Showing posts with label India. Show all posts
Showing posts with label India. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 07, 2022

7: India

China abandons key parts of zero-Covid strategy after protests
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How British colonialism killed 100 million Indians in 40 years Between 1880 to 1920, British colonial policies in India claimed more lives than all famines in the Soviet Union, Maoist China and North Korea combined. ......... Two years ago, a YouGov poll found that 32 percent of people in Britain are actively proud of the nation’s colonial history......... extreme poverty in India increased under British rule, from 23 percent in 1810 to more than 50 percent in the mid-20th century. Real wages declined during the British colonial period, reaching a nadir in the 19th century, while famines became more frequent and more deadly.

Far from benefitting the Indian people, colonialism was a human tragedy with few parallels in recorded history.

............. the period from 1880 to 1920 – the height of Britain’s imperial power – was particularly devastating for India ........ the death rate increased considerably during this period, from 37.2 deaths per 1,000 people in the 1880s to 44.2 in the 1910s. Life expectancy declined from 26.7 years to 21.9 years.......... Robust data on mortality rates in India only exists from the 1880s. If we use this as the baseline for “normal” mortality, we find that some 50 million excess deaths occurred under the aegis of British colonialism during the period from 1891 to 1920. .......... Fifty million deaths is a staggering figure, and yet this is a conservative estimate. Data on real wages indicates that by 1880, living standards in colonial India had already declined dramatically from their previous levels. ............ prior to colonialism, Indian living standards may have been “on a par with the developing parts of Western Europe.” We do not know for sure what India’s pre-colonial mortality rate was, but if we assume it was similar to that of England in the 16th and 17th centuries (27.18 deaths per 1,000 people), we find that 165 million excess deaths occurred in India during the period from 1881 to 1920. ........... somewhere in the vicinity of 100 million people died prematurely at the height of British colonialism. This is among the largest policy-induced mortality crises in human history .......... larger than the combined number of deaths that occurred during all famines in the Soviet Union, Maoist China, North Korea, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, and Mengistu’s Ethiopia. ......... Britain effectively destroyed India’s manufacturing sector. Prior to colonisation, India was one of the largest industrial producers in the world, exporting high-quality textiles to all corners of the globe. The tawdry cloth produced in England simply could not compete. This began to change, however, when the British East India Company assumed control of Bengal in 1757. ........... the colonial regime practically eliminated Indian tariffs, allowing British goods to flood the domestic market, but created a system of exorbitant taxes and internal duties that prevented Indians from selling cloth within their own country, let alone exporting it. ........... This unequal trade regime crushed Indian manufacturers and effectively de-industrialised the country. As the chairman of East India and China Association boasted to the English parliament in 1840: “This company has succeeded in converting India from a manufacturing country into a country exporting raw produce.” English manufacturers gained a tremendous advantage, while India was reduced to poverty and its people were made vulnerable to hunger and disease. .......... British colonisers established a system of legal plunder, known to contemporaries as the “drain of wealth.” Britain taxed the Indian population and then used the revenues to buy Indian products – indigo, grain, cotton, and opium – thus obtaining these goods for free. These goods were then either consumed within Britain or re-exported abroad, with the revenues pocketed by the British state and used to finance the industrial development of Britain and its settler colonies – the United States, Canada and Australia.............. This system drained India of goods worth trillions of dollars in today’s money. The British were merciless in imposing the drain, forcing India to export food even when drought or floods threatened local food security. Historians have established that tens of millions of Indians died of starvation during several considerable policy-induced famines in the late 19th century, as their resources were syphoned off to Britain and its settler colonies. ........... Colonial administrators were fully aware of the consequences of their policies. They watched as millions starved and yet they did not change course. ..........

Britain’s imperial policies “were often the exact moral equivalents of bombs dropped from 18,000 feet.”

........... Britain’s exploitative policies were associated with approximately 100 million excess deaths during the 1881-1920 period. This is a straightforward case for reparations, with strong precedent in international law. Following World War II, Germany signed reparations agreements to compensate the victims of the Holocaust and more recently agreed to pay reparations to Namibia for colonial crimes perpetrated there in the early 1900s. In the wake of apartheid, South Africa paid reparations to people who had been terrorised by the white-minority government. .......... reparations can help address the legacy of deprivation and inequity that colonialism produced. It is a critical step towards justice and healing.
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Gujarat And Himachal Pradesh Exit Polls Prediction | Political Pulse | Election Results 2022
India’s economic growth on track. Here’s how it’s set to shape up The country is projected to become the world’s third-largest economy, outpacing Japan and Germany, by 2027.......... Global offshoring, digitalisation, investment in manufacturing and energy transition are revving up India’s economic growth. The country is set to become the world’s third-largest economy, outpacing Japan and Germany, by 2027, and will have the third-largest stock market by 2030, according to S&P Global and Morgan Stanley......... India is projected to be one of the fastest-growing major economies in the world. Morgan Stanley has said that India’s GDP is likely to more than double by 2031 -- from the current $3.5 trillion to $7.5 trillion. .......... The economic boom will usher in sweeping changes. India is expected to become a manufacturing powerhouse and hub. The Production Linked Incentive Scheme (PLIS) to boost manufacturing and exports is already in place. PLIS gives incentives to investors – both domestic and foreign – by way of tax concessions and quick licence clearances. ........ The power and willingness of consumers to spend on goods will see a spike as disposable incomes increase. This will not just enhance the standard of living but also give a boost to the quality of life of people. ........ overall consumption in the country could more than double from $2 trillion in 2022 to $4.9 trillion by 2030. The greatest gains will go to non-grocery retail, including apparel and accessories, leisure and recreation, and household goods and services. ......... the number of people employed in India for jobs outside the country is likely to at least double, reaching more than 11 million, as global spending on outsourcing swells from $180 billion per year to around $500 billion by 2030. ........ Manufacturing’s share of GDP in India could increase from 15.6% currently to 21% by 2031—and, in the process, double India’s export market share......... the slowdown in emerging economies could also position India as an attractive alternative investment destination. ........... Energy transition will also play a huge role in India’s growth saga. As energy needs mount, India will meet the consumption demand by tapping renewables, including solar, biogas, hydrogen, ethanol, wind, and hydroelectric power. Using non-conventional energy sources will go a long way in ensuring that India’s reliance on imported energy is slashed by half. The growth in energy demand and energy transition (from fossil fuels) will throw up new investment opportunities. ......... The GDP growth for the July-September quarter plummeted to 6.3% from 8.4% in 2021, and 13.5% in the previous quarter. This was because the manufacturing and mining sectors reportedly didn’t grow as much as they were supposed to.......... must keep tapping its huge talent pool, and harnessing its 'ease of doing business' policies to inch towards becoming the world’s biggest economy in the next 15 years. .
‘मधेश प्रदेशमा जनमतको नेतृत्वमा सरकार बनाउने मतादेश छ’ जनताले हामीलाई दिएको समर्थन समानुपातिक मतमा देखिन्छ । त्यो आधारमा हेर्ने हो भने जनताले जनमत पार्टीलाई बहुत राम्रो तरिकाले समर्थन गरेको हो । ........ मधेश प्रदेशको सवालमा अहिले हामी हाम्रै नेतृत्वमा सरकार बनाऔं भनेर पहल थालेका छौं । मधेश प्रदेशका जनताले सबभन्दा ठूलो पार्टी जनमत पार्टीलाई बनाएको हो । किनभने अरु पार्टीहरु गठबन्धन बनाएर प्राविधिकरुपमा हामीभन्दा बढी सिट ल्याएका छन् । तर हाम्रो पार्टी कोही कसैसँग कुनै किसिमको गठबन्धन नगरी एक्लै चुनाव लडेर त्यत्रो धेरै सिट ल्याएपछि जनताले हामीलाई अनुमोदन गारेको देखिन्छ । त्यस आधारमा हामी सबभन्दा ठूलो पार्टी हौं । त्यसको आधारमा हामीले सरकारको नेतृत्व गर्ने र सरकार निर्माणका लागि पहल गर्ने कुरा गरिरहेका छौं । ....... सरकारमा जानैपर्ने हाम्रो बाध्यता छैन । अर्को कुरा हामी आन्दोलनकारी शक्ति हौं । जनताका समस्यासँग जोडिएको जनमत पार्टी हो । जनताको जनजीविकालाई पहिलो प्राथमिकतामा राखेर उदय भएको पार्टी हो । सडक र सदनमा भएर पनि जनताको पक्षमा हामी काम गराउन सक्छौं । ........ अहिले हाम्रो पहिलो प्राथमिकता हाम्रै नेतृत्वमा सरकारमा निर्माण गर्न पहल गर्ने हो । ....... मधेश प्रदेशमा हेर्ने हो भने झण्डै १८–१९ प्रतिशत मत जनताले दिएको छ । यो आधारमा हेर्ने हो भने जनमत पार्टी सबभन्दा ठूलो पार्टी हो । त्यसकारण जनताले मधेश प्रदेशमा जनमत पार्टीले सरकार बनाउनुपर्छ भनेर मतादेश दिएको हो नि । हामीले सडकबाट जुन सवालहरु उठायौं, त्यो कार्यान्वयन गर्ने निकाय त सरकार नै हो । हामीले किसान आन्दोलन ग¥यौं, भ्रष्टाचार विरोधी आन्दोलन ग¥यौं, रोजगारी सिर्जना गर्ने भनेका छौं । ती सवालहरु कार्यान्वयन गराउन हामीलाई मतादेश आएको छ । ......... अहिले हामी सय वर्षको रोडम्याप लिएर अगाडि बढिरहेका छौं । हामीले चरणबद्ध रुपमा आफ्ना योजनाहरु बनाएका छौं । विगतका सरकार वा पार्टीले जसरी भ्रष्टाचार गरे, त्यस्तो हाम्रो पार्टीका कुनै सांसद वा मन्त्रीले गरे भने त्यस्तालाई तत्कालै हामीले फिर्ता बोलाउने प्रावधान हाम्रो पार्टीमा छ । ......को संसदीय दलको नेता, सचेतक, प्रमुख सचेतक लगायतका विषयमा संसदीय दलको बैठकले टुंगो लगाउने हो । जो संसदीय दलको नेता हुन्छन् उहाँ नै मुख्यमन्त्रीको दाबेदार हुनुहुन्छ । यस विषयमा अहिले हामी टुंगो लगाइसकेका छैनौं । चुनावको अन्तिम नतिजा आइसकेपछि त्यसपछि टुंगो लाग्छ ।

Wednesday, November 16, 2022

16: G20

Thursday, October 13, 2022

13: UPI



युट्युबर गाउँ, जहाँका अधिकांस मानिसको युट्युब च्यानल छ भारतको छत्तिसगढमा त्यो युट्युबर गाउँ छ । रायपुर जिल्लामा पर्ने उक्त गाउँको नाम तुलसी गाउँ हो । यो गाउँ आफ्नो विशेषताका कारण सोसल मिडियामा छाएको छ । यो गाउँलाई युट्युब भिलेज तथा युट्युब हबको नामले पनि चिनिन्छ । ...... गाउँमा १५ वर्षदेखि ८५ वर्षसम्मका मानिसहरुले युट्युब भिडियो बनाइरहेका हुन्छन् । ..... गाउँका पहिलो युट्युबर जय बर्माका अनुसार पहिले शिक्षकको जागिर खाँदा उनले महिनामा १२ हजार भारुसम्म कमाउन गर्दथे भने अहिले ३५ हजार भारु सम्म आम्दानी गर्ने गरेका छन् ।

जुली महतो र अनिल झा : धनुषा ३ मा कसको पल्ला भारी ? फेरि पराजित हुने डरले निधि समानुपातिकमा गए भने महतोले पनि विगतमा जस्तो मतदाताको विश्वास नदेखेर हुनसक्छ गृह जिल्ला सर्लाही २ मा उम्मेदवारी दिएका छन् । विगतको चुनावमा एमालेले आन्तरिक रुपमा राजेन्द्रलाई सहयोग गरेको थियो । जसमा एमाले नेता रघुवीर महासेठ र जुलीको भूमिका थियो । अहिले जुली यो क्षेत्रमा एमालेबाट उम्मेदवार भएपछि उनको गुन तिर्न महतो बाहिरिएको पनि कतिपयको बुझाइ छ । ...... धनुषा क्षेत्र नं. ३ मा जनकपुरधाम उपमहानगरपालिकाका १७ सहित जम्मा ३८ वटा वडा पर्छन् । जनकपुरधाम बाहेक नगराइन नगरपालिकाको सबै ९ वटा वडा, मुखियापट्टी मुसहरनिया गाउँपालिकाको सबै ६ वटा वडा, धनौजी गाउँपालिकाको सबै पाँचवटा वडा र विदेह नगरपालिकाको एउटा वडा यस क्षेत्रमा पर्छ । ........ गएको स्थानीय चुनावमा ३८ वटा वडाको वडाध्यक्ष पदमा पार्टीहरुले पाएको मत जोड्ने हो भने पहिलो स्थानमा कांग्रेस देखिन्छ । उसको २२ हजार ४२९ मत छ । दोस्रोमा एमालेको १६ हजार १६ मत छ । जसपाले ८ हजार २२४ र लोसपाले १ हजार १६३ मत प्राप्त गरेको छ ।

रविले किन रोजे चितवन २? पत्रकार शालिग्राम पुडासैनीको मृत्यु प्रकरणमा आत्महत्या दुरुत्साहनको मुद्दा खेपेका रवि केही समय चितवन प्रहरीको हिरासतमा थुनिएका थिए । रवि प्रहरी हिरासतमा रहँदा उनको समर्थनमा चितवनमा हरेक दिन जस्तो प्रदर्शन भएको थियो भने उनी धरौटीमा छुट्दा नारायणी नदी किनारमा केही हजार समर्थक भेला भएका थिए । ....... स्थानीय निर्वाचनमा यस क्षेत्रमा सत्ता गठबन्धनबाट वडाध्यक्षका उम्मेदवारहरुले ३५ हजार ३९४ मत ल्याएका थिए । एमालेका वडाध्यक्षका उम्मेदवारले ३५ हजार ५४३ मत ल्याएका थिए । जबकी ७ असारमा मात्र स्थापना भएको राष्ट्रिय स्वतन्त्र पार्टीले चितवनमा संगठन बनाइसकेको छैन ।

Saturday, September 17, 2022

17: Russia



Life Is an Accident of Space and Time Even if life existed on every planet that could support it, living matter in the universe would amount to only a few grains of sand in the Gobi Desert. ........ even if all potentially habitable planets do in fact harbor life, the fraction of matter in the universe in living form is exceedingly small: about one-billionth of one-billionth. That’s like a few grains of sand on the Gobi Desert. Evidently, we living things are a very special arrangement of atoms and molecules. ........ In the mid-1970s, the Australian physicist Brandon Carter pointed out that our universe seems particularly fine-tuned for the emergence of life. For example, if the nuclear force holding the centers of atoms together were a little weaker, then the complex atoms needed for life could never form. If it were a little stronger, all of the hydrogen in the infant universe would have fused to become helium. Without hydrogen, water (H2O) would not exist, and most biologists believe that water is necessary for life. ........... Carter’s observation that our universe is finely tuned for the emergence of life has been called the anthropic principle. A profound question raised by the principle is: Why? Why should the universe care whether it contains animate matter? The theological answer to this question is a cosmic form of intelligent design: Our universe was created by an all-powerful and purposeful being, who wanted it to have life. ........... animate matter is not only rare in our particular universe, but seems to be nonexistent in most possible universes. ............ In a limited but real sense, we living things help give the universe meaning. Without us, the cosmos would merely be.

........ very few democracies have begun to slide and then reversed course. ....... A neutral social media really could be a democratizing force, in theory. But the major platforms are far from neutral. They are deliberately designed to manipulate you, and to manipulate your experience on the platform in ways that will change how you think and how you behave. These platforms do this not just by what they show you, but also by eliciting certain emotions and behaviors from you. ........ All this digital manipulation, at the scale of maybe hundreds of hours per year, changes you. And not just online, but in your offline life, too. It changes your emotional makeup, the way that you approach politics, your sense of your own identity — even the way that you process right and wrong. .......... the effect can be to make you angrier, more extreme and intolerant, more distrustful, more prone to divide the world between us and them, and more disposed toward hostility and even violence against people outside your social in-group. ........... The Yellow Vests, the French protest movement that began in 2018, exemplifies this. It was this stunning, spontaneous, nationwide uprising for political change. And it had been organized almost entirely through Facebook and other platforms. But it was also internally incoherent. For all its force, it quickly fizzled out, having caused a lot of traffic problems but having changed very little. ........



An Epic Struggle for the Soul of Catholicism John T. McGreevy’s exhaustive “Catholicism: A Global History From the French Revolution to Pope Francis” explains how debates within the church got so fierce. ....... the only thing I feared more than an authoritarian nun with a stiff ruler was the prospect of that class known as church history. All those monarchs and ministers, the papal edicts and parsing of purgatory, the vast inexplicability of the doctrine of infallibility. In Latin, no less. ......... an attempt at making narrative sense of one of the most tumultuous periods in the history of the oldest institution in the Western world. .......... how the epic struggle between reformists and traditionalists has led us to the present moment in the Roman Catholic Church. ........ A church that has survived Christian-on-Christian wars, corruption on a scale that would make Satan blush and state campaigns to crush everyday Catholicism is still mired in what may be its worst crisis ever — clerical sexual abuse and the institutional cover-up. .......... The crimes against innocents have been a big contributor to the cratering of membership in much of the world. But this same church is vibrant and growing steadily outside of Europe and North America. “No institution is as multicultural or multilingual, few touch as many people,” writes McGreevy. A majority of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics, he says, “are people of color living in the global South.” ............ the clergy owned about 10 percent of all French property. ......... A faith that had long relied on kings and despots as staunch allies took a more cautious view of the many democracies that sprouted between the American Revolution and the various revolts of the 19th century. It’s no surprise that a top-down, insular institution did not know what to make of government by the people. ........ In an 1832 encyclical, Pope Gregory XVI said freedom of conscience was likely to “spread ruin,” and freedom of the press seemed “monstrous.” In 1864, Pope Pius IX formally rejected the idea that the Vatican should come to terms “with progress, liberalism and modern civilization” ......... In 1910, two-thirds of the world’s Catholics lived in Europe. By the end of the century, the global South was home to two-thirds of church members. ........... Father Charles Coughlin, the most famous Catholic priest in the United States, promoted conspiracy theories of Jewish global cabals and defended the 1938 Nazi violence of Kristallnacht. .......... A pair of notorious Vatican agreements — one with Mussolini in 1929, the other with Hitler in 1933 — were designed to protect Catholics. They were quickly broken and gave the Nazis and Fascists cover for some of their crimes. .......... The author concludes with another revolution, the Second Vatican Council and its aftermath, from 1962 to the present day. Rather than build a fortress against modernity, the church would engage the world. Out went the Latin Mass — and many other ritualistic formalities — and in came rock ’n’ roll, or at least folk music and the “absence of condemnation” ........... the simple spiritual philosophy at the center of the world’s largest faith. Why were so many generations in so many corners of the globe drawn to a man whose time on earth was so short and seemingly inconsequential?

The Strange Afterlife of George Carlin Carlin’s rueful 1996 routine about conservatives’ opposition to abortion (“they will do anything for the unborn, but once you’re born, you’re on your own”) .......... A video clip of a Carlin bit about how Americans are ravenous for war (“so we’re good at it, and it’s a good thing we are — we’re not very good at anything else anymore!”) .......... Carlin has been cited as an expert on bipartisanship (“the word bipartisan usually means some larger-than-usual deception is being carried out”) ........ “It’s called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.” ........ over the decades, as Carlin watched America’s retreat from Vietnam and its entrance into wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as corporate power grew more intractable and environmental catastrophe felt unavoidable, his feelings of bitter disappointment flooded into his routines. ............ “He taught me from Day 1 that the Black and brown people have always been oppressed, horribly and systematically, by the owners of wealth,” she said. “He had a pure disdain and loathing for white men in America.” .......... Using language that would later be echoed by Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, Carlin observed in a 2005 routine that the interwoven systems of American economy and government were not designed to ensure the prosperity of the average citizen: “It’s a big club and you ain’t in it,” he said. ........ “The table is tilted, folks,” Carlin added. “The game is rigged.” ......... suggests that a childhood spent swimming in the polluted Hudson River was the reason he didn’t catch polio. ........ (“In my neighborhood, no one ever got polio,” he fulminates. “No one, ever. You know why? ’Cause we swam in raw sewage. It strengthened our immune systems. The polio never had a prayer.”) .......... his barbs would have been aimed at “the corporate occupation” of discourse, with digital monoliths like Google, Facebook and Twitter “dictating how culture thrives and is consumed.” ....... “There’s this fearlessness in comedy now that is so fake,” Glaser said. “There’s so much sleight of hand and so many illusions happening onstage to trick an audience that you’re being brave.” ......... we have “the unlimited right to challenge everything, to never stop thinking critically about any source of power or any institution”

17: Sadhguru

Sunday, July 31, 2022

नितीन गडकरी और नेपाल




इस वीडियो में मोदी मंत्रीमंडल के शायद सबसे सक्षम मंत्री नितीन गडकरी कह रहे हैं कि मैंने भारत में प्रत्येक जगह जहाँ जहाँ पानी पर विवाद था उस प्रत्येक का समाधान ढूँढ निकाला लेकिन वही बात नेपाल के पञ्चेश्वर परियोजना पर नहीं कर सका। इस बात पर नेपाल के क्षद्म राष्ट्रवादी नेताओं को लाज माननी चाहिए। कभी कमीशन खोजते खोजते बात बिगाड़ देते हैं। कभी नासमझी से। कभी वैसे ही। शर्म की बात है। 

Thursday, February 10, 2022

New York Times: February 10: Uttar Pradesh, India, Facebook

A Bellwether for Narendra Modi as India’s Largest State Goes to the Polls While many voters say they are concerned about the economy, the prime minister’s party has placed a focus on religion, with often polarizing effects. . Voters in Uttar Pradesh, a largely impoverished state of 200 million people in northern India, say they are concerned about the pandemic-battered economy, with youth unemployment widespread, housing shortages, and the rising cost of food and fuel. ........ the first set of results are expected March 10......... During a TV news interview, Mr. Adityanath, an acolyte of Mr. Modi’s and a potential successor as prime minister, cast the election in terms of “80 versus 20” — a thinly veiled reference to the rough percentage of Hindus in the state compared with Muslims. ......

the backlash to Mr. Adityanath’s remarks was swift. Within days, several high-profile B.J.P. members defected from the party, joining the Samajwadi Party

. That party, which is widely seen as representing the interests of the Yadav caste and other disadvantaged castes, has formed an alliance with other, smaller caste-based parties that were historically rivals. ......... The unemployment rate, which was as low as 3.4 percent in 2017, stood at nearly 8 percent in December 2021, with rates far higher among young people. And even as incomes have fallen for many, inflation has sent prices soaring for staples like tea, meat, cooking oil and lentils. ........ “Economic issues are far more important for people.” ........ “The B.J.P. has all the resources and all the power, but this election seems to be showing that new majorities can be formed” ........... “What we want is better public service like good education, good health facilities and employment for our children,” said Surender Yadav, a sugar cane farmer and a member of an O.B.C. group who said he had voted for the B.J.P. in 2017 but would not again. “These are the basic issues, but there has been no improvement,” he said. ............ “B.J.P. is doing good work. Law and order is under control. Girls can go out, roads are good, poor people were given houses,” said Sachin Kumar, a 25-year-old mechanic on the outskirts of Meerut. “We will vote for Yogi and Modi.” ......... The state elections in Uttar Pradesh and elsewhere will reveal whether the party’s recent stumbles are just bumps in the road, or a larger obstacle to retaining power in the world’s largest democracy.
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How India’s Farmers, Organized and Well Funded, Faced Down Modi They received foreign and domestic financial support, kept their camps organized and looked for ways to be seen while trying to avoid violence. . Mr. Prakash was one of thousands of farmers in India who used their organizational skills, broad support network and sheer persistence to force one of the country’s most powerful leaders in modern history into a rare retreat. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday said lawmakers would repeal new agricultural laws that the protesting farmers feared would leave them vulnerable to rapacious big companies and destroy their way of life. ............ Their victory won’t help India solve the deep inefficiencies that plague its farming sector, problems that leave people malnourished in some places even as grain in other parts is unused or exported. But it showed how a group desperate to preserve its hold on a middle-class way of life could successfully challenge a government more accustomed to squelching dissent than reckoning with it. ......... The farmers, who camped out on the outskirts of India’s capital, New Delhi, for a year, endured more than the elements. A vicious Covid-19 second wave roared through the city in the spring. The movement also experienced two violent episodes that led to the deaths of protesters, one in New Delhi in January and a second last month in the neighboring state of Uttar Pradesh, that increased pressure on the group to give up. ............ the farmers’ insistence on pressing their campaign, their support from a global network of allies and the nonviolent nature of the protests proved to be keys to their success ......... The effort isn’t over yet. The farmers have vowed to continue their protests until the government submits to another demand, that it guarantee a minimum price for nearly two dozen crops. Rather than retreat now, they sense an opportunity to push even harder on a prime minister who is nervously watching his party’s poll numbers dip in a string of states with elections next year. The government has said it will form a committee to consider the matter. ..........

The government subsidizes water-intensive crops in drought-stricken lands. Farming focuses on staple grains while more nutritious crops, like leafy vegetables, are neglected.

......... Most of the 60 percent of the country employed in agriculture survives on subsistence farming. While some farmers enjoy middle-class lives, helped by modern aids like tractors and irrigation, many others do not see a profit and are in debt. With city and factory jobs hard to find in a country still struggling with poverty, many farm children emigrate to find a better life. ..........

Financial aid, particularly from Sikh temples and organizations outside India, has been critical to the movement’s staying power, said Baldev Singh Sirsa, a farm leader.

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Organizers leaned heavily on the Punjabi Sikh diaspora.

......... Protesters marched across from the United Nations headquarters in New York. The campaign worked: Justin Trudeau, Canada’s prime minister, and Rihanna, the pop singer, spoke in solidarity. ........ The B.J.P.’s poll numbers soon dropped in Uttar Pradesh, where the deaths took place.
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As Officials Look Away, Hate Speech in India Nears Dangerous Levels Activists and analysts say calls for anti-Muslim violence — even genocide — are moving from the fringes to the mainstream, while political leaders keep silent. .......... Activists and analysts say their agenda is being enabled, even normalized, by political leaders and law enforcement officials who offer tacit endorsements by not directly addressing such divisive issues. ...... “You have persons giving hate speech, actually calling for genocide of an entire group, and we find reluctance of the authorities to book these people,” Rohinton Fali Nariman, a recently retired Indian Supreme Court judge, said in a public lecture. “Unfortunately, the other higher echelons of the ruling party are not only being silent on hate speech, but almost endorsing it.” ........... Vigilantes have beaten people accused of disrespecting cows, considered holy by some Hindus; dragged couples out of trains, cafes and homes on suspicion that Hindu women might be seduced by Muslim men; and barged into religious gatherings where they suspect people are being converted. ........ In recent weeks, global human rights organizations and local activists, as well as India’s retired security chiefs, have warned that the violent rhetoric has reached a dangerous new pitch. With right-wing messages spreading rapidly through social media and the government hesitant to take action, they are concerned that a singular event — a local dispute, or an attack by international terror groups such as Al Qaeda or the Islamic State — could lead to widespread violence that would be difficult to contain. ............

Gregory Stanton, the founder of Genocide Watch, a nonprofit group, who raised similar warnings ahead of the massacres in Rwanda in the 1990s, told a U.S. congressional briefing that the demonizing and discriminatory “processes” that lead to genocide have been well underway in India.

.......... They celebrate a Hindu hard-liner’s assassination of Mohandas Gandhi — a renowned symbol of nonviolent struggle, but to them a Muslim appeaser. Pooja Shakun Pandey, a monk at the Haridwar event, has held re-enactments of Gandhi’s assassination, firing a bullet into his effigy as blood runs down. ........... The forces that shaped the ideology of Gandhi’s assassin, Nathuram Godse, have slowly risen from the fringes to dominate India’s politics. ........ Dhirendra K. Jha, a writer who has studied the rise of Hindu nationalism, said he worried that extremists now dominate India’s politics in such a way that those who call for violence feel protected. “Unless this is dealt with, the kind of consequences that may happen — I can’t even imagine, I don’t dare to imagine,” said Mr. Jha. .......... Pradeep Jha, the main organizer of the city’s largest pilgrimage festival, said he shared the vision of a Hindu state, not through violence but by urging India’s Muslims to convert back; in such a view, everyone in India was Hindu at one point. ......... Mr. Narsinghanand has made a name for himself doing the exact opposite. As he sees it, India’s Muslims — who account for 15 percent of the population — will turn the country into a Muslim state within a decade. To prevent such an outcome, he has told followers that they must “be willing to die,” pointing to the Taliban and Islamic State as a “role model.” .......... “This Constitution will be the end of the Hindus, all one billion Hindus,” Mr. Narsinghanand said at a virtual event. “Whoever believes in this system, in this Supreme Court, in these politicians, in this Constitution, in this army and police — they will die a dog’s death.” ..........

“He said nothing wrong,” said Swami Amritanand, an organizer of the Haridwar event. “We are doing what America is doing, we are doing what Britain is doing.”

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Facebook’s Failures of Invention . Young people, its most valuable demographic, keep spending time on TikTok, the irresistible short-video app that has become Facebook’s most formidable competitor in years. ........ New privacy features that Apple added to the iPhone last year are also hampering one of Facebook’s main moneymakers, targeted digital ads ........ but that, so far, remains more virtual than reality. ........ Meta’s stock value shed more than $250 billion last week. That’s a nearly incomprehensible amount — only a few dozen publicly listed companies are valued at more than $250 billion. ............ beneath Facebook’s many expensive problems is a single more fundamental problem .......... The problem is innovation: Facebook can’t seem to do it. The company just doesn’t appear to know how to invent successful new stuff. Most of its biggest hits — not just two of its main products, Instagram and WhatsApp, but many of its most-used features, like Instagram Stories — were invented elsewhere. They made their way to Facebook either through acquisitions or, when that didn’t work, outright copying. ........... it’s easy to see why investors might be skeptical that Facebook is the company that will invent the next big thing, whether the metaverse or whatever else. It’s been a very long time since Facebook created something truly groundbreaking. ......... Zuckerberg didn’t invent the idea of a social network, but Facebook’s first decade was nevertheless full of innovations. Perhaps the most important was the release in 2006 of News Feed, the system that organizes updates from your friends into a timeline — also known as the main part of the Facebook app. News Feed revolutionized how people navigated the internet. ........... As Steve Jobs said: “Good artists copy. Great artists steal.” Facebook’s artistry lay in its operational excellence more than its originality. ......... Consider Instagram. When Facebook paid $1 billion for the photo-sharing app in 2012, Instagram had only 13 employees, about 30 million users and no revenue. ......... Today more than a billion people use Instagram every month, and in 2018 it may have been worth more than $100 billion. ............ Now Facebook is trying to do something similar with Reels, its TikTok clone. Reels made its debut in Instagram in 2020, and in 2021 Reels began rolling out on Facebook. ........ I use Instagram often, but I find it increasingly messy. It’s a dog’s breakfast of lots of different social features all sitting uncomfortably together — a place for permanent photos, for ephemeral stories, for influencers’ short videos and even for shopping. The Facebook app, meanwhile, feels like a lost cause of bloat; like a restaurant that serves too many different kinds of cuisines, the app tries to do so much it ends up doing almost nothing well. .......... Its market value has just fallen under $600 billion, the threshold that Democrats in the House have picked for new legislation aimed at curbing the power of “Big Tech.” As the analyst Ben Thompson notes, the digital ad market, once ruled nearly entirely by Google and Facebook, has recently become more competitive. ............ Facebook has coasted so long on other people’s inventions that it’s really hard to see where it goes now that its mimeograph machine is jammed. Perhaps it’s time for a new inspirational corporate slogan: Move fast — and make things. .

Radical Ideas Need Quiet Spaces . Visibility and attention, and even a lively cultural conversation, are one thing. Actually mustering the power to fundamentally rearrange society or politics — that is something else. And though activists are good at achieving the former, they often seem stuck when it comes to the latter. ............ Saul Alinsky, the famed community organizer who wrote “Rules for Radicals,” had a useful metaphor: For a revolution to be successful, he argued, it has to follow the three-act structure of a play. The first act establishes the characters and the plot, the second act sharpens the conflict, and in the third act, “good and evil have their dramatic confrontation and resolution.” From women’s suffrage to the midcentury civil rights struggle, movements mastered this narrative, leaving a permanent mark on society. But by the early 1970s, Alinsky had started to worry that overeager revolutionaries were jumping straight to that third act, a losing proposition. .............

Those first acts matter because that’s where activists hammer out ideology, define goals, set strategy, build lasting identity and solidarity. It’s also where the essential work of organizing occurs.

............ Almost 200 years ago, in England, the right to vote was the domain of property owners and the landed gentry — about one in six men. (No one was even talking about women yet.) At the same time, the working class was increasingly frustrated with the horrid living conditions brought on by industrialization. With no political recourse, workers built a movement that became known as Chartism and had a simple objective: using the right to petition Crown and Parliament to demand representation. Chartism encouraged the working class to direct its energy toward gathering as many signatures as possible. This was a medium with almost zero cost. “Wherever there is a halfpenny sheet of paper, a pen and a few drops of ink, there are the materials for a petition,” wrote one Chartist. But the act of picking up these materials inspired solidarity — among those who worked with rulers to draw up the sheets by hand, went door to door to canvass, sneaked onto factory floors or set up tables in busy marketplaces. .................

When a Chartist activist had to argue his case, he was reinforcing his own beliefs, talking himself into deeper commitment while convincing others.

.......... In the summer of 1839, more than 1.25 million signatures had been gathered on a scroll that stretched some three miles long and was delivered to the government, where the Chartists were quite literally laughed out the door. But by then a new constituency had been born. A whole world of associations and a new politics spun out from the talking and signing. More petitions followed, until, 30 years later, working men were finally allowed to begin participating in democracy. ............. There is no switching off the internet. But we can better appreciate, as we increasingly do in our personal lives, that

where we talk can affect how we talk

. ......... These activists need spaces to come together in the quiet when revolutions are only impassioned conversations among the aggrieved and dreaming. Because without those spaces, we risk a future in which the possibility of new realities will remain just beyond our grasp.
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The Magic of the Birds For the teenage sons of an obsessed birder, a father’s bird-watching habit had become nerdy — until some bold jays in an Ontario park turned dubious adolescents into giggly boys. ......... Here, birds break the fourth wall between us and the wild. And, just as my wife and I had hoped, a weekend away with birds can pierce the sullen exteriors of adolescents hardened by life in school. ......... “It’s just so cool to feel it land on your hand,” said Henrik, as a Canada jay picked bread crumbs from his palm. It had been years since one of my sons thought a bird was cool. Somewhere after elementary school, dad’s birding habit became decidedly nerdy. But now that innocent smile was back........ “It’s cool because you learn that birds have personalities,” said Henrik, as another jay dawdled on his wrist, sorting through the trail mix in his palm. “One will come up and chill in your hand for awhile. Some are really picky and pick over the different pieces of food in your hand to get what they want.” ......... Since 1977, the number of Canada jays surveyed throughout Algonquin has declined by more than 70 percent. Climate change is thought to be a cause, namely unseasonably warm temperatures that spoil the birds’ food supplies. ......... In the cafeteria we warmed up with hot chocolate and coffee, chicken soup and flimsy cheeseburgers — food that tastes good after spending hours in the cold. ....... For a while on the drive back south to New York the boys were rehashing their observations and hypotheses on the different personalities among birds. Then we re-entered the realm of cellular service, and they were teens on TikTok again. .



Heather Havrilesky Compares Her Husband to a Heap of Laundry . a marriage between a neurotic perfectionist and a formidably patient man with much to criticize about him, from an annoyingly “phlegmy” throat to a similarity to “a heap of laundry: smelly, inert, useless, almost sentient but not quite.” ........ “Your house is just like your acceptably mediocre day care: Everyone yells at each other, and then you get to eat powdered sugar-covered doughnuts, and then everyone is happy and has sugar all over their faces. Your world is not really collapsing.” .......... I know only my own marriage, like her, and I prefer to hide its nuttier moments. Marriage is — for myself and others — a secret. ......... the suburbs she describes — with their complement of harried strivers sacrificing to educate their kids — strike one as rather novel, considering. Yet the focus of the text is on big lawns, lawns with warning signs about canine feces, concerns over property values and other clichés. ..........

the suburbs are clichéd

.......... “Being part of a community,” she observes, reprising a vision of the burbs articulated by legions of predecessors, “turns out to include countless hours of trying to look relaxed while you freak out on the inside.” ........... One of the book’s best episodes involves a chaotic last-minute cross-country road trip of too many miles and too few bathrooms. Stretches of scatological low comedy are cut with apt asides on the crazed intimacy of traveling by car with kids. It’s a bravado feat of family portraiture: savage, tender, claustrophobic. And Bill comes alive, escaping the gravity of the author’s confessedly self-centered consciousness. The trip is, in fact, a high point for their partnership, after which their story darkens, drifting toward romantic stalemate, potential infidelity and a harrowing medical crisis. We’ve spent enough time with the couple by this late stage that the universality of their predicament needn’t be asserted to be appreciated. Betrayal is betrayal. Fear of death is fear of death.
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