That Orange Colour
The word “social movement”, as Wikipedia defines it, means “a coordinated group action focused on a political or social issue”. Therefore, when supporters of Anna Hazare agitation began to claim that this is a “spontaneous” movement of the people, I noted with certain sarcasm that the spontaneous movement feeds around...
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Land Reform: The Left’s big lie
The Stillborn Baby of the Left I could not control my laughter after reading an article in Hindu. It was one of those Wikileaks articles where an American diplomat described his meeting with Sri Prakash Karat, the grand architect of the series of self-defeating moves for Left during the last...
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The Evolution of War
It was the Roman military strategist Vegetius (odd name for a military strategist) who remarkably observed, Si vis pacem, para bellum. Roughly translated into English, it means, “If you wish for peace, prepare for war”. The fundamental assumption being that a capability of waging costly war of retaliation is the...
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The Unstoppable Rise and Rise of Bengal’s Left
In the beginning there was only left…. “I still believe that there is no viable alternative to Left Front in Bengal today”, thundered a proud Marxist intellectual after Left Front won its mandate with an unexpectedly huge margin in 2006. Mamata Banerjee, the strongest rival of CPIM, bitterly complained about...
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The joy of Rinam Kritvah Ghritam Pibet
Two days ago, one of the leaders of LokPal “movement” came forward to present the view that economic liberalizations of nineties are the root cause of corruption in India . Coming from a lawyer who is in direct contempt of supreme court of this nation and believes that all the judges must be socialist, the comment is not surprising. Such views are suitable for the closed world of taxpayer funded university campuses but toxic for the world that takes human endeavor and spirit of entrepreneurship seriously.
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Our National Guilt Pleasure
Approximately around 2500 years back, Kautilya Vishnugupta noted in his famous Arthasastra that they way fish drinks water, administrators take bribe. Corruption, to put it mildly, is our national guilt pleasure.
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I am hungry… I am right
A respected activist with a long history of social activism and head of an NGO got together with an organization run by a Yoga guru and launched a movement against corruption. Nearly eighteen months later the activist went on a hunger strike to eliminate the corruption. A very noble ideal we thought.