Sunday Reads - How safe is your daughter & In the dark

• Boston carjack victim recounts his harrowing night. (Boston Globe)
• 50 Machines you would need to rebuild civilization. (ClimateerInvest)
• How safe is your daughter? (New Indian Express) 
• In the dark: dark matter is the commonest, most elusive stuff in the universe. Can we grasp this great unsolved problem in physics? (aeon)

Watch this 13-minute Jaguar ad video. Brilliant. (Hat Tip: Mohan Ramiah)

Pak Films: Holding a Mirror to Society

India is obsessed with films. Not surprisingly, India is home to the largest film industry in the world. Some films hold a mirror to the happenings in the society; for some, films provide an escape into fantasy from the same harsh realities.

But can films shape a nation’s destiny? Yes, says Nadeem Paracha, a columnist for Pakistani newspaper, Dawn. In an interesting and humourous piece titled, Evil Popcorn, Paracha picks three Pakistani films made in the 1980s and 1990s, and shows how they both shaped and reflected the deepening of the Jihadist mentality in the Pakistani society.

Here’s an excerpt:

I went looking for them to investigate a possibility of finding the cultural roots of what grew into religious and ideological extremism and myopia in Pakistan.

One can pin-point almost all of Ziaul Haq’s Machiavellian farce in the name of Islam as containing the main roots of the social and political extremism that now plagues the nation.

I will not go into the academic and scholarly details of this observation, but rather discuss the issue by reviewing the three films that I rediscovered. Two were made and released in the 1990s and one in 1980. They are interesting examples of the kind of mindset that many common Pakistanis started to develop at the conclusion of the anti-Soviet ‘Afghan jihad’ in the late 1980s. (End of excerpt)

Read the complete piece here. Highly recommended.

The Shifting Great Chinese Middle Class

China’s middle class is growing, and growing big. Almost all demographic estimates point to a startling statistic: by 2030, the size of China’s middle class will be more than 700 million, the largest in the world. It is believed that currently 25% of the overall population is middle class while in urban areas the number goes up to nearly 40%. 

As more people move up the income ladder, consumer spending will only increase. As we know, it is the nouveau riche class which is aspirational and has a consumerist bent of mind. In other words, higher disposable income (greater purchasing power) will only make for greater discretionary spending, which means big bucks for global brands.  

Ever since the Chinese government opened the economy in 1977, economic development has more or less been concentrated in the eastern parts of the country, especially along the east coast. As manufacturing boomed, it attracted migrant workers from the less-developed western areas and the large hinterland. The consistently high economic growth rates over the last three decades brought wealth and riches to the urban classes, thus raising the economic status of hundreds of millions of Chinese. 

However, the middle class demographic pattern of concentration is changing. The infographic (below) from the Reuters blog shows the shifting demographic patterns of the Chinese middle class. As the text on the graphic says, “today, China’s middle class urban households are mostly concentrated along the eastern seaboard. By 2020, following the rapid growth of cities in the interior, they will be spread throughout much of China. Today’s graphic shows middle and affluent urban households as a percentage of total urban households in 2012 and projections for 2020.”

Sunday Reads - The Martian Chroniclers & Getting behind Israeli frankness

This Sunday's installment of some interesting reads.

• Getting behind Israeli frankness. (BBC Magazine)
• How geography explains the U.S. (Foreign Policy)
• The Martian Chroniclers. (New Yorker)
• Religion & human trafficking: Freedom for the captives. (Economist) 

How did gender roles originate?

In most conservative societies, including India, there is a great deal of rigidity concerning the roles of men and women in various walks of life. There are thin red lines that either sex should not cross, especially in social and economic matters. So, how did this demarcation of roles between the sexes happen? 

In her interesting Al-Jazeera piece, Alison Booth writes about how the relative bargaining power of men and women has evolved.

"Millions of years ago our ancestors began to colonise what Seabright terms "a very risky evolutionary niche: the long childhood". This needed more cooperation between the sexes in order to ensure the survival of the offspring, and sex became not merely reproduction but also a cooperative venture.

"We all know the profound differences between male and female sex cells. Women's are large, scarce and relatively expensive to make. Men's are small, abundant and cheap to manufacture. Because of the relative scarcity of women's eggs, and their costliness once fertilised, women have to be selective about the source of the sperm. A woman carries and nurtures the foetus in her body for over nine months. Once the baby is born, she has to feed and protect the child for a long time afterwards. She does not want to waste her opportunities on unsuitable men; they have to be screened out. So we have female selectivity on the one hand and male persistence on the other hand." (End of excerpt)

Read the complete article here.

Sunday Reads - An executioner's tale & Replacing the $

Sunday Reads series is back after a really long time.

• What sparks prejudice in humans. (BBC)

• An executioner's tale from Yemen. (TIME)

• What currency will change the dollar. (MarketWatch)

• What the world needs from BRICS. (Project Syndicate) 

Source: DNA

India's Auto Industry - Stuck with Flat Tyres!

India's auto industry is stuck in a massive traffic jam. The industry has experienced its worst ever year in the last decade, with sales plunging 6.7% in FY'13, the biggest drop since FY'01 when the numbers went down by 7.7%. At one time, the industry was growing at over 20%, making it the fastest growing car market, after China.

The huge fall in sales reflects lower consumer demand mainly on account of lower overall economic activity and rising fuel and maintenance costs. This has added inventory and piled cost on the beleaguered auto industry, already reeling under discounts and price undercutting.

Source: Reuters India