The government is all set to stage a platform for the debate over gay rights in the Indian parliament. Often people complains that the homosexuals and the activists supporting them are corrupting India with "evil western culture", and their complaints get some strength because of the fact that US is also going through similar sort of debates over gay rights in US with the president Obama in a mood to support the homosexuals strongly. It can be true that the gay right movement in US inspired the Indian activists, but can we say that it is the western culture, which is corrupting India? Jessica Thompson answers it well in her blog at Times of India. Obviously, it is not about corrupting India, it is about amending a wrong. The article 377 simply makes homosexuality an unnatural act and thus illegal and that is wrong. Removing the article 377 will let many homosexuals live freely without any fear of blackmailing. Yet the real issue is not just to decriminalize homosexuality, but it is to recognize the individual's right to be homosexual if he wants to. Continue reading
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Even in the modern day India, Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru are considered as “Gods”. Any attempt to criticize them is met by denial and hatred. I remember that years back, when I made a case against the socialist policies of Nehru in my college hostel, every one of them present there turned emotional. They argued that India is a poor country, and hence need intelligent planning, to which Nehru made significant contributions. Their response was similar to what you would get from sulky children when you point out that their parents could be wrong. “Breaking Free of Nehru”, by Sanjeev Sabhlok, a resigned IAS officer, flies in the face of such an attitude. Sabhlok is one of the very few Indian authors I have read who has a reasonably good understanding of Free Market Economics. He points out with extreme clarity and precision that the legacy of Nehruvian Socialism has done incalculable harm to India. Continue reading
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It has been a long accusation of the feminists that women are paid less compared to men for doing the same job because of sexism. Most of the men out there know it for a fact that we don't have a secret pact amongst us men to pay women less wages, nor we actively discriminate against women in that regard. Yet statistically speaking women are paid less than men in many aspects. What is the reason behind it? Continue reading
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It’s not been tough for me to get to hear of derogatory comments against ‘greedy’ capitalists; about how those selfish pests suck all wealth unto themselves, by selling their products to consumers at prices above production costs to earn ‘undeserved’ profits. Going even further, some distressed souls even expect Capitalists to sell the products they produce at prices below production costs, and suffer outright losses. Continue reading
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There is a strong common ground among the Libertarians and Communists and that is Open Source movement. Communists do not accept "Intellectual Property" rights such as copyrights and patents as their general rejection of any kind of property rights. Libertarians do not accept "Intellectual Property" rights because they refuse to acknowledge "Intellectual Property" as any kind of property at all, and copyrights being an artificial monopoly created by the government. Continue reading
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In an investigative report covered by a television channel, Chennai private colleges were shown where Taliban-style rules were enforced on the students. There is so much segregation among guys and girls that to an American citizen it is going to be reminded of the Jim Crow laws era when blacks and whites were made to attend school separately. This did not come to me as news, I had friends from those universities who told me about these things years ago. I went to a much more liberal private college so all those things came as a big shock to me. I was told that if a guy was found talking to a girl, he was fined(not always through money, but through social service etc etc). Continue reading
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While whole world is blindly running for the goal of being green, the latest annual survey of National Geographic Society has announced India as the winner. The Greendex of Indians is 59.5 and India is at the top. The Greendex indicates the consumer behavior of a certain region or country and compares the sustainable power consuming behavior of the consumers. For some environment crazy folks, this might prove to be an encouragement and they might feel great about the fact that Indians have been declared as the forerunners of the campaign Green Earth, yet, the question that is to be asked is, what keeps India at the topmost position of that green index? How come one of the most populous country is the least power consuming too? Continue reading
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