I AND MY WORDS

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them. -Paul Valery   A friend of mine recently remarked that while he agreed with the idea of the struggle of democracy in its present avatar, he also failed to understand why the youth, the catalyst of change, talked in the language that they do with respect to the political space. He expressed his concern on the short memory and confrontational attitude that the youth possessed with respect to the ideas and issues that affect everyone. In my opinion, much of this has been due to the failure to incorporate the youth into the mainstream. It also has much to do with the failure of political language used to converse with the youth. Arnold Kling has recently written a book called the ‘ The Three Languages of Politics’, which offers some interesting perspectives as discussed by him here . Kling has stated that the three schools of American politics – republican, libe...

Democracy is the worst form of government, except all those others that have been tried.   - Winston Churchill The world, or at least its youth, the torchbearers of our society, culture and democracy, are really angry. They are angry about lack of jobs. They are angry at inflation and price rises. Go to the European countries fighting recession, and there is a strike a day targeting government betrayers and vested interests (namely the financial world) for leaving them high and dry on every front, ruining their prospects for a better tomorrow. China is worried about the repercussions of the inability to absorb millions of fresh graduates in the next few years amid suicides over pathetic salaries for making iPhones. Brazilians were angry over increased bus fares in the light of abysmal low wages. They are angry about the state of law and order within their countries. Brazil, India and even Nepal have seen massive protests where law and order has been a major to...

Yesterday, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), the municipal body of Bengaluru, uploaded a document that was submitted by an expert committee to the Honourable Karnataka High Court on the issue of garbage (mis)management in the city. A good look at the document shows all that is wrong with the manner in which local governance takes place in India. It is ironic that at the very beginning of this document the committee notes that the garbage disposal issue has in recent times become an issue of grave concern. What it conveniently ignores (though it is not their mandate) that while this issue was growing in menacing proportions, the councillors of BBMP, cutting across party lines, were busy fighting with Vijay Mallya, Anil Kumble, Karnataka Cricket Association (KCA) and the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) for free passes for IPL matches taking place in Bengaluru. Even as you scan across the document, you see how confused and muddled the issue is, with the exp...