[Republished in leading Indian news sites: Scroll and Quartz] Back in 2014, when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) ascended to power in India, it did so on the promise of running an open government accountable to its citizens that would eliminate corruption. But nearly five years later, and with an election due between March andContinue reading “India: government continues to suppress citizens’ right to information ahead of election”
Category Archives: Opinion/Columns
Nothing British about the Brits
Nigel Farage’s ‘Independence Day statement’ post the Brexit vote rests on the assumption that there exists a unique ‘British’ culture that needs guarding from immigrant populations. To shatter that myth we only need look at what Britain eats… Vidya Venkat If people are what they eat, then there could be nothing uniquelyContinue reading “Nothing British about the Brits”
A fig leaf for the world’s woes
[Long version of essay first published in The Hindu’s blog thREAD] Seventy years after it was founded, the United Nations continues to function on a budget lesser than that of New York City’s. Where is this global organisation headed? Vidya Venkat When I was a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl preparing for my All-India UN Information Test, knowingContinue reading “A fig leaf for the world’s woes”
A New Year’s resolution from Paris 2015
[A shorter version of this appeared in The Hindu’s op-ed pages on Jan 4, 2016] The lesson from Paris 2015 is this: until world powers don’t stop digging black gold out of the bellies of Iraq, Africa and Saudi Arabia, the convoluted webs of violence, terror and climate change, will continue to keep usContinue reading “A New Year’s resolution from Paris 2015”
Shooting the messenger
First published in The Hindu Though there is a law in place to “protect” people coming forward to expose corruption, the safety of whistle-blowers cannot be guaranteed in India “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” – George Orwell The Supreme Court’s insistence that the identity of the secretContinue reading “Shooting the messenger”
An anthropologist among the journalists 