Meltdown

Debate began decades back about direct transfer of money to the poor and continues. Politicians who themselves are creations of elections, oppose formal distribution of cash to the poor or direct transfer of cash via the state .  People can be imparted skills and given goods but the poor cannot be trusted with cash and its direct transfer? While the companies who understand cash better are the ones who adopt the suggestion wholeheartedly. They offer cash back, directly in your account, if you buy with credit or debit cards or use online payment apps. So, if you have some purchasing power, you are part of the cash back scheme.  You can be an immediate beneficiary. Elections are supposed to fall outside the realm of financial and monetary influences in order to secure that they are 'free'. People, representatives and intermediaries understand the relationship between elections and cash as immediate and direct. Though there is an official limit to the amount a candidate c...

The science would be translated as vigayan in hindi and the word for theory is sidhant. Political science is rajnitik vigyan/shastra and one of its subfield political theory would be named as rajnatik sidhant as the hindi translation of their english counterparts. One would associate science with empirical and explanatory and may be sidhant is closer to principle so closer to normative. How are distinctions in the English language placed in their Hindi translation?  The translations of the terms could be literal by taking a word in its isolation looking for a equivalent word as stand alone in another language. It is possible that translations also factor the distinctions that envelops a word and is attuned to the process that turns a word into a concept and places it in a theoretical universe. The translated word or the accepted and actual term in one language may also mark the convergence and divergence of one language with another, revealing the contours of the history that bri...

Anil Persaud opined that a medieval mosque, where prayers have stopped in Ayodhya is a Hindu temple in modern India. Here lies a conundrum in the history of political independence of India. A feeling of unease and incompleteness an anxiety that something is not right that rears its head again and again. 70 odd years of political independence and partition has not settled the question of demographic diversity of being Hindu or Muslim and the sense of divide that the populaces are attuned and chosen to sync with. Around the time India was busy familiarizing itself with the new found status of being a nation- state, an idol was sneaked into the Babri Masjid in the mid-night. The stroke of the midnight, tryst with the destiny and founding of the new republic, free from the clutches of the colonial rule had a ghostly companion and illegitimate half-brother and with time the ghost and the ‘brother’ had shown more tenacity and resilience than the vaunted fabric of the modern secular republic...

"The Sage as Astronomer: As long as thou feelest as stars as an ‘above thee', thou lackest the eye of the discerning one."       - Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil.   Syria’s history clocks more years before the arrival of Christ, than after. It came into being roughly 2700 years before Christ and we have just about 2100 years in AD. Arithmetically speaking Syria is 4800 years old. Syrian history, though continuous, is marked by invasion, occupation, conquest and destruction since antiquity; the land, located as it was at the cross roads of trade routes and empires. Historically, the importance of this region, bounded by its location, was strategically tied to the schemes of other empires. Syria attained its glory in history, albeit briefly, mostly playing second fiddle to neighbours. The contemporary phase of notoriety Syria has attained provides us a prosaic image of endless and perpetual instability, civic strife and intractable conflict. In t...