The Times is very upset with us for being mean to our billionaires
Yikes- who’s going to chop of your head, Adar? Do tell!
And there’s much more guff in the article.
Good to remember that today as state governments have been refused stock of the vaccine, private hospital chains that pay significantly more, have been given supplies.
So yeah, worlds smallest violin etc etc.
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The “give them what they want to hear” media model is not new. It’s was what spurred Bennet Coleman’s (Times Group) rapid growth in the late 90s and early noughties.
But it’s important to understand fully how it has harmed all of us and how that harm began before 2014
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First - it created a vicious feedback loop.
We’ve always been aware of communalism in our society. But the fact that you didn’t see it portrayed on television or in major newspapers made its expression limited in day to day affairs. It wasn’t “normal” or civilised.
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Of course it would break through from time to time around festivals or rumours or specific events. But it wasn’t openly expressed in workplaces and social conversations.
At the end of the day sports stars, movie stars and other celebrities are all in the business of monetising our emotions. They convert our adulation into wealth for themselves
The smarter ones give a small portion of that money back to the community.
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It’s an investment - that money then generates more adulation which they can monetise further.
Some use their platform for genuine good, but that’s the exception not the norm. Most just raise their voices when they know that will generate more adulation at minimal cost
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When there is a cost involved to raising their voice, they weigh it. Carefully. Is angering a authoritarian government in India worth the adulation it will get you? If it isn’t, they don’t speak. An elephant in an opposition ruled state is an easy win- so they speak.
On March 3, 1921, Mahatma Gandhi and Maulana Shaukat Ali visited the Nankana Sahib Gurudwara near Lahore. They dropped everything relating to non-cooperation on receiving a wire that informed them of the massacre and rushed to Lahore.
Gandhi spoke to the congregation.
"It seems almost unbelievable that not a man died at the hands of the Akali party. Did not the brave men who were armed with kirpans and battle-axes retaliate even in self-defence? If they did not, it is an event that must electrify the whole world."
"I hope that you will not take the credit of the bravery for the Sikhs only, but that you will regard it as an act of national bravery. The martyrs have died not to save their own faith merely but to save all religions from impurity."
Looking at the stories coming out of China, it’s increasingly clear that we were rather shortsighted in 1999 in fighting to keep labour standards out of the mandate of the WTO.
In 1996, in the inaugural WTO ministerial in Singapore the US tried to introduce what would be called a “social clause” in multilateral trade agreements. This would make certain labour standards mandatory in all member countries.
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The motion failed in Singapore. It was defeated mostly by developing countries who saw it as a means to negate their low cost labour advantage. They argued it amounted to using labour standards as a form of protectionism.