Tomichan Matheikal's blog

  Listen to P Sainath about the farmer's issue and its lethal implication Narendra Modi has been bluffing a whole nation of 1.35 billion people for over 6 years. He has failed on most of his promises. He promised to deliver petrol and diesel at affordable prices. But their prices kept on rising higher and higher and now they stand at record highs. Same with cooking gas. Same with most other things including essential food items. He had promised a whole lot of things to India’s farmers too. Sample a few of them. 1. Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana was set up in 2015 for improving irrigation facilities. Rs 50,000 crore was to be invested in irrigation projects by 2020. The actual figure invested so far stands at Rs 8,000 crore. The Yojana hasn’t done much good to most farmers. Most of the projects promised under it are yet to take off. 2. Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana was a much-publicised scheme meant to provide crop insurance to farmers. Even this morning some new

  A page from a Malayalam newspaper of today expressing disagreement to the Centre's decision to rename the institution The BJP government’s decision to rename the Rajiv Gandhi Centre for Biotechnology in Thiruvananthapuram after M. S. Golwalkar has not found many takers in Kerala. A lot of public figures have come out with strong opposition to the move. Understandably so. Who was Golwalkar? Does he deserve such a great honour? Golwalkar was a detestable bigot. In his book We or Our Nationhood Defined , Golwalkar calls all non-Hindus in India “traitors” and “idiots”. Let me quote his entire paragraph: All those not belonging to the national, i.e. Hindu race, Religion, Culture and Language, naturally fall out of the pale of real 'National' life. We repeat: in Hindustan, the land of the Hindus, lives and should live the Hindu Nation - satisfying all the five essential requirements of the scientific nation concept of the modern world. Consequently only those movements

  The mobile phone has a calendar making planning easier than ever. But for those who love to play with numbers, the calendar can be a fun game. You can keep the entire year’s calendar in your mind if you can remember 12 numbers, one for each month. Be prepared to do a little arithmetic too. It’s fun if you love numbers. 400 351 362 402 Can you memorise those numbers? Easy, right? Now what do you do with them? The first number is for January, the second for Feb, and so son. Let’s see which day of the week is the next Republic Day. The Republic Day is on Jan 26. Add the number for Jan to the date. 26 + 4 = 30 Now divide that sum (30) by 7. The quotient (the answer you get when you do the division) is immaterial for us. We only need the reminder. In this example, the reminder is 2. 30 ÷ 7 = 4 & reminder 2 So Jan 26 is Tuesday. If the reminder is 0, it’s Sunday. Reminder 1 = Mon Reminder 2 = Tue Reminder 3 = Wed Reminder 4 = Thu Reminder 5 = Fri Re

  ‘The Last Lesson’ is a short story written by French writer Alphonse Daudet [1840-1897] about the Franco-German War [1870]. France loses the war and two of its provinces, Alsace and Lorraine, are lost to Bismarck’s Germany. German language and culture are imposed on the people of Alsace and Lorraine. In the story, M Hamel is a teacher in Alsace who has to leave the school where he has been teaching for 40 years. A German teacher will take over tomorrow. A nine-year-old student, Franz, feels pity for his old teacher and also for himself because he never used M Hamel’s classes for learning his own language. M Hamel teaches his last lesson. There is a palpable sadness in the classroom accentuated by an eerie silence that descends as the students do their writing tasks. A few pigeons sat on the roof of the building cooing soberly. Franz asks himself, “Will they make them sing in German, even the pigeons?” Imposing a language and culture on a community of people is what nationalism es

  Canossa Castle Fiction Sitting on a boulder that looked rather out of place amidst the tall trees and thick grass, he watched the vehicles that plied on the ghat road. His car was parked in the shade of a tree on the roadside. The car also looked out of place there. Why would anyone stop his car at the edge of a forest? He did, though. Out of an impulse. He had nowhere to go, in fact. He was driving aimlessly. No destination. The Corona pandemic had kept him home for a long time. Months. It was like an imprisonment. What else would he do if the pandemic wasn’t there? He had nothing to do. He was a retired clerk. He pushed files all his life in a government office. That was not what he wanted to do, however. He wanted to hold a high position in one of those government offices and bring about changes in public life. Positive changes. Radical changes. Reformation. For a better world. Nothing happened but. He didn’t pass the required tests in the required age limit. He didn’t kn

Image from Republic World Communal hate has been a national pastime in Uttar Pradesh for quite a while. Now they have made it official and legal too with the promulgation of the ordinance against ‘love jihad’. Other BJP-ruled states will soon follow suit. Cows always belong to the herd. There are so many interfaith couples in India just as in any other country today. When Sharmila Tagore married Mansoor Ali Khan, the sky didn’t collapse, the earth didn’t quake. Nothing happened except that they made love like any other couple and begot three very normal children one of whom followed the parents’ example and married from a different faith. There are numerous such couples who live happy lives though their allegiances are to apparently irreconcilable gods. When Kamala Harris became the vice president-elect of the US, India’s right wing celebrated her Indian origins though her father was a Jamaican-American-Christian. This same right wing has no problems about Indian Hindus leaving

  Book Review The Tyranny of Merit Author: Michael J Sandel Merit is not always right. It generates winners and losers and often creates hubris among the winners and resentment among the losers. Moreover, there is something immoral about handing over the world to a group of people who possess certain qualities (merits) just by luck. Michael Sandel is a political philosopher at Harvard University and author of many books. His latest book, The Tyranny of Merit [2020], is an incisive critique of meritocracy. Our world places much premium on merit . Students are admitted to premier institutions on the basis of their merit which is assessed by highly challenging tests. Jobs are allotted also on the basis of merit. Merit is important, no doubt. It ensures efficiency and fairness. Those who are more capable should be given greater responsibilities. It also promotes aspiration and individual freedom (freedom to forge one’s own destiny). It is also morally comforting: we feel that w