Zeitgeist

Let’s have a look at some incidents that took place in recent times across India: Karnataka: A 22-year  old man  died after injuring his spinal cord while doing a backflip for TikTok. Rajasthan: A 12-year-old boy  hanged himself  after wearing a ‘ mangalsutra’  and bangles (apparently, they were part of the rules of a challenge). Maharashtra: – A teenager from Maharashtra  was killed  while posing with a pistol for a video clip. Tamil Nadu: A 24-year-old man  jumped  in front of a train and committed suicide after being bullied and ridiculed by strangers over social media for dressing up in womanly attire. And the list goes on. A common theme across the above incidents is TikTok, a mobile app. It appears that this virtual world has become a death valley of sorts for youngsters. As a result, there has been a clamour from many quarters for flattening out this valley. TikTok has become a sort of playground for ‘ Youngistan’  provi...

As per Ancient Hindu literature, there are  different types of marriages  in accordance with the religious sanction and social acceptance (Brahma, Daiva, Arsha, Gandharva, Asura etc). Among them, Brahma marriage is considered to be the most appropriate marriage, and in today’s Indi, it is the most prevalent one, although in a polluted form. We will see how. The general precepts of Brahma marriage are: The father finds a suitable man and proposes the marriage of his daughter to him – This part is still the same. The groom, bride and families freely concur with the proposal – Quite often, in a patriarchal society, girls have no say whatsoever in selecting their life partners (forget about being engaged in supervised courtship). Their parents and elders choose for them and they have to accept the proposal and marry a person with whom they are unacquainted with (without any prior interaction with the person or any consideration to their p...

When the electoral process for the recently held general elections had begun in India, the result was not supposed to be as crystal clear as we got on 23rd May. With the loss of BJP in the bypolls and key assembly elections in few states, the NDA win was not that obvious. New political alliances were being forged and NDA was to fight loosely stitched but a resurgent coalition of opposition parties. In such a bitterly fought electoral environment, it looked to be a close call and political parties sought to capitalize on celebrities' star power. As a result, a number of stars from Bollywood, Bhojpuri Cinema, and Sports had embellished the political arena. From Delhi itself, we had celebrity candidates, namely, Gautam Gambhir, Manoj Tiwari, Hans Raj Hans and Vijendra Singh who jumped into this battle. However, not all of them found the electoral success and the big names such as Raj Babbar, Jaya Prada, Vijendra Singh, Nirahua etc were among those whose star appeal did not attract ...

Elections are considered to be “Maha Parv” of Indian democracy. And the extent to which it represents the will of the electorate depends on whether it is free and fair in practice. The two important factors which determine the integrity of electoral process from the perspective of the electorate are:- Their access to accurate information about candidates/parties and Whether the issues which are being raised while campaigning resonates with their socio-economic development and the broader national interest. Let us try to understand how the embedded misinformation tweaks the above two factors. Elections have an element of marketing in it where all the parties try to persuade customers (voters) to buy their product (candidates) through different mechanisms. Like marketers, political parties strategize their election campaigning by asking what people need and sometimes this need is mis-prioritized or manufactured by putting emphasis on trivial issues. In today’s era...