Killing the Great Nicobar
“To slow a beast, you break its limbs. To slow a nation, you break its people. You rob them of volition.” I’m quoting Arundhati Roy’s 1999 essay The Greater Common Good . She was writing about the disastrous impact of big dams on nations. Big dams are weapons of mass destruction, she wrote. They help a government demonstrate its absolute command over people’s destiny . “You (the Government) make it clear that ultimately it falls to you to decide who lives, who dies, who prospers, who doesn’t. To exhibit your capability you show off all that you can do, and how easily you can do it. How easily you could press a button and annihilate the earth. How you can start a war or sue for peace. How you can snatch a river away from one and gift it to another. How you can … fell a forest…. You use caprice to fracture a people’s faith in ancient things – earth, forest, water, air.” Roy wrote that years before Donald Trump started a war for no reason in Iran and Narendra Modi decided to clear ...
