Silent explosionsMimicPoisonous wavesEncompass the depthsOf your mind The subtletyThat fools youAnd mostIt’s, okay? Bars, a jokeDemocracies, cokeStill what skiesA childLullabiesWho are you?Do I crySighA realist must build a wallThis nigh A million tombsFor a hundred livesFascinated by leafGlitter for theTrophy wivesThe waves riseCapsize Again
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Regression and Reform: India’s Education System
In 1976, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi added the words ‘socialist’ and ‘secular’ to the existent description of India as a ‘sovereign democratic republic’; yet, each one of these aspects has been disregarded by governments in the past as well as the present. The preamble may declare India to be a socialist country, but the nation has failed to deliver basic services such as education and healthcare to its masses. Even as capitalist a country as the US provides its populace with free public schooling. In contrast, supposedly socialist India is unable to provide education to its children. As Pranab Mukherjee, the deceased former president of India said, “education is…
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Police Brutality in India: An Overdue Evaluation
With the Black Lives Matter movement gaining momentum in America post the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, liberal Indians have been relentless in criticising the American policing system and the subsequent inaction on the part of the Trump administration. However, the stark similarities in regime between right-wing India and conservative America hint at the idea that institutional neglect of policing systems is not an issue that is restricted to American borders. During lockdown itself India has seen several instances of grave police misconduct and brutality against migrant workers, daily wagers, vegetable vendors, street vendors and the working class.
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The Modi Stimulus Package: It’s Time to Bite the Bullet
As India hits 140,000 Covid-19 cases and Mr Modi’s apparently great stimulus package gets ramped into action, hopes of economic emancipation for the people are high. However, as economists have concluded, as the lower middle class and service sector workers shall agree, and as I shall elaborate, the apparently prodigious stimulus packaged announced by the Modi regime has proved to be but another hideous attempt to handle the pandemic as an image-issue as opposed to a health and economic crisis.
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Pandemics and Politics: Covid-19
With over 1,781,000 confirmed cases and approximately 108,000 deaths worldwide as of April 12, what started out as an epidemic in China, has now become possibly the world’s deadliest pandemic. The coronavirus or Covid-19, promises to not go down without a fight. As the United States of America battles the largest number of coronavirus cases at over 503,000, it has, among several other nations, declared a national emergency. Amidst crashing economies, broken supply chain for food and essentials, and lack of medical equipment, many governments acknowledge the world to be in the state of ‘war’. Having a mortality rate of 4%, and transmissibility of Ro 2.24 to 3.58, coronavirus undoubtedly…
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The Chinese Demographic Crisis: A Downward Spiral
With only 14.6 million live births in 2019, approximately 500,000 less than 2018, China’s birth rate is now the lowest it has been since 1949. This is the third consecutive year in which the birth rate has fallen. According to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), the number of births in 2019 were 10.48 per 1000 people.Efforts to head off this crisis, like the removal of the one-child policy, have failed, and China is in for trouble.
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Not So Ache Din
As the world transitions into the second decade of the 21st century, India slips back into the not so glorious 1970s. Popular opinion says Indians are living in an undeclared emergency, it seems the Congress and the BJP have more in common than expected. Communal riots, persecution of demonstrators, people in power blatantly and unfairly obstructing democracy, sound familiar?