Dear Hafta Team,
Greetings from a subscriber and congratulations on completing 170!!!!
This is in response to Madhu’s specific question about people who might offer sexual favours for professional gains and whether one should ‘judge them’. The answer is yes.
It’s a simple question of equal opportunity. People that choose to readily offer sexual and other favours for professional gain perpetuate an exploitative work culture, which, according to the last memo we all received, is not what we want to do
In this context, it’s not simply about consent, which is an understanding between those directly involved, but a wider social contract that we make as citizens when we seek and offer merit-based employment. Those who betray this contract through unfair means and bribery are putting other contenders at a disadvantage and should clearly be judged as such!
(I’m talking about people in the context you were discussing, not someone who is choosing to give in as an alternative to death by starvation.)
On a different note, the Maharashtra farmer’s rally has been discussed several times for how unusually peaceful and disciplined it was. I just wanted to point to an interesting potential link between this and the Warkari (pilgrim) culture of Maharashtra, part of the bhakti tradition and centered around saints/mystics/poets, like Tukaram, Dyaneshwar, Bahina bai and many more, who preached the message of personal devotion to Vitthal (avatar of Vishnu) rather than dogmatic faith. They belonged to a variety of castes and communities, and so do their followers.
Coming to the point, since around 800 years Warkaris undertake Waris (mass pilgrimages) every year, often involving as many as 800,000 extremely chilled out, men, women and children walking over around 300 km over the period of 20 days. On the way they sing Abhangas (hymns of love and wisdom) composed by the saints, and other musical delights. It’s quite a sight.
The Warkari tradition is permeated through much of rural Maharashtra and my proposition is that this could have something to do with the peaceful and disciplined nature of the farmers’ rally. Here’s to many more Haftas.
An addition to the mail
Hello,
This is a short but important addition to my earlier email – to be clear, the judgement for anyone who chooses to offer sexual favours in return for professional perks should have nothing to do with puritanism or the sexual nature of the bribe (as is so horribly often the case), but purely for reasons of equal opportunity described in my email. And needless to say, the person asking for favours must of course be judged much more harshly.
Thanks!
Sneha
Hello all,
I am relatively new to Newslaundry and yes I subscribed. It has been an interesting experience listening to you guys on the Hafta and reading your articles. You guys seem good, but I am a cynic so I am not putting you on a pedestal. Hope you guys continue to improve and survive the tough business of journalism.
Talking about the recent Hafta some things that stood out for me personally are:
- Abhinandans counter to politicians showing off wealth. Everyone else on the panel seemed to have like most Indians drunk the kool aid and think it’s completely normal for a politician to be a crorepati. A political leader is ethically bound not to make wealth using his power, this is something a school kid knows that adults seem to forget.
- The Michelle Wolf standup at the correspondents’ dinner, even if it was a bit distasteful, I feel she managed to hold up a mirror to both sides of the media, the right and the left profiting of the Trumpmania. It is funny that people are trying to hold a comedian accountable for her language for talking exactly like Donald Trump, who seems to have been given a pass. And personally I feel the whole set up of the correspondents’ dinner itself is a bit of a circlejerk.
And now some for some requests.
- Recently while reading something random I learnt how powerful an authority the Comptroller and Auditor General is and the vital function of public accounts committee and public undertaking committee in our Parliament. This is a vital cog in checking public spending and corruption that no one talks about. I want to know why the hell is it not working. I am willing to bet if you dig into it and follow the money you will find some really good stuff to report on.
- Recently I heard somewhere that Indian origin kids in America were found to have the highest lead concentrations in their body, I will give you the source if possible. I want you guys to check how much of a public health disaster India is heading towards, be it overuse of antibiotics, use of banned substances like lead, asbestos, DDT. We are losing generations of kids to these serious health hazards. Please try to do a report on this.
That’s it, sorry if this email is long Abhinandan. And Madhu I admire how knowledgable you are, but you may need to rethink the old vs young debate. The current reality is that most power in the world is held by older people in terms of wealth and power and look where the world is headed in terms of climate change, pollution, wars etc etc . This where a lot of frustration for the youth is coming from.
Chetan
Dear Newlaundry team,
My name is Himanshu Tyagi, this is my third email, thanks for weighing-in on the previous two. (Indeed, I am a subscriber!)
I am writing since you have once again touched on a topic close to my heart. I want to add-on to the brief discussion you had about the masala news item on “50 IITians starting a pro-Dalit political party.”
Firstly, at the outset I would like to contradict what Anand mentioned: I don’t think that brand IIT is diffusing. I regularly interact with IIT undergraduate, and I think they are now even better trained at problem solving and analytical thinking — their core competence. Perhaps the brand IIT represents a middle-class demographic that is very aware of the capitalist market demands and waves of the time and will mould itself to ride any such wave.
Second, taking a cue from Anand Vardhan’s book, I will explore the abstract underlying the concrete. The larger issue here is how any effort to start a ground level movement in India is only half-hearted and amateur. Indians seem to have mastered the art of latching-on to the successful capitalist western societies and providing blue-chip workers of various kinds to them.
These societies have provided transparent paths that elevate a Sundar Pichai from a metallurgy engineering student at IIT KGP to the helm of the most revered enterprise of the world. (I mentioned a “transformation” because I believe that the metallurgy engineering programme at IIT KGP has not been designed to train one in any of the skills required to lead Google.) We Indians are happy to traverse this path without pondering upon to what extend and how we can transform a developing and fragmented society such as ours into the ever-so-shiny western social machinery.
In fact, whenever we try to carve such a path for ourselves, we find it very hard to create scalable mechanisms and sustainable systems that underlie any successful enterprise, political or business. AAP is a case in point, so is this new 50-IITian party. But still as a society we must learn to appreciate these efforts, which are perhaps doomed to fail, over the standard Indian model of latch-and-replicate. The latter will limit the rate at which we can develop as a country; though certain individuals such as Mr Pichai and Mr Nadella may see a meteoric rise.
Regards,
Himanshu
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