While the government schemes and provisions to uplift the urban poor have been highly appreciated, especially during the pandemic, its infrequent and uneven benefits are testimony to the fact that there is much more that still needs to be done.
Category: Academic Essays
Towards De-exceptionalizing the Middle East: Navigating Between Theory and History
What is the history of a place? What happens when that history comes into contact with the forces of modernity? The answer to all these questions comprehensively lie in the increased exceptionalization of that place.
Coastal Erosion: A Regulatory and Political Phenomenon Today
The article describes coastal erosion today, prime facie a natural phenomenon, to be a result of organized regulatory oversights and flaws. The analysis is primarily administered through a commentary on current-day environmental clearance regulations for coastal structures and their accommodation of a plethora of vested interests.
A Choppy Road Ahead: How the Pandemic is Reinventing India’s Urban Mobility Crisis
India has always had its issues with urban mobility. However, the financial, behavioral and commercial trends triggered by the pandemic threaten to complicate these issues in an unprecedented manner. In the first of a series of essays on urban mobility in India, Sudarshan and Mukundan trace some of these complications to unravel the biggest challenges faced by the government.
The Third World’s Modern Origins
The genesis of the ‘Third World’ categorization lies in the nature of modernity exported by the First World. Asish Singh explains this with the example of eighteenth-century famines in India.
Girl Groups and Gender Gaps: The Globalization of Gender Stereotypes Through K-Pop
The meteoric rise of K-Pop stars as celebrity diplomats has exported various aspects of South Korean society to the rest of the world. This article explores how some of the nation’s more damaging characteristics, such as its highly unequal gender perceptions are being amplified by the growth of the K-Pop industry.
Analyzing the South Korean Cultural Wave
With the rise of K-pop, K-dramas and Korean Cinema, this article seeks to analyze Hallyu, or the South Korean Cultural Wave as a soft power tactic by the country to rebrand itself as a rising eastern power in the world stage. It looks at the role this wave plays in political diplomacy, especially with countries like the US, China, Japan, and North Korea to maintain a position in the East Asian region.
HOLY REALISATIONS
Religion as we used to know has ceased to exist. Today, temples have gained enough power to influence key economic decisions in our country. The rise of the temple economy has thrown a dark shadow over the rest of our economy- why and how has this happened? And what are the consequences of this intermingling?
Understanding Chinese surveillance: Comparing Realist and Constructivist Perspectives
What do China’s domestic efforts in mass surveillance and use of data-dependent technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) mean for the world? And what role have social and political developments played in the development of the Chinese surveillance state? This essay will evaluate China’s surveillance system, the Chinese government’s pursuit of AI supremacy and its impact on the world through two major theoretical paradigms: Realism and Constructivism.
Arcane Algorithms
This article talks about the use of algorithms by social media platforms and the ways in which they, oftentimes without the user’s knowledge, collect personally identifiable data to generate specific content for them. The article also touches upon the impact of the same on children and adolescents and the future of behavioural science to mitigate these risks.
What makes BCCI the richest cricketing board
This article talks about how BCCI became the richest cricketing board in the world and assesses how the board earns its money and what factors helped it in becoming the economic giant that we know today.
Latent Gender Normativity – A Roadblock for Feminism
Gender is a complicated and widely debated subject. This article explores what construes gender, its stability, its role in feminism and the seemingly normal distinctions that can be potential forms of gender normativity.
NICKELED AND DIMED 