Rashid's Blog: A Place for Inquisitive Souls

I imagine most readers will know Elaine Scarry ‘s vital account of The Body in Pain .  She has produced several important books since then, of course, but Scarry explains that her latest book, T hermonuclear monarchy: choosing between democracy and doom , published last month by Norton, emerged directly from her first:

It directly emerged from “The Body in Pain,” which has a first chapter on torture and a second on war. I was trying to address the question why when people prohibit torture they make it an absolute prohibition, but when they make a prohibition on war, they always make exceptions.

I realized that nuclear weapons much more approximate the condition of torture than of war. Torture involves zero consent on the part of the injured, whereas conventional war allows many levels of consent. With nuclear weapons, there’s zero consent.

There is an excellent, wide-ranging conversation between Scarry…

By Raksha Sharda

Very recently, President Pranab Mukherjee awarded Ahmedabad the glory of being one of the best cities under the Basic Services to the Urban Poor (BSUP) and Interest Subsidy Scheme for Housing the Urban Poor (ISHUP). But does the city deserve this award? Ahmedabad is the largest city in Gujarat and the seventh largest city in India. The total population of the city is around 5.5 million, of which about nine lakh reside in the slums with 710 in the city. In order to bring about a holistic approach for improving and upgrading the infrastructure facilities of slum settlements a flagship scheme — Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) — was initiated by the Government of India in 2005 identified cities, including Ahmedabad.

The physical progress of the JNNURM has been good with 33,824 dwelling units (DUs) being approved, of which 33,074 DUs have been completed and…

On Sunday, China released a 31-point plan mapping out the next six years of the nation’s urban development. Between now and 2020, the government will take steps to modernize agriculture and transform into a consumer driven, service-based and environmentally friendly economy, all while ameliorating the various social and economic gaps between urban and rural, and coastal and inland that have widened since Deng Xiaoping opened the country to free market activity in 1978. China will also superintend the urbanization of an additional 100 million migrants into cities, while granting urban status to 100 million of 234 million total people who currently live in cities but can’t access basic services.

Social and economic imbalances featured prominently in the plan issued on Sunday. The document stated that while China’s urbanization rate has risen to 53%—lower still than nations with comparable per capita income levels—only about 36% are legal urban residents, meaning that…