On Digital Money and Urban Shit

    First there was the swachchata concept which put pressure on the poor to build cement-walled toilets. Thousands of poor families living on city streets and slums, and in ramshackle village huts, actually smiled at the irony of this. No roof over the head, no land to call one’s own, and we have to build a toilet with walls,  plumbing and drainage!

    Following this has come the cashless concept which is putting pressure on the poor to perform electronic transfer of funds. And the poor are shaking their heads with despair because ‘cashless’ just about sums up their state of being. With daily-wage dependence and hand-to-mouth existence, they barely have money to meet their needs, let alone save and spend through digital transfers.

On Obama, Education and Slavery

For a person who normally critiques globalization and the undue influence of the west over the rest, I should not be adding more attention to Barack Obama’s end of presidency than to what is already a sycophantic prostration being offered by global media.

But yet, I feel that one must not let this moment pass, without a due test of western democracy, which the USA represents; of the notion of equality, which Obama being a black president represents; and of modern liberal education, which is being touted as the means to that equality, but which to my mind is the blight of modernity.

Please allow me to explain.