Weekend reads

  1.  It isn’t surprising that measures to arrest the slide of the Indian rupee failed. When holding $400 billion in reserves has not arrested the rupee’s depreciation, how could tinkering around for $8 billion-$10 billion in inflows stop it, writes Puja Mehra in The Hindu. 
  2. When Raya Sarkar released the first list of sexual predators last year, there was a backlash from a section of feminists questioning the circumvention of due process in taking forward these complaints. Shivam Vij in The Print points out that former Tehelka head Tarun Tejpal’s gaming of legal system shows why #MeToo doesn’t believe in due process.  
  3. Everyone enthused by the #MeToo movement must watch out for the blowback from those rattled by it. It will come, says Pamela Philipose in Indian Express. 
  4.   Arguably, extremist organisations like the Sanatan Sanstha have emerged after being disillusioned with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Like the RSS, it too believes in militaristic training and taking an extreme – sometimes ridiculous – positin on the Hindu religion. There are now enough reasons to ban the organisation, writes Sanghamitra Prabhal in the Economic and Political Weekly. 
  5.   What happens when climate changes quickly in a previously frozen place, when the earth heats up and the mountains melt? In the high Swiss Alps, here’s what happens: The ice gives up the bodies – and the secrets – of the past, reports Sean Flynn in GQ. 
  6. In this interview to Longreads, memoirist Tanya Marquardt talks about consent, trauma, and investigating our memories in the age of #MeToo. 
  7.   A lawsuit alleging discrimination against Asian applicants to Harvard has been discussed as though it will determine the future of affirmative action. In reality, the stakes are somewhat different. Jeannie Suk Gersen writes in the New Yorker on the racial controversy at Harvard University.   
  8.   Rather than annoying a trading partner, the Tories turn a blind eye to the country’s excesses. Emily Thornberry on why it is time for the United Kingdom to confront Saudi Arabia on human rights violations.   
  9. The more marginal and excluded a person is, the more that is allowed to assert their ethnic identity and exclusive way of life. This is how the politically correct landscape is now structured, writes Marxist philosopher Slavoj Zizek in The Philosophical Salon. 
  10. In the Indian Express, Devarshi Mishra writes on why English is a necessity for India. Its benefits are far more than its costs.