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You deserve a boo
I cock a snook at you escapist folks of humandom
Your illusory potency is the opiate of you masses
Self-deluding quagmire of a non-existent afterlife
That be the effortless way out for the tremulous and the avaricious
You are the close-minded quasi-paranoic demented
Die smiling in the transfixing by a thunderbolt
Thinking it a call from the heavens, a halo to be
The more I see you ostriches of a lascivious breed
My resolve becomes resolute that
I would rather die, then be embarrassingly wrong.
• Collection:
Anger in Ashes
• Originally written on
June 26, 2002
[ First published: November 22, 2008
Last updated: November 22, 2008
]
The BlackBerry, the elite, and a question of civil liberties
The Indian elite is known for many things good, bad and ugly, its ostrich syndrome being one. Any ill that does not plague it, simply does not exist. A liberalised socio-economic regime gives it all the privileges that it barefacedly demands; civil liberties always go to hell and stay there.
So when civil liberties activists raised the alarm after the Indian laws governing cyberspace and online activities came into force, no one took any cognizance of them. Street dogs after all are wont to bark. At every one, at everything. India Inc was gung ho about development, never mind what that means, and the media was dutifully reflecting this misplaced euphoria. Everyone used the Internet, the Internet made money for everyone, this way and that. Till one fine day.
The dam report on tribal peoples that was damned by the media
When skewed concepts of development are the watchwords of the day, it is more than likely that voices against this twisted sense of development don't see the light of day. So when a group that fights for tribal people around the world releases a report on dams, it is damned and made to disappear into the back hole of the news world.
That is what happened to happened to the report "Serious Damage: Tribal peoples and large dams" that was released last week by Survival International. The report exposes the untold cost of obtaining "green" electricity from large hydroelectric dams. The impact on tribal people is profound. One Amazonian tribe, the Enawene Nawe, has learnt that Brazilian authorities plan to build 29 dams on its rivers. Across the Amazon, the territories of five uncontacted tribes will be affected.