Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Blind Spot

The recent publication of the United Nations' human development report and country ranks prompted me to write this op-ed for Outlookindia.com.

5 comments:

gaddeswarup said...

There is an interesting
response "Intellectual Bilingualism" by Kalyan Raman to a Guha article. Towards the end of the article Kalyan Raman says:
"Guha’s article could also be construed as the recognition of a crisis in the monolingual Anglophone community of intellectuals in India. The arena of their engagement seems increasingly limited to metropolitan life, affairs of the central government, commerce and industry, the Anglophone diaspora and an endless parroting of voices and ideas from the western world. Beyond this, they have no means of participating in – or influencing
– contemporary political, cultural
and intellectual currents which would be inevitably shaped by the subaltern classes in the natural course of our quest for a more democratic society."
I wonder whether this disconnect is part of the problem.

nabina das said...

Umair, I'm crossposting your outlook link on my fb page... good point you make here

Qalandar said...

Interesting point gaddeswarup, though the "aspirational" aspect of Anglophone culture (from the perspective of those "excluded" from the paradigm) complicates the picture. So we have disconnect that is recognized as a disconnect, but cannot be dismissed...

Thanks nabina.

kaivalyam said...

am posting the outlook link too on fb...
interesting blog....good pieces on cinema...
k

Anonymous said...

I really enjoyed reading your piece in Outlook. Keep up the good work.