Chai Chalk Chatter

The drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights obviously forgot to take into consideration the situation that prevailed in most newly independent nations which are the developing nations of today. In this short piece, I would like to highlight one such incident especially with reference to India and in doing so, would highlight a conflict within the articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Eleanor Roosevelt couldn’t have probably ever imagined this conflict that is plaguing most developing nations today. India is said to be the Pharmacy of the world, although most of the pharmaceutical industry is dependent on the manufacture of generic drugs. With relatively less investment in Research and Development and the demand for cheap drugs, doesn’t seem to encourage the production the patented drugs which is more of a trend in the countries of the north. This disability cannot be only attributed to the laziness of many Indians but more to the nature of the...

Walking the streets of the small town of Mahabalipuram or Mamallapuram, amidst the hustle and bustle of the tourists moving around, one would most often than not notice only rocks, rocks and only rocks. The rock art carving is simply an enthralling tradition, the art of which has been passing on from generation to generation. It is simply amazing to notice the way these artists work on their rough and crude stones and convert them to works of art. It is very much similar to a painter, painting on an empty canvas. The history of this art form dates back to the 7 th century, during the dynastic rule of the Pallavas, who were also the rulers of Kanchipuram at the time. The advent of the art form can be traced back to the construction of structures like the Shore Temple and other similar structures which have now been declared as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. 

If we go by the ‘Performative Identities Theory’ of Judith Butler, gender is suppose to be performative, which in other words means that gender is defined by how a person behaves and not a mere biological grouping as in the case of ‘Sex’. The idea of masculinity and femininity is one of Cultural Conditioning and changes from time to time. Traditionally, masculinity or maleness has been represented in the media as very manly characters without any feminine traits, especially in the Media Texts of the 1970’s and 1980’s. James Bond, Rambo as well as Arnold Schwarzenegger from the terminator series would be some examples that we could quote here. The popular Super Mario video game which shows the character of ‘Mario’, as a male with certain acquired powers, has to rescue the princess from the monster dragon, portrays ‘Man’ as a protector, which might not be the case all the time. But then again this has been established as a stereotype for a very long time, even through our fai...

“How can a man in a cave out-communicate the world’s leading Communication societies?” -Zaharna (2001) As Joshua K Fowler, in his paper on the ‘New Media Warfare’ ideates the transfer of traditional warfare to the virtual and information front and that in the specific case it becomes necessary to manage and control the respective space by the powers involved. He further suggests that the horizontal power structures that the terrorist organizations like the Hezbollah have are more efficient as compared to the vertical power structures that most conventional militaries have, with reference to information warfare because the red tape involved causes hindrance in the fast and efficient dissemination of information. Now Internet is supposed to be a platform where the freedom of expression is held paramount, at least that is the argument that the US and its other Western allies put forward when the MacBride Commission Report was published in 1980, which led to ...