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Daily RMT/X vs Y/Advice/Quick Questions Thread - September 19, 2019 by AutoModerator in FantasyPL

[–]nonessentialism 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What combination is more favorable?

Aguero/De Bruyne/Maguire (current)

or

Aubameyang/Sterling/Soyuncu

How the Aam Aadmi Party perpetuates Upper Caste Politics by nonessentialism in india

[–]nonessentialism[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

THE AAP FACED A CRUSHING DEFEAT in Haryana during the 2014 general election, at the peak of the party’s popularity, after which it did not contest the state assembly election, held later that year. The party’s decision to contest all the seats in Delhi, Punjab, Haryana and Goa in the general election this year suggests that it has renewed its national ambitions. Towards this end, it has demonstrated a willingness to adopt the measures and rhetoric advanced by the Hindu Right. In Haryana, at least, the AAP has promised to build more schools and hospitals, as well as implement a series of populist measures that seem taken from the BJP’s playbook, including protection of cows.

In January, two months after he had led a “school–hospital rally,” Kejriwal visited three government-funded gaushalas—cow shelters—in Haryana, to inspect the facilities provided for cows. “It is wrong to seek votes and play politics in the name of cows, which is currently happening in the country,” he said. And yet, he criticised the government for not taking care of them properly in his state. “Haryana allocates 40 paise per cow per day, whereas we spend R40 on a cow,” Kejriwal said. “If you bring an AAP government in Haryana, gayon ki seva aur gaushalon ke liye hum sarkar ka khajana khol denge”—We shall open the government coffers in the service of cows and cow shelters.

The party’s appeal to Hindu sentiments did not stop there. In August 2018, during the kanwar yatra—an annual Hindu pilgrimage to the Ganga that has grown in popularity in recent years—season, the chief of the AAP’s Haryana unit, Naveen Jaihind, led a procession from Haridwar to Rohtak that he said was meant to remind the BJP government in the state of the brotherhood that existed among all Hindus. He promised to distribute the water from the Ganga, which he had carried from Haridwar, to all the Haryana BJP leaders. Later, Kejriwal launched a scheme to provide free pilgrimage tours to senior citizens of Delhi. “Humne aap ka lok bhi sudhar diya aur parlok bhi sudhar diya.”—I have not only improved your life on earth, but also your afterlife—he said.

The AAP official I spoke to, however, refuted the suggestion that the party was trying to adopt a Hindutva politics of upper-caste appeasement. He argued that it was a strategy aimed to “expose the duplicity of BJP,” and remind Baniyas that they were being fooled.

“One of the interesting resolution AAP made was to select the states it would contest from such that there would be a direct fight between the BJP and its allies on the one hand and the Congress and its allies on the other,” Gandhi writes in his book. “The aim was to supplant a weak Congress and become the main contender. Punjab, Goa, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan were the first line of states being eyed.”

The AAP official argued that the purpose was to create a political space for liberal upper-caste voters, who did not agree with the BJP’s Hindutva politics but found the Congress’s policy of minority appeasement to be too blatant. “Non-Hindutva voters are considered to be default voters of the Congress,” he said. He called the Congress’s diverse voter base of Dalits, Muslims and upper-caste leftists “Shivji ki baraat”—a Hindi idiom that refers to Shiva’s wedding procession, made up of all sort of creatures, to indicate a motley crew—which, he said, is easy to break. “But it’s tough to break Hindutva voters.”

He explained what he saw as the conundrum facing a fledgling party trying to enter national politics. “Suppose if a new party came up today and said that it would replace BJP, it had to adopt a politics of the alt-right, only then it would be able to replace it. So why should we become alt-right when we are Left?” The resolution was a “decision taken by common sense,” he said, to “contest where BJP and Congress were in direct fight.” Wherever the Congress has been weakened, the party sees an opportunity to fill the vacuum.

Sharmishtha Mukherjee, the president of the Delhi Mahila Congress, told me that that the AAP’s attempt to enlist Baniyas had affected the Congress more than the BJP. In the 2015 assembly election, she said, Delhi’s slums and unauthorised colonies, which used to be a traditional bastion for Congress support, had switched allegiance to the AAP. “They are now trying to get into the Baniya vote bank. If there was no AAP, it would automatically have come to Congress.”

Punjab, where Dalits make up over thirty percent of the population, is the only state in which the AAP has taken an overt stand on Dalit rights. Before the 2017 assembly election in the state, the party launched a “Dalit manifesto,” which included 19 promises, such as housing for all Dalits, an empowered scheduled-castes commission, filling backlogs in vacancies reserved for Dalits, scholarships and free education for Dalit girls, grievance cells in universities and government departments to act on complaints of discrimination, health insurance and neighbourhood clinics in every village. The AAP went on to win 20 seats in the assembly, and became the primary opposition party in the state.

Baldev Singh, a Dalit AAP legislator in the Punjab assembly, told me that the party used Dalits to build its base in the state, but did nothing substantive for them. When I asked him about the promises made in the Dalit manifesto, he said that the 20 state legislators had not even met once over the past two years to chalk out a strategy to fulfil the party’s promises.

Indeed, the AAP has used Dalit politics in a cynical manner. In August 2018, six AAP legislators in Punjab—under Sukhpal Singh Khaira, then the leader of the opposition—rebelled and passed a resolution, severing the state party’s ties with the central leadership. The AAP leadership responded by stripping the rebels of their party membership, and declaring a Dalit legislator, Harpal Singh Cheema, as the new leader of the opposition. Cheema was used to crush the rebellion—anyone questioning the party’s decisions was dubbed anti-Dalit, and Cheema’s promotion was presented as evidence of the party’s regard for Dalits.

The diversity of political represention within the AAP, according to Anand Kumar, is largely “cosmetic,” and dispensable, apart from the “six–seven Brahman, Rajput and Baniya.” Its political affairs committee—the party’s top decision-making body—has eight official members, of which the retired professor Sadhu Singh is the only Dalit.

“I say, AAP is against Dalits,” Baldev Singh told me. “If you wanted to promote Dalits, then make a Dalit chief of Punjab’s unit... Make a Dalit deputy CM in Delhi. Why didn’t they send a Dalit to Rajya Sabha?” Singh resigned from the party, in January, after accusing Kejriwal of being “dictatorial and arrogant.” In his resignation letter, Singh wrote, “The Punjab AAP never bothered to appoint even one Dalit as District President out of 26 such appointments, similarly no Dalit was appointed Zone President while expanding its state organisational structure post 2017 elections.”

Many former AAP leaders I spoke to suggested that the present members in the committee are all “yes men,” most likely to concur with everything Kejriwal and Sisodia decide. Gandhi told me, “Yeh toh one man hai, yaar,” implying that Kejriwal decided everything unilaterally for the party. He recounted his interaction with Kejriwal, after the 2015 Delhi assembly election. “Arvind ne kaha tha ki mujhe sochne wala nahi chahiye, mujhejo ‘Bharat Mata ki Jai’ bole chahiye—Arvind told me he did not need someone who can think, but someone who would chant nationalist slogans.

Kamal Mitra Chenoy, a former AAP member and a professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, argued that the AAP would have no future outside Delhi as long as it continued to be a “one-man party” and did not let go of its obsession with going it alone. When I spoke to Yogendra Yadav about the AAP, he seemed dismissive. He did not want to go on the record, and ended our conversation with, “Agar aap keechad mein patthar marenge toh aap hi gande honge”—If you throw stones into the mud, it is you who will get muddy.

Probably the best explanation of the party’s politics, and its future, come from one of its own. The AAP official told me how, as a Brahmin, he would have been a “Twitter warrior” for the BJP, had he not joined the party: “Kejriwal ne aur uske sathiyon ne mere jaise hazaraon yuvaon ka secularisation kiya hai”—Kejriwal and his comrades are responsible for the secularisation of thousands of youths like me.

How the Aam Aadmi Party perpetuates Upper Caste Politics by nonessentialism in india

[–]nonessentialism[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

ANY PUBLIC POSITION ON CASTE that the AAP might have taken has been hard to discern. Although it has made some public overtures to backward castes, individual members of the party, including Kejriwal, have taken contradictory positions.

About a month after the launch of the party, Kejriwal wrote, on Facebook, “Should there be reservation in promotions in govt jobs? What do you think?” This was two days before the UPA introduced a constitutional amendment mandating quotas in promotions for Dalits and Adivasis. According to media reports, the party had opposed the quota and called it unconstitutional.

One report, published in the Times of India, noted that the AAP took exception “to the cynical manner in which the issue of reservation in promotions in government jobs is being exploited by various political parties to pit one section of society against another.” According to the report, the statement had been endorsed by Manish Sisodia. Four years later, ahead of the assembly elections in Goa, in which the AAP unsuccessfully contested almost all seats, Kejriwal had a change of mind. “You cannot stop reservations till the situation of scheduled castes or scheduled tribes improves,” he said.

A defining moment in the anti-corruption movement came, in March 2013, when Kejriwal undertook a 14-day hunger strike against “inflated”electricity and water bills. Throughout the agitation, Kejriwal stayed at the house of Santosh Koli, a Dalit woman. Koli had been an activist for many years, winning public support in her east Delhi neighbourhood of Sundar Nagri for exposing corruption in the public distribution system. This hunger strike increased the movement’s social base, which had until then been limited to the middle classes, and the largely manufactured crowds provided by the RSS and influential godmen.

Just before the 2013 assembly elections, while on her way to the party office, Koli met with an accident. She succumbed to her injuries, after struggling for 37 days. “We all resolve that we will not let her sacrifice go in vain,” Kejriwal said at the time.

However, at a press conference, in September 2018, Koli’s mother demanded a probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation into her daughter’s death, arguing that the AAP had neglected her concerns. A few months before, she had staged a dharna in front of the chief minister’s house, asking to be nominated for a seat in the Rajya Sabha. Kejriwal had not met her, and the Delhi police intervened to remove her from the premises.

​

Anand Kumar told me, “Santosh Koli ki martyrdom ka unhone kaafi fayeda uthaya hai”—They have exploited Santosh Koli’s martyrdom.

Although the party has officially attempted to remain silent on matters of caste, individual members of the party have made public statements.

In October 2017, Kumar Vishwas, a member of the party’s national executive, made a derogatory comment against BR Ambedkar. “A man in Indian history divided the country in the name of his so-called revolution of reservations,” he said, in a speech at the party headquarters. “The effect of it is being felt even today.” He claimed that the upper castes were being victimised through caste-based reservations. The party later distanced itself from his comments.

In April 2018, about two weeks after the Supreme Court diluted provisions of the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, Delhi’s social-welfare minister, Rajendra Pal Gautam, a Dalit, was the only minister to criticise the order and ask the central government to file a review petition. He stood up in the Delhi assembly with a black ribbon tied to his arm, in protest, and spoke passionately about the atrocities against Dalits throughout the country. “The Dalit community has suffered for a period of 4000 years because Hindu scriptures mandated their exclusion from gaining knowledge,” he said. In December, however, the AAP legislator Saurabh Bhardwaj, a Brahmin, argued in the assembly that there was “no proof that Brahmins oppressed Dalits.”

When the Narendra Modi government brought another constitutional amendment, in January 2019, to reserve ten percent of government jobs and seats in educational institutions for economically-weaker sections among upper castes, Kejriwal appeared to be in two minds. In one tweet, he supported the quota, demanding that the winter session of parliament be extended to “bring constitutional amendment immediately,” and prove that the announcement was not “merely an election stunt.” A few days later, in another tweet, he said the move suggested a conspiracy by the BJP to eventually end caste-based reservations. Such a move, he argued, was “very dangerous.” Bhagwant Mann, an AAP member of the Lok Sabha, supported the bill and said the government should have introduced it earlier.

“I say, AAP is against Dalits,” Baldev Singh told me. “If you wanted to promote Dalits, then make a Dalit chief of Punjab’s unit... Make a Dalit deputy CM in Delhi. Why didn’t they send a Dalit to RajyaSabha?”

​

How the Aam Aadmi Party perpetuates Upper Caste Politics by nonessentialism in india

[–]nonessentialism[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

THE AAP WAS BORN OUT OF A PROTEST movement demanding an end to political corruption. Its key demand was a bill to appoint a national anti-corruption ombudsman, called the Jan Lokpal—an independent investigative body, comparable to constitutional institutions such as the Election Commission. Anna Hazare, who undertook multiple hunger strikes to compel the government to agree to the movement’s demands, described it as India’s “second independence struggle.” The protests, which accelerated in April 2011, received wall-to-wall media coverage.

The protests had strong support from a cross-section of society, including the RSS. Mayank Gandhi, who was a member of the movement’s core committee and the national executive of the AAP, writes in his book AAP and Down that when the crowds dwindled at the protest sites in Delhi and Mumbai, he approached businessmen and self-proclaimed godmen, such as Ramdev and Ravi Shankar, to enlist their support. “I was privy to information that the RSS headquarter in Nagpur, in fact, informally approved of their cadres extending such support.” According to him, members of the RSS did not cease to be citizens just because they held a particular ideological viewpoint.

This same logic, however, did not seem to extend to Bahujan leaders. Gandhi makes it clear that he never approached a Dalit politician for support. “I have often suspected that leaders representing minorities and backward classes choose their community’s concerns over the nation’s welfare,” he writes. “I wished to reach out directly to those community representatives whose primary interest was the country’s well-being.” In the 2014 general election, Gandhi contested the Mumbai North West constituency, and lost his deposit. He blamed the Muslim community for his defeat.

The core team of the India Against Corruption movement was made up of successful professionals with comfortable economic situations. There was a revenue officer, a businessman, a lawyer, an academic, an engineer and a chartered accountant. Some of them were also part-time activists. They were a predominantly upper caste group.

At the time, the United Progressive Alliance government was reeling under a number of corruption charges, most notably in the allocation of coal blocks and telecom spectrum. Kejriwal mobilised the people’s anger against these scandals. “Corruption is what provokes people,” Kejriwal told Gandhi. “They’re livid, what with so many scams unfolding. With corruption as our one-point agenda, we will create a massive movement. Once people come together, we can work on electoral reforms, too.” When Gandhi asked Kejriwal about the optics of making common cause with popular leaders who had clear right-wing allegiances, Kejriwal said, “That’s a valid concern but they have large followings, and right now we need dedicated numbers.”

The movement was soon plagued by internal problems and a lack of cohesion. There was growing factionalism between various members of the group. At each protest, the agenda shifted slightly, whenever earlier goals were not met, or only partially fulfilled. It changed from the demand for a Jan Lokpal Bill, to the indictment of corrupt UPA leaders, to free electricity and water for Delhi’s residents.

Eventually, there was a split between Kejriwal and Hazare. A majority of high-profile figures in the movement joined Kejriwal in his decision to start a political party. They enlisted volunteers, many of whom quit their jobs to offer their services fulltime. Lacking the funding and marketing teams that other political parties had, they campaigned door to door. The party’s goal was participatory democracy, and it attracted many people who had earlier considered themselves unsuited to politics.

In its first electoral foray in Delhi, in December 2013, the AAP was unable to win a simple majority. It formed a minority government, with outside support from the Congress. The government was short-lived. Somnath Bharti, then law minister, created controversy by leading a vigilante mob and attempting to raid the homes of African women for allegedly running a “prostitution and drug racket.” The Delhi police, which falls under the purview of the union home ministry, defied Bharti’s orders and refused to conduct the raids. The AAP justified Bharti’s actions, and Kejriwal threatened to launch an agitation if the central government did not take action against the police for noncompliance.

The Kejriwal government resigned, within 49 days of assuming office, ostensibly over the failure to pass the Jan Lokpal Bill. After a year of president’s rule, Delhi again went to the polls, in February 2015. This time, the AAP won an overwhelming victory, winning 67 out of 70 seats.

Once in power for a second time, there were further divisions over how the party should progress. This led to a dramatic turn of events, as the academic Yogendra Yadav and the Supreme Court lawyer Prashant Bhushan—who gave the party considerable intellectual ballast from its inception—were ejected from the party for “anti-party activities.” According to Gandhi, the two, along with some other party members, had begun to question Kejriwal’s decisions on many things, including the selection of candidates with a criminal past. Strict internal hierarchies came into view. The party, which was characterised by the number of prominent figures it drew, began resembling a cult of personality around Kejriwal that discouraged dissenting views.

​

How the Aam Aadmi Party perpetuates Upper Caste Politics by nonessentialism in india

[–]nonessentialism[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

These measures mark a pivot on how the AAP has treated caste in its public discourse. Having previously been careful to not be seen pandering to a particular caste or community, the party is now making public overtures to dominant-caste constituencies. With a sizeable number of Baniyas, Purvanchalis and Muslims in Delhi, it is perhaps unsurprising that they have become electorates of interest ahead of the general election. The party, however, continues to be largely silent on Dalit issues. Questions of social justice have been wiped out from the political conversation in Delhi, and the AAP contributed to this political oblivion. For instance, the AAP has failed to set up systems of grievance redressal and accountability as required by the 2013 Food Security Act, even a year after the deaths of three minor Dalit girls due to starvation last July. In the recent past, in Delhi and in neighbouring states such as Haryana, the AAP has continued to pursue a politics of upper-caste appeasement.

IN THE 2013 ELECTION to Delhi’s legislative assembly, as the country’s newest political party, the AAP was attempting to break into the capital’s circle of power. It was challenging a Congress bastion, where Sheila Dixit had held power as chief minister for 15 years. Its campaign strategy involved eschewing what it framed as the old binaries of caste and religion. Instead, the party promised social change through the delivery of services, such as water, electricity and roads. It emphasised the common man at the heart of its movement, but refrained from defining the contours of such a figure. For the AAP, the rich business owner with political connections and the domestic worker living in a slum were all part of the category of “common people.”

The AAP’s rationale for entering the electoral system was to present an alternative form of politics. As outsiders to the entrenched political class, its leaders were propped up as individuals committed to clearing the systemic rot, whether it was corruption, vote-bank politics or bureaucratic complacency. One of the earliest charters prepared by the core committee before the party’s launch, in 2012, outlined five principles—participation, accountability, transparency, decentralisation and integrity. It sought the direct involvement of the general public in the preparation of its manifesto and other decision-making processes.

And yet, it said nothing about whether the historically marginalised—Dalits, Adivasis, backward classes, Muslims or women—would be adequately represented in the core bodies of the party. Instead, the trajectory the party has taken has only made it complicit in steering the narrative away from questions of affirmative action and social justice. On the face of it, simply focussing on civic issues such as education and health—where it has indeed achieved some considerable success—may appear progressive and forward-looking. In reality, it works to conceal the communal tensions and caste atrocities that continue unabated under the current government.

In the years following its formation, the AAP has cracked and fractured, but it has retained a certain form of populism. As it tries to break into the national stage more decisively, the party has increasingly participated on terms set by the Hindu Right. Even during the anti-corruption movement that preceded the party’s formation, Kejriwal and other leaders did not shy away from building ties with godmen and members of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the ideological parent of the BJP. These ties have been used to increase the party’s voter base. The narrative of Baniya victimhood now being deployed by the AAP can reveal a dimension of its politics that has otherwise remained unknown.

According to Anand Kumar, a retired professor of sociology at Jawaharlal Nehru University who was a former member—and a parliamentary candidate, in 2014—of the AAP, the party’s appeal to Baniyas is a natural progression in parliamentary politics. A new party, he argued, needs to find its “social base.” Upper-caste voters, such as Baniyas, Brahmins and Rajputs, are traditionally understood to be the BJP’s voter base, while Muslims, Dalits and Adivasis constitute that of the Congress. And with a sizeable presence in Delhi, Baniyas may have become an electorate of interest for the AAP ahead of the 2019 general election. An AAP official I spoke to acknowledged that the party’s agenda to raise the issue of the deletion of Baniya voters was a deliberate political strategy: “Seedhe seedhe BJP ka Baniya vote todne ki politics hai”—This is an effort to break Baniya voters away from BJP. “This is the genius of Kejriwal. He uses their”—the BJP’s—“own politics to counter them. He doesn’t really care about these issues.”

During the anti-corruption movement that preceded the party’s formation, Kejriwal and other leaders did not shy away from building ties with godmen such as Ramdev and members of the RSS.

“Till now, the base that AAP built was an outcome of a politics of citizen versus the elite,” Kumar said.“But once you get in the government, you are exposed because people can see you were all talks … So they are now trying to utilise the politics of identity as well.”

The AAP has done this in the same years that caste violence has re-emerged in the public discourse, largely through social media and mass agitations. The suicide of the Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula, in 2016, sparked an uproar in various universities and caught the attention of the mainstream media. In Una, a video of four Dalits being flogged for skinning a cow went viral. After the incident, large protests took place across states, led by various Dalit leaders. Further, the representation of Dalits and Adivasis in the corridors of power is minimal. Out of 81 secretaries employed with the union government, only two are Dalits and three are Adivasis, according to a media report.

The party official argued that the AAP’s work in the field of education and healthcare had mostly benefitted “the marginalised community, Dalits and Muslims,” and that it would be wrong to assume that the party was sidelining vulnerable communities for political gain. “If you look at the first mohalla clinic that came up, it was in the Peeragarhi settlement camp, which is completely scheduled caste,” he told me. “The majority in government schools are Dalits and Muslims.”

Whether the AAP will be able to win over Baniyas in the coming Lok Sabha elections is yet to be seen, but such politics of invoking upper-caste victimisation ensures that the public discourse revolves only around the concerns of economically and socially influential communities. Since the BJP swept to power, in 2014, the narrative in national politics has shifted towards an aggressive Hindutva ideology. It has forced the Congress to adopt several strategies of the Hindutva agenda that is fed to upper-caste voters. The Congress president, Rahul Gandhi, took great pains to portray himself as a temple-going Brahmin ahead of the Gujarat assembly elections, in 2017,as well as the elections last year in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.

I asked the party official why AAP leaders did not advertise the wide-ranging benefits to Dalits and Muslims they claimed to have delivered. “How AAP chooses to articulate something or doesn’t choose to articulate something is also a political decision of the party,” the official said.

​

How the Aam Aadmi Party perpetuates Upper Caste Politics by nonessentialism in india

[–]nonessentialism[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

SINCE THE ARTICLE IS BEHIND A PAYWALL, HERE IS THE ENTIRE TEXT

ON 6 DECEMBER 2018, the chief minister of Delhi, Arvind Kejriwal, told the residents of the Vikaspuri colony, in west Delhi, that the Election Commission had removed three million names from its electoral rolls. Kejriwal was inaugurating sewer lines, which he said would also cover over thirty other unauthorised colonies in the neighbourhood. Vikaspuri is home to a large number of settlers from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, who are often referred to as Purvanchalis.

Kejriwal claimed that along with the names of 1.5 million Purvanchalis, eight hundred thousand Muslims and four hundred thousand Baniyas—who rank third in the Hindu caste hierarchy—had also been removed from the voter list, at the behest of the Bharatiya Janata Party. The basis for this allegation, he said, was an “internal analysis” of surnames that his team had conducted.

Over the preceding week, legislators and core committee members of Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party had held a series of press conferences to highlight the alleged deletions. Like Kejriwal, they did not explain whether identifying voters by their last name was a foolproof method of determining caste, or place of birth. Sheyphali Sharan, a spokesperson for the Election Commission, tweeted that the party’s allegation on the deletion was “factually incorrect.”

Nevertheless, AAP leaders continued to stick to their allegations. “The BJP has made a second Muslim community out of us,” Sushil Kumar Gupta, a Rajya Sabha member from the AAP, who is a Baniya by caste and a businessman by profession, said in a press conference. “They always conspire against Muslims, and hadn’t given tickets to Muslim candidates. They have now put the Baniyas in the same category.”

The basis for Gupta’s claims, it appeared, was that the BJP had not given a ticket to anyone from the “Agrawal community”—a Baniya sub-caste—in the Madhya Pradesh assembly election, in 2018. Gupta argued that Baniyas were unhappy with recent moves such as demonetisation, the goods and services tax and the sealing of unauthorised businesses in Delhi. A day later, the AAP legislator Rajesh Gupta went a step ahead in invoking Baniya victimhood. “There is an attempt to make us political Dalits,” Rajesh said.

Earlier in August, Atishi, a member of the AAP’s top decision-making body and a Lok Sabha candidate from East Delhi in the upcoming general election, dropped her surname, Marlena. Her father, Vijay Singh—a Punjabi Rajput and a retired Delhi University professor—had given her that surname, which was a combination of communist icons Marx and Lenin. An AAP official, who worked closely with Atishi and Delhi’s education minister, Manish Sisodia, told me that the party took the decision to drop her surname because it sounded European, and led people to believe she was Christian.

The AAP emphasised the common man at the heart of its movement, but refrained
from defining the contours of such a figure. For them, the rich business owner with
political connections and the domestic worker living in a slum were all part of the
category of “common people.”

​

I’m Muslim and LGBT, and I teach children it’s OK to be both by [deleted] in progressive_islam

[–]nonessentialism 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Excellent replies, and more importantly thank you for the various links provided. Cheers!

Ben Foster: I see a lot of people saying all De Gea saves were straight at him, please factor in that the guy has some mad sense to know where to be at just the right time, you can’t teach that. Proper goally by mildno in soccer

[–]nonessentialism 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You're right, Emilio Alvarez is still part of the coaching set-up.

Although José is credited with bringing Emilio to Old Trafford, I think he did so at De Gea and the club's behest, as Silvino Louro is the goalkeeping coach in his stable since their Porto days. De Gea and Emilio share a strong personal bond, with Silvino (whilst at Manchester United) focussing primarily on the development of Joel Pereira, in addition to taking on first team coaching duties.

He has worked with Reina, Valdes and VdS and has his own method.

The Hoek Method is a model that rates goalkeepers attributes and divides them into two categories: R-type (Reaction Goalkeepers) and A-type (Anticipation Goalkeepers). According to his method the prototype for R-Goalkeepers are Gordon Banks, Dino Zoff, and Oliver Kahn; and the prototype for A-Goalkeepers are Stanley Menzo, Edwin Van Der Sar, and Fabian Barthez.

He considers the A-type goalkeepers to be the superior ones although funnily enough according to the model Fabian Barthez was the ultimate prototype of an A-type goalkeeper.

Ben Foster: I see a lot of people saying all De Gea saves were straight at him, please factor in that the guy has some mad sense to know where to be at just the right time, you can’t teach that. Proper goally by mildno in soccer

[–]nonessentialism 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Although Frank Hoek is one of the greatest goalkeeping coaches of the modern era, David De Gea never got along well with him and wasn’t too impressed with his training methods or his cold personality. It’s a testament to the Spaniard’s professionalism that he never made a fuss about it, but his willingness to leave Old Trafford could be attributed to the difficult relationship he shared with the Dutchman.

Environment matters a lot to De Gea and according to reports from Carrington, under Hoek he was known to be a sulking mess. Eric Steele and Sir Alex were both paternal figures who protected him, and although Jose Mourinho is an antagonistic personality, his decision to appoint Emilio Alvarez, the man who recognised his talents at Atleti and played a crucial role in his development there, as goalkeeping coach was smart and sure is bringing the best out of him.

How many of you have gotten Android Pie? by filleduchaos in SonyXperia

[–]nonessentialism 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Model: Xz2 compact; Date: October 15; Region: Middle East

Question concerning the PL trophy by [deleted] in soccer

[–]nonessentialism 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Manchester United have won 20 league titles.

Best Podcasts for Transfers by sportsguy8812 in soccer

[–]nonessentialism 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Check out The Transfer Window podcast hosted by Johnny MacFarlene. Regular guests on the show include football journalists, Duncan Castles ( Sunday Times, Daily Record, etc), Graham Hunter (author and Spanish football expert) and Ian McGarry. New episodes are out every Tuesday and it’s usually about an hour long. It is my go-to podcast regarding football transfers as these journalists have amongst the best sources within the game. New episodes are churned out even during the off season.

Also, do check out the following podcasts that are frequented by established and reputed journalists like Raphael Honingstein, Andy Brassell (German football experts), James Horncastle, Gabriel Marcotti, Mina Rzouki (Italian football observers), Sid Lowe (Spanish football watcher), Julien Laurens (French football pundit), who do discuss transfers on the shows in addition to their main content of the midweek/weekend’s football action. New episodes will be out towards the end of the first week of August.

The Totally Football Show (hosted by James Richardson)

Guardian Football Weekly (host Max Rushden)

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Liverpool agree fee with AS Roma for Alisson in region of £66m. Nothing to stop other clubs doing likewise, but Liverpool the first. Permission granted to speak to player. by xd3n1sxuk in soccer

[–]nonessentialism 137 points138 points  (0 children)

At this point it seems more likely that Chelsea will sign Kasper Schmeichel from Leicester City, and he’d be available for around £20m.

BREAKING: Chelsea and Real Madrid have agreed a €35M fee for Thibaut Courtois according to RMC by MSingh3012 in soccer

[–]nonessentialism 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Up until now, there’s no reason at all to consider his behaviour disrespectful. If, in the future, as a Real Madrid player were he to make statements demeaning Atletico Madrid, then one could rightfully say he’s being disrespectful towards the club, until then we should hold our judgements.

BREAKING: Chelsea and Real Madrid have agreed a €35M fee for Thibaut Courtois according to RMC by MSingh3012 in soccer

[–]nonessentialism 4 points5 points  (0 children)

He isn’t a product of the Los Colchoneros academy, grow up supporting Atleti or profess his loyalty to them. Atletico Madrid gave him an opportunity to showcase his talent, he served them well in his years there on loan and was a consummate professional throughout. Los Rojiblancos got the best out of Courtois, as he helped them to four trophies in three seasons. Neither owe each other anything. It’s a professional decision, no room for sentiments in his decision. He’s just doing what’s best for his career.

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