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...powered by a thorough critique of Indian democracy. Free elections, she writes, have failed to challenge the rich and powerful. "The hoary institutions of Indian democracy - the judiciary, the police, the 'free' press and, of course, elections - far from working as a system of checks and balances, quite often do the opposite." But there is more passion than reasoned argument here. Urbanization, for example, may be destroying rural communities, but it also liberates people from the appalling restrictions of village life. Roy couldn't care a whit for such subtleties - yet to fault her for that is to miss...
...Block Re your cover story, "Can China Save the World?" [Aug. 10]: Throughout years of turmoil and political instability, the Chinese have often suffered the prejudice and discrimination of Westerners. However, in recent times, China has opened up, transforming an impoverished country into a miracle of history. With a booming economy, a huge population, remarkably high economic growth and with more affluent Chinese willing to spend big bucks on luxury goods, no wonder investors from everywhere are pouring much of their resources into the Chinese market and trying hard to woo many Chinese consumers and companies to their own homelands...
That cozy post World War II arrangement, in which the state has regularly arbitrated between big business and unions, may have helped those three groups, but it has too often ignored wider French society. The system has made reform nearly impossible and is now "sclerotic," according to Julien Bayou, 29, one of the half-dozen or so people at the core of France's new protest movement. "Thirteen percent of people in France live in poverty, youth unemployment is above 25%, and the number of people who can't keep up with the price of rent and food continues...
...Bayou and buddies Manuel Domergue and Lionel Primault identified a handful of specific problems that thousands, if not millions, of people face every day. Then they created groups dedicated to those individual causes, with perhaps a dozen full-time members running each. Every group comes up with creative and often wickedly funny new ways to focus attention to their issue, drawing in supporters and hordes of journalists who don't want to miss a good story. It has proved wildly successful. "What you have is a small number of brilliant people taking up problems that may seem marginal compared...
Indeed, the Obama era has helped clarify an often overlooked dichotomy in late-night TV comedy: the divide between the political satirists (Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Letterman much of the time) and the topical jokesters (Leno, Conan O'Brien and Jimmy Fallon). O'Brien's middle-of-the-road, Carsonesque wisecracks in particular ("President Obama's approval ratings have slumped to an all-time low, which explains Obama's new Secret Service code name: NBC") are looking comparatively tame now that he's opposite the increasingly politicized Letterman - whose contempt for Bush-era politics comes through in his interviews as much...