Zeitgeist

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...

Recently board results were declared in India. Sad news is that at least 20 students have died by suicide in Telangana itself possibly due to poor performance. Similar incidences were reported from other states also. Apart from the board results, every year we come across the news of students committing suicide because of their failure in competitive entrance tests like IIT-JEE. Such news repeats itself every year, only the statistics changes. Such incidences pass largely without significant emphasis or prominence in the public discourse. It also does not occupy the central stage in the public debates and the policy making. In our society, students’ suicide, housewives’ suicide etc gets sidelined over political issues and is not taken with the seriousness it deserves. Whereas farmer’ suicides take precedence in news reporting owing to their political nature, as farmers are a major voting sector during the election season. Political will in India is informed by electoral logic and...

Freedom of speech and expression under Article 19 of Indian Constitution forms the core of our democratic value system. Degradation in this value system occurs when this constitutional right takes the form of hate propaganda. It is best reflected in the way communally-charged content and outright hate speech has polarized the current Indian polity by capitalizing on the anonymity and omniscience of social media networks. With the single majority of BJP in 2014 general elections and aggressive campaigning by it, elections have increasingly become a do-or-die situation for all the political parties. In today’s bitterly fought electoral schema, election has become a war and political speeches have been replaced by war mongering (hate speech) against the opponents. In this perception battle, whoever wins is a master strategist and this very notion is making the election campaigning increasingly inciting with lesser restraint and consideration of what is being spoken/done to the elect...

A "Temple" is a symbol of Hindu faith where the Hindu Gods/Goddesses reside. It is related to spiritual development of the human beings. If any message is given out by associating it with temples, it symbolizes the importance of the subject matter. When our first Prime Minister Nehru Ji described dams as the "temples of modern India", it symbolized how important dams were for the economic development of India. Our current Prime Minister Modi ji gave the statement of "Pehle shauchalaya, phir devalaya (toilet first, temple later)". It was a very strong statement given the significance of temples in Hinduism and had the potential of hurting the sentiments of his followers. He himself had said, "I am known to be a Hindutva leader. My image does not permit to say so, but I dare to say". What he meant was that before spiritual development, we need socio-cultural and economic development (especially for our girls/women) and for that toilets are n...

A newly-wed couple was set on fire in a village in Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra as their family was opposed to their inter-caste love marriage. We can trace a series of such incidences of honour killings across India every year. Such news do make small headlines, but fails to become a topic of prime-time debates on national television or part of digital activism in terms of social media hashtag campaigns or never leads to candle-light protests. They have just become a part of the annual statistics on crimes. Have we normalized such killings in our psyche? In India, all "honour (ijjat)" of the families/societies is positioned in the purity of women. Hence, instead of being considered as individuals with lives and choices of their own, women's lives are structured through a strict maintenance of an honour code. They are seen as the torchbearers of family ‘honour’. Honour killing is related to a perception that the couple has dishonoured the family by transgressi...

         Cinema has always been a pivotal distribution source of popular culture in India, and its persuasive message often helps in constructing the future of popular culture’s space and identity for our societal construct. Last year, the movie “Mulk” was released, which was also opposed by many, and received harsh audience reviews on IMDB. But my experience of this movie was quite opposite to such reviews. In my view, “Mulk” shows how a systematic religious polarization can silently vitiate our societal/moral norms. It shows how even a nanoscopic glimmer of jingoistic nationalism is enough to disturb the communal harmony and flares the sparks of fear and suspicion within some of us. It shows how we come to a stage where we start questioning the loyalty of our relationships with our own fellow citizens. The movie also redefines, or rather reaffirms, the definition of terrorism. Forcing a section of your society to live as second class citizens under the s...

We come across many cases of gender-based violence like sexual assault, domestic violence, rape (marital too), acid attacks etc. on a daily basis. The deep-rooted reason is the ingrained gender inequalities present in the society and the social agencies of sexism and patriarchy which forces women into a subordinate position. This is perpetuated by the prevailing and entrenched "rape culture” environment in which  gender-based violence  is pervasive and normalized due to societal attitudes/behaviors (which include victim blaming, slut-shaming, sexual objectification, trivializing the rape cases, refusing to acknowledge the gravity of such incidences by gender-insensitive enforcement agencies including politicians etc). Employing the tool of gender-based violence in any society is the outcome of the cult of masculinity and this cult is sustained through authority and subjugation. Some men fear their identity of "MAN" to be threatened without it (although it cons...