Deenanath Bantwal

All views expressed are personal and uninfluenced

[Deenanath Bantwal @deenabantwal]

@AiyyoShraddha What an act. We were spellbound. The so mini things you picked up from our daily lives and weaved it into an exceptional string of pearls was truly amazing. Thanks for the autograph as well. May all the success come to you and you continue to stay humble.

[Harsh Goenka @hvgoenka]

Rather long but I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did:

I am an Indian,
and everyone says I lack civic sense.

They can burn streets,
and vandalize a city after a championship game.
I dance at an airport excited about my first foreign trip, and suddenly I am the face of poor civic sense.

I am an Indian,
and everyone says I steal jobs.

They move factories across oceans,
shift profits through tax havens.
I study, compete, earn a visa, work 18 hours a day, sometimes multiple jobs and somehow I am the one stealing jobs and scamming the system.

I am an Indian,
and everyone says I am everywhere.

I build your software,
treat your illness,
teach your children,
drive your taxis,
and open your stores.
The world became a village,
yet my presence remains a problem.

I am an Indian,
and everyone says I am too loud.

The evening news screams outrage.
The internet echoes with anger day and night.
I celebrate a wedding, a festival, a victory,
and I am told my joy is too loud.

I am an Indian,
and everyone says I smell of curry.

The world smells of gunpowder,
of hatred,
of division,
of endless arguments about race and religion.
I carry the fragrance of spices from my grandmother's kitchen,
and somehow that is what offends.

I am an Indian,
and everyone says I have no culture.

I come from a civilization that counted the stars
when much of the world was still learning maps.
I speak languages older than nations.
I celebrate hundreds of traditions,
yet I am told I have no culture.

I am an Indian,
and everyone says I am backward.

I send missions to the Moon.
I build vaccines for millions.
I run companies across continents.
Yet a viral video of one fool becomes evidence against a billion people.

I am an Indian.

I celebrate my favorite actor's success
with flowers, music, and a few glasses of milk.

Others worship influencers who sell outrage, turn every disagreement into a battlefield, and every opinion into a war.
Yet my celebration is the one that makes headlines.

I am an Indian,

and everyone says I gather in crowds.

We walk together in processions,
celebrating our faith, our culture, our traditions.

Everyone is welcome.
No shops are looted.
No neighborhoods are burned.
No one is threatened for thinking differently.

We sing.
We dance.
We pray.
And somehow our gathering becomes the problem.

I am an Indian,

and everyone says I bring my culture everywhere.

I light a lamp in a foreign land.
I wear a saree in the snow.
I teach my children the language of their grandparents.

Others build walls between neighbors,
argue endlessly over identity,
and forget where they came from.
Yet I am told I should leave my culture behind.

I am an Indian,

and everyone says I live in the past.

But my past gave me yoga,
mathematics, philosophy, meditation,
and the idea that the world is one family.

The future keeps borrowing from my past,
while telling me to be embarrassed by it.

I am an Indian,
and everyone says I should be ashamed.

Ashamed of my accent.
Ashamed of my food.
Ashamed of my festivals.
Ashamed of my traditions.
Ashamed of existing.

But I am not ashamed.

I am the child of farmers and philosophers,
scientists and saints, workers and dreamers.

*I come from a land that taught the world
that truth can be many-sided,
that all paths deserve respect,
and that the entire world is one family.*

*Yes, we have flaws. Every nation does.*

*But judge me by my actions, not by your stereotypes.*

For I am an Indian.

*And before you tell me what is wrong with me, look honestly at what you have normalized in yourself.*

For I am an Indian.

The world may mock my accent,
question my customs,
laugh at my celebrations,
and judge me through a thousand stereotypes.

*Yet I stand tall. For I belong to a civilization older than empires, a culture richer than prejudice, and a people whose spirit refuses to bend.*

For I am an Indian.

[Deenanath Bantwal @deenabantwal]

@hvgoenka Shameful . When did we forget that we come from a land where peace and quiet were integral ..

[Nishant Ratnakar @nishantr]

Why exclude Tulu?

Why prioritize only Urdu/Hindi?

How can a state effectively safeguard endangered indigenous languages, such as Tulu, without providing institutional support?

[anand mahindra @anandmahindra]

We’ve waited for a top of the podium finish in this particular venue for over a decade…

Victory at one of the most celebrated stages of global motorsport

The sweet sound of the Indian Anthem at Monaco

Music that made every ounce of sweat, toil and conviction worthwhile.

In that unforgettable moment, Monaco belonged to India…

💪🏽🇮🇳 @MahindraRacing

[Deenanath Bantwal @deenabantwal]

@ivShubham_INN I hope he is also keeping the place litter free. Saw him throw the tastemaker wrapper there

[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++

[Deenanath Bantwal @deenabantwal]

Amazed at how policies like this are even drafted in corporates. Shame . More power to the folks like this for standing up

[Revant Himatsingka “Food Pharmer” @foodpharmer2]

The Great Indian Education Scam exposed!

Indian schools have become a billing machine. Schools today focus less on education and more on extortion!

You need to pay “donations” just to get admitted to schools. School textbooks are charging 10,000+ per year. Uniforms, books, shoes can be bought from fixed shops because schools take commissions.

The biggest irony is that these school make so much "profit" but are still classified in the non-profit category.

We need an Education system which has:
1. Transparent fee structures
2. A maximum limit on fees
3. Affordable Books & Uniform
4. Freedom to buy books from any seller

It is time for parents to raise questions! Share this video so it reaches every parent, teacher & government education authority!

[Swapnil Srivastav @theswapnilsri]

Something small happened on my flight yesterday.

IndiGo flight. Sitting next to a guy, well put together, well dressed. The kind of person you’d point to and say “educated, aware.”

He finishes his snack. Looks at the trash in his hand. And places it on the floor under the seat in front. Not accidentally. Deliberately.

The cabin crew came through for trash collection. Did their job perfectly. Collected from everyone’s hands, every tray table. The stuff on the floor, easy to miss from that angle, stayed.

We landed. His cups and food box were still sitting there on the aircraft floor.

And I just sat with this feeling I couldn’t quite name.

It wasn’t anger. It was something closer to disappointment. Or maybe exhaustion.

Because we’ve been having this conversation about civic sense in India for decades now. And nothing moves.

Here’s what I’ve come to believe. It’s not an awareness problem. It’s not an education problem. It’s not even an income problem.

It’s a “whose problem is it” problem.

Most people in India have unconsciously decided that shared spaces, flights, roads, parks, footpaths, are not their responsibility. Someone is paid to clean it. Someone will handle it.

Me? I’m just passing through.

And that mindset is exactly where the problem begins.

Because civic sense isn’t just about what you do. It’s about what you normalize.

Every time someone litters and nobody reacts, the bar drops a little lower.

Every time someone cleans up after themselves in a space nobody’s watching, the bar rises.

We are all, quietly, setting the standard for each other.

Choose the standard you want to live in.

[Revant Himatsingka “Food Pharmer” @foodpharmer2]

Bollywood celebrities do not promote baby food products! In fact, all baby food product ads are banned in India since 1990s. But do you know the man behind it?

Meet Dr. Arun, Nestle’s biggest enemy!

Dr. Arun started his fight with Nestle in 1980s. He noticed that Nestle’s sales agents dressed up as nurses and went to hospitals to convince mothers to stop breastfeeding and give formula to babiesinstead.

The sales agents would also give free baby formula samples to mothers. Mothers would get overdependent on formula, and their breast milk would dry up. As a result, they would have no choice but to give their babies formula.

Dr. Arun and his team fought aggressively, and got the Milk Substitutes Act passed in 1992 which banned all forms of baby food ads!

Breastfeeding has numerous benefits including reducing the risk of obesity and diabetes, and the entire country should thank Dr. Arun for his role in fighting against baby formula!