Viswanathan K's Thoughts

The NRC (National Register of Citizens) was a list of the citizens of Assam (only). The road to the current Citizen Amendment Bill (CAB) began when the BJP decided to update the NRC for Assam. The intention was to identify all illegal immigrants who had entered after the Bangladesh war in ‘71. Inconveniently for the BJP, the updated NCR found 60% of the illegal immigrants in Assam to be Hindus. The BJP had done something lawyers are taught not to do: Never ask a question you don’t already know the answer to. But that’s law, and this was politics. And not for nothing is Amit Shah called admiringly (by the BJP’s supporters) the modern-day Chanakya. The surprise of the NRC findings led to a very calculated response that combined well established facts with the right’s worldview. First, the facts. Fact #1 : In 1950, Nehru and Pakistan’s head, Liaquat Ali Khan had agreed to protect and give full rights to the minorities of their respective countries. Fact #2 : The Muslim perc...

In November, 2013, Aileen Lee  coined the term “Unicorn” to describe a certain type of company: “U.S.-based software companies started since 2003 and valued at over $1 billion by public or private market investors.” By that definition, Lee called Facebook the super-Unicorn! Today, just a year and a half after the term was coined, Fortune says we live in the “Age of the Unicorns” ! And the top companies on that list aren’t even all American anymore: Xiaomi, the Chinese smartphone manufacturer, tops the list and India’s Flipkart is number 7 with a valuation of $11 billion. At number 2 on the list is Uber ($41 billion), the ride sharing company that was in the news when one of its drivers raped a passenger in Delhi. What does “ride sharing” even mean? Here’s what it means: 1)       When someone wants to go somewhere, they ask for a ride via the Uber app on their phone; 2)      Uber finds a driver (someone who installed t...