Amit's Blog

Why India’s Delimitation Debate Misses the Point The debate over expanding India's Parliament from 543 to a proposed 850 seats has become a flashpoint for a deeper, more uncomfortable question: does increasing the number of elected representatives actually strengthen democracy, or does it merely expand political patronage without improving accountability? Drawing on Mancur Olson's theory of collective action, this article argues that the logical remedy for India's governance challenges lies not in enlarging the Lok Sabha but in creating more states and devolving power to them. Smaller political units enable more perceptible contributions and greater accountability, while parliamentary expansion risks institutionalising the very dynamics that keep citizens passive and politicians powerful. The masses' embrace of the "more MPs" solution over genuine federal reform illustrates a tragic irony—the public buys into a dubious logic that ultimately serves organised ...

A tale of zero, translators, and the geopolitics of historical memory The conventional narrative of "Arab science" bridging India and Europe is a historical shorthand that has become a convenient fiction. What actually transpired was a multi-ethnic, multi-religious intellectual marathon spanning centuries. Persian bureaucrats funded the enterprise, Syrian Christian monks did the heavy lifting of translation, Indian mathematicians supplied the conceptual toolkit—and the Arabian Peninsula, while culturally significant, was notably peripheral to the scientific engine room. This article traces the journey of knowledge from India to Europe, exposing the erasures embedded in the label "Arab science" and revealing how modern geopolitics, nationalist agendas, and academic laziness have conspired to simplify a gloriously complex story into a single, misleading adjective. The zero, it turns out, carries more philosophical baggage than any number ever should. The Ind...

How capitalism moved from inherited privilege to earned success—and why "earned" itself is now one of the most consequential questions in political economy The great ideological victory of modern capitalism lies not in its productive capacity but in its moral camouflage. Privilege no longer arrives bearing crests and coronets; it arrives bearing diplomas. The transition from aristocracy to meritocracy represents one of the most profound shifts in how societies justify inequality—yet the underlying mechanics of advantage have proven remarkably resilient. Thomas Piketty's monumental scholarship, spanning Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2014) and Capital and Ideology (2020), systematically dismantles the meritocratic narrative that has come to define contemporary capitalism, revealing how the inheritance of advantage has simply changed costumes rather than disappeared. I. The Ideological Architecture of Inequality Every durable inequality regime requires what Pi...

How a centuries-old theatrical device continues to astonish in an age that claims to have seen everything In the flickering light of a Sichuan stage a performer’s face becomes a revolving door of emotion, loyalty, rage and divinity, each identity discarded in less than a heartbeat. Bian Lian, the face-changing art of Sichuan Opera, is neither pure magic nor pure theatre but a compressed civilisation of silk, secrecy, apprenticeship and philosophy. Rooted in Qing-dynasty innovation yet drawing on far older regional traditions, it externalises the human heart through colour and velocity rather than the actor’s own features. Today it survives as both intangible heritage and tourist magnet, practised by a few hundred specialists whose incomes range from middle-class stability to the rewards of international gala circuits. Its continued power lies less in uncrackable engineering than in the tacit mastery that no high-speed camera can fully bestow. In an era of digital spectacle the ancien...