As the bad news continues to pile up, the Modi regime has decided it is not enough to deny it. The solution: if India is falling in global rankings, it must come up with its own. P. Raman Throughout the buildup to G20, the Narendra Modi regime had repeatedly used the catchphrases ‘mother of democracy’… Read More ‘Vishwaguru’ Is Realising the World Does Not Dance to His Tune
“Free speech in India has sunk into a perilous abyss and steadily falling press freedom indices underscore the dangers of crossing a line that is becoming increasingly contentious,” the collective said in its report. The first four months of 2024 in India have already seen at least 134 instances of free speech violations, with journalists,… Read More India Has Seen At Least 134 Violations of Free Speech in 2024: Free Speech Collective
Tech giant fired number of people who protested against $1.2bn Project Nimbus, which supports Israeli military and government Michael Sainato Google has been accused of throwing a “tantrum” after sacking more than 50 workers in response to a protest over the company’s military ties to the Israeli government – firings that have shone a light… Read More Workers accuse Google of ‘tantrum’ after 50 fired over Israel contract protest
Yusra Khan A microblogging site is no town square, but the influence of X (formerly Twitter) cannot be understated when it comes to deciphering the health of public discourse. Indian pro-government media personalities often hold more sway in this regard than algorithmic bot activity when it comes to harassment and targeted bullying in the online… Read More Free Speech Or Fear Tactics? The Unchecked Rise Of Right-Wing Online Abuse
http://www.reporters-collective.in For the past 11 months, Manipur has been locked in an ethnic conflict. The conflict that has killed more than 219 people, injured 1,100 and displaced 60,000 is frequently oversimplified as a struggle between the Hindu Meitei and Christian Kuki-Zo communities, mirroring the religious polarisation seen in communal conflicts and assaults on religious minorities… Read More Scoop: Assam Rifles blames Manipur CM
More concerning is the university and police’s promptness to align with ABVP’s ideology, disregarding their obligation to operate within the framework of the Constitution of India. Instead of penalising those who commit violence, they punish the victims of violence… The list of such institutions is long where the administration has acted like the authorities of… Read More Pondicherry Violence Sparks Question: Why Can’t India Interpret Hindu Gods?
NB: Anyone concerned about the intellectual health of their country should recall what Mao’s regime did to China’s academic life under the so-called Cultural Revolution in the late 1960’s. This was Mao Zedong’s motivated assault on academics, intellectuals and on his critics in the Communist Party leadership. Professor Frank Dikotter’s research study of this momentous… Read More Where Are the ‘Don Quixotes’ of Indian Academia?
The infantilizing social control of the university. Rita Koganzon When I was a graduate teaching assistant at Harvard University a decade ago, one of my students missed a final exam because he forgot to set his alarm. I didn’t learn about this because he told me, in person or even by email; nor did he… Read More The Coddling of the American Undergraduate
Historians will find many reasons for the end of this American era, but the siege of TikTok reminds us that its largest cause was the epoch-defining rise of China… The US, that apostle of laissez-faire and free speech, now wants to save 170 million American TikTok users from themselves by banning an app. It’s hard to be… Read More TikTok, tick-tock
Amy Hawkins At first glance, a Nobel prize winning author, a bottle of green tea and Beijing’s Tsinghua University have little in common. But in recent weeks they have been dubbed by China’s nationalist netizens as the “three new evils” in the fight to defend the country’s valour in cyberspace. Last month a patriotic blogger… Read More China Nobel Laureate for literature becomes a target in nationalist slander campaign
After the truth-shower 