Bored Bohemian

  BRACING FOR DESTINY: AUSTRALIA’S DEMOGRAPHIC CHALLENGES   INTRODUCTION The largest country in the smallest continent, Australia, was shaped by waves of immigrants - including prisoners, indentured laborers and ambitious free men -and is home to a marginalized yet resilient indigenous population. Although a vast unique terrain hosting the Great Barrier Reef, the harsh claustrophobic outback and thriving populous cities, Australia has many challenges common with the WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and  Democratic) countries such as an ageing population, and an aggressive China. Then there are other concerns unique to its geography and its place in the pacific such as the proximity to the Asian theatre of power and a capricious climate. With a population of 26 million, Australia accounts for just 0.33% of the World’s population. The majority of them reside in areas facing the Indian and Pacific oceans. Beside the populous continents of Asia and Africa, Austr...

IMAGE- BUILDING:   A COMPARISON OF THE SOFT POWER DIPLOMACY OF INDIA AND CHINA INTRODUCTION It was the political scientist Joseph Nye who coined the term soft power , deeming it to be the art of civilized  persuasion .    I t is conversion by cultural capital  and a ccording to Nye, power can be exerted mainly via   three means  -  coercion ,  inducement and attraction .   I t is the third one which operates by means of allure and which we call soft power . When America was forced to retreat from  Vietnam and Afghanistan or when the Soviet Union was  faced with collapse, a greater power was losing before the will to fight expressed by a smaller power. T he ancient people of Afghanistan resisted the foreign ideologies of communism and western hegemony . We can see a similar dynamic at play in the current invasion of Ukraine by Russia. Apart from actual combat, both sides embark on an informational war and i n every such  oc...

LOCKED IN  It seemed like we lost the world then - the modern world. Though the "laptop class" soon migrated to the digital domain, the circumference of everyone's existence shrank overnight. People who were till then peering at Mars, were confined to the narrowest range- a mass hiding out against an ancient enemy. I had been working as an assistant professor when the lockdown was announced. It was almost the end of the academic year. What started out as a well-deserved vacation dragged on turning homes into bunkers and quashing plans like parasites. The initial ignorance and panic regarding the scale of the threat was hard enough. But as time passed and deaths rose, other side effects began to emerge. Taking a break from teaching, I began to explore content writing. While some of my friends lost loved ones, others struggled without work. I saw the people around me lost in various capacities. The most unorthodox of them had to return to their orthodox hometowns. All over ...