Quick notes: Apartheid | Rural revival...

• Our English Apartheid: Economic opportunity (in today's India) is almost exclusively for the English educated. Not knowing English is something the average Indian carries like a shame. There really is only one way to erase it: universal schooling in one's own mother tongue throughout India with a strong second language program.

5/ This issue is a silent social divide in India and the Indians on the "other side" silently endure their lingiuistic second class status and all too often blame themselves for their fate.

We have to address this in order to make broad based progress.

— Sridhar Vembu (@svembu) June 5, 2020



• Rural Revival and Technological Self-Reliance: Sridhar Vembu | Zoho




• "We make do with whatever is available": Pahadis are not used to complaining. A heartwarming tale of how returning migrant used the time to beautify the schools where they are quarantined.



• Narikutti Swami (Barry Long): By the 1960s Arunachala mountain had been almost completely denuded of all its original forests. Narikutti Swami was the first person to begin reforestation on the slopes of Arunachala. Many of the trees he planted are still there and nowadays the eastern slope of the hill has better forest coverage than at any time in the last 100 years. Narikutti Swami’s original name was Barry Long. He was born in Sydney, Australia, in 1930 and lived a fairly normal life there until, around 1957, he went to the cinema to see The Razor’s Edge, a film about a western seeker who goes to India and meets an Indian guru who transforms his outlook on life. Barry left the cinema with tears streaming down his face and a determination to go to India.




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• EU-Vietnam FTA: The agreement is expected to enhance Vietnam's attractiveness for investors shifting factories out of China and will help Vietnam raise its skills and standards.