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

Lynn Parramore: The perverted dreams of western modernity and capitalism may be exhausting themselves

Do you, inhabitant of the marvelous and menacing late-modern world, detect something missing – some kind of vitality, meaning, connectedness, love, beauty, or wonder? If so, you’ve likely searched for a story to explain it….  Critics of the disenchantment narrative have long noticed that if you look closely at western modernity, this ostensibly secular and… Read More Lynn Parramore: The perverted dreams of western modernity and capitalism may be exhausting themselves

Dilip

MATTHEW ROZSA: How humanity lost control of plastic pollution

Early in the pandemic, many scientists noticed an odd, incongruous side effect of business closures and widespread shelter-in-place orders: a concomitant reduction in air pollution. NASA saw significant drops in nitrogen dioxide levels in satellite data from April 2020. That raised an uneasy prospect for environmentalists, the possibility that the coronavirus pandemic — which has,… Read More MATTHEW ROZSA: How humanity lost control of plastic pollution

Dilip

Public Solidarity Statement: Greens With Farmers

Public Solidarity Statement: Greens With Farmers: #GreensWithFarmers   Youth environmental groups join Dilli Chalo and Nationwide General Strike on 26th November to withdraw the three Anti-Farmer Bills and Reverse the Dilution of Workers’ Protections. Stop destructive projects, reverse anti-Earth policies, abandon fossil fuels, and implement a People’s Green Recovery Agenda to safeguard future generations! Environmental groups… Read More Public Solidarity Statement: Greens With Farmers

Dilip

'The law related to Agricultural Produce marketing is a death warrant' / P Sainath: Farm Bills Will Create a Vacuum That May Result in Utter Chaos

“When protestors block a road or damage it, they are branded as criminals. What if governments do the same? Are they not what they call us?” asks 70-year-old Harinder Singh Lakha, a farmer from Mehna village in Punjab’s Moga district.  Lakha is referring to the 10-feet trenches dug in the roads by the authorities to… Read More 'The law related to Agricultural Produce marketing is a death warrant' / P Sainath: Farm Bills Will Create a Vacuum That May Result in Utter Chaos

Dilip

Mukul Kesavan – Right not rabid: Respectable conservatism in the time of Trump

In these majoritarian times, some conservative pundits, embarrassed by the feral Right and keen to seem ideologically respectable, have found an all-purpose rhetorical manoeuvre which goes like this. Progressives are to blame for the enthronement of racist, communalist and majoritarian political parties because it is the left’s ‘wokeness’, its elitist disdain for the anxieties of… Read More Mukul Kesavan – Right not rabid: Respectable conservatism in the time of Trump

Dilip

Owen Bowcott: International lawyers draft plan to criminalise ecosystem destruction

International lawyers are drafting plans for a legally-enforceable crime of ecocide – criminalising destruction of the world’s ecosystems – that is already attracting support from European countries and island nations at risk from rising sea levels. The panel coordinating the initiative is chaired by Prof Philippe Sands QC, of University College London, and Florence Mumba, a… Read More Owen Bowcott: International lawyers draft plan to criminalise ecosystem destruction

Dilip

Book review: Time, Islam, and Ecological Thought in the Medieval Ruins of Delhi

In and around the dark recesses of the ruins of a fourteenth-century palace in Delhi, Anand Vivek Taneja finds a counterculture to the demands of today’s India. In Taneja’s view, this world of jinn veneration is more inclusive and less judgmental than the outside world and hearkens back to a fast slipping past, with elements… Read More Book review: Time, Islam, and Ecological Thought in the Medieval Ruins of Delhi

Dilip

Bharat Bhushan: Short of answers or assurances; Govt unable to handle farmer protests

NB: The RSS-led Modi Government is politically bankrupt. It has only one mental fixation: communal hatred, which is why it is now raising the bogey of Khalistan, clubbing it together with the charge of Congress-led conspiracy. (Has it forgotten than Indira Gandhi’s assassins were inspired by Khalistani ideology?). This government has only one method of… Read More Bharat Bhushan: Short of answers or assurances; Govt unable to handle farmer protests

Dilip

Silvia Marchetti – South Tyrol identity crisis: to live in Italy, but feel Austrian

They’re Italian citizens but simply don’t feel Italian. Bolzano’s local authorities estimate that German is spoken by 75% of the 510,000 inhabitants of the Alto Adige region. Locals, however, call it by its original name – South Tyrol – and many wish it were independent. Eva Klotz is a co-founder of the separatist party Süd-Tiroler Freiheit (South… Read More Silvia Marchetti – South Tyrol identity crisis: to live in Italy, but feel Austrian

Dilip

JUAN COLE: Was the assassination of a nuclear scientist a bid to kill a Biden return to Iran nuclear Deal?

Likely, the operation, whether by Israel or Saudi Arabia or both, was intended to spike tensions in US-Iranian relations so as to make it more difficult for Joe Biden to start back up the 2015 nuclear deal or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Israel does not acknowledge its covert operations, but it seems the… Read More JUAN COLE: Was the assassination of a nuclear scientist a bid to kill a Biden return to Iran nuclear Deal?

Dilip