THE GLOBAL AND THE LOCAL

I was recently in Kapilvastu for an assignment when we stopped by the District Development Office. An officer there immediately gave me a piece of my mind. Pointing to two colleagues who accompanied us from a local NGO, he said: “We have an employee here who is also engaged in this NGO in some capacity. He was a former employee of the NGO, and now remains on the board as a volunteer. He’s been presenting our work on citizenship as work done by the NGO. To bideshis who come, it appears all this work is being done by the NGO when in fact its his work he is paid to do, as a government employee! Can you imagine? And this is how fundraising is done—taking the work of government agencies and passing it off as the work of NGOs!”   My colleages from the NGO nodded politely and didn’t contradict him at this point. Later in the jeep they told me that they had been doing this work of getting citizenship papers to their constituency for a long time, and it wasn’t that the man ...

Notice something about Modi’s coronation? Besides the fact that everyone was there—estranged relatives (Pakistan), annoying cousins (The Congress Party), and even Dharmendra and Hema Malini, the most interesting thing about the coronation was the glare that Modi gave his line of demure ministers at the very end. Behave! He seemed to say. Discipline is in the air. But then something struck this Nepali right at the very end. As the program ended, two guards in colorful attire rushed down the aisle in a rather undisciplined fashion—right past the newly crowned PM? And the Prime Minister looked left, and then right, as if he was on a Delhi street, before scooting over to the other side, to be swept up by the Great Indian mass. In other words, they hadn’t thought out their exit. Great start, bad finish. They had thought of everything, except how the event would end. No colorful guards ceremoniously guiding the new PM out, with the line of exalted dignitaries behind. And...

Ms. Joshi is shooting a short film on how men and boys are supporting the gender equality movement. It will win the Oscars shortly. Please stay tuned! ;-) She will be back with her blog posts as soon as she finishes her 10 minute video (what? No Oscars for 10 minute docs?), which will be after the advertisement break. Stay tuned!

As all thinking adults on this planet, I was intrigued to read about Thomas Piketty and his magnum opus “Capital in the Twenty-First Century.” Its main message, according to the Guardian : Rising inequality is killing capitalism. This is a nice message. I like the French, and I like this idea of taxing the super rich.  The only problem after reading this article is that I felt Piketty didn’t really address the origins of money creation.   To me, it feels like he still believes it’s a fair world, with fair countries with equitable monetary policies, who somehow come into their trillions of dollars and euros in a fair way, and the only solution is taxing those awful rich people. Now I wonder if it’s that simple? It appears to me Christine Laguarde also says the same thing on Amanpour's program. Economic inequality is bad for the economy. Lets monitor it, lets measure it, lets keep it in check. Sort of like it’s a tumor that can be scanned with a scanner ...