Op-Ed – Page 6 – NICKELED AND DIMED

Safeguarding the Sea: Navigating Microplastic Pollution with WasteLess Auroville

Microplastics and marine plastic pollution is a global crisis that requires immediate action. Educating people on this issue is essential to ensure that we can effectively combat it. WasteLess Auroville and the Government of Tamil Nadu launched an educational programme to raise awareness of microplastics and marine plastic pollution. This essay will explore why it…
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Gender and Property Rights in India

Women’s inability of acquiring land and property is a sheer barbaric and misogynistic representation of India’s age-old ethos. It has been ardently argued by various sections of society that ownership and control over land is a major stepping stone towards attaining greater gender equitability. The orthodox mindsets of people cause these huge gender gaps between…
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Coral Reefs: Their Importance and Subsequent Destruction

Over the past few decades, due to various human activities, they have come under the threat of extinction. However, recently, coral reefs have bounced back across two-thirds of the Great Barrier Reef.
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Kaam ki Kadar:The Ill-Treatment of Domestic Workers in Indian Households

Domestic workers operate in an unregulated, over-saturated sector, subjected to frequent exploitation. The historical devaluation of domestic labor in patriarchal societies has resulted in these abject working conditions. This is exacerbated by the caste and class-based discrimination pervading these employer-employee relationships and resulting in complicity with or active participation in inhumane practices. The privilege and…
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Evolution of queer literature: from Lihaaf to Shikhandi

Although Ismat Chugtai’s Lihaaf is often cited as a beacon of queer indian literature in the early 20th century, a close scrutiny of its sub-texts and narrative shows how this attribute may not be entirely suitable to its premise. Several instances and inter-personal relationships, created by Chugtai, demonize queerness as exploitative, undesireable, and ugly. It’s…
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How to Get Away with Bad Policy: Covid-19 Lockdown and its Impact on Street Vendors

People who form the backbone of a predominantly informal Indian workforce and economy have yet to reveal the full extent of the pandemic. Their hardships necessitate amplification through stories and statistics to paint a picture of what went wrong.
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Saadat Hassan Manto: Stories of resistance, partition, and women

Despite the hardships and the trauma of surviving the partition, Manto wrote about women who were involved in the resistance. He wrote not only about women in elite households but also about those who resided on the fringes of society. Most of Manto’s stories contain women who are not dependent on men for their existence…
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The Unseen Annihilation: A New Narration of the Threats facing South Asia – I

Not just the states, but South Asia as a region is facing an existential crisis. The urgency of these threats is underplayed by the gradual nature of their onset. Leaving them unresolved entails doom yet little urgency is observed in tackling them. There is a need for a new language which communicates the urgency of…
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The Land of the Lawless:

The “Northeast” as addressed by its western counterparts, stands as an exceptional case against the efforts made by the post-colonial masters of India to build a multi-cultural, multi-religious and a multi-lingual democratic society. India’s tumultuous relations with this region has taken numerous faces in the form of laws, regional militias, ethnic and cultural oppression and…
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Role of Constitutional Institutions in the persistence of Indian Democracy

Indian democracy has often baffled scholars and academicians, just by merely surviving. It was seen as a feat in itself by the west, particularly when democracy was considered a western concept. The Indian Constitution is often attributed to be one of the major factors contributing to the success of Indian democracy, forming a long and…
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Ola, Uber and their drivers in Delhi: evaluating industry sustainability and future requirements

Despite the rosy picture painted by big MNCs like Ola and Uber for the average working Indian, the shocks and stresses felt by the aggregator taxi industry due to the recent coronavirus lockdown highlighted the need for welfare intervention by the State for the weaker sections.
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Multi-alignment: How Nations are Navigating the present era

With the post-cold war “order” gone for good, and no alternative order in place given the flailing multilateral forums like the UN, something akin to pre-1991 Bloc politics seems inevitable. However, developing nations are playing these cards to their benefit and skillfully so.
Read more: Multi-alignment: How Nations are Navigating the present era