000-tobecategorised

 Revisiting Dharampal  https://www.samanvaya.com/articles/revisiting-dharampal  Our work with the village community coincided with the bloom of Globalization in India which resulted in further transfer of ownership of even the industries in the metropolis to that of ‘foreign investors’ which were the modern corporates. One of Dharampalji’s oft repeated quotation was how the then American President in the 1940s wrote to the British Prime Minister, seeking that the British ensure ‘’India remains in the Western orbit’’. Globalization renewed Indian subscription to western orbit through diverse treaties, agreements, opening up to investments in all kinds of areas, subsidies in terms of land, resources, manpower and market privileges provided to such investors while imposing restrictions on our own industries, relaxing of regulatory regimes to suit profit making of foreign corporates and calling all of these as “development” and “progress”. Whether it be the medium of instruction, choice of careers, technology, defence, development, economic power, policy or even a sense of what constitutes dignity, if India merely subscribed to the Western orbital idea post Independence, the globalization agenda made us own up to the identity of being modern and western completely. Once in a conversation someone mentioned, ‘’but Dharampalji our people are employed in NASA and other big technological establishments’’ to which he responded, ‘’but what do they do? Can they actually change the way NASA or any of these companies work? Can they have a say in what gets done in the societies they live in or are they in these positions only because they are hard-working employees?’’.

Samanvaya Periodic Paper by Ramasubramanian 31st March 2023
1
Academic Elites and their Climate Indifference…
Unforgivable sloth of Indian academia towards impact of Climate Change on rural India and
its practices that could contribute towards the knowledge to save the planet…

Greendex was an interesting consumption-based study that rated the greenest consumer base in the
world. This annual rating was by the National Geographic magazine and strangely (or not)
discontinued some years ago. This study ranked India as the No#1 country in the world as green
consumers. We as a consumer base adopted green building techniques, food production practices,
transportation, and materials more than any other in the world. We, as in the majority of India that
continues to live in the villages, not the urban population that irresponsibly consumes at par with
Europeans or Americans. Something must be right and sustainable among the village people of this
land. Who has studied these and why is it that we do not get to hear on these in the mainstream
academic discourse or even among the popular opinion generating media?
Academia in India is an elite that continues to look up to the western universities to generate
knowledge, even if it is knowledge about the CC resilience of communities in India. We do not have
the courage to theorize our own people’s customs, practices, or systems in place. for full text

Read more …

The curious case of Cash App; Hindenburg’s latest victim https://www.cenfa.org/the-curious-case-of-cash-app-hindenburgs-latest-victim/

As we move from traditional banking to mobile banking apps, this is a cautionary tale of what could go wrong. These apps do come with several security concerns. Recently, in Mumbai, cybercriminals robbed Rs 1 crore from 81 people using the UPI app. Last year, Paytm was in trouble for flouting data storage laws. The money routed through the apps is difficult to trace, unlike in traditional banks. Digital literacy is a must to know and understand fintech; and though it is growing, our everyday life is fraught with rising digital payment frauds! Hope the regulators are paying heed.