Chirayu Jain The BJP’s new labor reforms, the construction industry, and the mounting challenges for India’s trade unions Like the tax and agrarian legislation, the four new Labour Codes—the Labour Code on Wages of 2019, the Labour Code on Industrial Relations of 2020, Labour Code on Social Security of 2020 and Occupational Safety, Health and… Read More A New Labor Regime
…..the second result of junk politics is more insidious. It solidifies the cult of the self, the amoral belief that we have the right to do anything, to betray and destroy anyone, to get what we want. The cult of the self fosters a psychopathic cruelty, a culture built not on empathy, the common good… Read More Chris Hedges on America’s junk politics
openDemocracy’s new film BOOMERANG, exploring the legacies of empire through Liverpool’s docks, is available online Kojo Koram Lenin’s famous quote that “there are weeks where decades happen” would be a suitable epitaph for the tombstone of the Liz Truss premiership. As commentators focus on her obvious personal limitations as a politician to explain her spectacular… Read More Empire not only made the colonies. It made the unequal Britain we see today
Bharat Bhushan Contrary to popular perception, Hindutva forces have not endorsed Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra (BJY). However, such a public perception prompted Union Home Minister Amit Shah to announce that the Ram Janmabhoomi Temple at Ayodhya would be ready on January 1, 2024. Champat Rai, Vice President of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and… Read More Ayodhya ‘endorsements’ of Rahul compel BJP to grab credit for Ram Temple
Sonali Kolhatkar There is a common feeling that many of us have experienced in professional or academic environments, especially when we struggle against gender or racial bias. It’s called “imposter syndrome”—the feeling that one doesn’t deserve one’s position and that others will discover this lack of competence at any moment. I felt this way as… Read More Nepotism babies and the myth of American meritocracy
Jairus Banaji The evolution of India’s corporate sector from 2000 to 2020 “The systemic, long-term nexus between the political elites and big business will not go away anytime soon,” wrote journalist M. K. Venu in 2015. Writing in the aftermath of Obama’s second visit to India, Venu suggested that “crony capitalism” had to be grasped in… Read More Indian Big Business
Eric Bennett First posted April 26, 2018 NB: This comment on the issues connected to ‘multi-culturalism’ and ‘deconstruction’ is written about American literary and media studies departments, but is relevant in other continents. DS Now that we have a culture of higher education in which business studies dominate; now that we face legislatures blind to the… Read More Dear Humanities Profs: We Are the Problem
J.J. Charlesworth Capitalism is making us mentally ill because we’ve all accepted its new message – that our freedom can be found in our constant self-realisation, which turns out to be our never- ending self-exploitation. That’s the driving message of Byung-Chul Han’s newly translated extended essay (it’s 130 pages long), but its bleak diagnosis of… Read More Topology of Violence, by Byung-Chul Han
Lessons From the Start of a Cold War. By Fredrik Logevall January/February 2023 We all read him, those of us who did graduate work in U.S. diplomatic history in the late 1980s and early 1990s. For although there were other important figures in modern U.S. foreign relations, only one was George Kennan, the “father of containment,”… Read More The Ghosts of Kennan
Byung-Chul Han is a South Korea-born German philosopher and cultural theorist whose recent books include “The Burnout Society” and “The Disappearance of Rituals.” He recently spoke to Nathan Gardels, Noema’s editor-in-chief. Nathan Gardels: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once commented that: “When eras are on the decline, all tendencies are subjective; but, on the other hand, when matters… Read More All That Is Solid Melts Into Information
