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Identity

Who am I? Everyone asks this question to themselves at some point of time in their lives. Personally, I have battled with this question for years and continue to do so. Are we defined by where we were born, or where we live, or by what color our skin is? Maybe the religion we belong to, the group of people our surnames point to, or by our physical appearances?   To some of my more liberal readers, these classifications may seem old and outrageous even. But the reason I include them here is because we must remember that our society, even today and for the foreseeable future, is constantly shaped by people who identify themselves based on these criteria. My aim is to keep this blog practical as well as philosophical today. I do not believe there is much merit in identifying myself on the basis of religion, geography, color, sex, sexuality, etc. I identify with the human inside us. It is my personal view that each person, irrespective of any of these criteria, is ...
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Feminism

I am a feminist. Feminism today has come to be identified as something pesky in the minds of many. It is associated with protesting, causing trouble for no apparent reason and for being impractical. A large number of people consider it useless agitation. And that is both a saddening and a troubling scenario for a feminist such as myself. With the principle of patriarchy, men have dominated the social sphere of human life. This might sound extreme, but the truth of the matter is that women have been treated as bearers and caretakers of children and the maintainers of the household for centuries, and continue to be treated as such in many parts of the world. They have been denied basic freedoms and rights; ones that men take for granted. Even as little as a 100 years ago, it was a major anomaly for a woman to get higher education, and this was the case in today’s developed world; let alone the case of poorer countries. Two centuries ago in India, sati was a common practice in whic...
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Television Media

Television media, especially in India, has come a long way from what it was, say, a few decades back. Gone are the days of Doordarshan’s hegemony. The plethora of options in English language news today include NDTV, CNN News18, Times Now and the most recent addition, Republic. But these channels collectively present a very stark contrast to the international news channels like BBC World News and CNN International. The first and most obvious difference is the information overload presented in Indian channels and the one or two news tickers at the bottom in the case of international channels. Following the same trend, Indian news channels are increasingly becoming sensationalism-oriented, and prefer to present only that news which makes for good TRPs, instead of focusing on presenting unbiased news. Putting the question of credibility aside for some time, if we only focus on the format, the international channels are more information and opinion oriented. What I mean by that is th...
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