Subir Ghosh's Blog, page 2
September 27, 2015
Reliance figures at bottom on climate action, deemed 'obstructionist'
On Wednesday last, many news establishments diligently reproduced a press release announcing Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) as the first Indian company to partner with the Global Goals Campaign that aims to reach seven billion people in seven days with news of the Global Goals for Sustainable Development. Among other things, this campaign seeks to tackle climate change for everyone by 2030.
What went unnoticed, however, was that this news came just a few days after RIL figured miserably in...
August 31, 2015
Ivory trade will not end till China and US make it illegal
In mid-2015, the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) carried out a well-publicised event in New York citys Times Square. It crushed seized ivory items weighing one ton (equivalent to 2000lbs or 907kg), as crowds cheered on and photographs with the hashtag #CrushIvory flooded Twitter. Then came the post-event rhetoric about how were not just crushing ivory; were crushing the blood ivory market.
It would seem illegal ivory trade had already come to a...
August 28, 2015
From farm to fashion: Cotton farmer on the global ramp
Few sectors of the economy have so much bearing on people's lives as the textiles and apparel industry has. It touches as many lives as the food sector does for no one stops eating, or for that matter wearing clothes; yet, it goes on up on food co...
August 25, 2015
Siddaramaiah���s poll dance failed to entice Bangalore voters
Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Tuesday owned responsibility for the Congress defeat in the elections to the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Pailke (BBMP). But only had he been a bit more graceful, for in the same breath he asserted that it was not a referendum either on himself or his party. Siddaramaiah perhaps suffers from the Ostrich Syndrome, or is too arrogant to accept reality.
The Chief Minister has been parroting this referendum line for a w...
Talking with Naga heads
The accord between the Government of India and the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (Isak-Muivah) is definitely not an accord by any measure; what has been announced, if anything at all, is only a statement of intent. Most of the ongoing discourse has either bordered on "whataboutery" or been academic speculation. Neither is off the mark, and yet neither is fair. For, the history of Naga insurrection is a history of failed...
August 4, 2015
Caught in its warp and woof, handloom sector needs a lease of life
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's speech marking the first National Handloom Day has triggered some debate about the handloom sector. But unfortunately, as is wont nowadays, arguments for handlooms fluctuate between the revivalist (let's work towards an Indian pride) and the sympathetic (let's save the weavers). Unfortunately again, both indulge in rhetoric and bombast, cut off from grassroots realities.
Photographs Inside Image: [image error] Caption: ...How green was the valley
The ancient Romans had a widely-used adage: Ovem lupo committere. Translated into English, the Latin expression would mean: to set a wolf to guard the sheep. The construct has had many variations and mutations over time and across geographies, but the essence remains the same.
This thought would cross ones mind many times over while going through the report of the High-Level Committee (HLC) that was constituted to review Acts a...
July 14, 2015
Legitimate misgivings
On January 10, 1929, a memorandum signed by 20 members of the Naga Club was submitted to the Indian Statutory Commission, also known as the Simon Commission, demanding exclusion of the Naga Hills from the Province of Assam. The underlying fear was that the Nagas would be lost in a sea of Indians if they came to be administered by the latter. John Hutton, an anthropologist who was the Deputy Commissioner of the Naga Hills, even...
June 22, 2015
Select tweets from the June 11 chat on #FairFashion
The chat on #FairFashion was organised by Fairtrade India on June 11, 2015. The premise was my #FairFashion piece, 'Green will be the next black.' The article on sustainable fashion, which had appeared in Fibre2Fashion magazine's February 2015 issue, can be seen here http://bit.ly/1JD4gN9. I tweeted from the Fairtrade India account that evening. The chat ran for two and half hours.
What follows below is a curated collection of some tweets that went under #FairFashion.
Hola! Let's take you for a ride
When they were launched, the then Web-based and now app-based cab companies had come in as a breath of fresh air for consumers dog tired of what they were having to deal with. But just a few years down the line, many consumers are now sobering up to the contention that they (the companies) are pretty much like the errant auto-wallahs and callous taxi-drivers that they had promised to replace.
Not a day goes...
