Centres for Defence against Deadbeat Dads on June 18, 2016On Fathers Day, we pay tribute to South Asian men for painstakingly fulfilling their fatherly duties. Since Politweak provides roadmaps to wellbeing, let’s focus on eliminating the suffering of those who enjoy none of the benefits of paternity while having fathers. As traditional safeguards recede, there is a role for governments in re-enforcing the vital […]
Bollywood to Mollycoddle-wood on June 11, 2016In 1991, Mumbai didn’t exist. I was born into a post-colonial khichdi of a family: Sindhi, Brazilian mulatta, Portuguese and East Indian. My ancestor, Viscount Inacio Caetano Carvalho of Bardez fled to this Good Bay in 1895 to outwit censorship in Goa, and publish his libertarian piece de resistance on the mutiny of the Maratha […]
The broken happy record II on May 28, 2016My first ‘conversation’ on Gross National Happiness (GNH) was a yelling match at age 13 with Zimbiri, my Bhutanese dorm mate at Kodaikanal International School. Then a budding Marxist, my little heart lit up with fury at the historical hurt of Queen Marie-Thérèse recommending the starving peasantry eat cake in lieu of bread, and King […]
The broken happy record I on May 21, 2016For this week’s Politweak, I ask you to (re-) imagine history with me and embark on a thought experiment: It is 1972. You are 16. You have lost your father to a heart condition 6,477 kilometers away in Nairobi, Kenya, where he was undergoing medical treatment. Your Apa (father) had a weak heart but the […]
Taxpayers unite on May 15, 2016Governments do not have a right to collect tax. Taxes are payment for goods and services we allow governments to provide instead of doing it ourselves in the private sector. Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment trial and the British Prime Minister David Cameron’s faux pas-paved London Anti-Corruption Summit (LACS) for the “fantastically corrupt” have one […]
Feminism and 50 shades of red on May 7, 2016As it is Mothers’ Day, let’s talk about menstrual rights, often mistaken for the right to remain silent. It simply isn’t polite conversation, but then ‘women’s issues’ seldom are. Feminists — men and women — have successfully dragged a gamut of ‘awkward’ issues like sexual and genetic diseases, abortion, and maternal mortality into public discourse […]
Troll Patrol on April 30, 2016Recently, I stepped on what appeared to be a troll-hive by questioning someone on twitter about his self-proclaimed lack of prejudice, while he trolled a mainstream political party. His response was swift: he retweeted me under instructions to his 47 thousand followers to ‘debate’ with me. Knowing that debate is a misnomer for shouting matches […]
Dont get mad, get haven! on April 23, 2016We, the honest, hardworking, law-abiding taxpayers of South Asia, are hopping mad! From our Indian Ocean of poverty, our monies are being siphoned off to ‘prosperous island’ tax havens like the Caymans. The culprits are ‘welfare-minded’ politicians and bureaucrats who take their cut even as they are palming out generous budgetary allocations at our cost. […]
Processing Panama: from jugaad to jugular on April 15, 2016Dear Indian sub-continentals, On April 3, when the Panama Papers made their debut, we were promised ‘leaktivism’ like Wikileaks-on-steroids that trumped the counter-espionage of Edward Snowden. ‘John Doe’ could have been a mythical financial double agent, and SüddeutscheZeitung (SZ) reporters Hollywood-like handlers for an elaborate counter-insurgency at the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) on […]
Naseeruddin Shah: the anti-national Einstein on April 8, 2016Naseeruddin Shah mocks extreme method acting too much to pretend to be a medium channelising Einstein to caution us ‘Indian sub-continentals’ against our spirited nationalism. FYI, method acting demands actors’ immersion in their subjects’ lives. Not no-nonsense-Naseer! He’d pick science over séance any day. The down-to-earth legend, painstakingly, researched Gabriel Emanuel’s script and invited me […]