Dilip Simeon's blog

On Thursday, a day after the results of JEE were announced, a 17-year-old in Jaipur killed herself — the police said that she wanted to pursue a BSc degree in astrophysics. What’s worrying is that the police said that it was “strange” that she killed herself over that because it seemed to him that "one can also become an astrophysicist after graduating from an IIT.” What Harshit Bharati (who is investigating the case) and perhaps countless parents and peers who have heard or read about the girl’s demise are unable to understand is the mental anguish of a child who probably does not want to go to IIT at all. In a  six-month study  conducted on undergraduate students from cities such as Chennai and Delhi, researcher Arti Sarma found that a total of 14.5 percent endorsed suicidal ideation and 12.3 percent had admitted to having deliberately hurt/kill themselves. These figures are grim, yet quite telling in light of the burgeoning suicide rate among students. In Kota, the...

Soni Sori’s lonely battle in Chhattisgarh for adivasis' rights doesn’t have many takers. In the video above she invites people to visit Bastar and talk about the adivasi struggle to give strength to the movement. Sori, who was in Mumbai recently, spoke of how adivasis are being labelled Naxals and killed just so the government can get access to their land. The Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Areas or PESA Act protects Adivasi rights over their land – so, she alleges, the way out of that problem is to just kill them. “I used to think the government was fighting to kill Naxals. But now I think it’s wrong because the officials themselves tell me, ‘The adivasi will have to die at any cost!’ because they don’t have any identity, they have to die like insects.” “They told me to end my fight and I said you stop killing adivasis and I’ll stop fighting to which they said, ‘But they have to be killed because the government wants that land’.” "If we talk about the adivasi r...

Nonviolent politics have unique power to change the world, but they require strategic suffering and ascetic self-mastery No political action seems to enjoy greater moral authority than the nonviolent methods Mahatma Gandhi inaugurated more than a century ago. Gandhi’s neologism for nonviolent direct action was satyagraha , which roughly translates to ‘holding fast to truth’. While this term itself never caught on, in principle or form, nonviolent models of organising protest did. For decades, pro-democracy movements in Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe have conspicuously embraced nonviolent politics to express mass dissent and topple authoritarian governments. Time and again, activists around the world have turned to mass boycotts, strikes and collective vigils, techniques Gandhi pioneered and practised on the world stage with historic results. More recently, protestors in the Occupy movements and the Arab Spring successfully put to use nonviolent tactics of disruption. S...

To fall in love feels like such a personal and spontaneous process, it is strange — and a bit insulting — to suggest that we’re only copying what the novels and the movies tell us to do. However, the differences in how people have loved throughout history suggest that our style of loving is to a significant extent determined by what the prevailing environment dictates. In certain eras, we’ll swoon at the sight of the beloved’s ankle; in others, we’ll coldly put romanticism aside for the sake of dynastic or practical concerns. We learn how to love by copying a range of more or less subtle cues emitted by our culture. Or, as that brilliant observer of human foibles, François de La Rochefoucauld, wickedly put it: “There are some people who would never have fallen in love if they had not heard there was such a thing.” Crucially, over the centuries, the most important factor to have shaped how we love is art. It is through novels, poems, songs and, latterly, films that we have acquired...

India has withdrawn  the visa issued to Uyghur leader Dolkun Isa for attending a conference at Dharamsala scheduled later this month. The government had earlier issued a visa to Isa, inviting Chinese criticism. The Chinese government considers Isa a ‘terrorist’ and also used its influence to get a red notice issued against him by Interpol. Earlier today, Isa released his statement on the controversy which reads as follows. NB - For all the muscular noises emanating from the 'Sangh parivar' government; these events show their disdain for the courageous struggle of Chinese dissidents; along with their fear of annoying the leaders of the People's Republic of China. Here is a report on Modi's chest-thumping   in 2014:  Modi blows hot air at China in a rally in Arunachal  .   Indian democrats need to learn more about the Chinese people's democratic aspirations and support them whole-heartedly. Didn't the Chinese Communist Part support the Indian revol...

Eugene Victor  "Gene" Debs (November 5, 1855 – October 20, 1926) American union leader, a founding member of the  Industrial Workers of the World  (IWW or the Wobblies)   Every year, 15th May marks  International Conscientious Objectors day  - a day to celebrate those who have and those who continue to resist war, especially by refusing to be part of military structures.  You can use the hashtag # CODay  (o # díaOC  en español) Email  hannah@wri-irg.org  with your events and they can be added here. http://www.for.org.uk/events/peacemakers16/ http://www.wri-irg.org/en/co-day-2016 Remembering Hiroshima & Nagasaki, August ...   SATYABRATA PAL - Remembering August 6 ... Janet Farrell Brodie - The Little-Known History ... Banks in front line of nuclear arms campaign summary of a study of long-term health effects in the survivors of the atomic bombings The ...

More than 33,000 civilians were killed or injured by explosive weapons in 2015, an increase of more than 50% in five years, according to a wide-ranging survey passed to the Guardian. In the last year alone, the number of civilian deaths caused by such weapons increased by as much as 7,682%  in Turkey , and 1,204%  in Yemen .  There were also significant increases  in Egypt  (142%),  Libya  (85%),  Syria  (39%)  and Nigeria (22%).  The number of civilians killed or injured by suicide attacks also rose sharply, reaching 9,205 last year, an increase of 68% on 2014, even though the number of individual attacks – 253 – was about the same. More than half of the 16,180 civilians killed or injured by all  improvised explosive devices  (IEDs), including car bombs, were victims of suicide attacks. Suicide bomb attacks occurred in 21 countries, the highest figure ever recorded. They were: Nigeria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Tur...