March 2025
Reimagining Swaraj amidst the relentless politics of statism in the 21st centuryBarun Mitra, Free ThinkerLast week a good friend invited me to join a series of weekly online socratic dialogues. The topic was 'the functional order of cities'. He wrote, "In cities, order can be seen and felt as safety, vitality and social capital in a neighbourhood. This functional order is present in some cities and some neighbourhoods, and lacking in others. Through a conversation about cities, the seminars will explore the tension between the sources of this functional order, and planners' desire for…
"Life is uncertain. Eat dessert first." – Ernestine UlmerIndia’s sugar-making story started long ago with simple methods like boiling sugarcane juice into jaggery (gur), khandsari, rab, and palm jaggery. These traditional techniques are still around today, especially gur and palm jaggery, used by about 500–700 million people in India. They’re big business too, worth ₹31,000–73,600 crore yearly, mostly in rural areas. The government keeps an eye on them through the Department of Food and Public Distribution and FSSAI, but it’s light regulation. India’s languages show off this sugar diversity—…
Career Crisis in 30s: Fancy First Job, Changed Market Condition, Pretentious Titles, Inflated Salaries and Unclear Career Path“You know we are a highly rated corporate only because of the value of the commodity we deal with!”, I remember this conversation with an oil company senior executive in my corporate days. While fossil fuel remains one of the primary commodities, today, seasonally hyped commodities and services create very large value corporates for few years that disappear in the quicksand of market trends. Along with them disappear the dreams and aspirations of careers as well.…
I have had an ''event''ful year so far including being invited to speak in 5 academic seminars and two more coming up in the next 10 days. Some observations - Academics have become event managers in many institutions thanks to the corrupt rating system that gives them extra points Ridiculous rules on what constitutes ''international'' or ''national'' seminar or conference - if there is 1 person joining from another time zone, even if it is Sri Lanka, it becomes a ''international'' conference, if two people from neighbouring states join it becomes ''national''. Preference seems…