The Rich want protection from the Masses

    In April last year, I wrote about Chidambaram's and Modi's common vision of building 100 new cities, even though they were in opposing parties in the election. I questioned and critiqued that step for its devastating effect on rural India (The 100-City Madness).
    What I did not expect, however, was that the government and academic elite would cobble together a scheme which is so wilfully depraved.
    We should be grateful to Shri Laveesh Bhandari for revealing these views during a recent seminar on 'Smart Cities in India: Reality in the Making'. Now we know what these chaps really think and do behind closed doors.
    In his presentation paper, Bhandari, an economist, says:
    "When we build these smart cities, we will be faced with a massive surge of people who will desire to enter these cities. We will be forced to keep them out. ‎This is the natural way of things... There are only two ways to keep people out of any space - prices and policing...
    "Even with high prices, the conventional laws in India will not enable us to exclude millions of poor Indians from enjoying the privileges of such great infrastructure"..

The modern myth of 'social mobility'

This is a letter I wrote recently to the Indian Express in response to their series on 'Is India Moving to the City?'. I have not been following newspapers for some time so I do not know if they have published it.
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Dear Sir,
    As a person who grew up in Mumbai, worked in Delhi, and who then lived in rural Garhwal and ran a village school there for many years, I found your series on 'Is India Moving to the City?' relevant and useful. It is an issue which has been staring at us in the face for 65 years, while we, the urban elite, have looked the other way.
    There is one basic assumption which has to be questioned for us to understand this issue fully. A few of your contributors may have touched upon it, in an oblique way, while most have missed it altogether.
    That basic assumption is the modern creation of 'social mobility' as a norm, indeed as a necessity. This 'social mobility' is represented as a geographical or financial movement - moving from village to town to city, or moving from small house to big house or from small to bigger bank balance.
    This is a crude, hastily gathered assumption of 'development' of the last hundred years. I feel we must question this 'need' completely, honestly, so that we understand ourselves first, before we try and understand the village and city..

Let us Vote for Change

    I write this as a supporter of Aam Aadmi Party. I write this in support of a people's movement which has the potential to correct the errors of modern politics and economics.
    The issue is not Mr Kejriwal. I feel it is important that we should not overlook a fundamental fact - that for once we actually have an alternative which is really an alternative, not just the same mindless copying of 'development' which all political parties are doing.
    The fear that this 'alternative' has triggered in the conventional political parties is apparent. Both the BJP and the Congress are desperate to show that the Aam Aadmi Party 'is like the rest of us'. They are shouting and screaming that AAP too has internal dissent, that it has people leaving them, that it plays caste politics, that it is irregular in taking donations, etc., etc. In a way, both BJP and Congress are conceding that political parties are after all corrupt and dishonest. So why should AAP be different?
    Why this fear of the Alternative? ..