Listening to Grasshoppers: Field Notes on Democracy: By Arundhati Roy

[harharmahadev]

Anybody interested in buying this turd of a book??



http://www.amazon.com/Field-Notes-De...60846024X/ref=

Basically, in this book, she argues that Mohammed Afzal is innocent and wrongly charged. She also argues that the government is (covertly) attempting a genocide or whatever!! REad the review

http://www.economist.com/books/displ...ry_id=14120046

Listening to Grasshoppers: Field Notes on Democracy. By Arundhati Roy. Hamish Hamilton; 256 pages; £14.99. To be published in America as “Field Notes on Democracy” by Haymarket Books in October.

IT IS impossible not to admire Arundhati Roy. Despite her flawed reporting and analysis, her left-wing prejudices and one-sided portentous writing, the author who carried off the 1997 Man Booker prize for her novel, “The God of Small Things”, is just the sort of brave and energetic critic that India needs.

Not for her the national image projected by India’s smug elite, of a nascent superpower lifting off. Ms Roy’s India is a truer one—a poor, rural country beset by grave problems, where, notwithstanding the holding of regular elections, wretched injustices are perpetrated by a corrupt and often brutal state.

As prime evidence of democracy’s failure to protect Indians, in this collection of her recent journalism and other writings, Ms Roy cites a massacre of perhaps 2,000 Muslims in Gujarat in 2002, in which the state’s Hindu-nationalist government was allegedly complicit. Almost no senior official or Hinduist agitator has been prosecuted over the atrocity. And Narendra Modi, Gujarat’s chief minister then and now, is currently vying to take over the leadership of the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, and one day India. Many of the country’s industrialists would approve of that; even Ratan Tata, the gentlemanly head of the vast Tata Group which prides itself on its ethical dealings, has praised Mr Modi’s business-friendly policies. Nothing annoys Ms Roy more.

The Hindu nationalists’ hateful tendencies are well-known. Perhaps less notorious is the weakness of India’s non-political institutions, and Ms Roy skewers most of them. In three deft articles, she examines the dubious methods of the police in securing the conviction of Muhammad Afzal Guru, a Kashmiri, for masterminding a 2001 terrorist attack on the Indian parliament building—allegedly by planting evidence and torturing him into confessing. Given that India’s police are often alleged to use torture, and have long enjoyed impunity in Kashmir, where Mr Guru was picked up, this would not be surprising. But neither India’s complacent judiciary nor its often-craven journalists shows much interest in reinvestigating his case. Mr Guru remains on death row.

Whether or not he is guilty, Ms Roy does laudable work in defending Mr Guru when others—including at times India’s legal fraternity, according to Ms Roy—would not. On other issues, however, she is not always a reliable witness. Her claim that in Kashmir last summer protesters were as likely to call for union with Pakistan as freedom from India is probably wrong; most seemed to want to be shot of both countries.

But that faulty observation was at least noted by Ms Roy in the field. More typically, she appears to gather her facts from newspapers (her articles strike the reader rather as “lounge notes”), before selectively arranging and then exaggerating them to suit her own ends. For example, about 25% of India’s territory is alleged to be affected by a Maoist insurgency, but that does not make it, as Ms Roy writes, “out of government control”. Beyond India, her grasp of her subject-matter gets looser. If Ms Roy believes, as she writes, that a good portion of Africa’s “contemporary horrors” are caused by America’s “new colonial interests”, she would do well to pay a visit to the continent.

So entrenched is the anti-globalisation that informs her world view, she would be tough to dissuade. But what alternative strategies does she advocate for improving India? Hard to say. A rare suggestion for better governance—the formation of a shadow parliament “that keeps an underground drumbeat”—does not seem terribly serious. On economic policy, Ms Roy has even less to offer—other than to slam recent governments for aspiring to rapid economic growth. This is a “project” she considers to be “encrypted with genocidal potential”. For a more measured analysis, Ms Roy should perhaps turn to the finance ministry’s recently published Economic Survey. There she would read that, “High growth is critical to generate the revenues needed for meeting our social welfare objectives.” Ms Roy should take note.

[MaxDeIndiana]

Originally Posted by harharmahadev

Anybody interested in buying this turd of a book??



http://www.amazon.com/Field-Notes-De...60846024X/ref=

Basically, in this book, she argues that Mohammed Afzal is innocent and wrongly charged. She also argues that the government is (covertly) attempting a genocide or whatever!! REad the review

http://www.economist.com/books/displ...ry_id=14120046

Listening to Grasshoppers: Field Notes on Democracy. By Arundhati Roy. Hamish Hamilton; 256 pages; £14.99. To be published in America as “Field Notes on Democracy” by Haymarket Books in October.

IT IS impossible not to admire Arundhati Roy. Despite her flawed reporting and analysis, her left-wing prejudices and one-sided portentous writing, the author who carried off the 1997 Man Booker prize for her novel, “The God of Small Things”, is just the sort of brave and energetic critic that India needs.

Not for her the national image projected by India’s smug elite, of a nascent superpower lifting off. Ms Roy’s India is a truer one—a poor, rural country beset by grave problems, where, notwithstanding the holding of regular elections, wretched injustices are perpetrated by a corrupt and often brutal state.

As prime evidence of democracy’s failure to protect Indians, in this collection of her recent journalism and other writings, Ms Roy cites a massacre of perhaps 2,000 Muslims in Gujarat in 2002, in which the state’s Hindu-nationalist government was allegedly complicit. Almost no senior official or Hinduist agitator has been prosecuted over the atrocity. And Narendra Modi, Gujarat’s chief minister then and now, is currently vying to take over the leadership of the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, and one day India. Many of the country’s industrialists would approve of that; even Ratan Tata, the gentlemanly head of the vast Tata Group which prides itself on its ethical dealings, has praised Mr Modi’s business-friendly policies. Nothing annoys Ms Roy more.

The Hindu nationalists’ hateful tendencies are well-known. Perhaps less notorious is the weakness of India’s non-political institutions, and Ms Roy skewers most of them. In three deft articles, she examines the dubious methods of the police in securing the conviction of Muhammad Afzal Guru, a Kashmiri, for masterminding a 2001 terrorist attack on the Indian parliament building—allegedly by planting evidence and torturing him into confessing. Given that India’s police are often alleged to use torture, and have long enjoyed impunity in Kashmir, where Mr Guru was picked up, this would not be surprising. But neither India’s complacent judiciary nor its often-craven journalists shows much interest in reinvestigating his case. Mr Guru remains on death row.

Whether or not he is guilty, Ms Roy does laudable work in defending Mr Guru when others—including at times India’s legal fraternity, according to Ms Roy—would not. On other issues, however, she is not always a reliable witness. Her claim that in Kashmir last summer protesters were as likely to call for union with Pakistan as freedom from India is probably wrong; most seemed to want to be shot of both countries.

But that faulty observation was at least noted by Ms Roy in the field. More typically, she appears to gather her facts from newspapers (her articles strike the reader rather as “lounge notes”), before selectively arranging and then exaggerating them to suit her own ends. For example, about 25% of India’s territory is alleged to be affected by a Maoist insurgency, but that does not make it, as Ms Roy writes, “out of government control”. Beyond India, her grasp of her subject-matter gets looser. If Ms Roy believes, as she writes, that a good portion of Africa’s “contemporary horrors” are caused by America’s “new colonial interests”, she would do well to pay a visit to the continent.

So entrenched is the anti-globalisation that informs her world view, she would be tough to dissuade. But what alternative strategies does she advocate for improving India? Hard to say. A rare suggestion for better governance—the formation of a shadow parliament “that keeps an underground drumbeat”—does not seem terribly serious. On economic policy, Ms Roy has even less to offer—other than to slam recent governments for aspiring to rapid economic growth. This is a “project” she considers to be “encrypted with genocidal potential”. For a more measured analysis, Ms Roy should perhaps turn to the finance ministry’s recently published Economic Survey. There she would read that, “High growth is critical to generate the revenues needed for meeting our social welfare objectives.” Ms Roy should take note.

She is a well known India hater BITCH

[motowner]

Saala Friday mood ki MBA kar daali .. This BITCH and her lover Mohd Afzal, need to be airdropped into Saudi Arabia

[slay3r]

Left loonie...a Pinkie loooser...