third time's the charm

you've seen the jokes. india is "dirty", indians are "everywhere", why don't they fix their own country. ok. let me tell you why, and what's happening right now while nobody's watching.

first, the history you skipped: britain ruled india for two centuries and drained it. economist utsa patnaik's research estimates around $45 trillion in today's money was taken. the india that got independence in 1947 was one of the poorest countries on earth. every "why is india like this" question starts there. you don't get to profit off a robbery and then mock the crime scene.

now, what's happening RIGHT NOW:

in may the question paper for NEET leaked. that's the national medical entrance exam. over 2.2 million students took it. cancelled. years of studying, families' savings poured into coaching, gone overnight because someone sold the paper. students died by suicide after. these were kids who wanted to be doctors.

and out of that came a protest movement. a gen z group called the cockroach janta party, started by a 30 year old named abhijeet dipke, got 22 million instagram followers within DAYS. they've been doing a sit-in at jantar mantar in delhi demanding education minister dharmendra pradhan resign.

and then there's sonam wangchuk. if you've watched 3 idiots, he's the real engineer the character was based on. built solar schools in ladakh. invented ice stupas so himalayan villages have water. spent his whole life on education. he's 59 and he's been on hunger strike for 17+ days now. reporters went to see him this week and he was too weak to talk. and the troll armies are calling him "anti national" and "foreign funded". a man starving himself for other people's children. that's the thing here, anyone who asks a question is suddenly a traitor.

it's not one incident, it's everywhere you look:

• infrastructure worth thousands of crores failing within months of the ribbon cutting. tunnels collapsing in regions where heavy rain is a guarantee, not a surprise.

• youth unemployment near 10% for ages 15 to 29, 13.6% in cities. in a country of 1.42 billion where more than half the population is young.

• only about the top 3% of indians earn above 10 lakh a year. meanwhile billionaire wealth keeps ballooning and the headlines celebrate it.

• manipur burned for over two years. an ethnic conflict, tens of thousands displaced, and the prime minister barely said the word manipur while it happened.

• journalists raided. critics' houses bulldozed. activists sitting in jail for years without trial under laws like UAPA. our press freedom ranking has cratered.

• even the petrol is a fight now, ethanol blending pushed through while drivers complain about their engines and get no straight answers.

and through all of it, the PM, who came to power on religious polarisation (americans, sound familiar?), travels abroad for photo ops and has not held one single open press conference in over a decade. not one.

what i'm asking:

if you're not indian: share this. our media mostly won't cover any of it because the big outlets are owned by the same billionaires the government serves. the only reason wangchuk's fast is getting any coverage is people refusing to look away.

if you ARE indian: speak up even if you're comfortable. especially if you're comfortable. join the protests. add to this, correct me, translate it. staying quiet is a choice when nothing in this post touches your life.

india is not "dirty". india was robbed, and it's being robbed again, from the inside this time. but it's also the country where a 59 year old will starve for strangers' kids and 22 million young people will rally behind a party literally named after cockroaches, because cockroaches survive everything.

we can still save her. but only loudly.

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TODAY'S FACT IS

Did you know that the Cobalt Milkweed Beetle (Chrysochus cobaltinus) is typically found in the western US and Canada? This beetle is very aptly named for its metallic blue sheen and its affinity to milkweed. It has no problem with the toxic chemicals produced by its favourite milkweed (or dogbane, its second favourite food) and stores those toxins for later use in defense.

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Spotted on some driftwood on the beach, gamely holding on despite the howling gale.

"Different from Clinops", and Albert Edmund Brookes (1879–1968), a prominent New Zealand entomologist and beetle specialist who amassed a massive collection of New Zealand Coleoptera. The species was described and the genus erected by Scottish-born soldier, farmer, teacher and entomologist Thomas Broun (1838 – 1919) and published after his death, in 1921.

However, Broun's taxonomic work leaves a lot to be desired - he described the ground beetle Megadromus meritus under fifteen different names, for example, and this Broun Effect is probably the reason why the list of NZ beetles is so much longer than that of say, Great Britain. Not including illustrations of most of his purported species, and listing others only by number, didn't help.

A Wedge-shaped Beetle (Rhipiphoridae) in a genus endemic to Aotearoa. The larvae of Wedge-shaped Beetles are parasitoids of other insects, targeting bees and wasps, cockroaches, or beetles, depending on which subfamily they're in. This one is known to target Oemona hirta, the lemon tree borer (AKA whistling beetle or singing beetle) a longicorn that feeds inside a wide range of native and introduced trees, shrubs and herbs.