#Indian Economy 2022

[thenewsfactsnow]

PM Modi Commits ₹10,500 Cr Projects in Vizag, Priority to Blue Economy

PM Modi Commits ₹10,500 Cr Projects in Vizag, Priority to Blue Economy #PMModi #Vizag #Business #Infrastructure #NationBuilding #BusinessNews #InfraNews #AndhraPradesh

Prime Minister Narendra Modi today dedicated to the nation projects worth 10,500 Crores. He laid the foundation stone and dedicates multiple projects in Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh. He also emphasised the need to strengthen Blue Economy. Addressing the people of the state and the nation PM Modi said “People of Andhra Pradesh have made a prominent name for themselves in every field” He added,…

[brainiuminfotech]

The growth of the IT industry in India has put it on the world map as one of the unprecedented economies in the world. How did this surge happen?

[reasonsforhope]

"India’s announcement that it aims to reach net zero emissions by 2070 and to meet fifty percent of its electricity requirements from renewable energy sources by 2030 is a hugely significant moment for the global fight against climate change. India is pioneering a new model of economic development that could avoid the carbon-intensive approaches that many countries have pursued in the past – and provide a blueprint for other developing economies.

The scale of transformation in India is stunning. Its economic growth has been among the highest in the world over the past two decades, lifting of millions of people out of poverty. Every year, India adds a city the size of London to its urban population, involving vast construction of new buildings, factories and transportation networks. Coal and oil have so far served as bedrocks of India’s industrial growth and modernisation, giving a rising number of Indian people access to modern energy services. This includes adding new electricity connections for 50 million citizens each year over the past decade. 

The rapid growth in fossil energy consumption has also meant India’s annual CO2 emissions have risen to become the third highest in the world. However, India’s CO2 emissions per person put it near the bottom of the world’s emitters, and they are lower still if you consider historical emissions per person. The same is true of energy consumption: the average household in India consumes a tenth as much electricity as the average household in the United States.  

India’s sheer size and its huge scope for growth means that its energy demand is set to grow by more than that of any other country in the coming decades. In a pathway to net zero emissions by 2070, we estimate that most of the growth in energy demand this decade would already have to be met with low-carbon energy sources. It therefore makes sense that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has announced more ambitious targets for 2030, including installing 500 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity, reducing the emissions intensity of its economy by 45%, and reducing a billion tonnes of CO2. 

These targets are formidable, but the good news is that the clean energy transition in India is already well underway. It has overachieved its commitment made at COP 21- Paris Summit [a.k.a. 2015, at the same conference that produced the Paris Agreement] by already meeting 40% of its power capacity from non-fossil fuels- almost nine years ahead of its commitment, and the share of solar and wind in India’s energy mix have grown phenomenally. Owing to technological developments, steady policy support, and a vibrant private sector, solar power plants are cheaper to build than coal ones. Renewable electricity is growing at a faster rate in India than any other major economy, with new capacity additions on track to double by 2026...

Subsidies for petrol and diesel were removed in the early 2010s, and subsidies for electric vehicles were introduced in 2019. India’s robust energy efficiency programme has been successful in reducing energy use and emissions from buildings, transport and major industries. Government efforts to provide millions of households with fuel gas for cooking and heating are enabling a steady transition away from the use of traditional biomass such as burning wood. India is also laying the groundwork to scale up important emerging technologies such as hydrogen, battery storage, and low-carbon steel, cement and fertilisers..."

-via IEA (International Energy Agency), January 10, 2022

Note: And since that's a little old, here's an update to show that progress is still going strong:

-via Economic Times: EnergyWorld, March 10, 2023

[indizombie]

Indian media's collapse has meant that serious issues such as unemployment do not get the attention they deserve. Joblessness is not framed as a question of political accountability but is couched in technocratic language and buried in a maze of data and conflicting claims. Those who intruded into parliament reportedly told the police they were upset about high rates of unemployment. Youth unemployment in India is at around a staggering 23 percent, the highest for any major global economy and nearly double that of neighbouring Pakistan and Bangladesh. For graduates under 25, a report by the Azim Premji University estimates, this number rises to 42 percent. IT firms such as Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services and Wipro have announced they will reduce the hiring of engineering graduates by 30 percent-reducing it by 40 percent from the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology-leaving thousands of freshly graduated students without jobs. Since the onset of the 2022 funding winter, 34,785 employees have been laid off by just 121 Indian startups, with 15,247 of them fired by 69 Indian startups so far this year. An improvement is unlikely. Pranjul Bhandari, the chief India economist at Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, estimates that while India will need to create 70 million jobs over the next decade, it will only end up with 24 million. Put simply, India's demographic dividend has turned into a demographic disaster.

Sushant Singh, ‘Fire and Smoke’, Caravan

[mitigatedchaos]

The Floating Causation of Vulgar Anti-Racism

Post for August 12, 2024 ~7,400 words, 36 minutes

-★-

The late 20th century and the early 21st century were an excellent time for 'catch-up' development in under-developed countries. For example, the GDP per capita of the People's Republic of China rose from $312 in 1980, to $12,720 in 2022, more than a 40x increase. This is despite the People's Republic being nominally communist, 92% Han Chinese, and one of the largest potential geopolitical rivals to the United States. This is not a one-off – exports from the Socialist Republic of Vietnam to the United States rose from $50 million in 1994 to $114 billion in 2023.

While the ideologically liberal government of the United States did invade Iraq and Afghanistan, and placed strict limits on Iran, in practical terms, the United States was willing to direct hundreds of billions of dollars of demand, for everything from disposable gloves to rice cookers, to countries that were neither majority white nor, officially, capitalist, which allowed these countries to build up their industrial base.

Inside the United States, as of the early 2020s, Americans of Indian descent, Americans of Asian descent, and a number of other non-white groups are outperforming the median household income of white Americans. It's not uncommon to see an Indian-American as the CEO of a major US corporation, such as Microsoft's Satya Nadella, Google's Sundar Pichai, or IBM's Arvind Krishna. And while Americans of Nigerian descent aren't earning quite as much money as Sundar Pichai, they are doing better than the U.S. national average. [1]

The American economy is willing to award non-white Americans and non-white immigrants with average pay higher than that the average pay for white Americans, and American society is willing to award members of these same groups with highly prestigious positions – Google is one of the most famous American companies, and to be its CEO is highly prestigious indeed.

Why is it that vulgar anti-racists aren't content to leave well enough alone on negative racial messaging, and take advantage of this opportunity to focus on personal development, ingroup development, and national development? Why is it that they have a strange totalitarian bent, such as Ibram Kendi proposing to give veto power over all government policy to a body of unappointed race experts, which would de facto end democracy?

Last month, @max1461 wrote a post, attempting to find a balanced compromise between the social justice movement and its critics in the discourses on racism over the past 10 years. Perhaps this was intended to close the books and allow the participants to move to a saner footing going forward. Subsequently, Max flagged the post as unrebloggable in order to prevent it from being beat up like a piñata. Near the end of the initial chain, Max wrote:

I can’t stress enough that, for all the excesses of DEI seminars and modern anti-racist academia and whatnot, for however unhelpful or even regressive these things may often be, what they exist in response to is fundamentally a horror of an entirely different and incomparable scale; something unspeakably evil and destructive. And, after 200 years of such an evil world order, which only really began to melt in 1945, I think it would be incredibly naive to believe that all the wounds are now healed.

It would seem that for the most part, the wounds that Japan suffered from America in World War II have already healed. The country already went through reindustrialization, followed by a boom period (which startled Westerners), and then a subsequent crash and the 'lost decade' of the 1990s. The Japanese have a favorable view of the United States, as perhaps they should – Japan has prospered in the Post-WW2 international order, in which they can simply purchase whatever materials they need on global markets with no need to invade or occupy anyone.

Yet for others, the past lingers on.

Ibram Kendi is one of the most famous contemporary self-identified anti-racists, a New York Times bestselling author (his most famous book was titled "How to Be an Anti-Racist") who was not only platformed by major corporations such as Microsoft (in 2020, an advertisement on the login screen of Windows 10 computers linked to a search for "anti-racism books," with his at the top), but even received funding for his own anti-racism center (now under attack for its ineffectiveness).

At one time, Ibram Kendi thought that white people were aliens. A roommate talked him out of it, asking how it was that white people could have children with everyone else if that were the case. To his credit, Kendi did change his mind.

...but how could anyone have come up with Kendi's conclusion in the first place?

In school in the United States, children are taught that the Spanish conquered the Aztecs. It is true that Spanish military forces brought about the downfall of the Aztec Empire, but often people forget the details of what they learned in school, and often what they learn in school is itself a simplified story, designed to be told to children. Encyclopedia Britannica's summary of the Battle of Tenochtitlan largely agrees with the gist of Wikipedia's more detailed article on the Fall of Tenochtitlan, which is littered with instances of "[citation needed]."

Wikipedia, however, provides more numbers. In particular, Wikipedia's version provides one of the Internet's favorite parts of wiki battle articles, a listing of the balance of opposed forces (with citations):

There is a racist narrative of the conquest of the Americas in which the brave Spanish explorers overcame the savage, human-sacrificing hordes of the Aztecs. There is an inverted, anti-racist narrative of the conquest of the Americas in which the powerful, cruel Spanish showed up to oppress the weak, innocent Aztecs.

And then there is a third narrative - a narrative that politics happened. A number of tributary states had grievances with the Aztecs, and the small number of Spanish probably didn't seem like enough to conquer the whole territory from the perspective of the tributaries, but did seem powerful enough to rally around to fight the Aztecs and win.

Nobody comes out looking good in this third narrative. The Spanish brought about a brutal war with tens of thousands of casualties, and devastating disease followed their arrival. The Aztecs and tributaries combined failed to overcome a foreign invasion due to (relative to the foreigners being from another continent) local infighting. The Aztecs were awful enough that a number of tributaries sided with an army of foreigners against them.

Now, suppose that we delete the 200,000 native allies from the balance of forces above, but still record a victory for the Spanish. The effect of the native allies remains, but the cause of that effect disappears. This creates an effect without a cause – unattributed causation, which is disconnected from what came before, or what we might call, "floating causation."

Some might call overcoming a force of 80,000 with only 1,000 or so men a miracle. For those not so inclined, the 'floating' causation gets attributed to the Spanish soldiers – their equipment, their valor, their tactics, and their discipline. Each of a thousand Spanish infantrymen is now somehow worth 200 native warriors.

In this cartoon version of history, the Spanish are an unstoppable psychic warrior race. Their steadfast will in the face of danger and their unit cohesion are quite nearly inhuman, and their technological advantage is overwhelming. The natives have not merely made a political miscalculation similar to others of the pre-modern era, such as the decisions of states facing Genghis Khan, but are buffoons to the slaughter, incapable of putting up any real defense.

In this cartoon, the Spanish can go anywhere. They can do anything. And because of this, they are the only people with agency in the whole world.

They sound... like aliens.

Trying to rebalance this cartoon only leads to greater absurdities, such as the idea that only Europeans ever meaningfully engaged in conquest (contradicted by Genghis Khan), or that industrial technology and its resulting pollution are "European" in nature (China has been quite aggressive about industrializing), or that only "European" countries waged modern and industrialized wars of conquest (the Empire of Japan used guns, bombs, and tanks as part of its project to create the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere).

All three of the above counter-examples are from Asia, which is usually conspicuously absent from self-identified anti-racist thinking, but none of them are obscure.

-★-

It is my belief that floating causation is a source of distortions across the ideological spectrum.

Ideology is not independent from human beings. Manifestos, one might say, do not print themselves. From the other direction, it is not a piece of paper which murders somebody – it is a human being who pulls the trigger.

There is ideology, which is a system of related rules and beliefs, and there are adherents who adopt ideology, spread beliefs, and put ideological rules into practice.

An ideology can contain taboos which prohibit noticing or explaining the true cause of some outcome, separating the cause from its effect. Practitioners can then attribute that effect to a preferred ideological construct instead, making it seem much more powerful, and often dangerous, than it really is.

The Elephants

Imagine (as this example is entirely made-up) that there is some village in which elephants are considered sacred, but the elephants in the area have a habit of trampling crops in the night. To avoid loss of face, the damage to crops is attributed to "bandits" by an initial group of elders. The young children who do not know better are then taught this explanation. Later, after the death of the elders, the initial truth is lost. Anyone claiming to have seen elephants trampling the fields is denounced as choosing the vile bandits over the virtuous elephants. An outsider who did not realize what was happening might be quite impressed to hear that a bandit in the region ruined a dozen fields in a single night, and assume that the bandit has tremendous physical stamina.

But floating causation is not necessarily the result of an ideological taboo. Someone may be ignorant about the cause of an effect, unable to understand the process by which an effect came about, have powerful emotions about the topic which they are unwilling to confront or may not even be aware of, or may simply have poor judgment. An adherent may be drawn to an ideology for these reasons.

Continuing with our example, a fresh-off-the-boat colonial administrator arriving at the village might be unaware that elephants exist, or trample crops, and conclude that there were ongoing feuds driven by animosity among the villagers, with bandits as the cover-story. Alternatively, the new colonial administrator might love the elephants and hate the villagers, and be unwilling to consider the possibility that the elephants are trampling the crops, including cooking up rather elaborate rationalizations.

Ideology

Issues with not understanding a process are more likely to come up with things like economics – occasionally a worker will post a video to social media complaining that he is not paid the full value of the items he sells or creates, ignoring all the money that went into the construction of the facility, the work from other workers putting together the input materials, and so on.

Liberals in the late 00s and early 2010s had an interest in memetics, which concerns the replication and spread of ideas. (This field is where the term "Internet meme" comes from.) Then, as now, they had a tendency to treat people as too similar to each other, and some of them leaned towards the idea that any person could hold any ideology. Ideologies do (in my judgment) influence behavior – there are far fewer monarchists around these days, and far fewer monarchs with real power, for example – but how a set of beliefs is expressed depend on the emotions, motives, and temperament of the person who holds those beliefs.

So do people choose ideologies, or do ideologies choose people?

One way to view this matter is as a cycle. Someone's social environment is partly a matter of choice, and partly a matter of circumstance. The ideologies that show up in someone's environment are generally going to be ones that spread (as ideologies that don't attract new adherents will die out), but which ideology someone actually chooses and how they practice it will be influenced by what type of person they are.

Another way to view this matter is that emotions, motives, temperament, and beliefs are all things that make certain actions or thoughts either easier (and cheaper) or more difficult (and more expensive). A drug addict who believes in hard work and free market capitalism, but finds himself stealing to feed his habit, may find that the influence of his beliefs is not enough to overcome his addiction. (He is likely to feel miserable.) However, when a religious person is choosing what time of day, or day of the week, to worship, the explicit belief of their religion is likely to have a great deal of influence.

Yet another way to view this matter is to treat things like social relations, ideology, and temperament as interacting layers, and then propose that politics spans multiple layers.

Human Talent

I don't believe that all human beings are equally talented, and I don't believe that they all have identical temperaments. Therefore, one of my beliefs is what might be called the "human capital theory of movements." Ideologies consist of networks of related beliefs which can be used to interpret the world, to guide behavior, or to create arguments. But ideologies do not create beliefs or arguments themselves. Humans do.

When a movement has a lot of talented, virtuous people working for it, these people can create new arguments in order to win debates, and change parts of the ideology, the network of beliefs, to adapt the network to changes in conditions. Without talented people, the ideology of a movement will drift farther from environmental conditions, causing its responses to become more misaligned with conditions on the ground.

Talented people are also needed for the implementation of an ideology. An ideological book is just an inert text. No matter how complex it may be, it is fundamentally limited in its complexity. Applying that text in the environment, bridging the gap between what the text says and what that means in the reality of a specific situation, requires both intelligence and good judgment. Not every person is equally talented, and not every person is equally informed. If someone more talented and with better judgment is around, they can read the situation and come up with some simpler rules or orders for others to follow.

The less talented the adherents of a movement are, the lower the ability of the movement to adapt to conditions over both the short-term and the long-term.

A shift in the distribution of talent can precede other forms of political change. Ideologues may smile as the most disagreeable members are driven out of their movement, but at the same time, the lack of criticism will reduce the movement's ability to respond to change.

There are trade-offs. The use of floating causation may make an ideology less aligned with reality, but it may also be useful for the movement to stoke the emotions of their followers in order to drive action. (This emotional motivation bit is why every election in the United States is "the most important in your lifetime.")

-★-

Beliefs are not intelligence. Nonetheless, a person with a belief may act as though they are smarter (or even wiser) than they actually are. This is just the nature of knowledge (as cached intelligence, wisdom, and observation).

I developed the talent theory in the prior section by observing opposition to racism in the United States prior to 2014. In the United States between 2000 and 2014, there was substantial support for individualist "colorblindness," while at the same time, there was immense social pressure against overt white racial organizing.

Racial organizing takes time and effort. Because white Americans were not subject to racial discrimination, they could simply go out into the market and earn what their work was worth. For talented white Americans, the gains from white racial organizing would be marginal, so the penalties could easily overcome those gains. The less talented would have the most to gain due to the ability to reduce the amount of economic competition they would be up against, but they were also less able to organize. [2]

There was somewhere famous for white racial organizing in the US during this era: prisons.

Racial prison gangs have been particularly noted in the California prison system. Prison gangs offer inmates a credible threat of retaliation if the inmate is harmed, so every inmate has an incentive to join one, and the bigger the gang the better that threat of retaliation is, so every gang has an incentive to recruit. If you're a gang member and a new guy comes in and starts causing trouble, and you don't want to escalate (and thus risk extra charges for your guys or reduced privileges), what are you to do? You would prefer to negotiate with someone that has leverage on him. Race is very visible, even if inmates move around between prisons, so if all inmates get sorted into gangs by race, then someone is responsible for this guy, and by talking to the right people, you can make sure he knows it. (If the troublemaker still doesn't respond, and his own gang cut him loose, then you can punish him without fear of retaliation from other inmates.)

Different incentives produce different results.

Four Options

Glenn Loury is a black man, and an economist at Brown University. He views himself as an American and therefore an inheritor of human rights philosophy of the American founders and their English forebears. He has his own show on YouTube in which he regularly discusses matters with John McWhorter, another black man, who is a linguistics professor at Columbia University. (John strikes me as more liberal, and I heard that he was frightened of Donald Trump, a sentiment shared by many white American culturally liberal Democrats.) Both of these men are quite smart, and if you watch the show, you'll see them easily consider arguments from various perspectives and toss hypotheticals back and forth.

Neither of these men are vulgar anti-racists.

Roland Fryer is a black man, and is an economist at Harvard (although he was suspended for 2 years) who I have discussed previously. He thinks like an economist, and has conducted studies such as paying children to read books. In previous appearances, it seemed that he believes that education gaps can be closed through extremely rigorous selection of teachers and other methods.

Mr. Fryer does not appear to be a vulgar anti-racist.

These men are all relatively prominent voices. If you go looking for the sort of content they produce, they aren't that hard to find. And they're all smart. They might have disagreements with each other and with some of my readers, but smart people can disagree.

However, during the 2014-2022 era, when it was decided to push a black academic to prominence, political forces settled on Ibram Kendi instead. There must have been dozens of other candidates.

When I think about why that happened, I suspect that the answer is that while the first three men care about the interests of black Americans, all three of them are willing to say, "No." Although I doubt they would phrase it in exactly these terms, I suspect that all three understand human rights as rooted in high-order consequences, limits on information, and human bias.

If you proposed to John McWhorter that we should give veto power to a committee of unelected race experts, he would immediately recognize the problem with just that.

Why Vulgar Anti-Racism?

With all of that said, I believe we can think about vulgar anti-racism by means of comparison.

a. Economics

Loury and Fryer are both economists. They know about gains from trade, prices as a distributed form of economic planning, property rights as enabling investment, specialization of labor, economies of scale, and dozens of other things. They understand where wealth comes from.

The typical vulgar anti-racist that you will encounter on an Internet discussion board has little knowledge of economics, and tends to think of total production as fixed. From their perspective, if someone has more resources than another person, it has nothing to do with production, and is purely the result of hoarding.

The typical vulgar anti-racist also doesn't think in terms of entropy, the tendency of things to break down over time. They tend not to discount temporally-distant advantages. (If a well was built 400 years ago, they treat that advantage as retained today.) They tend to think of capital as fixed and not as something that is constantly being rebuilt and adjusted. They don't understand that the ability to create new capital is generally more important than the initial capital in the long-run.

Thinking about production is probably why we see Fryer focused on educational gains. His theory is likely that if the children have a good base of education, they'll be able to produce more, avoid losses, overcome entropy, and net accumulate wealth. If they don't have a good base of education, then they'll be less productive, and entropy will eat a higher percentage of their earnings, leading to reduced wealth.

If someone doesn't know economics, then the wealth of developed countries is "unexplained," and so are the motives of many people within developed countries.

b. History

I don't know about Fryer specifically, but Loury and McWhorter seem to have a good grasp of history.

A solid understanding of history leads to seeing actions as emerging from their historical contexts. This places a limit on the range of expected behavior.

For example, for most of history up until about the 1900s, the child mortality rate was about 50%. That example is relevant for feminism, as under such brutal conditions, we would expect any society that didn't push for women to have at least 4 children to die out. Gender-based oppression didn't occur for no reason, or because of pure male greed, but was influenced by material circumstances.

If we run this understanding backwards, it follows that 1700s or earlier gender norms would be unlikely to return without 1700s or earlier child mortality rates.

Likewise, some basic historical knowledge would reveal that wars of conquest have happened pretty much everywhere, so it's quite unlikely that Europeans are uniquely conquerors. You end up having to declare everything from feuding Chinese kingdoms, to the Māori, to chimpanzees, be "European" in order to fit the model.

The typical vulgar anti-racist's position is, implicitly, "Everyone lived together in peace and harmony, until one day, for no reason at all, the Europeans became possessed by the spirit of greed, and attacked."

If someone somehow doesn't know that war existed outside of Europe prior to 1492, then the wars of colonialism are "unexplained," and so are the motives of the people who fought them.

When vulgar anti-racists do research history, they generally focus on collecting racial grievances in order to build up a case that the group they favor are poor, oppressed, not responsible for anything bad their group has ever done, and are owed indefinite benefits for incalculable harms. They don't proceed from the idea of, "How does this work?" They don't, say, look at the tremendous economic success of South Korea, and ask, "Based on how South Korea obtained their wealth, how can our group achieve such riches?" (They don't even look at South Korea's birthrate and ask how they can avoid such a fate!)

Even before World War 2, Japan did look afar to ask how they could become rich. That kind of mentality is part of how they were able to become a developed country (who could threaten other people with tanks) in the first place.

Looking to Asia is useful for people making comparisons to figure out how things work, but is not useful for collecting racial grievances in order to build up racial claims to make demands. That's why vulgar anti-racists often don't know basic facts about Asian history, like that state testing to determine government positions was practiced in ancient China. [3]

c. Racial Attachment

Even during the individualist colorblindness of 2000-2014, there were still white Americans with some talent engaged in racial organizing. In general, these were people to whom race was very important, and thus who were out-of-step with the mainstream of white America.

It's my opinion that there is a natural range of tribalism among human beings. Sometimes, the rival tribe on the other side of the mountain just want to trade. Other times, they really are out to kill you. The trait doesn't disappear, because wars still happen, and even if they didn't happen, someone could just reinvent war and start it all back up again.

In my view, this tribalism trait isn't attached to race specifically. It can attach to religion. It can attach to sex. Some of the rhetoric from radical feminists sounds the same as rhetoric from hardcore ethnic nationalists – or at least it would, if we treated men as an ethnicity. In our modern environment in which race is highly legible due to intercontinental travel, for a lot of people, it gets attached to race.

Rather than assigning people a single number on a scale from "moral" to "immoral," it's probably better to think of people as having virtues and vices, strengths and weaknesses.

Some level of racial attachment itself is not inherently evil. Based on his research topics, for example, Roland Fryer seems interested in bringing about the success of people with a similar background to himself. His virtue (his interest in truth) and his strength (his intelligence) convert that attachment into something that's beneficial to society.

High levels of racial attachment fly much closer to the wire. A highly racially attached individual might do good work in other domains, but there's a risk that they'll end up routing too much of their sense of self-worth through their race, and become obsessed with guarding their race's self-perceived reputation. For such a person, any information deemed unflattering to the group may be interpreted as an attack on himself (or herself).

The Mayo Clinic (a network of hospitals in the United States) describes narcissism as:

Narcissistic personality disorder is a mental health condition in which people have an unreasonably high sense of their own importance. They need and seek too much attention and want people to admire them. People with this disorder may lack the ability to understand or care about the feelings of others. But behind this mask of extreme confidence, they are not sure of their self-worth and are easily upset by the slightest criticism.

A number of users on Twitter (now known as X.com) began using the term "ethnic narcissism" to describe this sort of disordered thinking when done on behalf of a racial or ethnic group rather than oneself specifically.

2019 and 2020 were banner years for platforming this sort of behavior, with the nation's leading newspaper arguing, in its own words, that we should make the suffering of a particular racial group the core narrative of American history, that everyone should define their identities around:

The 1619 Project is a major initiative from The New York Times observing the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. It aims to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.

Obsession with self-perceived ethnic reputation is part of what leads to the "rebalancing the cartoon" behavior I discussed earlier:

Trying to rebalance this cartoon only leads to greater absurdities, such as the idea that only Europeans ever meaningfully engaged in conquest (contradicted by Genghis Khan), or that industrial technology and its resulting pollution are "European" in nature (China has been quite aggressive about industrializing), or that only "European" countries waged modern and industrialized wars of conquest (the Empire of Japan used guns, bombs, and tanks as part of its project to create the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere).

How does someone end up so ignorant that they don't know that Genghis Khan existed? By being the kind of person that doesn't want to know that Genghis Khan existed. They don't look it up. If you tell them, they either forget or they take a conflict theorist approach and think that it's some sort of trick.

Unfortunately, while a fairly accurate description of the behavior at issue, the term "ethnic narcissism" can also be used as an attack by ethnic narcissists themselves, as well as people engaged in ethnic conflict. This makes it of limited utility in practice.

The Mysterious Anglo

Option #1: In general, the right wing would consider the vulgar anti-racists to be liars working to selfishly advance their own personal interests and those of their preferred groups. Left-wingers would tend to take a negative view of this, as they believe that right-wingers are unjustly dismissive in order to 'protect the unearned and unquestioned advantages of the privileged.'

In this version, vulgar anti-racists won't drop the issue and hit the GDP gym because they're bullies who think the particular groups they dislike are easy targets. The appropriate response is to become a harder target by systematically defunding any institution that supports them, putting them on the same footing as conventional racial supremacists in the US.

I tend to agree that many of the vulgar anti-racists are just being selfish. There is a question of just how consciously aware of it they are, however.

Option #2: A left-wing view would be that the vulgar anti-racists are "good people, just a bit misguided." Right-wingers tend to take a negative view of this, because if a right-winger published a book titled "Black Fragility" that was as circular in its reasoning as the "White Fragility" of Robin DiAngelo appeared to be, he would be hounded as a racist.

In this version, vulgar anti-racists just need patient guidance to put their empathy back on the right track.

I tend to believe that a good chunk of the vulgar anti-racists are just low-tier progressives who get their opinions socially. If the social consensus changes among progressives, they'll forget ever fretting about "microaggressions." Arguing with them individually mostly won't work, though, because it doesn't override their social consensus, and it won't make them think harder about the issues.

Many left-wingers would disagree with me on this assessment.

Option #3: A more centrist view would be that vulgar anti-racists are a mix of people with excessively high racial attachment, enthusiastic people who are underinformed, and people who serve their niche of the information and political economy, and that this isn't that different from the lower quality wings of other left and right political movements (look how bad "degrowth" is, for example), except that race feels much more core to people's identities (it's certainly not easy to change one's race), so it evokes more powerful emotions. A centrist would likely say that there are more academically and philosophically serious opponents of racism out there, but because the things they say are more serious, they're less controversial, so they get less coverage. ("You wouldn't expect a textbook in the Sunday paper.")

A person with this perspective would say that the appropriate course of action is mostly just to wait for it to blow over.

I would disagree. If vulgar anti-racism is taught in schools for a generation, it would create an expectation that racial blame is the default course of action. This would create a situation which is much more favorable for racial conflict, so it should be shut down now to prevent that from happening.

However, I feel that this does not adequately explain the totalitarian bent. What about other values society might have? What about trade-offs? [4] I would like to throw a fourth possibility into the ring.

Option #4: Life inside the vulgar anti-racist worldview is anxiety-inducing and subtly terrifying.

I don't fully endorse this view, because I think that vulgar anti-racism is a coalition of multiple groups (see the previous three options).

However, while I learned from school that racism and ethnic conflict are extremely dangerous in general (e.g. they can boil over and result in mass murder), the susceptibility of vulgar anti-racists to, "It's impossible to be racist to white people," which is very obviously racist, strongly implies that what they learned was, "Jews good; Germans bad" – basically just a list of which groups are acceptable, and which groups aren't. [5]

I reverse-engineered a sophisticated moral worldview, and when I was young, I assumed that everyone else had done so, too. And for a little while, society approximated that view closely enough for that misconception to kind-of work.

I think that a significant number of people in the vulgar anti-racist coalition don't understand white people.

In terms of anxiety, a number of them seem to think that Europeans and their descendants think about race as much as the vulgar anti-racists do – that they are silently passing judgment, or saying nasty things when others are not listening.

I've been around middle-class and above white Americans my entire life. I've seen some kids make stupid racist jokes, and I can imagine bullying targeting race if it looks like an axis of vulnerability, but in general, among themselves, they don't talk about race much at all.

A skeptic reading this may say that that's just anecdotal. However, according to surveys, "white conservatives" have about the same "racial/ethnic" "ingroup favorability" as either "hispanic moderates" or "asians." "White liberals" were the only group on the chart to have a "pro-outgroup bias."

If we interpret these ingroup favorability measures as racism (which is a stretch, because a favorability measure is not itself a discriminatory policy), then white conservatives have a "normal" (as in typical of most groups) amount of racism. White liberals (probably in the sense that the label "liberal" is used for the entire left in the US) are the only ones who loop around into what might be called "anti-racism." (Razib Khan has his doubts about the stability of this arrangement of anti-racism as opposed to non-racism.)

A vulgar anti-racist doesn't know this, and doesn't want to know this.

Now, for the "subtly terrifying" part. If someone accepts, for instance, that the British were sincere in sending warships to intercept slave traders, then there are all sorts of explanations that they can come up with for that behavior, such as it being a natural result of industrialization, or maybe a result of rising literacy, or motivated by Christianity in combination with previous political developments in England, and so on.

From Wikipedia, here's a map of the British Empire, a map of the Spanish Empire, and a map of the Portuguese Empire. While from the perspective of Europeans at the time, the European states were in competition with each other, if taken together as a group, they were closer to achieving true world conquest than anyone else in history. (Sure, the Mongol Empire was huge, but they didn't make it over to the Americas.)

If someone believes that the Europeans turned off the slave trade for some sincere or enduring reason, then the 1700s are unlikely to come back. If someone believes that the Europeans turned off the 1700s for no reason, or for a secret reason, then one day, they could just... turn the 1700s back on.

And maybe that thought isn't entirely conscious. Maybe it just sits quietly, at the back of the mind.

And they get stuck, much like people who are still focused on "overpopulation" as birthrates plummet in industrialized countries throughout the world.

-★-

Whether they consciously intend to or not, vulgar anti-racists leverage social taboos to make it difficult to argue for one group's innocence without making another, generally more vulnerable, group, look worse. People don't want to be mean and say mean things about a vulnerable group. Vulgar anti-racists exploit this. (This kind of behavior is immoral, but I'm not sure how much vulgar anti-racists consciously understand that.)

Online Tactics

I've developed tactics to argue with them in online space, but I haven't tried them out in in-person institutional spaces where they have institutional influence (power).

In general, you cannot argue with vulgar anti-racists grievance-for-grievance. Building up an ammunition depot of racial or ethnic grievances on behalf of "overperforming" groups won't work – vulgar anti-racists will dismiss you as irrationally motivated by racial hatred and dismiss your entire collection, and normal people will also think it's weird (even though they still don't think many racial or ethnic minorities collecting grievances is weird). [6]

A better approach is to pick one or two grievances to shut down the idea that the group you're defending are "invulnerable." Morally, you shouldn't have to point to, say, children or minors being mass victimized, because it should be obvious that people of any race can be victimized. But that's just the world we live in.

Collect examples of institutional policy, such as by governments, corporations, or universities, that is racially discriminatory against the group you're defending, in order to show that the intent of vulgar anti-racists is racial discrimination. Use center-left, mainstream sources to prevent dismissals. The goal is not to show major harms; most Democrats who are not social justice critical will initially attempt to deny that racial discrimination is a goal of vulgar anti-racism.

(If necessary, it can be emphasized that not wanting to be racially discriminated against is a normal thing to want.)

Vulgar anti-racists will try to shut you down by reciting their list of grievances. Memorizing racial grievances is something that they are strong at. Redirect the conversation to where they are weak: demand that they show whatever policy it is that they want will actually improve things and permanently close racial outcome gaps.

If you find someone who has memorized a list of successful academic or nutrition interventions, you've likely found a philosophical liberal. In my experience, almost no vulgar anti-racist has any even modestly-successful intervention memorized. If they propose an intervention, demand evidence that it will work.

It's possible that they could propose something scientific, but science is undergoing a replication crisis, and 'race scholars' have come under fire for scientific misconduct. If a vulgar anti-racist does come up with something, the next step is to get a binding commitment to close the racial claims against their target group.

If their political leaders will not agree, in writing, with binding mechanisms (and punishments with teeth if they don't follow through), to close out the racial claims against their target groups, conditional on some social intervention going into effect, then they don't believe that the intervention will work.

A working intervention is win-win. Outcomes improve, and the odds of conflict (over this particular issue) decrease.

IRL Tactics

X user CantonaCorona must live somewhere very different from me, because I never hear vulgar anti-racism from people in real life. His advice?

100%. I can’t even tell you the number of times I’ve been in a friendly/polite mutual friend gathering, and someone who knows 10% of the room will add “gawd, white people, gross” etc.

The issue is they are also the person lacking social skills to see the room gets uncomfortable

In 2023ish I started responding by asking them very honest seeming questions and leading them into saying really crazy stuff.

Takes a lot of finesse to not sound like a schizo, but if you can pretend to be genuinely curious it works wonders and someone else will call them out

It does, indeed, take a lot of finesse, even online. Because vulgar anti-racists are exploiting taboos, they have a huge terrain advantage in most encounters due to normal people not wanting to touch reputationally-damaging information. Successfully navigating the situation without sounding "schizo," and without sounding cruel, is difficult.

The advantage of the tactics discussed above are that you don't have to attack the reputation of the vulnerable group that vulgar anti-racists are using to justify their own bad behavior. It isn't surprising that, like a successful hostage rescue, it requires being more careful than the hostage-takers.

"Corrective" racial discrimination that does not permanently close racial outcome gaps is not actually a correction, it's just extra harm for no reason, and the motives of people who support it are suspect.

Demobilization

While the online tactics I've discussed above are reasonably effective for an online debate or argument format (and vulgar anti-racists are increasingly retreating to protected contexts where they don't have to engage in open debate), the long-term goal needs to be demobilization. Ethnic conflict interferes with stability and good government.

There are some supporters that don't recognize the logical errors in their positioning, but they can sense, "Wait, this guy isn't like the others," and flee rather than risk being split off from the social approval of their group.

I propose the fear theory for the potential to develop new angles. If the real motivation is fear, then addressing most of the intermediate arguments won't work, as the intermediate arguments are just products of the fear.

Reportedly, black musician Daryl Davis demobilized many Klansmen just by befriending them. [7] I suspect that most vulgar anti-racists already know a number of white people personally, so that tactic probably won't work here.

I have not conducted field experiments (either online or offline) on using the fear theory during encounters, so I can't provide solid information on its tactical use, yet.

-★★★-

[1] Stylistically, I have chosen to capitalize nationality while not capitalizing racial groups. On a quick reading, the tables provided by Wikipedia don't appear to disaggregate between first-generation immigrants, who have foreign nationality of origin and American citizenship, and second-generation immigrants who only have American nationality. All three CEOs listed were born in India.

[2] The ability to buy off competing talent is one of the reasons for the endurance of capitalism. Capitalist systems tend to be extremely productive. They can offer wages from increased productivity that are higher than the wages that other systems offer from rents.

[3] This is one of the reasons I got into writing about politics. It became common to find people whose professed opinions implied they'd never even heard of Genghis Khan, and at that point, I figured the bar was set pretty low.

[4] Positions on migration appear related, but I'll touch on that in another essay.

[5] One reason it wasn't obvious that people were just making an acceptable targets list at the time was that quite a few people from all over the world have a tendency to get wacky about Jewish people specifically, so putting antisemitism off-limits looked like it was backed by more sophisticated reasoning than it actually was. Obviously, people shouldn't hate Jewish people. The problem with the acceptable targets list approach is that it's fragile – since the list is based on social approval rather than deeper philosophical principles, it can end up being "readjusted" later.

[6] I also suspect that continuing to constantly expose yourself to the worst behavior of other groups may be corrosive. Watching a video where a man is shot on some other street, in some other city, may give you a jolt of adrenaline while you sit helplessly in your chair. Reading about atrocities may make you feel helpless and doomed.

[7] This behavior is morally praiseworthy, not morally obligatory.

[thozhar]

Gulf migration is not just a major phenomenon in Kerala; north Indian states also see massive migration to the Gulf. Uttar Pradesh and Bihar accounted for the biggest share (30% and 15%) of all Indian workers migrating to GCC1 countries in 2016-17 (Khan 2023)—a trend which continues today. Remittances from the Gulf have brought about significant growth in Bihar’s economy (Khan 2023)—as part of a migrant’s family, I have observed a tangible shift in the quality of life, education, houses, and so on, in Siwan. In Bihar, three districts—Siwan, Gopalganj, and Chapra—send the majority of Gulf migrants from the state, mostly for manual labor (Khan 2023). Bihar also sees internal migration of daily wagers to Delhi, Bombay, and other parts of India. Gulf migration from India’s northern regions, like elsewhere in India, began after the oil boom in the 1970s. Before this time, migration was limited to a few places such as Assam, Calcutta, Bokaro, and Barauni—my own grandfather worked in the Bokaro steel factory.

Despite the role of Gulf migration and internal migration in north Indian regions, we see a representational void in popular culture. Bollywood films on migration largely use rural settings, focussing on people who work in the USA, Europe, or Canada. The narratives centre these migrants’ love for the land and use dialogue such as ‘mitti ki khusbu‘ (fragrance of homeland). Few Bollywood films, like Dor and Silvat, portray internal migration and Gulf migration. While Bollywood films frequently centre diasporic experiences such as Gujaratis in the USA and Punjabis in Canada, they fail in portraying Bihari migrants, be they indentured labourers in the diaspora, daily wagers in Bengal, or Gulf migrants. The regional Bhojpuri film industry fares no better in this regard. ‘A good chunk of the budget is spent on songs since Bhojpuri songs have an even larger viewership that goes beyond the Bhojpuri-speaking public’, notes Ahmed (2022), marking a context where there is little purchase for Gulf migration to be used as a reference to narrate human stories of longing, sacrifice, and family.

One reason for this biased representation of migration is that we see ‘migration’ as a monolith. In academic discourse, too, migration is often depicted as a commonplace phenomenon, but I believe it is crucial to make nuanced distinctions in the usage of the terms ‘migration’ and ‘migrant’. The term ‘migration’ is a broad umbrella term that may oversimplify the diverse experiences within this category. My specific concern is about Gulf migrants, as their migration often occurs under challenging circumstances. For individuals from my region, heading to the Gulf is typically a last resort. This kind of migration leads to many difficulties, especially when it distances migrants from their family for much of their lifetime. The term ‘migration’, therefore, inadequately captures the profound differences between, for instance, migrating to the USA for educational purposes and migrating to the Gulf for labour jobs. Bihar has a rich history of migration, dating back to the era of indentured labor known as girmitiya. Following the abolition of slavery in 1883, colonial powers engaged in the recruitment of laborers for their other colonies through agreements (Jha 2019). Girmitiya distinguishes itself from the migration. People who are going to the Arabian Gulf as blue-collar labourers are also called ‘Gulf migrants’—a term that erases how their conditions are very close to slavery. This is why, as a son who rarely saw his father, I prefer to call myself a ‘victim of migration’ rather than just a ‘part of migration’. It is this sense of victimhood and lack of control over one’s life that I saw missing in Bollywood and Bhojpuri cinema.

— Watching 'Malabari Films' in Bihar: Gulf Migration and Transregional Connections

[zvaigzdelasas]

countries neighboring Mozambique, particularly fellow members of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), also hope to benefit from gas exploitation [along with Europe]. They are counting on the 3.4 trillion cubic meters (tcm) of natural gas reserves in Mozambique and Tanzania to provide electrification and economic growth for the continent. [...]

But six years of conflict in Cabo Delgado has kept everyone waiting. The Mozambique LNG Project, the region’s largest, has had construction on hold since 2021, when it declared force majeure after insurgents captured the port town of Palma. African troops and international military aid have since helped subdue the insurgency.[...]

Stretching from just above the Comoros Islands to below the southern tip of Madagascar, the Mozambique Channel separates Madagascar from the African continent. It is an essential route for maritime traffic heading towards East Africa, the western side of the Indian subcontinent, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Persian Gulf. About 30% of global tanker traffic passes through there. The channel is vital for East Africa’s economy since the major Madagascar rivers empty into it, and it includes the exclusive economic zones of Mozambique, Tanzania, Madagascar, the Comoros, and France. Landlocked and southern African countries also rely on the channel to export goods to Asia and Europe. [...]

insurgents seized the port towns of Mocimboa da Praia in August 2020 and Palma in March 2021. Rwandan, SADC, and Mozambican forces have since retaken the port towns[...]

Both regions, particularly the EU, have increased resources to end the conflict. In 2022, the SADC Mission in Mozambique (SAMIM) and Rwandan forces received $35 million from the European Peace Facility Fund, making Mozambique the biggest recipient after Ukraine. India has been the most active in protecting the Mozambique Channel. An Indian Navy P81 maritime patrol aircraft has been staging joint channel patrols with the French Navy since 2020. India also donated two patrol boats to Mozambique in 2021[...]

The SADC has a particularly keen interest in Mozambique’s gas as many member countries rely on imported petroleum, which puts their economies at the mercy of fluctuations in global oil prices. As the SADC’s economic powerhouse, South Africa has led efforts to stabilize Cabo Delgado. With 205 days of countrywide blackouts in 2022 due to failing coal-powered plants, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa is counting on gas imports to ensure their energy security. He said, “Mozambique is endowed with significant volumes of natural gas. This can benefit the people of Mozambique and South Africa and the rest of the SADC region.” He emphasized that energy security was “vital to economic growth in our respective countries.”

3 Sep 23

[srbachchan]

DAY 5432

abdh, JHo                  Dec 29,  2022              Thu 10:00 PM

the travel is over the quietude and the scarcity is ambivalent .. the peace and the charm prevails and the winds of cold bringing temperatures down brings in the feel of the North , long left .. 

those fog filled early mornings and the run to the crossing and back trying to improve the resistance and breathe to the system .. the borrowed scooty the Lambretta with the broken accelerator wire in the mouth to keep the thing moving .. all the way to Univ and back just for a few days .. 

aahhhh .. those were the days my friend .. and as soon as you remember them you wonder when and how did all those wonderful days disappear and fell distant .. cannot revive them simply bring in the remembrance and take the deep sigh of remembrance back to the times .. 

there is sweet company for the break of a few days to bring in 2023 .. the family in their company on different locations but connected each hour on FT .. distance time and location has lost its mystery .. the ease of its reference and adaptability is what remains constant and prime .. all else is an asking and a deliver ..

routines have changed .. and so have the timings, but the body adjusts .. the eatings have developed a different tongue .. but no matter where , the Indian reigns supreme .. presence, talent, brain, cuisine , dress, all now suddenly proving that when every 6th individual in the World is an Indian, t will become impossible to ignore us .. and to top that the largest youth population in the world of humans ..

someone announced at a PC .. by 2027 India will be a 40 trillion economy .. and there is India in all walks of life today ..

i must rest and realise that , my trillion is dependent n the sleep trillion 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Love 

Amitabh Bachchan

[rjzimmerman]

Climate Workers Wanted. (New York Times)

Excerpt from this New York Times story:

Three years ago, Alexsandra Sesepasara moved home to American Samoa, a remote chain of Pacific islands, with her family after more than a decade of military service. She took a job as a water resources engineer for the utility that provides power, cleans up trash and manages drinking water for the more than 49,000 residents of the territory.

But soon after she arrived, she realized that rising seas and worsening storms, fueled by climate change, had brought new problems to her homeland, while exacerbating old ones. Saltwater was seeping into the islands’ fresh water supply, shutting down schools and leading to boil water notices. In December, the issue caused a nearby hospital to close all nonessential services for nearly a week.

There was another problem, Sesepasara said: American Samoa didn’t have enough workers to fix its water issues.

But this summer, the American Samoa Power Authority, her employer, became one of nine entities across the country to receive funding under a $60 million federal program intended to help train workers to combat the growing challenges of climate change.

The climate jobs of the future, experts told me, may mean adjusting how we think of the jobs of the past: Electricians may need to learn to install solar panels, construction workers may need to deal with new engineering requirements and bankers may need to manage climate risk.

“This is a model of us adapting our jobs in real time to the reality and need of the moment,” said Ned Gardiner, a program manager for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Program Office, which is coordinating technical assistance for the grantees.

The funding comes as part of the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which included hundreds of billions in tax incentives for clean energy and climate programs across the country.

While most of the applications NOAA received for the grant program focused on coastal resilience and protecting marine economies, the agency was open to proposals from sectors like shipping, engineering and finance, Gardiner said.

“Every job will be affected by climate change,” said Lara Skinner, founding executive director of the Climate Jobs Institute at Cornell University. “We look at every sector of the economy, and every sector will have to change. This isn’t some little transition.”

The tax incentives in the I.R.A. could ultimately help fund more than 6,200 projects in utility-scale clean energy and storage and almost four million jobs, according to the Climate Jobs National Resource Center, a labor organization educating workers on climate action.

NOAA’s work force program isn’t the only funding for jobs included in the I.R.A. Hundreds of millions of dollars are also available to hire employees in the National Park Service and workers to expedite clean energy projects in rural America, as well as to train a new generation of Indigenous workers through the Indian Youth Service Corps.

Last year, the Biden administration also launched the American Climate Corps to put 20,000 young Americans into jobs addressing global warming.

In the short term, there’s a lot of physical work that can be done to mitigate the climate crisis, like building more flood-resilient communities.

[darkmaga-retard]

Bangladesh, once celebrated as an economic success story in the Indian subcontinent, is now navigating turbulent waters following a dramatic political crisis in August 2024. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s resignation, her subsequent flight to India, and the installation of an interim government with US and Pakistan backing have sent ripples of uncertainty through the nation and beyond.

In August 2024, Bangladesh faced a major political upheaval as student protests over government job quotas escalated into widespread violence, resulting in over 130 deaths and a coup, with Hasina forced to resign and flee to India preceding protesters storming her residence and government offices.

Even before the political crisis erupted, Bangladesh grappled with several economic challenges that threatened to undermine its progress, such as declining exports and dwindling foreign exchange reserves. The country’s export-driven economy faced severe disruptions, particularly its crucial garment sector. Foreign exchange reserves had declined sharply, with gross reserves standing at $21.8 billion in June 2024, 35% lower than in June 2022, covering just over three months of current account payments.

At the same time, inflation hit a decade-high of 9.7% year-on-year in April 2024, putting immense pressure on the cost of living for average Bangladeshis. The IMF reported the debt-to-GDP ratio as 41% for 2024, raising concerns among local economists, especially given the stagnant revenue growth. Two-fifths of Bangladesh’s young population lacks reliable employment, contributing to social unrest. In the first quarter of 2024, unemployment increased by 3.51% compared to the last quarter of 2023, with the total unemployment count growing to 2.59 million. Stagnating between 8% and 9% over the past decade, the low revenue-to-GDP ratio is significantly lower than in neighbouring countries like India (20.2%), limiting the government’s fiscal capacity.

[applebrooklyn]

India bears a disproportionately large burden of the world's tuberculosis rates, with World Health Organization (WHO) statistics for 2011 giving an estimated incidence figure of 2.2 million cases for India out of a global incidence of 9.6 million cases.

Tuberculosis is one of India's biggest health issues, but what makes this problem even worse is the recent discovery of Totally Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis, TDR-TB. This issue of drug resistance began with MDR-TB, moved to XDR-TB and, as of 2021, has grown to embrace the most dangerous form, TDR-TB.

The cost of this death and disease to the Indian economy between 2006 and 2014 was approximately US$1 billion.

Another major cause for the growth of TB in India has to do with its standing as a developing country. A study of Delhi slums has correlated higher scores on the Human Development Index and high proportions of one-room dwellings tend to correlate with TB at higher rates.[16] Poorly built environments, including hazards in the workplace, poor ventilation, and overcrowded homes have also been found to increase exposure to TB

( Their own living situation is causing them death and suffering, and bad wiring is causing summer fires)

It’s a fun fact and a reality check education hour.

I do agree with you. The world is living through a silent pandemic for years and it's the worst in India. We are struggling with it since pre independence era. The first sanatorium was established in 1905 or 1906, if I remember correctly, and even now, if you go to any of the colder places or hill stations, you will find these delepidated buildings which once used to be a sanatorium. One of them is near my college as well.

In 1951, the GOI launched a mass vaccination program for BCG and in 1962, National Tuberculosis Control Project was launched. As a young nation, we did well. Goverment's efforts were commendable. But soon enough, in late 1970s, we realised BCG vaccine isn't exactly working. This should have prompted the government to take an action, but nothing happened. Although, I would like to add here that some say that some data was lost between 1978-1979 (if my memory serves me right) and if we took that in account, the vaccine was working just fine. I would leave this to your discretion.

The world then saw the emergence of HIV in 1984. We too had cases of HIV infection. We did not knew until 1986. Until then, many were infected with HIV and TB was it's most common secondary infection. In 1992, we reported our first MDR TB case as well.

So we were in a hot soup. No vaccine, HIV, increasing population, recession, political upheaval, communication gap between the government and the masses, poor sanitation, lack of knowledge in public, MDR.

In 1993, TB was declared a global emergency and in the same year, Revised NTCP was piloted. We had our objectives clear—85% cure rate and 70% detection rates. And we did it. The catch—it took us 13 years!

Now, time is an asset. Even more so in the case of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. There is a whole catalogue of 17000 mutations which may lead to multi drug resistance. Bacteria are quick to reproduce and respond. They are exceptional at defence and time constraints are tight. Safe to say, the devil works fast, but bacteria work faster. Sadly, we did not realise it at that time. In 2012, we then encountered a rather strange strain that was resistant to all the first line and second line drugs—the TDR strain. As if MDR-TB wasn't a nuisance enough. The MDR-TB treatment has a success rate of only 54%. WHO reported roughly 3.4 lakh deaths due to TB in India in 2022 and 1.1 lakh were due to MDR-TB. We had record TB cases in 2023.

But yes, we are working on it. We are a big country with a big population. Population burden is always going to be an issue. We can't run from it. We are working on sanitation, it is taking time, but it will hopefully happen in its due course. In 2023, we became the first country to make a mathematical model to estimate the cases of tuberculosis. According to that, there was an 11 % reduction in the case of TB in 2022 as compared to 2023.

Government has launched NSP for Tuberculosis elimination (2017-2025). We have NiKshay ecosystem (under which the mathematical model has been developed), we have Nikshay poshan Yojana for financial support of TB patients. The scientists are doing their due. Two vaccines are under phase 3 clinical trials. Drugs are being developed. Rifampicin derivatives, BDQ, Delaminid etc.

So yeah, it's an uphill battle and we have made many mistakes. But if all of us do our respective parts, we still have a chance to overcome it.

[mariacallous]

Talk about the promise and the peril of artificial intelligence is everywhere these days. But for many low-income families, communities of color, military veterans, people with disabilities, and immigrant communities, AI is a back-burner issue. Their day-to-day worries revolve around taking care of their health, navigating the economy, seeking educational opportunities, and upholding democracy. But their worries are also being amplified through advanced, persistent, and targeted cyberattacks.

Cyber operations are relentless, growing in scale, and exacerbate existing inequalities in health care, economic opportunities, education access, and democratic participation. And when these pillars of society become unstable, the consequences ripple through national and global communities. Collectively, cyberattacks have severe and long-term impacts on communities already on the margins of society. These attacks are not just a technological concern—they represent a growing civil rights crisis, disproportionately dismantling the safety and security for vulnerable groups and reinforcing systemic barriers of racism and classism. The United States currently lacks an assertive response to deter the continued weaponization of cyber operations and to secure digital access, equity, participation, and safety for marginalized communities.

Health Care

Cyberattacks on hospitals and health care organizations more than doubled in 2023, impacting over 39 million people in the first half of 2023. A late-November cyberattack at the Hillcrest Medical Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, led to a system-wide shutdown, causing ambulances to reroute and life-saving surgeries to be canceled. These attacks impact patients' reliance and trust in health care systems, which may make them more hesitant to seek care, further endangering the health and safety of already vulnerable populations.

The scale and prevalence of these attacks weaken public trust—especially among communities of color who already have deep-rooted fears about our health care systems. The now-condemned Untreated Syphilis Study at Tuskegee, where researchers denied treatment to Black men without their knowledge or consent in order to observe the disease’s long-term effects, only ended 52 years ago. However, the study created a legacy of suspicion and mistrust of the medical community that continues today, leading to a decrease in the life expectancy of Black men and lower participation in medical research among Black Americans. The compounding fact that Black women are three to four times more likely, and American Indian and Alaska Native women are two times more likely, to die from pregnancy-related causes than White women only adds to mistrust.

Erosion of trust also extends to low-income people. Over a million young patients at Lurie Children's Surgical Foundation in Chicago had their names, Social Security numbers, and dates of birth exposed in an August 2023 breach. The hospital treats more children insured by Medicaid—an economic hardship indicator—than any other hospital in Illinois. Once breached, a child’s personal data could be used to commit identity fraud, which severely damages credit, jeopardizes education financial aid, and denies employment opportunities. While difficult for anyone, children from financially insecure households are least equipped to absorb or overcome these economic setbacks.

Economic Opportunity

Identity theft is not the only way cyberattacks exploit hard times. Cyberattacks also go after financially vulnerable individuals—and they are getting more sophisticated. In Maryland, hackers targeted Electronic Benefits Transfer cards—used to provide public assistance funds for food—to steal more than $2 million in 2022 and the first months of 2023. That’s an increase of more than 2,100 percent compared to the $90,000 of EBT funds stolen in 2021. Maryland’s income limit to qualify for the government’s food assistance program is $39,000 for a family of four in 2024, and only if they have less than $2,001 in their bank account. Unlike a credit card, which legally protects against fraudulent charges, EBT cards don’t have fraud protections. Efforts to help the victims are riddled with red tape: reimbursements are capped at two months of stolen benefits, and only within a specific time period.

Cybercriminals also target vulnerable populations, especially within older age groups. Since the last reporting in 2019, 40 percent of Asian Pacific Islander Desi Americans (APIDAs) aged 50 and older have reported experiencing financial fraud, with one-third of those victims losing an average of $15,000. From 2018 through 2023, Chinese Embassy Scam robocalls delivered automated messages and combined caller ID spoofing, a method where scammers disguise their phone display information, targeting Chinese immigrant communities. This resulted in more than 350 victims across 27 US states and financial losses averaging $164,000 per victim for a total of $40 million. And for five years, this scam just kept going. As these scams evolve, groups now face increasingly sophisticated AI-assisted calls, where scammers use technology to convincingly mimic loved ones' voices, further exploiting vulnerabilities, particularly among older adults—many of whom live on fixed incomes or live with economic insecurity.

While social movements have fought to promote economic equity, cybercriminals undermine these efforts by exacerbating financial vulnerabilities. From the 1960s La Causa movement advocating for migrant worker rights to the Poor People’s Campaign mobilizing across racial lines, activists have worked to dismantle systemic barriers, end poverty, and push for fair wages. Current attacks on financial systems, however, often target the very groups these movements aim to empower—perpetuating the disparities that advocates have fought against. Digital scams and fraud incidents disproportionately impact those least equipped to recover—including natural disaster victims, people with disabilities, older adults, young adults, military veterans, immigrant communities, and lower-income families. By stealing essential resources, cybercriminals compound hardships for those already struggling to make ends meet or those experiencing some of the worst hardships of their lives—pushing groups deeper into the margins.

Education Access

Education is another area where cybercrime has soared. One of the worst hacks of 2023 exploited a flaw in a file transfer software called MOVEit that multiple government entities, nonprofits, and other organizations use to manage data across systems. This includes the National Student Clearinghouse, which serves 3,600 colleges, representing 97 percent of college students in the US, to provide verification information to academic institutions, student loan providers, and employers.

Attacks on educational systems are devastating at all levels. A top target for ransomware attacks last year was K-12 schools. While the complete data is not available yet, by August 2023 ransomware attacks (where hackers lock an organization’s data and demand payment for its release) hit at least 48 US school districts—three more than in all of 2022. Schools already have limited resources, and cybersecurity can be expensive, so many have few defenses against sophisticated cyberattacks.

The data compromised in attacks against educational institutions includes identifying information and deeply sensitive student records, such as incidents of sexual abuse, mental health records, and reports of abusive parents. This information can affect future opportunities, college admissions, employment, and the mental health of students. The impacts are especially magnified for students from marginalized backgrounds, who already face discrimination in academic and employment opportunities. In 1954, the US Supreme Court struck down segregated public schools as unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education to address disparities based on race, but today’s threats to equitable and accessible education are being jeopardized through digital attacks.

Democratic Participation

Another foundational pillar of our civil rights is also under attack: democracy itself. Since 2016, foreign state actors and state-linked criminals have increasingly used sophisticated cyber operations to suppress minority democratic participation worldwide. The early warnings for the 2024 global elections are clear: Influence and disinformation threats will likely escalate—now enabled by AI-powered cyber operations. Unlike humans, AI systems have few limitations—they can spread disinformation and divisive content to a vast, multilingual, global audience across countless mediums, simultaneously and without rest. Worse, they can do so in an individualized, highly targeted manner.

The undermining of democracy is also more insidious, less about pushing communities toward a specific candidate than sowing distrust in the system itself—which leads fewer people to vote and otherwise suppresses civic participation. The concentration of these attacks on racial and ethnic minority groups means communities of color, who historically have not been in positions of power, will remain marginalized and disenfranchised. Consider a 2022 cyberattack on Mississippi’s election information website on that year’s Election Day—a significant event in a state without modern early voting options. The 2022 elections included crucial midterm elections that decided congressional representation, and Mississippi has the second-highest Black population (39.2 percent) in the US, behind only the District of Columbia—a jurisdiction without voting rights in Congress. The disruption also extended to state judicial elections, where most judges are elected in a single day, due to a lack of judicial primaries. In Mississippi, 11 percent of adults and 16 percent of Black voters could not cast a ballot because of past felony convictions. With the compounded challenges in Mississippi—no early voting, no judicial primaries, and the high rate of disenfranchisement—coupled with the opportunity of a pivotal Black voting bloc, access to voting information is imperative for those who can vote.

Weaponizing cyber operations for any form of voter suppression leaves marginalized groups further aggrieved and isolated. Worse, it takes away our only ability to address systemic inequities in wealth, health, and education: democratic participation.

These compounding problems require a new perspective on cyberattacks that looks beyond lost dollars, breached files, or doomsday debates over generative AI tools like ChatGPT or artificial general intelligence. Marginalized communities are suffering now and civil rights advocates cannot take on these burdens alone. To quote civil rights icon Fannie Lou Hamer, “The only thing we can do is work together.” Cybersecurity analysts, developers, journalists, researchers, and policymakers ​​must incorporate civil rights into our work by building inclusive defenses, understanding demographic trends in cyber attacks, deterring misuse of AI, and utilizing diverse teams.

Cyber operations are being used to attack the foundation of civil rights, democracy, and dignity around the world, and that is a problem that affects everyone.

[noah-william]

Visual Effects Trends to Watch Out for in 2024

2024 is anticipated to be a highly exciting year for visual effects. In 2023 we saw a rapid shift in the VFX industry with the expected boom of Artificial Intelligence. Today, AI and other new tools and technologies make a huge impact, including in the filmmaking processes like the screenplay, visual concept, VFX creation, editing, and sound. Artificial Intelligence will be employed almost everywhere. This will be an exciting change that will make storytelling tools to start becoming more accessible to all, while also fostering a more competitive and healthy environment for content creators across the board. Naturally, this will make it easier for artists to produce visually stunning content and shall provide wider access to technology, whether it is for writing filmmaking

Umpteen candidates. Infinite opportunities

The last year’s trend shift completely changed the horoscope of the visual effects sector. Studies show that the number of candidates enrolling for Animation and VFX courses has recently doubled effectively proving the popularity it gained among the general public. And, the reason being the scope of studying VFX has broadened worldwide never as before. Every VFX artist dream of working in premium studios like Disney, DNEG, Warner Bros etc or individually start their own business. Just like the boom in visual effects industry there is a similar boom happening in the film industry as well. The average amount of movies being released every year easily surpasses the former years. As most of the movies make use of VFX shots for the better theatrical experience, VFX industry effortlessly benefitted from this trend paving way for more opportunities for VFX artists.

Industry Statistics

India's visual effects and animation sector was estimated to be worth 107 billion Indian rupees in 2022, even after the pandemic's negative impact caused a decline in market value the year before. With revenue of over 50 billion Indian rupees, the VFX segment contributed the most to the overall market size. India's growing prosperity fuels the country's appetite for entertainment. Like other nations in the Asia-Pacific area, India's population is getting wealthier and its economy is expanding. The nation's media and entertainment sector has expanded as a result of rising income and improved connectivity.

Visual effects (VFX) and animation are widely growing media categories. A change towards more convenient and customized digital encounters occurred with the spread of the internet and its revolutionary technologies. These changes made more room for India's animation and visual effects industries to expand, and in 2022, the sector grew by almost 29%. In India, the media sector is dominated by animation and visual effects (VFX), which is expected to increase at a robust rate of 35 percent CAGR between 2022 and 2023.

The most recent developments in technology are establishing new avenues for creativity. As tools and techniques advance with time, VFX artists are experimenting and exploring new artistic possibilities. Traditional pipelines are being challenged by these innovative strategies, and 2024 will be a fascinating year for revaluating how the technology will interact with audience. In order to maximize ambition and minimize risk, VFX studios will be more involved and integrated, leveraging their knowledge of emerging technology and methods of operation.

The speed at which technological innovations are occurring is truly astounding. It is anticipated that in 2024, real-time technologies like Unreal Engine will continue to be adopted for virtual production applications and other uses. Although there are certain difficulties in this field, the opportunities and possible gains for studios are quite alluring. The widespread acceptance of these tactics has been greatly aided by the instruments' accessibility, and this envision is sure to be continued into 2024.

How to get into VFX industry?

The fact that you’re reading this blog and you’ve read it this far is itself a sign that you’re already into the step one of this process. Yes, step one is reading and studying intensively about VFX industry; Knowing the latest trends, range of opportunities, field that matches your taste and everything related which you can do research in. No matter whatever field you choose, having a thorough knowledge about what you’re getting yourself into is mandatory. The second step is opting a suitable program suited to your taste and interests. To pursue a career in VFX, select a  that is  well-reputated and has nice studio set-up.  If you’re interested in only one of the genres of visual effects sector, taking a full-time 3 year degree programme won’t be a good idea. Whether you did 3 year degree program or certificate/diploma course, the opportunities will knock at your door if you’ve a top-noch bunch of works/showreels that showcase your talent and hardwork. Basically, it’s not the education certificate that matters but its the quality of your showreels that decides your future.

However, enrolling in a suitable VFX course at a respectable institution is the simplest approach to get into the VFX and animation industries. This will have a profound impact on how you pursue employment in the sector as well as how your future is shaped.

Salary of a VFX Artist in India

You can offer yourself a solid foundation by enrolling in a reputable VFX and animation course in India. As to the April 2020 update, a VFX artist’s average monthly remuneration is INR 37.5k. As you advance to the position of assistant technical director or assistant animator/creative director, you can expect to generate more income accordingly. In India, the average monthly salary for a VFX artist is presently around INR 15-25k. It is possible to take on freelance work in addition to your full-time employment if you have at least four to five years of expertise in the business. You can make up to INR 45k to 60k a month working as a freelancer, depending on your expertise, reputation, and caliber of work. Expert animators and visual effects artists also bill by the hour. Anyhow, let’s patiently sit back and watch what 2024 has in store for the VFX industry.