Subir Ghosh's Blog
January 31, 2016
Critically endangered: The state of India's wetlands
There are natural disasters, and there are those that are man-made. The ones usuallly most catastrophic are natural disasters that are compounded and accentuated by man-made factors.
When Mumbai was ravaged by just 900mm of rain over a 24-hour period leading to almost 450 fatal casualties, one might have thought that planners and policymakers would have sat upright and taken note of the ecological degradation in their own backyards: that of the wetla...
January 27, 2016
Memories of underdevelopment
January 28, 2016: Politicians from mainland India, bogged down by their own mainstream and patronising narrative of what development or nationalism ought to mean, hardly ever get the ground situation right as far as the Northeast is concerned. All the more so with Assam, an anthropologist’s dream-come-true and a demagogue’s proverbial nightmare. This was amply evident from the cavalier way in which Prime Minister Narendra Modi kicked off the e...<![endif]--><!--[if IE 9]>
Terrain of complex issues
Politicians from mainland India, bogged down by their own mainstream and patronising narrative of what development or nationalism ought to mean, hardly ever get the ground situation right as far as the Northeast is concerned. All the more so with Assam, an anthropologists dream-come...
December 28, 2015
Ambani brothers may now control telecom space, and more
The pomp and glitz surrounding the launch of Reliance Jio's 4G services on Monday was all-pervading. It would have one believe that the company, part of the Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) conglomerate, had done something revolutionary. But then, it hadn't. Neither had it introduced a new technology, and nor launched an innovation. It had only annnounced the rollo...
December 27, 2015
The Jio launch was all about Mukesh Ambani. Here's why
The media blitz surrounding Reliance Jio's launch of 4G services (albeit for its employees, as of now) has been as overwhelming as the launch event itself had been a spectacle. But the real story is hardly about the rollout of a broadband service as it is about being a personal milestone for Mukesh Ambani, the chairman and managing di...
December 4, 2015
A flood of corruption
The advantage with hindsight is that even the proverbial fool, after the event, gets the chance of a lifetime to become wise. No, the event one is alluding to here is not the Chennai cataclysm, but the one that had ravaged Mumbai ten monsoons back. There had been a lesson in urban planning for all and sundry there; for coastal city Chennai, especially so. The Mumbai floods had been as much about unbridled concretisation and una...
November 19, 2015
The artful dodger
The heat and dust generated by the hateful and acrimonious exchanges over the Karnataka government's decision to celebrate the birth anniversary of Tipu Sultan will settle down sooner or later. As in all other debates, there are merits and demerits in the arguments being put forward by both proponents and detractors; but what has been missing from most contentions is the role of the man central to the conflagration the state's...
October 11, 2015
Let's throw a BRIC at the US
In the first week of October, what was hitherto only looming large over the trade horizon became a disturbing reality. Twelve countries announced the inking of the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) after years of clandestine negotiations. Though the partnership has not yet been ratified by lawmakers from the member countries of the Pacific Rim that constitute the bloc, it is likely to cause a flutter in global trade...
Let���s throw a BRIC at the US
In the first week of October, what was hitherto only looming large over the trade horizon became a disturbing reality. Twelve countries announced the inking of the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) after years of clandestine negotiations. Though the partnership has not yet been ratified by lawmakers from the member countries of the Pacific Rim that constitute the bloc, it is likely to cause a flutter in global trade...
September 30, 2015
As you lake it: The case of disappearing lakes of Bangalore
Early this summer, a couple of incidents threw the issue of Bangalores lakes back into the limelight. Not that they ever deserved to fade away from the headlines, but a couple of bizarre happenings at two lakes, and an order from the National Green Tribunal (NGT) over unauthorised constructions has since ensured that the issue does not disappear all over again, as many lakes themselves have.
Buried and gone Close to 50 major lakes have lost their ch...
