AlterNative

A few weeks back an incident disappeared from the news space as mysteriously and suddenly as it had appeared. The affair in question was that of a Jarawa woman being made to dance naked for the amusement of tourists in the Andamans. A video clip appeared on the website of a British newspaper and set the word “Jarawa” trending on Twitter for a couple of days. And then the concern, outrage and all traces of the news vanished into thin air. In a 24/7 era of news bombardment, that’s bound to happen...

The word ‘democracy’ is one of the most abused in today’s world. A watch on the news front will provide you with glaring instances. Let us keep away from the villains we love to hate – politicians, bureaucrats and corporates, and look at the mess we are in from a peoples’ point of view. After all, democracy, we are told time and again, is about people. A democracy is built on several foundation stones – that of freedom and the right to dissent being the most critical. If you don’t have freedom...

The degree of civilisation in a society can be judged by entering its prisons. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881), Russian novelist Mid-November brought some distressing news – more than four persons per day were killed in police and judicial custody in India between 2001 and 2010. The exact number would be 14,231. The New Delhi-based Asian Centre for Human Rights (ACHR) in its report, Torture in India 2011, revealed that a large majority of these deaths were a direct consequence of torture in...

It is not always that the “people” of this country get to hear good news. And let’s, for once, exclude the privileged like us (who are fortunate to have been born in cities and read these glossies) when we talk of people. Let’s shift our gaze to the heartland, where the “real” India probably lives. It is an India that is rich and poor at the same time. Take a set of maps – that of the country’s forests, minerals, rivers, poor, and tribals together, and superimpose them. You will be taken by...

A few days back, I chanced upon fast-crumbling cuttings of some of my old write-ups. None of those can be found online today since they predate the Internet era. I picked one up, and decided to key it in to upload it on to my blog since it was my first full-fledged feature on cinema. It had been written in April 1995 and was a critique of Clint Eastwood, who had at that time been awarded a Special Oscar for his contribution to Hollywood cinema. As I feverishly keyed the article in, I was...

"Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains. One man thinks himself the master of others, but remains more of a slave than they." -- Jean-Jacques Rousseau; Economie Politique (Discourse on Political Economy) Freedom means different things to different people. It varies from one individual to another, from one generation to another. Yet, it is a word that is known by all and sundry. And needless, to say, there are different kinds of freedoms. As also, the literal and the metaphorical. It...

The tell-tale photographs of the street protests in Srinagar and elsewhere in Kashmir that raged during the summer of last year are difficult to forget. Pitched battles were fought between Kashmiri youths and Indian security personnel. Indian authorities came down on the protests with a heavy hand and on the protesting youths too. Much was said in the Indian media about the youth having been led astray by parochial political leaders in Kashmir, and how these were hands that had been hired for a...

William Wilberforce is a man one should know about, but few actually do. Wilberforce (1759-1833) was a British politician and abolitionist, a man who spent his life fighting for the abolition of the slave trade in Great Britain and across the British empire. The movement that he led in Parliament was met with stiff resistance both in the House of Commons and outside. Among others was a campaign that almost silenced him once and for ever. The argument that made this campaign menacing was that...

Talking about the Mumbai terror attacks two years down the line (and while not making this article perfunctorily and callously coincide with the anniversary) is a good idea. Serious issues need to be debated when passions don’t run high. No, the idea is not to dwell on why Kasab has not been executed till now. The point is also not to thrash out the issue of terrorism. We need to go beyond the headlines. If you can recollect the outburst of people, especially in the social media networks like...

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings." Cassius, Julius Caesar (I, ii, 140-141) One often gets to hear and read this thing about us, in a democracy, getting the politicians that we deserve. This clamour had hit a feverish pitch during the last general elections in 2009. From Facebook status messages to tweets, the underlying message was this: we should elect politicians who are clean. One year down the line, even a cursory look at the day’s...