Author: Dilip

I'm a scholar, writer and teacher; and my blog is designed for intellectual exploration. It carries no advertisements and requires no cash subscription

Farm laws repealed – Huge victory for India's agricultural population after a year-long non-violent struggle, and hundreds of lives lost

NB: This is the first major setback for the corporate gangsters running India’s people and its democracy into the ground with their greed and arrogance. Perhaps the Supreme Court will reflect on why they did not take direct notice of the government making uniform laws for the whole country on what is a state subject.… Read More Farm laws repealed – Huge victory for India's agricultural population after a year-long non-violent struggle, and hundreds of lives lost

Dilip

Adam Ramsay: World leaders failed us at COP26. But change doesn’t come from glitzy conferences

“Ultimately, you look at the global economy that we’ve created over the last 40 years, the neoliberal global economy – that’s what’s driving climate change. And no wonder, because the logic at the heart of that economy is that there is no right more important than the right to make profit…” NB: An excellent article.… Read More Adam Ramsay: World leaders failed us at COP26. But change doesn’t come from glitzy conferences

Dilip

Bharat Bhushan: Incentivising pliant bureaucrats at the helm

Despite a Supreme Court ruling forbidding further extensions in service to the Director of the Enforcement Directorate (ED), the Narendra Modi government has gone ahead and given a second one year extension to Sanjay Mishra. For this an ordinance was promulgated barely four days before Mishra was to demit office and two weeks before Parliament’s… Read More Bharat Bhushan: Incentivising pliant bureaucrats at the helm

Dilip

Hamid Dabashi: Hollywood Orientalism is not about the Arab world. It's about the American world

You do not fight Hollywood with critical argument. You fight Hollywood with Akira Kurosawa, Satyajit Ray, Abbas Kiarostami, Elia Suleiman, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Moufida Tlatli, Ousmane Sembène, Yasujirō Ozu, Guillermo del Toro, Mai Masri, ad gloriam. You do not battle misrepresentation. You signal, celebrate, and polish representations that are works of art…. The recent release… Read More Hamid Dabashi: Hollywood Orientalism is not about the Arab world. It's about the American world

Dilip

Khudai Khidmatgar: 3rd Ankit Junaid Social Harmony Award ceremony followed with discussion on 'Yuva aur Sampradayikta ki chunautiya'

 Third Ankit-Junaid Social Harmony Award ceremony followed with discussion on “Yuva aur Sampradayikta ki chunautiya” on  28th November- Sunday @5:30 P:M Venue -Gandhi Peace Foundation- DDU Marg, New Delhi Dear Friends! In the year of September 2018, Khudai Khidmatgar launched the Social Harmony Award and fellowship in memory of Hafiz Junaid and Ankit Saxena. Junaid was… Read More Khudai Khidmatgar: 3rd Ankit Junaid Social Harmony Award ceremony followed with discussion on 'Yuva aur Sampradayikta ki chunautiya'

Dilip

SC restrains Tripura Police from arresting 2 lawyers, journalist booked under UAPA

The plea said that “if the quest for truth and reporting thereof itself is criminalized then the victim in the process is the idea of justice” and that “such circumstances strike at the very foundations of a participative democratic society as it curbs the ‘free flow of information and ideas’… The Supreme Court Wednesday asked… Read More SC restrains Tripura Police from arresting 2 lawyers, journalist booked under UAPA

Dilip

Neoliberalism wrecked our chance to fix the climate crisis – and leftwing statements of faith have changed nothing

Why didn’t we nip climate change in the bud? Nathaniel Rich poses that question in an important article for the New York Times Magazine in 2018 (later published as a book). He notes that, for a brief period in the late 1980s, a consensus developed on the necessity for action. Back then, no one considered the science controversial… Read More Neoliberalism wrecked our chance to fix the climate crisis – and leftwing statements of faith have changed nothing

Dilip

Anna Iasmi Vallianatou: The Poland-Belarus border crisis is what happens when humans are treated as weapons

Another humanitarian catastrophe is unfolding on the European Union’s doorstep. Poland has responded by deploying 20,000 border police, firing water cannon and teargas at asylum seekers, reinforcing its border fencing and blocking access for journalists and aid organisations. This need to react is understandable: Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko’s use of refugees and migrants as pawns for… Read More Anna Iasmi Vallianatou: The Poland-Belarus border crisis is what happens when humans are treated as weapons

Dilip

Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk charged again with ‘insulting Turkishness’ / Complaint filed against Indian comedian Vir Das for his allegedly anti-India show

Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk is being investigated by the Turkish state for “insulting” the founder of modern Turkey and ridiculing the Turkish flag in his new novel Nights of Plague. Pamuk, who denies the accusations, published the book in Turkey in March. Set on a fictional Ottoman island during an outbreak of the bubonic plague in the early 1900s,… Read More Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk charged again with ‘insulting Turkishness’ / Complaint filed against Indian comedian Vir Das for his allegedly anti-India show

Dilip