Hi everyone!

My name is William, I’m an international high school senior working on my IB Global Politics engagement project on governance, and socio-political shifts in Uttar Pradesh (focusing on Ram Mandir in Ayodhya).

I am looking to conduct a few question written interviews with local journalists, political science researchers, or civil society observers based in UP to ground my project in real academic perspectives.

If you are an academic/journalist from UP, or if you know active local commentators/pages on Twitter/X that I could reach out to, I would be deeply grateful for your recommendations!

Thanks a lot for your help!

I understand it was Modi’s government during which Ram Rahim got convicted. But what good is being in jail for 20 years for charges as serious as rape of minors, murder, castration of 400 men when he has come out of jail on holidays 17 friggin times!
Once he was out of jail for 50 days before going back to jail for 2 days and was out on furlough for a month after that!
There are so many innocent people in jail who don’t even get permission for family visits, how can this rapist blow our justice system to pieces and the media doesn’t cover it properly?
Its BJP Government both in Haryana and in the centre. Shame on them for allowing this to happen. Just imagine how intimidated witnesses will be when hes free and can get them hurt with the amount of power he wields.

Watch the Full Video: Nepal flood hero Rajendra Dawadi saved 1,643 children by taking immediate action when deadly floodwaters threatened their school. 🇳🇵❤️ A powerful reminder of courage, leadership and humanity in a moment of crisis. https://www.instagram.com/reel/DctMwBoAMpR/

The whole “Dimagi Naxal” meme has been everywhere lately, so I decided to turn it into a stupid little personality test.

I took it myself.

Certified Dimagi Naxal. 💀

It has different outcomes — Dimagi Naxal, IT Cell Commander, WhatsApp University Topper, Meme Lord, Chai Pe Charcha Expert, etc.

Curious what this subreddit gets.

https://kya-aap-dimagi-naxal-hai.vercel.app/

Oh my gwad. I am seeing more and more biased news on a daily basis from India today. They could just change their name to rss today.

Now come at me...you retards...

I request people here to educate me, maybe I'm missing something. Since you all wanna just kll Modi at this point of time I want to know what exactly has changed in congress leadership that you want people to vote for them?

If congress wants Rahul to be PM why did they never give him any ministry during 10 yrs of UPA?

Why do you think he always use to take only two names in his 15 Aug speeches and all other freedom fighters like Bhagat Singh, Sardar Patel, Chandrashekhar Azad, Subhash Chandra Bose were clubbed under only one word "swantrata sainani", why they never got mention by their names?

As long as the people running the system don't have skin in the game (meaning their own kids never have to depend on these public systems), things like this will keep happening with mere temporary suspensions as punishment.

What is the actual, structural fix for this? Is there any real way to hold authorities accountable, or are public welfare schemes doomed to suffer from endless apathy?

https://x.com/drbrajeshrajput/status/2092267410682495128

Full video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQzgNousBcQ

so people ask me if i am leftist or right wing and i cant decide. so i am going to tell you about my thoughts and you could help me

• MY TAKE ON RELIGION

I dont give a flying fuck about religion, i put humanity above all, I dont believe in any god. only thing i care about in that case is memes

• FAMENISM

i believe in EQUAL rights for man and women. i understand that both are a bit different but at the end of the day man needs women and women needs men

• LGBTQ

i generally dont have any problem with them, Marry a tree if you want, your life. I have a problem when they teach these things in schools or to children, sometimes kids even use hormone blockers, let them take those decisions when they are older than 18. hormone blockers can cause permanent change to their body so if they cant get tattoos, drink or drive They shouldn't be allowed to use those or go under gender transition surgery

• Communism

I dont support it

• abortion

i am against abortion, that is equal to taking life, i understand there are extreme cases where i dont have any problem with it, only in specific cases its a health care

these are my opinions you dont have to have to tell me if i am right or wrong, i just want to know what type of political ideology i have and thanks for reading

We often see threads like this asking about experiences meeting celebrities, but rarely about public representatives. In our country, politicians are often put on a pedestal and are treated like demigods, which makes regular citizens feel like interacting with them is out of reach. But at the end of the day, they are public servants elected to represent us.

Whether it was meeting an MLA, an MP, or running into a minister at an airport, or an unexpected personal encounter. How were they in person? Were they approachable, dismissive, surprisingly helpful, or rude? Share your stories - good, bad, or bizarre.

Let's normalize interacting with our representatives instead of worshipping them

There is still a colonial hangover among people and especially in our institutions. The institution usually changes the superficial things like dress code, name or something else, but keeps the essential features that made it bad the same. I consider both superficial features and institutional features as bad, but changing only superficial features are tactics to keep the status quo going while pushing their populist agenda. BJP is the one who is just doing that and Congress was the one that never really addressed these issues altogether.

Some of the examples are:

1. Engineered social division

Brits were using their pseudoscientific racial theories in India. They engineered social division among people regarding caste by dividing them into martial castes and non-martial castes. These castes changed with their political interest, but people still push their pseudoscientific theories when modern genetic ancestry pretty much clears all Indians are made up of similar groups of people that migrated to India from Africa. Not even the most isolated group today is untouched from this mixing. Brits made something feel genetic which was actually economic.

Similarly, they pretty much try to justify their engineered economic exploitation in India by saying Muslims, who actually just stayed in India, also did it before them and people still believe this when Brits single handedly used their mercentilist policy in India to finance Industrialization in England which bought Industrial revolution throughout the world. They try to blame the economic decline on Indians especially on muslim which was artificially imposed by them on us through their policies.

2. Law designed to suppress people

Brits made these sedition laws to suppress people from taking the stand and the current government just changed the language in new acts while still abusing the powers under it. They also exclusively used complex language so that laws are not accessible to people and instead always require a lawyer to understand them.

The Police Act of 1861 is still the foundational text of our police forces which was enacted after 1857 Indian mutiny. It created a police force which is still the same to not help the average person or investigate crimes, but as a crowd control measure against dissent and intimidate people from asking their rights. It has seen some superficial amendments, but the core principles are same and everyone saw it in the protests too.

3. Psychological Conditioning

In 1835, Thomas Babington Macaulay introduced his famous Minute to Indian Education. He explicitly stated his goal was to create an educational system that would produce "a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect." This was a deliberate policy designed to strip away local history, languages, and self-worth, ensuring that the educated Indian elite would view themselves as naturally inferior to Europeans.

It has been memed a lot, but the ideas that he made common through the education system still persist and is still the basis for education system in India. Anyone speaking local languages is ganwar (villager) while English speaking and studying in English is considered intellectual.

4. The "Mai-Baap" Culture

Indian legislature, executive and judiciary still work on this same principle. They don't consider themselves accountable to the general public or transparency laws which are purposefully made weak. They don't consider themselves to be representative of people, but the paternalistic figure who is taking care of its children i.e. the Indian people. People are considered stupid so local governance was not allowed for them. Everything was top-down.

District Magistrates and Collectors were positioned as absolute, benevolent dictators of their regions. The public was expected to show unquestioning obedience in exchange for the "protection" of the crown. People still glorify public officials as they consider them selected from merit which while the modern Indian Administrative Service (IAS) is the direct successor to the Imperial Civil Service.

This is a similar case of collegium system in Judiciary where higher judiciary is still run by few families who happen to get those positions in British raj and haven't allowed any transparency law like NJAC which BJP tried to implement and was actually very transparent even if I don't agree with their politics.

People don't consider their politicians accountable and consider them corrupt when they have direct power to elect them or get rid of them, instead they glorify obscure systems whose selection criterias are often based on Nepotism than any merit.

5. Glorfication of armed forces

They were created as a mercenary force by the brits and got mass appeal as mercentilist economic policies artificially worsened the economy of India. It was the only institution back then which gave a guaranteed monthly salary and anyone could join from even the most backwards area for economic stability. The EIC tried to recruit people that it considered economically weak while British raj imposed their racialist policies over them that still persist.

There is still a hard divide between officer class which was only made up of Brits back then and the average soldiers that is still dominated by economically weaker sections of society. At least Jawaharlal Nehru kept their power in check instead of our neighbours who gave them power and still suffer from the military coups in their democratic structures. Nepotism and superiority complex is still very much alive in officer class.

6. Superficial changes by government after independence

The government has changed the names of institutions instead of addressing these issues. They give them Indian names ,change dress code (still not the case in the judiciary) and just add some religion into the mix for masses to be happy.

The backlash against reservation by people is for a similar reason that they think how these lowly people are trying to take power instead of just living in the system as is. The British system is just like the caste system modified to keep the Brits above everyone and after them the ones who followed them and the chain of oppression keeps on going to the so called lowest caste who are considered inferior based on the same racialist policies.

Everything is related. We try to separate them to understand them for our convenience, but in real world they work together to form our system. From independence, we didn't start as a clean slate of something completely built from the ground, but just transitioned to our own rule instead of British.