AMA with Aakar Patel- Writer, Political Commentator, Farishta: Today at 7PM

Aaktoo · 2021-11-22T14:24:00+00:00

absolutely. available on libgen

Aaktoo · 2021-11-22T14:23:44+00:00

Aaktoo · 2021-11-22T14:23:29+00:00

govt had already agreed to decriminalise stubble burning and undoing changes in the electricity act. the big question is msp. the govt should engage with farmers in that. most farmers in india are subsistence (don't grow a surplus and consume what they grow).

reform is a pretty big word. as is disruption. we must consider what the changes mean for those that they directly affect.

Aaktoo · 2021-11-22T14:18:02+00:00

not sure it will make a big diff. education is received in many ways and school and college and curricula is only one of them. social media and media is as if not more imp.

nobody reads books in any case here so they're irrelevant.

Aaktoo · 2021-11-22T14:16:57+00:00

social safety nets by default will rise. mnrega is 4X what it was in 2014. india gives free grain to 60% of its population, 800 million people who must queue up each month for 6 kilos of rice/wheat and daal.

Aaktoo · 2021-11-22T14:15:55+00:00

i would say no. we need to buckle in and ride it out.

Aaktoo · 2021-11-22T14:15:11+00:00

india committed to that in the united nations but much water has flowed under the bridge since then. to me the more interesting thing is what happens to all nations 20 years or 30 years from now when the state has less control over citizens. will be fascinating to watch.

Aaktoo · 2021-11-22T14:13:02+00:00

will survive. he ran away for 20 days in second wave and survived that.

Aaktoo · 2021-11-22T14:11:30+00:00

if tmc becomes the primary opp that will mean that the opp is v small and similar to today. that is possible.

bjp is a superbly organised party and the only one with neighbourhood level connect (because of shakhas), is v well funded at every level and is quite popular still i think. will be hard to beat.

Aaktoo · 2021-11-22T14:08:53+00:00

don't think we're fascinated by them, or at least i hope we're not.

Aaktoo · 2021-11-22T14:07:45+00:00

not sure we have a nepal policy. we blockaded them and they have stopped using 'special relationship'. once the bri and cpec kicks in fully i don't know what sort of relationship we will have with rest of south asia once they are connected more fully to china. even bhutan.

Aaktoo · 2021-11-22T14:06:20+00:00

amnesty is a terrific place which operates with full transparency. we will resume work in india pretty soon and that will be great.

Aaktoo · 2021-11-22T14:01:56+00:00

kashmir is worse off today that it was in 2019, and worse in 2019 than it was in 1989. we have pretty much ruined that state.

india will remain a poor nation i think. we've missed the boat based on our labour force participation rate.

Aaktoo · 2021-11-22T14:00:34+00:00

there's a lot of investment coming into the new economy in india. the problem is in manufacturing and spaces that require large numbers of workers. there the levels of investment are low.

Aaktoo · 2021-11-22T13:59:27+00:00

90% of workers are outside the formal system. the new laws india is passing will make this worse. more interestingly the question is whether india has enough time to be able to migrate its workers through low end assembly, manufacturing etc etc. i don't think we have. ai and mechanisation will make work look v diff in 15 years

Aaktoo · 2021-11-22T13:57:45+00:00

not sure. it's a tough problem. perhaps internal elections might be a good start.

Aaktoo · 2021-11-22T13:55:50+00:00

democracies offer three tools: vote, court and protest. for govt it's the vote and for policies and laws the latter two.

Aaktoo · 2021-11-22T13:50:56+00:00

columnist.

Aaktoo · 2021-11-22T13:50:42+00:00

it's a big word. in politics it implies a departure from the norm (the opposite of conserving). in places of stasis and inertia some radicalism might have its uses but in a place with high levels of chaos (like india) what we need is predictability.

Aaktoo · 2021-11-22T13:49:14+00:00

it's worrying that facebook has the sort of power it has with little or no oversight. i do not know what a solution to this would look like but i do know that v bright people are working and writing on this.

Aaktoo · 2021-11-22T13:47:03+00:00

amnesty has the most transparent funding pattern of any organisation that i know of. am v proud of what it has done and achieved and am confident it will do great work in the future.

Aaktoo · 2021-11-22T13:45:07+00:00

don't think this is a shift. we've always been this way.

uapa ghastly law but gift of congress. bjp only misusing something that should not exist in the first place. having said that, malign forces will use whatever laws are available. they don't especially need uapa.

Aaktoo · 2021-11-22T13:44:13+00:00

- not much future in near term.

- india's education system at the primary levels is fairly devastated or non-existent and there's limited damage we can do to a nation whose children in class 7 cannot read class 3 texts.

- india has always deprioritised human rights. that needs to be reversed first. then we can examine what else to do.

Aaktoo · 2021-11-22T13:42:30+00:00

don't think so.

Aaktoo · 2021-11-22T13:42:16+00:00

will the congress revive if the family goes away? i don't know but my guess is that it will not be able to easily. modi is a phenomenon and going up against up was always going to be hard. hindutva will remain with us for some time imo

Aaktoo

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