Reportage on a planet without equitable or sustainable development.
The slab that fell (and the story it told)
Black of grackles glints purple as, wheeling in sun-glare,
The flock splays away to pepper the blueness of distance.
Soon they are lost in the tracklessness of air.
I watch them go. I stand in my trance.
Another year gone...
Am reminded, all of a sudden, of this poem by Robert Penn Warren. 2021 is flickering to a close. Unless something extraordinary happens, my last report for 2021 is done. And I am looking forward to going off the internet, kicking the phone aside, and spending the next ten or so days in relative isolation, reading for pleasure. As in the past, seeking enchantment, I have returned to reading on evolution. I read Metazoa, to grasp how sentience developed in the early life-forms. And then, casting the net farther back in time, trying to understand how life itself began, I read Seven Clues To The Origin of Life. Next up, Nick Lane’s The Vital Question. And then, we will see.
2021 has not been a good year. I have lost two wonderful friends — Debjeet Sarangi and Anirban Bora. The world has also lost gentle, erudite Keshav Desiraju. Mythili Sivaraman passed away as well. Professionally too, in terms of work done, the year has been subpar. A lot of relatively analytic reports, almost all of them on energy — the year started with Coal, moved to Solar, Net Zero and then the warps and wefts of our energy transition — but almost nothing investigative.
Much of the year passed in this welter, one of knowing the work is nowhere near what it needs to be. I have to do a better job of balancing the two in 2022.
On now to the report I filed — about Lakshadweep and DDDNH administrator Praful Patel.
In the past, Patel has called his civil construction drive ‘developmentalism’ and labelled critics as “vested interests”. When the slab fell, it created a crack through which this claim could be tested. And so, this report took a look at the mechanics of civil construction under him. Do read.
I am an Indian journalist with interests in energy, environment, climate and India’s ongoing slide into right-wing authoritarianism. My book, Despite the State, an examination of pervasive state failure and democratic decay in India, was published by Westland Publications, India, in January 2021. My work has won the Bala Kailasam Memorial Award; the Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Award; five Shriram Awards for Excellence in Financial Journalism; and, more recently, been a finalist at the True Story Award and GIJN’s Global Shining Light Awards. Write to me at despitethestate@protonmail.com.
“Westland closure: Titles that are selling fast and a few personal recommendations,” by Chetana Divya Vasudev, Moneycontrol. (Because this happened too. In February, a year after DtS was released, Amazon decided to shutter Westland, which published the book. The announcement saw folks rushing to buy copies of Westland books before stocks run out.)
Fractured/Earth 
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