A Bowl of Elusive

The recent revelation of the Electoral Bonds data brought forward some worrying trends – trends that indicate bribes for contracts, possible extortion through agency actions, and large-scale money laundering activity. But what makes the Bonds so sinister is that it gives the parties plausible deniability. And looking at how BJP controls all central investigative agencies, I doubt that any investigations will take place – not against BJP, at any cost.  So the question now is – why should YOU care? In a recent video, Nitin Gadkari proudly claimed that he had no dearth of money, and asserted that no contractor would ever accuse him of taking kickbacks. Now, people tend to forget things rather quickly, but it is common knowledge now that Megha Engineering is BJP’s largest contributor through Electoral Bonds and they were awarded huge contracts after donating to BJP. I pointed this out in the comments of this video and some BJP bhakts jumped in to defend their favorite party.  Thei...

Back in 2016, I was on a road tour with a gentleman in Madhya Pradesh. He was an acquaintance – a former high-level executive from a smaller brand, who was now working for the same distributor that was dealing with the brand I was working for. Since I wasn’t a local to MP, I was asked by the distributor to accompany this gentleman and meet our business partners across the various districts throughout the state. This gentleman was pretty well-behaved, polite, and friendly. I had developed a very good image of him – until the topic veered to Muslims. Then, things just got weird. I couldn’t believe that a decent guy like him could have such hateful opinions about a whole community. He was talking about how Muslims choose to stay in ghettos and become criminals instead of studying and doing something with their lives. I just nodded and tried to change the topic. I had the counter-argument right there on my lips. “Muslims live in ghettos because they’re not easily rented out places in Hindu...

You see this? This is a picture of the Preamble to the Constitution of India shared by a Govt handle recently. Notice something? Here - check this. This was the Preamble we were all familiar with.  The difference? Well, the words “Secular” and “Socialist” aren’t there in the first picture. Why? The govt handle said that they were sharing the original version of the Preamble. These words were added in the 42nd amendment to the Constitution in 1976. But the fact is, that as far as any amendments made to the Constitution are concerned, the latest version is the original version.  Now we all know why the current ruling party is against the word Secular - but what do they have against the word Socialist. Let's find out. I can bet that around 80% of the people on social media today won’t know what socialist actually means. Among those who know, many don’t really understand the implication as far as the Indian Constitution is concerned. So here goes nothing. Socialist refers to a sta...

My grandfather once told me – You don’t have reservations to support you – you have to work twice as hard – the finish line is further away for you because you’re Brahmin  And that’s what I believed – for the longest time.  I, too, thought of the reservations as an unfair advantage given to undeserving people. This video is going to examine the idea of merit in reservations. My early life was tough – I dealt with abandonment, abuse, starvation, and being orphaned. But you know what I never had to deal with – caste discrimination. Because, after all – I was a “bahman chuaa” or “brahman baccha” for the Hindi speakers. I was a part of such an elite demographic (display upper caste & male) and I didn’t even know it – poor me, grew up with so much self-pity, maybe this knowledge would have made me feel better. Anyways …. (Transition). Like most Savarnas, I was oblivious to my privilege. When I first read about untouchability, I legit thought that was a thing of the past – like ...