Impoverishment, greed, and disaffection, he says, are engendered when the king: 1/ ignores the good [people] and favours the wicked; 2/ causes harm by new unrighteous practices; 3/ neglects the observation of the proper and righteous practices; 4/ suppresses dharma and propagates adharma; 5/ does what ought not to be done and fails to do… Read More Kautilya’s observations on the causes of discontent in a polity
Here are some recent exposes of recent happenings; aside from corrupt practices over the years. Not much is reported of it on mainstream media. Now there are calls for the arrest of independent journalists Derek O’Brien takes a snipe at PM Modi Modi Reality & INDIA : मोदी इकोनॉमी की फाइल खुली..तो पलट जायेगी बाज़ी… Read More Corruption and Fraud / Auditor General of India calls out massive financial irregularities
NB: And why should Caesar be a tyrant then? / Poor man, I know he would not be a wolf,But that he sees the Romans are but sheep / He were no lion, were not the Romans hinds Shakespeare; Julius Caesar, (I.iii.103-6) DS By Mitali Saran The trouble with manufacturing a larger-than-life persona for a… Read More The measure of the man
By Ishaan Tharoorwith Sammy Westfall The brutal war raging in Ukraine is a profoundly 21st-century conflict. Drones buzz around its battlefields. Hypersonic missiles plunge into unsuspecting targets. Satellites disperse the fog of war. Algorithms generated by artificial intelligence help guide artillery. Footage captured on mobile phones proliferates on social media, giving the conflict an almost visceral,… Read More Ukraine’s war of attrition draws parallels to World War I
Ours is the age of the intellectual organisation of political hatreds: Julien Benda, The Treason of the Intellectuals; 1928 Once crime was as solitary as a cry of protest; now it is as universal as science. Yesterday it was put on trial; today it determines the law: Albert Camus, The Rebel, 1956 A BJP minister’s… Read More India’s subdivision of criminality (how one massacre deserves another)
Underlying longer-term weaknesses in the economy are bound up with Beijing’s repressive political system George Magnus At a Politburo meeting last month, China’s leaders referred to the economic recovery this year as “torturous”. You won’t often hear such candour coming from a Chinese Communist party institution, let alone such an elevated body. They were referring… Read More China’s recent economic woes suggest there is something seriously amiss
Almost 10 years back on a lazy summer afternoon sitting in the veranda of our ancestral home in suburban Kolkata, my late grandfather in a casual conversation said something which has stuck to me till date: “While others can talk about it and be nostalgic, only people of Bengal and Punjab could feel the actual… Read More Suman Nath’s ‘Democracy And Social Cleavage In India’ Indicts Both TMC And BJP For Communalism In West Bengal
Babasaheb’s universalist vision of the community based on maitri enriches the political imagination everywhere Chandan Gowda During a stay at Shravasti, the Buddha asked the bhikkus, “Suppose a man is preparing to dig the earth. Does the earth resent him?” “No,” the bhikkus replied. “Suppose a man wishes to paint pictures in the air using lac and… Read More Ambedkar’s Ideal Of Maitri
the high-profile assassination on Wednesday of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio could be a turning point for the country Tara John Ecuadorians have found themselves in the middle of a bloody turf war as rival criminal organizations mete out brutal and often public shows of violence, battling to control drug trafficking routes that cross the Andean nation. Reports of dismemberments,… Read More How corruption and gang warfare transformed Ecuador
If there’s been one topline tech story this week that feels synecdochal of the United States’ entire tech-politik zeitgeist, it’s got to be Zoom’s latest privacy fiasco. The video conference software-maker caught heat this week over a Terms of Service (ToS) change allowing it to harvest private user meeting data for artificial intelligence training. And, yes, once… Read More Not so private room: Zoom’s AI privacy fiasco
