Monday, February 18, 2013

Siddhartha Deb on New India


by Siddhartha Deb The Beautiful and the Damned: A Potrait of New India via Kafila. I was alerted to recent internet blocks by a post of Rahul Siddarthan. One type from India by a Gwalior magistrate is intriguing but the contents blocked seem harmless. The portrait of Arndam Chaudhuri by Siddartha Deb seems to me to be a sympathetic one. Arindam Chaudhuri seems to be providing a finishing school for the rich who did not go to elite schools so that they can move around with the influential in Delhi and other places getting some idea of what length of cigars to smoke etc. There seem to many schools of that type in Australia and USA catering to foreigners. Though many come broad for economic reasons, I have also seen some rich coming for finishing touches or just a foreign degree.
The other DMCA mentioned by Rahul  seems more chilling. From the Wikipedia article on DMCA I find that there are several sites criticizing it and efforts to modify it. May be days of bloggers saying freely what they like are over with several companies trying to make money by DMCA take down services; one of the new ways that US companies are trying to make money with manufacture sector declining. 'Interesting times we live in' as Rahul says.

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