Vimarsh

Narendra Modi is a man before his time. A couple of decades along, too late for him, there will be a bigger constituency in India for the anti-Muslim demagogue. Modi dislocates the hypocrisy of a party whose leader fired up a mob and then said he regretted its vandalism. For those able to look beyond his superb oratory and humour, the vapidity of Modi’s message is striking. His simple views spring from his lack of knowledge. He’s not well-read, has little idea about the world or its history. It will be embarrassing, if he becomes prime minister, to have him in the same meeting as US President Barack Obama. He is aching to bring with him his social vision, which is aligned with that of the RSS, to the rest of India from Gujarat. A money-minded, intellectually barren, segregated, ghettoised, non-drinking and vegetarian utopia that some of us have fled from. Modi has never been to college and his degree is from a correspondence course. His writing, which is all in Gujarati,...

Is there a politician around, any politician apart from Arvind Kejriwal, who sees corruption as an election issue? I am not counting Anna. He is a social worker and, in many ways, our conscience. But as he has himself pointed out, he is not part of the political choices on offer. He is more like a moral compass. So even though we go on and on about corruption and we call UPA the most corrupt government ever, we have already conceded months ahead of the elections that corruption is not an issue worth voting on. The current rhetoric makes this obvious. Narendra Modi is not offering a corruptionfree government. He is promising development. Rahul Gandhi is not offering to clean up his Aegean stables. He is promising, instead, inclusiveness, whatever that means. The BJP is promising change. The Congress promises continuity. The NDA promises you Hindu nationalism. The UPA promises you secularism. The Congress makes Hindu nationalism sound like a fascist slogan, an excuse fo...

Unit 1: Who is a Contributor? … Values + Effectiveness What is Personality? In order to find out a contributor, we need to concentrate on certain important traits of personality. There are certain important characteristics that we can look into to understand the concept of Contributor. -           Magnetism, irrespective of other characteristics. -           Taking the responsibility of one’s activities, even if they are utter failures. -           To understand the major ideas expressed by the great thinkers, philosophers, activists, scientists, etc. -           To understand their personal life and compare it with the ideas they have expressed. According to Vivekanand, the ideal of education is to develop the inner being of man-kind, but we are concentrating more on the outer-image ...

Bilabials These are sounds formed using both (= bi) upper and lower lips (= labia). The initial sounds in the words pat , bat and mat are all bilabials . They are represented by the symbols [p], which is voiceless, and [b] and [m], which are voiced. We can also describe the [w] sound found at the beginning of way , walk and world as a bilabial. Labiodentals These are sounds formed with the upper teeth and the lower lip. The initial sounds of the words fat and vat and the final sounds in the words safe and save are labiodentals . They are represented by the symbols [f], which is voiceless, and [v], which is voiced. Notice that the final sound in the word cough , and the initial sound in photo , despite the spelling differences, are both pronounced as [f]. Dentals These sounds are formed with the tongue tip behind the upper front teeth. The initial sound of thin and the final sound of bath are both voiceless dentals . The symbol used for this sound is [ θ ], usually refer...