For a people who are considered mere statistical numbers, in terms of money sent home; where are the narratives of the subaltern? Are our histories, not important enough to the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs?
In a corporate funded theological dynastocracy called Bharat, the poor man is not even a footnote. Hundred plus people died in queuing up and in the inability to pay for medical treatment. The plastic money elite is finite with functional ATM’s even more scarce. Only Mr. Sharma, can rap his way to the bank, oops … More The Jugaad Nation: DeMo takeaways
Attention span and concentration allocation is the new normal of time management of the digital era
As per the latest statistics released by the RBI, Demonetisation has been a successful political program as economy wise it is a disappointment. The lived experiences of deprivation cannot be washed down by an intoxicating brew of nationalism. The entire meta narrative belittles the experiences of the poor and marginalised especially farmers, who protested and … More DeMo Quip: A Still Child After Nine Months
The guy who takes me to work here is a high school drop out from Chottogram. He is a man Friday by career and has worked previously in Doha as a house boy. He has family here, as is mostly the case with Bangladeshi families in Probash, with remittance riyals fuelling the household economics in … More The Migrant Transporter from Chittagong: Reflections
Climate Resilience is not mere rhetoric to green wash annual sustainability reports when Mumbai and Houston are global headlines. However, attention spans are short and normalcy will reign and wet Infrastructure shall be relegated to the digital back pages, while some celebrity interview takes over. Mumbai’s spirit is over glorified, the ‘chalta hain’ attitude is … More Mumbai and Climate Resilience
Aadhar is nir Aadhar. Digital Governance and Privacy are intertwined and the highest court of the land acknowledged it. Digital Modernity is shaped by law, business, society and least of all technology. My book project speaks aloud on these issues.
Archives are nodes of Memory, Nostalgia, Remembering and a narrative power. This power is hardly interrogated by the common reader. In this distraction led post truth era, the Archive is hardly a major concern for the listicle reader, mostly of the tech class genealogy. Billions of data points of perspective and persuasion are circulated through … More Digital Archives: Technologies of Memory and Power
The paradox of knowledge is that one creates cutting edge ideas as lone entity, and the digital era has enabled that completely but decision making power lies with the ‘structures’, the power elites who have the authority to execute, often to propel the status quo.
Bharat, has Clean India But, people who clear the sewers are dying We can send satellites to space Win spelling bee Have billionaires Dream of Smart Cities But can’t remove manual scavenging Bezwada gets Magsayay But, still sanitation workers choke to death What happens to the Clean India Tax? The conundrum of caste does not … More Caste, Cleanliness and Criminal Negligence
