Malavika
@MaLawdy
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π΄ constitutionalism beyond constitutionality. π° inner life beyond buzzwords. π€Ήπ½ββοΈ parenting, reading, writing, lawyering. π notes on the above ππΎ
Joined June 2012
not all of us are raised with books, literature, classics and a reading culture around us. it's fine. reading comprehension is a cultivable skill. in fact, the bulk of my reading comprehension skills have emerged during the four years I worked on my doctoral work, imo.
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I've defended my PhD thesis on cooperative federalism in India - by far the toughest thing I've done professionally - and it's curtains on my journey in legal academia. I had immense support from unlikely quarters. thank you to each soul here who helped me access materials.
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to friends who have chased a similar dream in law as mine but didnβt fully fit into the moulds of law practice in India, and to friends who are opting out of Big Law, scared because of its uncertainties, I cannot recommend highly enough @p_millerdβs The Pathless Path!.
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a week before I'm about to be fully done with my PhD and Libgen is down. send help, Global South academia gods.
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tl; dr: take more notes! there's no shame in logging everything, from feelings to events to ideas to reads:. I have giant voids of memory (longer story for anr day). realised this very early and obsessively became a note-taker. 1/n.
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Speaker: I'm also a mom, and I understand feelings and the need to hug. But Rahul Gandhi didnt hug Narendra Modi, he hugged PM. And then came back and winked. The manner of events wasnt appropriate. Even I want you all to live in love. But not in this manner. #SansadWatch.
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Some very important points raised in this letter by the Office of MP Owaisi resisting the Law Commission's scatterbrained proposal on *how* to conduct national and state elections simultaneously, without stating *why* we need to.
My party's response to Law Commission of India opposing the proposal of Simultaneous Elections #replytolawcommission
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I'm looking for an undergrad law student who is interested in academic writing to help me with sorting out about 150 citations of a paper in line with a citation style guide. Will pay. Please retweet. :).
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@PedestrianPoet "Women are not rehab centres for badly raised men" was a gem I heard recently.
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The MK Nambyar Centre at @NALSAR_Official.is inviting papers on the role of law in sustaining and eviscerating democracy in South Asia. If you are. - an early career scholar (LLM/PhD student) .- in a South Asian uni . Do please apply! More details at:
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had a presubmission thesis defence y'day. was struck by giant scholars and profs beginning their comments & questions with . "I am sure you have addressed this, but. " ."I am asking this question more to check my own understanding. ". gentle and rigourous feedback is a gift.
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I did have a huge advantage in English fluency, and even then I was self-flagellating always, about my reading speeds, ability to hold multiple ideas/ texts/judgments together in my mind. if you relate, please reach out - I will try to help.
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by 15, many of us (even girls) are hard-wired sexists. it's a long and arduous journey of unlearning, after. /1.
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Dr. Mohan Gopal assisting the court is the affirmation I needed in my struggle with committing to either academia or practice. π . what an icon he was in the EWS hearing.
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lots of DMs on how to read better. sharing my method here, if it helps you.
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our little practice, Sadananda & Prasad is looking for an associate with 2-5 years PQE to join us in Bengaluru. we do civil, commercial and public law disputes. to apply, please email us at malavika@sadananda.legal or vishwajith@sadananda.legal. many thanks! please retweet!.
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so much time as a law student was spent trying to seem competent and able beyond one's years. wish someone had told us then that all one had to do was master being a student of the law. just learn to read statutes cover to cover, cases end to end, slow read texts, and so on.
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and if you have a memory situation to boot (like I do) - make copious notes, there's no shame. revisit the notes over and over for recall.
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had the crazy opportunity to attend multiple workshops and conferences abroad this year. sharing my learnings here, bc in my experience, September was the key moment to starting thinking/planning. may be useful for others doing law-post grads in Indian public universities.
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Paul reflects on leaving the default path and prestige of strategy consulting and carving his own βpathless pathβ, all the while giving himself the permission to create, connect and sit with himself. feeling less alone and less insane thanks to gems like this ππ€
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The Chief Justice of India just gave himself a clean chit, while the Prime Minister just protested against himself. If this is not the democracy you want to leave to your kids, would you consider our #SummerCamp on living together under a democratic #Constitution?
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the key is to just keep trying, ask for support, and to not compare yourself to your peers who seem to read at lightning-fast speeds.
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Twitter friends-dads, can you connect me to any dad's groups/circles in India/Bangalore, where dads are talking to each other about.- equal parenting.- their vulnerabilities .- being supportive through post-partum etc. Thank you and please RT for reach?.
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Simultaneous polls sound like a great idea, absent context. Here, I argue that its effects will hurt us, given the regulatory vacuum in which political parties function:.1. re campaign funding/spending: β¦. 2. re in-party democracy
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#Bangalore! We're hosting a super fun #SummerCamp on living together under a democratic Constitution for 9-14 yo next week. Using experiential learning, we'll have them thinking about governance, civic & environmental issues, & what they can do to make a difference! Come say hi!
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friends, tweeple, country(wo)men: what questions do you have about being a citizen in India? . about the concept, law, philosophy, reason, the practical workings and so on. asking for a resource on citizenship iβm working on. please RT and help me learn π€.
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today, thanks to @david_perell, I was also introduced to the idea that note-taking offers the highest return on attention invested in anything. Kendrick Lamar, who apparently takes notes of everything too, thinks of it as the 'closest thing to time travel'! 6/n.
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update: many thousands of good (and mediocre) words later, done with a first draft of my thesis.πΈ.
will a public log of the number of (good) words I write per day to finish my thesis serve as accountability? let's find out π. 30/1 - 1400 (lit review).31/1 - 1832 (").
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π’announcing the MK Nambyar Essay Competition 2024!. - on either delimitation or "forests".- for 3/5 y LL.B students.- by 15 Oct 2024.- with generous cash prizes + internships at the chambers of Senior Advocates at the Supreme Court!. info:
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do fellow academics and friends here have any advice for a first-timer about presenting at conferences outside India/with a global audience? dos and donts, tips and tricks, etc. would be glad and grateful to hear from you πΌπΈ.
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Some thoughts on @Vidhi_India handling Government's legal/policy work for pay & the response pictured below:.1. The government, no doubt, has freedom to contract. A contract with Vidhi is a government contract for services. However, government never has unfettered discretion. 1/5
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reflecting on my relationship with my legal and academic research. work as a burden in the face of care that I owe others. versus. work as a channel to express my creative energy (and care) that I owe myself.
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favourite outside-the-binaries-and-brightlines-and-inside-human-experience episodes on The Seen and the Unseen by @amitvarma, that I want to be screaming off the rooftops about:. 1. Paromita Vohra's both episodes 339 and 155 -&
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sigh. feels like we need a widespread truth and reconciliation process to understand and account for our individual and inter-generational caste wrongs. goosebumps. :(.
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what a pleasant turn of events. same habit, but a new story about it that completely kills the shame. n/n.
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Tharoor: the Bill does not distinguish trafficked women with adult, consenting sex workers. We as a society may look down upon sex work, but constitutional morality must be the lens to judge sex work. S 370, IPC & Immoral Trafficking Prev. Act used ag sex workers. #SansadWatch.
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obviously, my mind spun up a story around these facts and I carried my note-taking habit with great shame everywhere. but it didn't stop me from taking more notes, out of pure need. on holidays, in walking tours, after mind-bending conversations, through reading groups. 4/n.
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Simultaneous elections won't cure India of the problems raised by NITI Aayog. Instead, simultaneous elections, when combined with the regulatory vacuum in which political parties undertake campaign funding & spending will hurt the Republic. My thoughts:.
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Tweeple, A) how could high-school Civics have been made more interesting to you? B) what do you wish you knew about the Constitution of India? C) if you could "be the change you'd like to see" in India, what would you do? .Please DM/email at asmala@umich.edu, AND RT! .Thank you!.
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I'm curating an experiential learning program for children on pro-active citizenship and the Indian Constitution. If you thought history & civics classes were dreadfully dry, please spare a moment to fill this form. Young adults' views especially welcome!.
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I've tried everything: One Note, Evernote, Notability, and then Notion, voice notes, WhatsApp chats to self. ff to 2022: I now to live in a world that apparently celebrates note-taking, information capture systems, 'building a second brain', and so on. 5/n.
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please do give this thread a read. I'm struck by Shahrukh Alam's provocations on .- how focussing on the excesses of the State elides from the day to day and incremental chipping away at the rule of law .- what really the dissenters in India's declared emergency were opposed to.
1/n Thread:. Our book discussion on βIndiaβs Undeclared Emergency: Constitution & the Politics of Resistanceβ with @anarrain and Supreme Court Adv. Shahrukh Alam is now live. The programme will be moderated by @96_madhulika. Follow this thread for live tweets
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will a public log of the number of (good) words I write per day to finish my thesis serve as accountability? let's find out π. 30/1 - 1400 (lit review).31/1 - 1832 (").
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please do join us for a conversation on @anarrainβs important new work, and working the Constitution of India for our constitution as a people. tomorrow, Saturday @ 5 pm.
We are excited to announce a book discussion on @anarrain 's book, 'India's Undeclared Emergency: Constitutionalism and the Politics of Resistance'. We will be joined by the author; Supreme Court Advocate Shahrukh Alam, and Lawyer and Academic @MaLawdy . Details in poster below
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I still have notes of my first reading of Bommai, Gopalan, etc. from 2009-10 in Word docs. also made notes as a law-clerk and young lawyer - of everything I read and everything I wanted to say. I wrote all the time, to myself and to others. 2/n.
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As expected, all questions on #AadhaarLeaks met with a flat denial in their written responses. Except for the one tepid response as to what action was taken against Govt websites that had published #aadhaar details of citizens: they were asked to take it down and be careful!
In today's questions for written responses in the #LokSabha, plenty of questions on #Aadhaar and #AadhaarLeaks:. #SansadWatch
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in the middle one of the most intimidating yet generous, critical yet kind feedback experiences of my life. such grace x rigour. πΈ . this shouldn't feel so rare and unique for lawpeople, given how absolutely necessary and urgent giving and taking feedback is to doing law. π.
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been really loving The Seen and the Unseen podcast, of late. such interesting folks, and such interesting questions (even if some of them are not as open ended or as βbeginnerβs mindβ as Iβd like). bonus is the reading lists that are inadvertently being curated in show notes.
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are biases only about about ideology or hate? or are they also about the quality of our mind-body health? . it takes staying power to separate the thing we read/hear, from the story of the thing that our minds make up: to focus attention onto the data of our sensory experiences.
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The Constitution does not allow any discretion in the matter of whether or when to introduce a no-confidence motion before the House. To pretend otherwise is to defy the vision behind the deliberate choice of a parliamentary executive made by the framers. Or so I argue:
#ICYMI In the #BudgetSession, a no-confidence motion was evaded day after day. However, Lok Sabha speaker Sumitra Mahajan could have taken it up, writes @MaLawdy.
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Placing on record my thanks to Speaker madam for timing her adjournments to my dog's poop schedule. <3.
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in the meanwhile, other lawyers and colleagues were excellent at retaining and communicating vast volumes of info, but also dates and page numbers, through sheer photographic memory after a single read. 3/n . some of you are on here, you know who you are. ;).
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@ friend-mentors everywhere π.
"It's almost always better to learn from peers who are 2 years ahead of you than mentors who are 20 years ahead of you. Life evolves and most insights get outdated." - James Clear
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#SansadWatch #ParliamentWatch. Proposal to @TheLeaflet_in @_maadhyam_ @Memeghnad @akrii_p @BijlaniDiksha and others who are watching and live-tweeting Parliament:. Can we use a common hashtag and join forces? Everyone is best served if all us use the same one.
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@Memeghnad One more instance: Congress opposes Aadhaar at center, happily passes it in Karnataka legislature.
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#LokSabha resumes. Papers laid. Tiny bit of green placard visible. Mallikarjun Kharge called. Kharge says there are more than 50 MPs ready to stand for no-confidence motion. (Camera is not focussing on the standing MPs!!! Close focus on Kharge's face though.). #SansadWatch.
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always troubled by "Repeat after me" tweets, because fighting the good fight can't justify infantilizing the adult citizen into parroting a message handed to her by someone who claims to know better. fellow citizens on #SpeakForMe, do write your own unique letters to your reps.
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The great city of Hyderabad is "cleaning up" beggars for Ivanka Trump. Forget rights and justice. When did we stop being a humane society?
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Debate on #NoConfidenceMotion. Day 3 of #MonsoonSession2018. #BJD walks out of the House stating the no-confidence motion is no help to the people of Odisha. #Kharge asks for more time for Opposition parties, the onus being on them to state the critiques of govt. #SansadWatch.
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all the words, usages and practices in the Indian democracy presume adult humans voted in to office are only as good as animals, who can be "whipped", can go missing, and must be physically confined with security, so as not to be "poached", or "traded".
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Speaker says Galla cant have another 30 min. Galla responds: in history of no-confidence motions, no one was given less than an hour to speak for the motion. Speaker shuts him down saying "aap varthman mein baat karo". (Because why must we care about precedent?). #SansadWatch.
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Tharoor: how will the Bill prevent trafficking? only 1 clause which deals with prevention which is vague, making it hard to hold Govt accountable. Prevention clause excerpted:. #SansadWatch
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The recently concluded washout #BudgetSession calls for urgent public debate on the #Parliament's defects by design that enable this status quo. Opening this 12 part series is MR Madhavan, Founder of @PRSLegislative, setting the stage for the debate:
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10 weeks today since I gave my biometrics for a UK visa for a conference. no decision. in the meantime others have applied in end May and early June and received their visas. any tips on what I might do to get a decision? travel scheduled for end Jun. thanks in advance.
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prof Samuel Moyn and Gautam Bhatia really keeping in step with each other at this whole producing new books thing π.
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After @derekobrienmp's tweet last week, I trawled through the #LokSabha website & cross-verified with @PRSLegislative data to list the #Bills passed without any Parliamentary Committee scrutiny under the 16th Lok Sabha. Sidenote: data aggregation on Lok Sabha website is so poor.
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In today's #NoConfidenceMotion debate, TDP is expected to raise:.- special category status for AP.- revenue deficit.- Kadapa Steel plant.- Visakapatnam Railway Zone & petro-chemical complex .- tax incentives.- metro rail in Vijayawada. #SansadWatch.
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can someone connect me to Romanian-English, English-Romanian interpreter services in Bangalore pls? . tried and tested recommendations would be excellent, but *any* leads would be helpful. thanks in advance!!. please RT for reach ππΎ.
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"Rule 198 is clear on this: "Once a no-confidence motion is moved, and the Speaker is of the opinion that the motion is proper. , then she must read out the motion to the House." Note the words "must read out". It doesn't give the presiding officer room for discretion."
My new essay. Under Modi government, Parliament is not functioning
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yes solidarity might mean we don't publicly call each other out, but it also means we don't shut each other down for stating inconvenient truths. celebrity feminists don't need solidarity, the ones they shut down need solidarity.
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Qala has a song that is about consent! is this the first ever coming out of the hindi music industry? can anyone point me to others? .
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maybe we need large scale reading/writing support and itβs not just a localised problem of some.
Sitting with that sinking feeling, too early in the semester, that our students simply cannot write. Whether UG, PG or PHD :(. How to shift? To not focus on content alone, rather than the development of reading and writing skills? Pedagogically?.
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This rogue wind in Ann Arbor is violating the speed limit on State Street.
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happening this evening. come by :).
Westland Books and @blossombookhous cordially invite you to this discussion on βUnderstanding Indiaβs Undeclared Emergency through the Prism of Lawβ on Saturday, 12 March at 6:30 p.m. in #Bengaluru with @anarrain and Malavika Prasad in conversation. Do join us!. @ContextIndia
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best advice I received from a couple of friends: break it down! . easy, reasonable, very doable (not stretch) chunks. even if it means just writing 500 words on a day, or freewriting to make sense of a thing that even you can only make sense of in the writing.
Writing a thesis can feel overwhelming, break it down into manageable chunks and make progress one step at a time!.
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"To the extent that the establishment depends on the inarticulacy of the governed, good writing is inherently subversive." - J Mitchell Morse, The Irrelevant English Teacher.
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. The debates are just theatrics. A spectacle for us. No one in Government was remotely open to changing their minds, based on the valid points raised by any MPs. No application of mind. Just blind loyalty based votes. NKP's 29th amendment also defeated. Wow.ππ½. #SansadWatch.
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all this citing of Dr. Ambedkar. one would think ours is some kind of thriving Ambedkarite constitutionalism.
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the last thing I want to say is that you might think something is totally beyond your reach. but the encouragement from third parties/strangers really made me reevaluate that. I would love to chat more about my experiences - please reach out if you want to.
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@gautambhatia88 good to know there's a threshold at which even you have to force yourself to do things. :p.
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someone I know has been denied ration for seven months + the Aadhaar systems do not recognise her fingerprints. she has a valid ration card and Aadhaar. how can I help her sort it out? @no2uid @gautambhatia88 @prasanna_s @monteskw & other Aadhaar conversant folks, help pls! ππ½.
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"We want Cauvery Board" is the new slogan. AIADMK is in the well. Speaker reads out that she's received a motion of no-confidence. AIADMK gets louder with the boos. Wow. Finally @loksabhatv shows us the well. #SansadWatch
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@churumuri @Tarunvijay Being called "black" wouldn't be getting folks angsty if they weren't insecure about being dark-skinned. that's where the real racism lies.
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list of bad reasons to be attacking people for their views, without engaging: 1) sense of superiority 2) sense of betrayal to one's cause.
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@ThePhDPlace the PhD is not going to be your magnum opus or even your last piece of writing. itβs a baby first step. get done with it with integrity and shelve the heartache.
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4. We do not know how Vidhi become the Government's go-to legal/policy advisor, whether there was a tender, whether other such think-tanks had the opportunity to apply etc. We do not know why Vidhi was ultimately chosen either/what principle basis guided that decision. 4/5.
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having buried a fair few friendships to work, anxiety, indifference and even thoughtlessness (and at least two with cold intention?) - this really hit me:
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considering Don is responsible for 82837% of my existence as a lawyer, Iβm pretty sure Iβd be reading for his class even at a reunion π―.
As part of our reunion weekend, Professors @PrimusEve and Don Herzog welcomed alumni into their classrooms to relive the law school experience. We hear that some of our overachieving alumni even did the reading
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Hell yea!.(My mum's in her 50s and is half-way through a Masters in Arts at the moment.)
My mom is in her 50s and is worried itβs too late for her to get her PhD. RT if you think she should go for it.
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been reflecting on linguistic states and my own Kannada heritage in a milieu of English as language of mobility and Hindi mandates from Delhi. here's a most novel insight on self-acceptance in one's native tongue, by the inimitable @angieeecreates:.
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