Posts

On the Hijab Ban

-
  Karnataka high court has upheld the government’s orders on the ban on wearing hijab (headscarf) by Muslim girls in school/college etc., places. In its verdict the high court   said ,   India’s Karnataka state has ruled that the hijab is not “essential” to Islam. The three-judge bench held that allowing Muslim women to wear the hijab in classrooms would hinder their emancipation and go against the constitutional spirit of “positive secularism”. “There is sufficient intrinsic material within the scripture itself to support the view that wearing hijab has been only recommendatory, if at all it is. What is not religiously made obligatory therefore cannot be made a quintessential aspect of the religion through public agitations or by the passionate arguments in court,” the order says. The court, however, said the order was valid, holding that the government had the right to prescribe uniforms for students. There are many delicate issues involved here. The implications of this decision are
Post a Comment
Read more

Lesson for India from the ongoing Russia-Ukraine War

-
 Russian president Vladimir Putin finally decided to stop the Western NATO power from coming too close to his country’s borders. Alarmed by the comment that Ukraine wants to become a nuclear power by Ukrainian prime minister Zelensky, Putin has invaded Ukraine and is either going to free it from its corrupt Western stooge government or he’s going to annex it, as he has now made it clear. To understand the full background of this war please listen to this  interview  of Anti-war expert Scott Horton.  In a nutshell, this is a typical war of one criminal gang with another i.e., one nation state fighting with another for territorial gains or to protect its turf where he enjoys the monopoly of use over violence. The latter applies to Putin where he is trying to keep the Western powers away from coming too close to Russia’s borders. Wars are the main weapon of nation state gang leaders for gaining hold of an area on which they are going to exploit for their parasitical survival. In this war
Post a Comment
Read more

Elon Musk vs the Indian Government

-
 Some recent headlines re the entry of Elon Musk’s electric car company Tesla in India read something like the following,  American car manufacturer, Tesla, is in serious negotiations with the Indian government over its entry into India. India is a very large market and all levels of purchases (high-end, mid-range and entry-level) are significant. However, the Indian government is leveraging on the significance of its market. The government will not allow any Tesla electric car that is not “Made In India” to have the same privilege as a Made In India car.  ( Source ) You Can’t Have the Market In India But the Jobs In China: Centre On Tesla The government’s policy is that if the Indian market is to be used, job opportunities will have to be given to Indians, said Union Minister Krishan Pal Gurjar, replying to a question on Tesla. Mr Gurjar said the government has Production Linked Incentives for automobile and auto components as well as for manufacturing Advanced Chemistry Cell (ACC) ba
Post a Comment
Read more

The Myth of the Fastest Growing Economy

-
Image
While addressing a post-Budget interaction with industry body FICCI, the Finance Minister Sitharaman  said ,  India’s economic recovery is going to place it as the fastest growing economy amongst others. It’s time now for us as Team India to rise. We are at such a juncture where the revival of the economy is very clear…this recovery is therefore going to place India as the fastest growing economy among the larger economies and that would continue even in the next fiscal. This talk of India being the fastest growing economy in the world is what we hear all the time from the Indian politicians, of whichever party is in power, media pundits, and other state supporters. But how significant is this claim? Does it really matter for an average Indian if his country’s economy is the fastest growing in the world? Let us examine these questions below.  Figure 1: Top 10 Countries by GDP Economic growth number per se doesn’t say much about the standard of living of the people in an economy. Instea
Post a Comment
Read more

Economics of Pollution

-
In the list of the world’s top polluted cities majority are from India. India’s capital New Delhi is again in the grips of very   hazardous pollution . Delhi government has shutdown schools, I have no idea how shutting down schools will stop or lessen pollution or keep children healthy but that is a question for some other time, and they are also thinking of imposing a climate change lockdown in the city! To understand what is causing this pollution we need to understand what are the different sources of pollution. Once we know these sources, we can figure out who is responsible for those sources. Below I am going to list down the major sources of pollution.  Vehicle pollution  Factories  Urbanization and  Population growth and poverty  Who’s responsible for all these sources? Let us see that now.  Vehicle pollution  The Indian central bank RBI is mainly responsible for vehicular pollution. I am sure my readers will be asking me a question in their minds: how is RBI responsible for veh
Post a Comment
Read more

A Radical Political Proposal for India

-
 When it comes to the political choices in India, Indians have no real choices. All political parties in India, in one form or another, are wedded to the ideology of socialism and its variants like communism. Whether it is the ruling BJP party or the major opposition Congress party or the Aam Aadmi Party, they all are followers of socialism. They all present the statist view of the society where the individual is subordinate to the state and its ruling government. The government is our overlord, our nanny who is going to control and regulate every aspect of our lives. The concept of the individual and its liberty is completely missing from the Indian social, cultural, and political scene. Basically the Indian culture is collective tribal and primitive. The present BJP government and its prime minister Modi are touted by many as a pro-market prime minister and to the right of the political spectrum, but looking at BJP and Modi’s track record, e.g., increasing centralization of the socie
Post a Comment
Read more

Economics of Corruption

-
Corruption has been maligned by everyone as if it is something bad and has to be condemned and removed from society forever. Transparency International   defines   corruption as, We define corruption as the abuse of entrusted power for private gain. Corruption erodes trust, weakens democracy, hampers economic development and further exacerbates inequality, poverty, social division and the environmental crisis. They also discuss three different forms of corruption, public servants demanding or taking money or favors in exchange for services, politicians misusing public money or granting public jobs or contracts to their sponsors, friends, and families, corporations bribing officials to get lucrative deals Although corruption per se is bad and it must be eliminated from society, doing that requires a sound understanding of causes of corruption. This is important because without removing the cause of corruption, if we try to eliminate corruption – which is a mere symptom of the underlying
Post a Comment
Read more