Careless Whispers ...

Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunters: ~ African Proverb The vast landscape of News, Information and General Knowledge on modern history and current affairs is populated in various intriguing ways in India. This has been a well established fact by now that the History taught in our schools through text-books has very little to do with actual facts and sequence of events. Contents of history text-books are collated in a particular way – read slanted ,  manoeuvred  and distorted . Important and crucial events are suppressed, ignored & censored from being exposed to the young minds. Idea is to push the young ones towards rote-learning by cramming up the historical dates of basic events, mostly birth and death anniversaries, and to a large extent the chronology. No wonder History is considered the most hated subject by the young minds as they do not find any value or interest whatsoever in remembering some dates and ...

"I think the greatest single enemy is the misuse of information,  the perversion of truth in the hands of terribly skilful people." ~ John le Carré This is the third in a series of posts on NaMo, after the earlier ones: Decoding NaMo : From a Classical Liberal perspective Decoding NaMo : From Lutyens' Delhi perspective This post is dedicated to the millions of ordinary people: self-respecting, law-abiding, well-meaning citizens, who do their daily prayers, go through their daily routine balancing life between job, school, children, parents and family. Among all of this grind there is a routine mundane activity (and every Indian child is ceremoniously “cultured” to get into it over her formative years) that includes reading daily newspaper and watching TV News. Basically, follow the mainstream media to keep one updated with the current events, “knowledgable” debates and “intelligent” opinions, that would eventually shape the judgement and decision of each o...

"The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by sceptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities.  We need men who can dream of things that never were." ~ John Keats This is a follow-up of the earlier post:  Decoding NaMo : From a Classical Liberal perspective   First off, let us understand the very concept of “Lutyens' Delhi”. If we look at the political history of India since independence, we notice that all of these years, we have been governed by a small group of people, hailing from a particular area of Lutyens' Delhi called “Lutyens' Bungalow Zone” (LBZ), which is spread over an area of about 2800 hectares. Poweratti: These people have worked their way up, either by virtue of their fine “pedigree” or through a high-powered social network and connections (read Coterie of Nepotist and Crony-Capitalists). In any case, they are obviously used to a fine life, full of “self-entitlements” and “perks”, whic...

Starting with this one, I will run a series of short posts on Narendra Modi (NaMo).  No, it is not about promoting Narendra Modi or supporting his candidature for the future Prime Minister of India. It is about taking a stand; and a response to many people who have asked my opinion on NaMo, whether I support him, and if so, why? The enigma of NaMo needs to be viewed, discussed and understood from different planes and angles. It would be impossible to cover everything in one single post, so for the sake of brevity and focus, I try to cover it in a series of short ones. In this post, let us try to understand NaMo purely from a Classical Liberal perspective. He is the only elected representative in the current political space in India, of course except JP of LSP, who in the capacity of a CM and now as PM designate, has explicitly, consistently and openly talked about some of the most fundamental aspects of governance, that draw straight from the Classical Libe...

I had arrived at Frankfurt airport early in the morning on 16 th December, after a long trans-Atlantic flight. After settling down in the transit lounge with my diet breakfast, pulled out copies of FT & IHT from the newspaper shelf, the two newspapers that I usually like to spend my time with while in transit. I was pleasantly surprised to find this article on Mr. Ratan Tata, yet again, in FT:  Chai with the FT: Ratan Tata Mr. Ratan Tata is much more visible in the UK press rather than the Indian press - call it just co-incidence or the sheer ignorance of the Indian media. James Crabtree of FT Mumbai Bureau has a knack of beautifully weaving the mundane into the extraordinary to make an interesting article. This article did not have any specific insights, just a chat over a cup of tea; but I kept thinking about it for a long time on board my onward flight back home. It was a mixed feeling of national pride and happiness; especially after reading a lot of negati...