The Third Slip: Issue 196 - Adelaide sending out this issue because crie

by Chuck & Tony

Hello, Slippers! Welcome to a delayed issue of The Third Slip - the weekly newsletter that distracts from the pain you feel about things you’re deeply invested in - like yourself, or the fate of the Indian cricket team with things that are larger and even more screwed, such as news from around the world. Basically, TTS is the equivalent of watching a Twitter fight between celebrities. It comes with the cringe benefit of making you feel so much better about how you’re coping with your reality.

This is issue 196. 196, of course, is the number of playing minutes that it took on day 3 for India to collapse to an improbable defeat after doing better than expected on the first 2 days of the first test in Australia. A trajectory that seems to be shared by Indian democracy. 67 years of flawed but decent run, followed by 6 years of self destruction into an unrecognisable lump of crap that makes you angry beyond belief. Okay, deep breath. Here’s the news...

At Home

Daya, there was a tod do

Let’s start with some news that’s not bad, uncharacteristic when the words ‘rape’, ‘CBI’ and ‘government’ are used in close proximity. The CBI confirmed what everyone already knew, Hathras victim was gang-raped & murdered, India was gaslit by Yogi Adityanath and Arnab Goswami. If you’re new to TTS (and India), yes, trust us, this is the good news. 

Rank and fail

We miss the ol’ days when ‘ranking controversy’ meant SIBM making it to a list of top 10 BSchools in India (hate mail for this goes to Tony please, thanks).

From Human Freedom Index (111/162) to Press Freedom (142/180), our global reputation is in tatters. Don’t take it from us, take it from centrist extraordinaire  Shekhar Gupta in his latest do-I-love-Modi-or-hate-him piece. And for those who think international folks have no business ranking us, a national survey showed child nutrition levels have worsened over the last 5 years (Thanks to Nehru, one guesses). Not sure if legal randomness is being ranked, but with Kunal Kamra & Sanitary Panels taken to court for contempt of it, one can take a guess. But hey, the SC did uphold farmers’ right to protest. So see? We’re fans. SC FTW. 

Cons and Pros

In cricket and lawmaking, India was hoping for a contest and concession. Instead we got a procession and protest. 

The farmer protests continue and have got international attention (partially thanks to the social media-savvy of the protestors & their supporters). Still, it’s at an impasse. And again, lest we come across as blindly opposed to anything the BJP does, a reminder that the farm laws have some merit. But let’s just say there’s been a wide gulf in the government’s strat team and project management teams.

Winter is apparently not coming

Us senior folk from the era of dial up internet and Orkut will speak eloquently of great things from the past like the internet anagram server which told us that Parliament is an anagram of Partial men.

India has handled Covid so well (government’s words, not ours). But the Winter Session is cancelled (government’s recommendation, not ours). It’s not like the prospect of facing heat from the opposition amid cold weather has anything to do with it, no? Makes sense - you can’t work in a building whose foundation stone has just been laid na. Think, liberals, think.

Illustration by Harini Kannan. (Definitely ours)

Other things

• Dal Fry: Facebook considered banning the Bajrang Dal from its platform but was afraid of backlash and safety of its employees.

• UlliFans*: The BJP made some small inroads in Kerala. Like not serious and all but even Amazon was dismissed by B&N and Netflix laughed at by Blockbuster once. All we’re saying is - fellow Mallu anti-nationals, stay vigilant. 

*Ulli means Onion and is a nickname for BJP state president K Surendran who denied eating beef when a picture surfaced, claiming that it was “onion curry” instead. UlliFans is a play on OnlyFans. Jokes are always better with footnotes. No?

• Another thread: Brahmins. Hurt sentiments. Textbooks. BJP state. You know how this story goes. Karnataka government drops passages in school textbooks.

• Moo point: The same state’s new prevention of cattle slaughter rules are going to hurt dairy farmers. And Muslims. Because lol obviously.

• Keju Kat li: Oh look RSS-lite party, AAP, is expanding into UP! Now we can look forward to earnest folks like Atishi getting a lampooning from actual thugs instead of Gautam Gambhir.

• Drawing the shot straw: As the UK & US start getting the vaccine, the rollout at home will start early next year, with obvious priority groups. Storage, distribution and rich countries buying up all those supplies means that unless you’re frontline/elderly, expect to be Zoomin’ well into 2021.

Global things

Putting the ‘at last’ in ‘a presidential election’ (it’s in there)

The US Electoral college has made it official - Joe Biden is the winner of the election. Following which a bunch of Trump pals congratulated him - Russia’s Putin, Brazil’s Bolsonaro, Mexico’s Obrador & the GOP’s own Mitch McConnell. We’re very excited about Biden’s progressive cabinet - now featuring a native American woman for interior secretary, a black man for the Environmental Protection Agency and an openly gay man (Pete Buttigieg!) for transport. They’ll have their hands full - this week Russia conducted a massive hacking into various US government agencies. 

Beleaguered Tech

We’re not gonna mince words - Big Tech is facing a lot of backlash. In the US, and in Europe (where some new very harsh rules are being mulled). The optics ain’t great: Supposed rivals Facebook and Google are colluding to shut out rivals in the ad market, while Facebook and Apple are having a very public, ugly spat (one that could have major ramifications, though). And poor Apple must be thinking that they’d find relief in India where nobody gives a crap about privacy and corruption they’d be safe, but alas their contract manufacturer in Bangalore saw violence and riots over unpaid salaries. 

Profiteer? Profit here.

Keen to show Big Tech aren’t the only assholes in town, it turns out that despite 45/50 of the biggest US companies turning a profit this year, a majority have laid off staff and gave profits to shareholders. There’s something very wrong here, even if you’re a free market absolutist who looks at employees as a variable resource.

Other things, very quickly now

• Scot free?: Like a Wasim Akram delivery or an autorickshaw in front of you, Brexit could still swing either way. Scotland has had enough of all this and wants independence. LOL.

• Sigh: There’s a severe drought in Zimbabwe.

• No Myanmar is an island: Bangladesh has built a new island (with infra) for the Rohingya, on a new island. But, it’s in a cyclone prone area and the Rohingya, understandably, don’t want to move there. They would like to go back to their home country with dignity.

• Nervous laughter: Remember Aleksei Navalny? That Putin rival who was attacked with a nerve agent and almost died? Putin was asked about that. He laughed it off saying if agents wanted to kill him, they’d have finished off the job.

• Phew: 344 Nigerian schoolboys who were abducted by Boko Haram have been freed after negotiations

• No Malware: Not New Zealand, not Taiwan (which handled Covid better than even New Zealand with a woman President in charge), the Economist names Malawi the country of the year. Fascinating.

• Boris the blade: A new alliance of democracies to fight authoritarianism? The G7 becomes D10? Maybe. Spoiler alert: It’s led by Boris Johnson who is India’s guest of honour for the Republic Day following Jair Bolsnaro. 

• MENA will be MENA: A very, very sobering list: 10 top crises in 2021: Mostly in Africa and the Middle-East, mostly thanks to religion and politicians. The top one: Yemen, third year in a row.

• The climate on climate change is changing: Despite it being the hottest year on record, there are silver linings. Coal is on the way out. Britain is the latest to announce very aggressive climate targets. Joe Biden is taking the climate change bull by its horns. 

• You reddit right: Reddit acquired Dubsmash which was news only because we realised Dubsmash was still a thing.

LinkedOut

Some great reads we came across this week

• At home, an optimistic view on why propaganda to brand farmers ‘anti-national’ is unlikely to work.

• 10 years on, many Tunisians blame the man who started the Arab Spring by self-immolating. And even if the Arab Spring didn’t achieve a dream democracy in the Middle East, it still was… something.

• This article that shows the disparity in access to clean air in Delhi (also an amazing example of data-meets-multimedia that NYT has got so good at)

• An astonishing story of gold washing up the shores of a Venezuelan fishing village.

• Perspective - the pandemic changes everything. Good.

• Science won. Good.

And that’s almost all for issue 196!Say hello to the authors on Instagram (Chuck | Tony), Twitter (Chuck | Tony), or by replying to this email. Until next week, may you walk 2 inches taller because your Christmas shoepping heels the wounds that are stilletto be forgotten.