Saturday, June 13, 2020

‘Judicial evasion’ says Gautam Bhatia

Judicial Evasion
 Two days ago, on this blog, we discussed the pending challenge before the Supreme Court to the government’s directions requiring employers to pay wages to their workers during the nationwide lockdown imposed under the Disaster Management Act. At the time, the matter had been reserved for orders; today, the Supreme Court passed an order that can only be described as bizarre: it refused to rule on the legal issues before it, postponed arguments to the end of July (seven weeks from now), directed employers and employees to “negotiate” between themselves, but in the meantime extended its interim orders preventing any coercive action against employers for not complying with the direction to pay wages. In effect, therefore, the Court made the wages direction unenforceable without holding it to be illegal or unconstitutional, at least for the foreseeable future.”

Wednesday, June 10, 2020

Some sites for Indian films, songs and dances

Some other sites for Indian film reviews film songs and dances:

https://p-pcc.blogspot.com/

https://indiancinema.sites.uiowa.edu

https://roughinhere.wordpress.com

http://cinemanrityagharana.blogspot.com

https://cinemachaat.com

https://madhulikaliddle.com

https://tunes.desibantu.com

https://mrandmrs55.com

Monday, June 08, 2020

James Baldwin on education

James Baldwin’s Lesson for Teachers in a Time of Turmoil by Clint Smith
A talk to teachers by James Baldwin in 1963
 The purpose of education, finally, is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions, to say to himself this is black or this is white, to decide for himself whether there is a God in heaven or not. ”

Sunday, June 07, 2020

A long review of Tristes Tropiques by Paul Kahn

With several references to India. “ A long read with passages about India.
“He is appalled and revolted by what he finds in India. He sees colonial history and parliamentary democracy as so much veneer covering a social arrangement that has been in place for thousands of years. His analysis is based entirely on the density of population in relation to the physical resources. People in India treat each other in an inhuman way in order to reduce the number of humans per square foot.”
Centennial Sauvage: The Survival of Tristes tropiques
From pp 149-150 of 1974 translation by John and Doreen Weightman:
 “India’s great failure can teach us a lesson. When a community becomes too numerous, however great the genius of its thinkers, it can only endure by secreting enslavement. Once men begin to feel cramped in their geographical, social and mental habitat, they are in danger of being tempted by the simple solution of denying one section of the species the right to be considered as human. This allows the rest a little elbow-room for a few more decades. Then it becomes necessary to extend the process of expulsion. When looked at in this light, at the culmination of a century during which the population figures have doubled, […] can no longer appear as being simply the result of aberration on the part of one nation, one doctrine, or one group of men. I see them rather as a premonitory sign of our moving into a finite world such as southern Asia had to face a thousand or two thousand years ahead of us, and I cannot see us avoiding the experience unless some major decisions are taken. The systematic devaluation of man by man is gaining ground, and we would be guilty of hypocrisy and blindness if we dismissed the problem by arguing that recent events represented only a temporary contamination.

What frightens me in Asia is the vision of our own future which it is already experiencing. In the America of the Indians, I cherish the reflection, however fleeting it may have now become, of an era when the human species was in proportion to the world it occupied, and when there was still a valid relationship between the enjoyment of freedom and the symbols denoting it.”

Saturday, June 06, 2020

Some good news

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/3-times-more-pay-air-travel-how-migrants-are-being-wooed-back/articleshow/76210270.cms
Via Madhukar Shukla “ Chennai realty firms hire chartered flight to bring back 150 workers Bihar;  Punjab farmers send buses to Bihar and offer three time higher wages; Small business in Haryana and other northern states book air tickets or send cars; Kerala govt comes out with a health insurance scheme for guest workers; Builders in Mumbai assure workers of job security and safety;  MP industrial units assign officials to bring migrant workers from their villages, and so on…”

Wednesday, June 03, 2020

Vanaja C on the Indian migrant crisis

Simple and straight withouypt politics from one of those people helping the migrants in Telangana.

Tuesday, June 02, 2020

Privilege

I saw this on TV this morning and was not sure whether I would see it again. A comment in Reddit “This is the kind of priveledge I can get behind. Respect to her for knowing it exists and she has it and double respect for putting it to use in this situation. Powerful.”
https://www.upworthy.com/powerful-footage-shows-a-white-girl-putting-herself-in-front-of-riot-police-to-protect-a-young-black-man 

My cousin Baburao