The Arm that wields the sword
09 Dec 2023
Aam Aadmi
An interesting, and for most of us, encouraging, phenomenon is visible in India today. It is the brick by brick dismantling of the neo-caste system in our society. Of course, the caste system per se was abolished by our constitution shortly after independence, yet the same independence slowly engendered this other, equally insidious neo-caste system…
Read More about Breaking the Neo-Caste BarrierBlogitorial
Dear Mr Patel, This is in response to your piece published in today’s TOI under a presumptuously named column ‘AakaarVani’. I’m writing this to correct you on some factual and a lot of perceptual errors that seem to behind almost every sentence in the piece. I’m writing in the hope that you may correct these,…
Read More about An Open Letter to Aakar Patel
Internet
Feeding abusive trolls instead of encouraging healthy debate will ultimately kill twitter
Read More about Feeding the wrong dog will kill off Twitter
Media
Time for media to cast aside a few black sheep who are giving the whole profession a bad name
Read More about Jaane Mat Do Yaaron
Media
In today’s milieu of crisp sound-bites, newsbreak a minute and short attention spans, the struggle to capture eyeballs and mind space of readers and viewers has become fiercely competitive. We, as consumers of news have become increasingly laid back and lazy, preferring our brains to be spoon-fed thoughts and ideas the anchors or journalists find…
Read More about Beyond the headlinesMedia
This is a follow up of a prior post on the issue of online intimidation by journalists, specially of serving armed forces officers. I was witness to a similar incident, where a pair of journalists ganged up upon someone, apparently a serving officer. It started when the officer objected to one of them linking…
Read More about Browbeating of service officers by defence journalists
Blogitorial
I wonder if Arnab Goswami has seen Chennai Express. If he has, he didn’t seem to have taken Shah Rukh Khan’s dialogue, “Don’t underestimate the power of an ordinary man”, seriously. Or maybe its the other way around, and he overestimated his own and his channels ability to control and direct viewers minds. That’s possibly…
Read More about Don’t ‘Angry’ the Common Man
Aam Aadmi
The turnout at the rally to launch Aam Aadmi Party at Jantarmantar, held on the 63rd anniversary of the adoption of our constitution, was an indicator of popular sentiment prevailing in the country. That it happened on a day when the major political parties were busy imparting spin to stories justifying corrupt acts by their…
Read More about Mango Shakes Politics
Blogitorial
Six and a half decades since we got our independence. For all intents and purposes, we are citizens of an independent democratic country whose constitution guarantees freedom of speech. But when the first son-in-law of the country calls it a ‘Banana Republic’, he definitely is speaking with the authority of an insider. And the grand…
Read More about Muzzling the Mango
Blogitorial
Just like honour, morale is a word that has been bandied about a lot in the recent past. Specially in context of the age row that has been dominating the front pages and prime time slots for an unbearably long time. It even prompted a leading national daily to commission a survey to gauge whether…
Read More about Morale of the story