Pranay Somayajula
Dignity and Access | On Food and Power
Pranay Somayajula
Back during the end of history, Thomas Friedman presented his “Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention” in a 1996 New York Times op-ed. As he put it, “no two countries that both have a McDonald’s have ever fought a war against each other.” There was “no question,” he declared, that McDonald’s “is part of this worldwide phenomenon of countries integrating with the global economy and submitting to its rules.” Today,...
Between the Campo and the City | Venezuelan Communes and the Cost of U.S. Intervention
Pranay Somayajula
In June 2014, a little over a year after the election of President Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, global oil prices tanked — and with them the Venezuelan economy, which was then, as now, largely reliant on oil exports. In the years since, inflation has risen so high that over half of its population of 29 million people cannot afford basic provisions. Michael Fakhri, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Right...
Shiny Objects | The Koh-i-noor, Rishi Sunak, and the Aesthetics of Anticolonialism
Pranay Somayajula
It’s unclear who, exactly, was the first person to refer to India as the “jewel in the crown of the British Empire.” The phrase has been commonly attributed — perhaps apocryphally — to British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, who proclaimed Queen Victoria Empress of India in 1877. It was popularized by British novelist Paul Scott, who in 1966 used it as the title of the first book in his Raj...
