‘Billionaire Raj’ Is Pushing India Toward Autocracy https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-03-25/india-election-billionaire-raj-is-backing-modi-and-leading-to-autocracy 
The super-rich have opened their wallets to Modi, and income inequality has soared over the past d https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-03-25/india-election-billionaire-raj-is-backing-modi-and-leading-to-autocracy...While inequality has grown since the 1980s, in step with a lopsided distribution of gains from globalization across the world, Modi’s reign has spawned a tiny class of super-rich. Fewer than 10,000 individuals in a population of 920 million adults earn an average 480 million rupees ($5.7 million), more than 2,000 times the average income of $2,800. Nine out of 10 Indians earn less than the average...

A handful of tycoons — such as Mukesh Ambani, Gautam Adani and Sajjan Jindal — have entered the leagues of the world’s richest people. They did so not by putting innovative products and services in global markets, but by carving up domestic industries such as transportation, telecom, power and gas, metals, retail, media and new energy. The Modi government rewarded large businesses with tax cuts and awarded them prized monopoly assets like airports. The billionaires got juicy deals when buying bankrupt firms and lobbied — often successfully — for protectionist trade policies.

The film is yet another one based on distorting the truth to strengthen Hindu nationalist politics, with an eye on the forthcoming elections.

https://thewire.in/film/films-building-up-majoritarian-narratives-swatantraveer-savarkar 

by  Ram Puniyani

28/03/2024

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYNJHzyPYfQ  Dec 21, 2023
Subaltern Studies 2.0, edited by Milinda Banerjee and Jelle J. P. Wouters (Prickly Paradigm Press, Chicago, 2022) may be construed with some reason as an attempt to take the now defunct Sublaltern Studies project into the new, relatively uncharted territory that we know by the name of the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene is our present age, the first age when humans are no longer just biological but rather geological agents: the impress of their activity, particularly the burning of fossil fuels, is now felt in what is known to some as global warming and to others as climate change. What would a subaltern studies project for this age which is still unfolding, rather calamitously, look like? Banerjee and Wouters have together written what some will call a rather wild work and one that, in my judgment, is wondrously risk-taking and intellectual energizing. They invoke a future that would not be so dominated by humans, a future of yak democracy and fungal democracy, a future hospitable to human and non-human species alike, and one where we shall strive together to redeem ourselves from the various "falls" that have characterized the history of the last several thousand years -- the fall that led us to separate non-humans from humans, women from men (and thereby denigrate and demean them), those without speech from those with speech, and (though this is articulated in various different languages) the colonized from the colonizers

A Whistleblower on the Rot in India's Shrimp Exports https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxvDx3dKuLY The Wire Mar 27, 2024
The general manager of a shrimp packaging plant in Andhra Pradesh quit his job in order to expose the chilling deceptions and violations in the booming export industry: workers housed like animals, mistreated and underpaid, and products – later sold by Walmart, ShopRite and Hannaford – falsely labelled to cover up the use of prohibited antibiotics.

Hidden Harvest https://corpaccountabilitylab.org/hidden-harvest 

https://www.theoutlawocean.com/investigations/india-shrimp-a-growing-goliath/the-whistleblower/  Summary of Choice Canning’s Response
Choice Canning's lawyers said that the company categorically denies the allegations made by Mr. Farinella, whom they said should not be trusted due to his criminal record. They added that all company documentation about shipments correctly shows the source of the shrimp. The company never ships antibiotic shrimp to the U.S. and the FDA has never stopped their shipments due to antibiotics because the company maintains the highest of quality standards. The lawyers also said that documents from Mr. Farinella were manipulated. (Upon request, a private firm that specializes in forensic data analysis reviewed a selection of the documents, including those specifically cited by Choice Canning, and they verified that they were not manipulated in any way.) Internal company correspondence about “Oscar" shrimp does not indicate that antibiotic shrimp was shipped abroad since this shrimp is tested a second time and likely was found at that stage to be antibiotic. 

An excerpt from ‘Broken Promises: Caste, Crime and Politics in Bihar’, by Mrityunjay Sharma. https://scroll.in/article/1065424/how-did-bihar-once-the-cradle-of-civilisation-devolve-into-a-state-of-crime-poverty-and-misrule 

Bihar’s fall from a position of prosperity can be attributed to multiple factors spread over the last two centuries. However, the three most important factors for Bihar’s economic decline in the period of modern history have been listed by Arnab Mukherji and Anjan Mukherji in a 2012 paper titled “Bihar: What Went Wrong? And What Changed?”

The most recent and the larger reason for Bihar’s fall from grace is what this book is about. The period from 1990 to 2005, often dubbed as “Jungle Raj”, was a controversial period in which the government de-emphasised the state’s urgent development issues in order to pursue the ostensibly higher goal of social empowerment. Recruitments to public posts and development expenditures were highly curtailed in the belief that they would primarily benefit the upper castes. During these fifteen years, the state experienced an average annual growth rate of less than 1 per cent, while real per capita income nearly stagnated.

by Mrityunjay Sharma

26/03/2024

The Art of Unlearning https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFgxyJimCGw  | Ecoversities 
Mar 25, 2024
The Art of Unlearning” invites co-explorers to discover and deepen ‘Unlearning’ as a powerful pedagogy for growth and transformation of the self and the world through autoethnographic narratives of understanding of how our perceptions and learning about life can be distorted and can be enhanced through the art of seeing in self-awareness. It addresses the need for decolonized systems of somatic awareness and breath work through a facilitated embodied activity and some discussions drawing from our personal life experiences.

Kaushiek Pranoo is the founder of Unlearning Ashram through which he offers facilitated experiential unlearning journeys that empower human transformation inside out. Over the past decade, he has delved into authentic inner work, leadership, well being, community building and alternative learning pedagogies and has been serving in multiple roles as a facilitator, life coach, mentor, writer and business consultant, having had the privilege to work closely with people from diverse backgrounds across all age groups - from indigenous, rural to urban communities. He summarizes his unlearning journey thus far as, "I can see. I can respond. I can bow down." https://www.kaushiekpranoo.com/unlearningashram 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xx-zYD4hZus 

Ladakh Solidarity- PUCL-NAPM-VS 

webinar on Ladakh: https://www.youtube.com/live/xx-zYD4hZus?si=aGj7bkd-m9616g4_

Ashish Kothsri hISTORICAL Context   https://youtu.be/xx-zYD4hZus?t=441  end=861 Land issue.. for tourist, miining, Vision from outside... - commwercial industrial profit making, security zone, religious,  the narrative itself..  Ecological crisis in terms of water, people from outside ladakh are also dependent on this as a source of water.. https://youtu.be/xx-zYD4hZus?t=861

https://youtu.be/xx-zYD4hZus?t=921 Kavita welcome Sonam...

Sonam Wangchuk,

Read more …

The Dark History of Lutyens Media The Dharma Dispatch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uO0QfRG3b24   Mar 6, 2024 history of the origin and growth of Lutyens media in Delhi. It is also the story of the downfall of Indian media. Listen to the story of how a handful of editors and journalists based in Delhi willingly surrendered their freedom in exchange for power and wealth.

The story really begins with the history of newspapers in India and the rapid ascent of the English language media which acquired power that was grossly disproportionate to its numbers. The power enabled a few media houses in Lutyens Delhi to bulldoze independent voices that criticised their brand of journalism. Lutyens media editors and journalists became brokers and fixers of politicians, even throwing the Indian national interest to the winds.

It is a sordid and depressing story but a story that must be told in the interests of democracy and freedom, and above all, to serve as a warning of what happens when the fence eats the crop.

https://www.dharmadispatch.in/ 

The Journey of The Jaipur Dialogues - From 0 towards Million | Future Projects The Jaipur Dialogues  online platform under the leadership of Sanjay Dixit. It covers a wide range of subjects including politics, governance, national security, foreign policy, economy, education, culture, history, and social issues. The Jaipur Dialogues aims to create an environment of intellectual rigour. 

 https://www.youtube.com/@THEJAIPURDIALOGUES 

Spiritual guru and founder of the Isha Foundation, Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, has undergone emergency brain surgery at Apollo Hospital in Delhi after massive swelling and bleeding in his brain . https://www.business-standard.com/india-news/sadhguru-jaggi-vasudev-undergoes-emergency-brain-surgery-at-apollo-in-delhi-124032000835_1.html