Shrijata Mukherjee

Go Getter. Chai Lover. Dog lover. ❤️In constant build mode | Trying to build something meaningful for a global e-commerce | Ex-Flipkart | Ex-Paytm Money

[Shrijata Mukherjee @ShrijataM]

Blessed to be around people who came forward. From a stranger helping to find an ICU Bed to another stranger helping an ambulance and a massive army of 193 people coming forward to save a life, realised people power for the first time🙏🏻
Update : She is recovering well. 🤗

[Santanu Bhattacharya @SantanuB01]

Hero of #India are normal people who do extraordinary things. Meet Shrijata, who called/ searched tirelessly to get her #COVID impacted help Geetha admitted & put in most of her savings /raised money to pay ~5L bills. Godspeed @ShrijataM 🙏. @vijayshekhar you have a gem 💎 @Paytm

[Congress @INCIndia]

पेपर लीक के खिलाफ लाखों बच्चे जंतर-मंतर पर बैठे हैं, लेकिन उनके ऊपर लाठीचार्ज करवाया जा रहा है।

मोदी सरकार बच्चों की आवाज दबाने की कोशिश कर रही है।

: कांग्रेस अध्यक्ष और राज्यसभा में नेता प्रतिपक्ष श्री @kharge

[Mohammed Futurewala @MFuturewala]

Data centres and its impact on already existing water scarcity in India…

[Siddharth @DearthOfSid]

We’re living in a black mirror episode.

[Nilesh Trivedi @nileshtrivedi]

The trouble with @svembu's appeal to NRIs is that it continues to demand more sacrifices from Indians while demanding no change from India's governments. Resident Indians have more than enough talent in every domain but they are already choked. He makes no attempt to demand removal of existing bottlenecks. It's not TALENT that India is starved of, it is ACCOUNTABILITY.

Some reform ideas which I'd like to see implemented in India:

- (0) Improve nutrition and environmental safety. Safe air, water and food is the bare minimum expectation.

- (1) Encourage skin-in-the-game for political and administrative leaders (for eg: require an exit tax for them and their kids).

- (2) Radical transparency in govt systems. Anonymized files should be digital and public by default, unless marked confidential for valid reasons.

- (3) Increase actual Ease of Doing Business (eg: improve contract enforcement).

- (4) Discourage young talented people from wasting away their most precious years into civil services exam prep, or pseudo-scientific professions like degrees in AYUSH.

- (5) Do not allow the world to dump inferior hardware and software products on Indians. Insist on interoperability, technology transfer and repairability by third-parties.

- (6) Prepare the workforce for the future: For eg: Decrease the number of specializations by bundling subjects in Engg, achieving a better balance of employability and national interest.

- (7) Reduce the need for affirmative action in later years by improving access in earlier years.

- (8) Create conditions for healthy competition among states so that we can have more experiments in governance.

[Anuradha Tiwari @talk2anuradha]

Yes, come back and

> Drink detergent milk
> Eat fake paneer
> Get fake medicines when sick
> Pay full price for ethanol-blended fuel
> Walk in sewage water every monsoon
> Enjoy 50+ degree celsius in summer
> Breathe 1000+ AQI air in winters
> Kids will face 70% Reservations

[Bhavreen Kandhari @BhavreenMK]

While we battle #heatwave, under a new tender, Delhi govt plans to clear forest land in Central Ridge, carry out excavation & create themed plantations inside a notified forest; last ‘lifeline’ of Delhi.

Well explained by journo Shubhangi Derhgawen⬇️
https://t.co/msbx6tQUhc

[Darab Farooqui @darab_farooqui]

Look at this map.

Nagpur 45°. Ahmedabad 44°. Prayagraj 43°. Delhi 42°. The entire country is a single dark red mass. This is not a heatwave. This is a country that was told its forests were fine.

And this is April. Not May. Not June. The hottest months have not even arrived yet.

The past few days have been hell. So I did what I always do when something bothers me. I went looking for answers.

What I found was a policy con job that has been running for over two decades.

But before I explain what happened, let's clear some definitions.

A garden is not a forest. An orchard is not a forest. A plantation is not a forest.

A forest is a living system. Soil, water, fungi, insects, birds, mammals, decades of accumulated complexity, specific to its land and climate. It cannot be designed. It cannot be harvested. It regulates water, cools land, shelters hundreds of species. It takes decades to become what it is.

You can plant a forest. But it will take decades to become one.

In 2001, India's forests were disappearing. The Indian state, led by the Vajpayee government, faced a choice. Protect what remained, or change what the numbers said.

It chose the numbers.

The Forest Survey of India quietly changed the definition of what a forest means. Any land with 10% tree canopy cover and more than one hectare in area was now a forest. Your mango orchard. A coconut plantation in Tamil Nadu. A tea garden in Assam. Lodhi Garden in Delhi.

All forests, on paper.

The FSI will tell you that 10% canopy cover follows international norms. The FAO also uses 10% as its threshold. But the FAO's definition comes with a crucial exclusion that India's FSI quietly dropped. 

The FAO explicitly states that fruit tree plantations, oil palm plantations, olive orchards, and agroforestry systems are not forests. The World Bank says the same. India adopted the number but discarded the exclusion. 

It took the cover of international legitimacy while gutting the standard that gave it meaning.

The government will also tell you this was never hidden. That it was publicly stated in every report, disclosed in Parliament. That is technically true. But a disclosure buried in a technical government document is not transparency. It is the appearance of transparency. 

I did not know any of this until I went looking. Neither do most Indians whose forests, whose land, whose air this directly concerns. The con is not in what was hidden from experts. It is in what was never explained to the people it was done to.

This is not a technicality. This is the con.

It was a trick as old as power itself. If you cannot fix the problem, fix the measurement.

For ten years after 2001, Congress governed India. Two terms, two environment ministers, including Jairam Ramesh, one of the more serious ones. They saw the numbers. They knew what the numbers meant.

They did nothing.

Because the lie was convenient. India looked good in international climate negotiations. The fiction of a greening India served everyone in power, so everyone in power kept it. Congress did not create this lie. It simply chose, year after year, to live inside it.

The BJP is different.

When they returned to power in 2014, they came with something Congress never had. An absolute majority, and no coalition compulsions. They did not merely inherit the lie. They built on it. And in 2023, they legislated it.

The Forest Conservation Amendment Act of 2023 removed legal protection from "deemed forests." Forests that existed outside the official definition but were ecologically real. 

Forests that Adivasi communities had lived in and depended on for generations. Forests that cooled land, held water, sheltered species. They were not on the right list. Since the amendment, forest destruction on Adivasi land has accelerated. 

The people who knew these forests best, who had protected them longest, now watch them being cleared. Legally.

CONT++

[Reuters @Reuters]

India's Asteria, the Reliance unit at the centre of a bribery scandal https://t.co/RtldcG3lnY https://t.co/RtldcG3lnY

[Roshan Rai @RoshanKrRaii]

Never seen a country so united in unfollowing a turncoat politician on social media.

This has to be the most based moment in Indian politics.🗿

[Ankit Mayank @mr_mayank]

This will blow your mind 🤯

Tribals in Madhya Pradesh are holding unique ‘Chitra Protest’ against BJP Govt for stealing their homes & forests

They are covering themselves in mud, holding hunger strike & acting like dead bodies for past 11 days

Their only demands — Land in return of land & proper rehabilitation

They have been living on the same land for 2000 years and suddenly they lost all rights? Really?

[Shrijata Mukherjee @ShrijataM]

Twitter fam, requesting your kindness 🙏 A relative with BA degree is in a really difficult situation and urgently needs a job — ops/warehouse/field sales, any city. He’s sincere and hardworking. Any leads for these roles would mean a lot. Please retweet too for better reach🙏

[Anuradha Tiwari @talk2anuradha]

Dear @nitin_gadkari

We need a public website that shows:

> Which contractor built road
> Which babu approved it
> Total cost & ministers involved
> Firm responsible for maintenance

Contractors are becoming billionaires while people die on roads

Bring real accountability now!

[Shrijata Mukherjee @ShrijataM]

Really sad state of affairs..He has been struggling so much to get such a small thing done. What a shame.. @UPGovt @CMOfficeUP @myogiadityanath @BJP4UP

[dhruv gupta @dhruvam119]

@UPGovt @CMOfficeUP Kindly take a note of this and help me here. a simple family id register update application has taken over 2 months without any proper updates on how long it could take. Secretary is just saying 1 week more everytime and it’s been 2+ months.

[Ishkaran Singh Bhandari @ishkarnBHANDARI]

One will not want to be enemy of such a man.

Cold. Scary Demeanour.

[Devi @DefiantDevii]

I do not agree on many things that INC but for the last few years Rahul Gandhi’s analysis of most problems faced by India are on point.
I would have to agree that he is the only politician in India that has a holistic view and has some sense.

[Amock_ @Amockx2022]

Narendra Modi before 2014 LS :

"There should be no international pressure on India. We should put pressure on others"

When will we see this avatar again? 🤣

[Prakhar Gupta @prvkhvr]

To Friends in the West and to the people of Pakistan,

Jai hind 🇮🇳

[Meru @MeruOnX]

Shashi Tharoor should be made India’s international spokesperson ASAP!

[Vir Das @thevirdas]

We have a Foreign Secretary and armed forces that give us timely accurate briefings with facts, restraint and evidence. It could not be more impressive and civilised. Please stop listening to, and sharing, people screaming their lungs off on TV and ’twitter experts’.

[Prayag @theprayagtiwari]

Exactly the same as what Alia Bhatt did in Dear Zindagi.