Category: Popular Essays

Popular Essays

Corporate Social Responsibility or Actual Corporate Irresponsibility?

By ALBERTINA ALMEIDA

A recent cycle tour sponsored by Adani ostensibly for health under the cover of Corporate Social Responsibility, a citizens’ protest against these double standards, and police protection for the cycle tour, makes us all ponder about what this Corporate Social Responsibility is all about. Indeed, cycling is good for health, but carrying out such as CSR exercise in today’s Vasco is akin to planting a handful saplings while axing thousands of trees.

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Popular Essays

Conversations for our Future

By DALE LUIS MENEZES

In the Lok Sabha elections 2019, most voters faced the proverbial horns of a dilemma. These voters who want a non-communal, non-corrupt government have, on the one hand, voted for a particular party whose record in combating communalism and corruption belies its lofty rhetoric of upholding values of honest politics and secularism. On the other hand, some may have voted for a new party, whose unique selling pitch is its tirade against corruption, and whose new-ness has ensured that it has no real record of malfeasance.

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Popular Essays

Chowkidar? Protecting Who from Whom?

By ALBERTINA ALMEIDA

Chowkidars, as we understand, are watchmen, whose services are hired by people who need protection. And, of course, different people need protection for different reasons. But what kind of protection must the head of the country provide, and to who, and from whom? The Constitution of India proclaims that we, the people of India, have solemnly constituted ourselves into a sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic Republic. So clearly, the Constitutional imperative is for those in governance to protect people from want, starvation, violations of bodily integrity, targeting as a community, discrimination on the basis of caste, creed, sex, sexual orientation, ableism, ageism, or any other axis, violation of freedom of speech and expression, among other things.

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Popular Essays

In Life and Death: Politics and Politicians

By DALE LUIS MENEZES

In Goan politics, the politician is an indispensable cult figure, one whose image is more important than his or her ability to discharge his or her public responsibilities. The unexpected presence of the ailing Pandurang Madkaikar, Cumbharjua MLA, for the first time in public in 11 months, at the floor test of the BJP government, a few weeks ago is a case in point. Madkaikar, who suffered a brain stroke last year, has been away from public life all this while. Despite his ill health, Madkaikar contributed, or was forced to contribute, to the cutthroat power struggles, even though he has not discharged his public responsibilities and was dispensed from his minister’s post since last year.

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Popular Essays

The ‘Gilded Cage’ of Progress

By ALBERTINA ALMEIDA

There was a time when the oppressive situation that women were in was brazenly obvious- patriarchal laws, distinctly patriarchal local self-governance bodies (like khap panchayats), courts with not a single woman judge (in Goa, for instance), all male bank managers, non-equitable situations for women where they had to fight for their share of the pie despite being all in a disadvantaged situation. The list could go on and on.

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Popular Essays

When Empowerment is Child’s Play

By DALE LUIS MENEZES

In January this year, many Goans watched a video on social media and Whatsapp of a Swedish acapella group, Vocal Colors, rendering a beloved Goan song Tambdde Rosa. The Swedish acapella group were Goa to collaborate with Child’s Play India Foundation led by Dr. Luis Francisco Dias. The Foundation was set up about 10 years ago with the aim of training underprivileged kids in classical music and continues to do so today. The story of the Foundation’s inception and work provides important lessons for a deeply unequal society as that of India.

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Popular Essays

Zero Caste-based Discrimination in Law, Please!

By ALBERTINA ALMEIDA

Today is Zero Discrimination Day. While we would all agree that every day should be Zero Discrimination Day, such commemoration allows us  to foreground the existing discrimination so that it ends. The focus, this year is on the urgent need to take action against discriminatory laws. Discrimination can be actively perpetrated by individuals and the State in the way they conduct themselves with those who are marginalized, and it can also be actively perpetuated by not doing what the State is duty bound to do.

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