This cartoon from @thetoonguy today in @TheHinduMag today, which captures the reality of knowledge supremacy, triggered an old memory that had been buried deep inside for 13 years. The Children's #Science Congress was taking place in Baramati, Maharashtra in 2008. I had travelled with an incredible bunch of geohydrologists from ACWADAM, Pune, to see how #science was being encouraged for school goers.

"The Dry" could have been just another murder mystery film, but what made it interesting was how it weaved in the #ecological crisis in #Australia - #bushfires & #droughts - with the social crisis in #rural farming communities & small towns. The swirling dust devils, the dried up #rivers & creeks, correlates with a societal collapse. The washing of a car with waste #water, the red crud that emerges out of shower heads, all narrating how a #rain starved society has hit its #ecological limit.

In the 19th century, a Bengali Shudra widow had outwitted The British East India Company & protected the #Ganga as a #commons for fishing rights, using Anglo-Saxon #capitalism’s potent weapon — private property. My story on Rani Rashmoni.
thehindu.com/society/the-sh… I have grown up with this understanding that Bengali's are bad at business, we are somehow too intellectual & idealistic to survive the rough & tumble world of commerce. Poppycock! If you study 19th century Bengali capitalists, they amassed huge wealth & power through trade.

"the concept of “#decolonizing” is being circulated, thrown around, & even abused by many individuals who hijacked it without having direct experience & connection to what many decolonial thinkers call the “colonial wound”.Fascinating piece from Louis Yako counterpunch.org/2021/04/09/dec… "I think it is absurd to have many privileged and institutionalized Western professors who have no firsthand experience with the colonial wound to give us lectures, workshops, or write about decolonizing this or that matter."

I have never used #WhatsApp, ever. I always saw it to be an invasive & privacy violating tool. In #India, that translated into being called "Luddite" & an anti-social. I watched it being made mandatory for office groups, housing societies, public services & vendors. 1/1 My resident housing society secretary recently shouted at me for not being on #WhatsApp. I didn't realise it was mandatory, I told him. "If everyone is on it then what's your problem?" He hollered 2/2

"Anustup"/ "অনুষ্টুপ" is a 54 year old independent #Bengali literary & cultural journal (ISSN: 0974-2697). It is now officially recognized by @ugc_india on their list of approved journals. Scholars publishing in #Bangla/#বাংলা pls consider subscribing & publishing. cc @maitreesh Regional language journals are dying across #India. Anustup doesn't even have a decent website because it doesn't have resources. It will only sustain if more people subscribe to it. Please write to Anustup at anustuppotrika@gmail.com

1/1 I have been a regular at many Geographical Society talks in recent years in Edinburgh. And I find them to be fascinating & very informative. But there are some issues which I has been niggling me & I have to put them out. Caveat: #Thread. 1/2. Though speakers end up traveling to the majority world, there is rarely any discussion on how these former Anglo European colonies dealt with years of systematic loot and oppression. For example, in today’s talk with a legendary photographer, he said & I quote:

Though I am really glad that #arsenic contamination of #groundwater in India, and specially #WestBengal is getting the attention it deserves, there is a major issue that needs wider discussion.

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There is a simplistic argument that arsenic naturally occurs in the #Gangetic belt, the author uses the term “#geological curse”. If this is the case, why is heavy #arsenic contamination being reported from #Jharkhand and #Chattisgarh in Central India?