Relating Indian realities to world history

[Thursday, July 06, 2006 Drain-inspector's Report-2
The Myth of the New India By PANKAJ MISHRA NYTimes.com Homepage: July 6, 2006
This week India's prime minister, Manmohan Singh, made it clear that only a small minority of Indians will enjoy "Western standards of living and high consumption." 5:56 PM]

[The Myth of the New India by Pankaj Mishra. In this article, Pankaj Mishra considers contemporary India's middle class myth of emerging economic superstardom. Is this a reality or a make-believe narrative swallowed as part of neo-liberal globalization with its own convenient interests? According to Mishra, "Many serious problems confront India. They are unlikely to be solved as long as the wealthy, both inside and outside the country, choose to believe their own complacent myths."
by Debashish on Sat 15 Aug 2009 12:24 AM PDT Permanent Link
The Myth of the New India (The New York Times, July 6, 2006) By Pankaj Mishra
INDIA is a roaring capitalist success story." So says the latest issue of Foreign Affairs; and last week many leading business executives and politicians in India celebrated as Lakshmi Mittal, the fifth richest man in the world, finally succeeded in his hostile takeover of the Luxembourgian steel company Arcelor. India's leading business newspaper, The Economic Times, summed up the general euphoria over the event in its regular feature, "The Global Indian Takeover": "For India, it is a harbinger of things to come — economic superstardom." Science, Culture and Integral Yoga]

[The movement of New Journalism founded by creative writers like Norman Mailer moves between objective and subjective realities to push the reader into a creative engagement with the lifeworld. Such engagements can change public expectation and bring new concepts into currency through words and phrases. There are some Indian writers who have moved in this direction. Two names I can think of are Pankaj Mishra and Pico Iyer. Arundhati Roy, some of whose wrtings have been carried on sciy, has been an important commentator, relating Indian realities to world history and the larger forces structuring modernity. Contemporary Indian novelists are also trying to engage its inner social structures, but here, imo, the power of critique has yet to find its voice. Re: Technology in a Global World by Andrew Feenberg
by Debashish on Fri 14 Aug 2009 07:51 AM PDT Profile Permanent Link]

[A conservative could never write a book with the title, The Politics of Meaning. Politics for a conservative is more like garbage-collecting: it is a dirty job; somebody has to do; it would be better if nobody had to do it; and we should all lend a hand in getting the dirty job done. But there is little by way of meaning, immanent or transcendent, in garbage collecting and sewage disposal: these are things one gets out of the way so that meaningful activities can first begin. We are not totally committed to defeating the totally committed who would defeat us
The Conservative Disadvantage Posted at 12:37 PM in Conservatism, Leftism and Political Correctness, Politics Permalink Maverick Philosopher: In Praise of Blogosophy by Bill Vallicella 9:31 AM 9:54 AM]

[Thomas Sowell once wrote that the that political left have a major "investment in failure":
Domestically as well as internationally, the left has long had a vested interest in poverty and social malaise. The old advertising slogan, "Progress is our most important product," has never applied to the left. Whether it is successful black schools in the United States or Third World countries where millions of people have been rising out of poverty in recent years, the left has shown little interest. Progress in general seems to hold little interest for people who call themselves "progressives." What arouses them are denunciations of social failures and accusations of wrong-doing. THE SOCIALIST UTOPIA AWAITS !
The collapse of the global left is due to its pervasive intellectual and moral bankruptcy.
from Dr. Sanity by Dr. Sanity]

Human civilization has marched forward through the process of evolution and rival political camps fight to take credit without being awake to the underlying forces that propel it. That indoctrination can thoroughly subjugate the human mind is the most tragic and paradoxical aspect of human affairs. [TNM]