Brutal and grotesque punishments deter crime better than an inefficient and corrupt legal system argue many Brutal punishments are back into public debate in India with the airing of the video below. A boy who had snatched a chain from a woman was caught and brutally punished by a mob – relentlessly. A Policeman joined in meting out this “justice” by finishing the act by tying the boy to his bike and dragging him in the road. Even before this furore has died from public debate there has been another mob action today emulating the infamous Bhagalpur blindings epitomised by […]
Human rights
Many talks and interviews with well known people are now available online. I’ve put together a series of them that I have specially enjoyed. To see the rest, click here Desmond Tutu, the Archbishop from South Africa is one of the towering figures of the world today. His role in removing Apartheid from South Africa is well acknowledged. He also received a Nobel peace prize for his role in 1984. Bishop Tutu is a very powerful speaker, story teller, and a jovial person. But between his stories and jokes he gets serious and makes touching appeals. His sense of hope […]
Touching talk by Desmond Tutu: Nobel Laureate from South Africa
Is the language of rights useful in discussing poverty? Economists seem to claim these days that the rights approach may undermine the cause I encountered many economists writing tentatively about human rights these days. Perhaps there is an extensive literature about it already. The main premise of arguments seems to be while the ideals of human rights are good, the approach will only impair the reduction of poverty by advocating unsound policies. Amartya Sen responds to these issues in a debate with Jeffry Frankel at Harvard University. Webcast of debate is available. The programme runs for an hour and fifteen […]
“Consequentialist perspective” of economists and Human Rights
13 Search the debates that helped frame India's far sighted Constitution
Search engine for Constituent Assembly debates in India
Many talks and interviews with well known people are now available online. I’ve put together a series of them that I have specially enjoyed. To see the rest, click here. The argument that Sen makes is complex and I will not attempt to recap them here. But as a pointer, I’ll just mention that this talk is based on his book “Identities and Violence”. Sen questions the notion of Clash of civilisation by Samuel Huntington from different dimensions. He questions if any group of people can be neatly identified as a “civilization”, if animosity has to be the basis of […]
Amartya Sen’s critique of Samuel Huntington’s “Clash of civilisations”
Many talks and interviews with well known people are now available online. I’ve put together a series of them that I have specially enjoyed. To see the rest, click here Justice Henderson started as a sports person and with some mentoring graduated in Law. As he was finishing school he had an interesting offer to work in the Kennedy administration on civil rights issues. The interview interlaces Justice Henderson’s biography with the tumultuous years of civil rights activism in USA. The path he took – African American sports person who finally went on to become a Judge in a US […]
Interesting interview on civil rights with African-American Judge – Justice ...
Many talks and interviews with well known people are now available online. I’ve put together a series of them that I have specially enjoyed. To see the rest, click here This is an interview by Harry Kreisler taken in 1983 with Linus Pauling who got two Nobel Prizes, once for chemistry and the second time for peace. The interview is a reflection of the context in which Linus Pauling got into peace activism in the United States. The opinions of Pauling were slightly uncommon to me, atleast from a peace activist. He for example would talk of the importance of […]
The peace movement in historical perspective with Linus Pauling – ...
Many talks and interviews with well known people are now available online. I’ve put together a series of them that I have specially enjoyed. To see the rest, click here This is a wonderful lecture by Edward Said on Samuel Huntington’s idea about “Clash of civilizations”. In this lecture Edward Said analyses in detail the arguments of Samuel Huntington in his paper on Clash of civilizations (with a question mark) that ultimately became his book (this time without a question mark!). Edward Said incisively analyzes Huntington’s notion that differences in culture between the ‘West’ and ‘Islam’ will lead to conflicts […]