Harshit Gupta / हर्षित / ہرشت

Writer—Translator—Editor—Lyrics
Differentiates between है/हैं
Favs can be bookmarks.
If you like Hindi music, check my insta @hg6

Cover pic by @sanjay_wanders.

[Harshit Gupta / हर्षित / ہرشت @hg6]

अगर जनता के चुप रहने से देशों के नाम हुआ करते तो नॉर्थ कोरिया दुनिया का सबसे नामवर देश होता।

[Harshit Gupta / हर्षित / ہرشت @hg6]

अनपढ़ नागरिको, तुम्हें क्या पता अच्छी सड़क किस चिड़िया का नाम है! ये इतनी हाइ-लेवल सड़क है कि तुम्हें समझ नहीं आएगा। मुँह बंद रखो अपना।

[माझी Mumbai, आपली BMC @mybmc]

🔹Visible Joints on the Mrinaltai Gore Extension Flyover Are Part of the Technical Construction Process

#MyBMCUpdates

@CMOMaharashtra
@mieknathshinde
@SunetraA_Pawar
@ShelarAshish
@MPLodha
@TawdeRitu
@misanjayghadi

[Harshit Gupta / हर्षित / ہرشت @hg6]

Watched the trailer of Pyramid Scheme today. Still wondering how on one hand Shekhar Suman pronounces even the q of 'qismat' perfectly, while on the other hand a dialogue goes "agar aap paison se madad kar dete", quite a visible translation of "if you could help with money". 🙈

[Harshit Gupta / हर्षित / ہرشت @hg6]

@harihar_goswami I have always thought of aari aari as that only. :D

[Harshit Gupta / हर्षित / ہرشت @hg6]

@penpencildraw Chehre ki kitaabein hain,
hum wo padhne aate hain,
ye soorat teri meri,
mobile library.

(Yep, I know the irony.)

[PenPencilDraw @penpencildraw]

Withheld: a horror story.

[Harshit Gupta / हर्षित / ہرشت @hg6]

@AnantikaMehra @JhatuSigh Neither is the original pronunciation, but yes, in Hindi, people use ri, and in Marathi, ru. Of course, it's just an adjustment as logically and technically it makes no sense to have a vowel that is actually a combination of a vowel and a consonant in a phonetic script.

[Harshit Gupta / हर्षित / ہرشت @hg6]

रोटी वाला दिन आ गया है।

#2June

[Harsh @huntheharsh]

In peak India moment today, I got scolded by an uncle on bike for walking on the footpath during traffic hours. He said and I quote, “pagal hai kya be, footpath koi chalne ki jagah hai?”

[Prapthi @prapthi_m]

And then hostels in Kota need grills around ceiling fans.

Children are raised to believe that their marks define their worth, their future, their right to feel proud of themselves. It is grotesque.

[Harshit Gupta / हर्षित / ہرشت @hg6]

@Velvetyvirgo The saddest part is that those issues don't remain isolated to just how you look. Often, they end up becoming "am I enough?" across the board.

[Harshit Gupta / हर्षित / ہرشت @hg6]

@GurpriyaSidhu It's interesting how I never added 2+2, in spite of knowing both of these things very clearly in isolation.

[Harshit Gupta / हर्षित / ہرشت @hg6]

@Velvetyvirgo Honestly, good of you to try and take control of your health. Doesn't come easy when others at home are hitting this extreme. Keep that up. :)

[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++

[Harshit Gupta / हर्षित / ہرشت @hg6]

@AnaArsonist This is interesting. Because I have setup the exact same thing as my home address shortcut.
Fun fact: I literally just typed the shortcut and it placed in the entire address, of course. So I said 'exact same thing' instead. :D

[Harshit Gupta / हर्षित / ہرشت @hg6]

Where can I try Garmin watches in Mumbai? Can’t seem to find a store.

[Harshit Gupta / हर्षित / ہرشت @hg6]

@Soumyabrata_hp @dekhane_mukul You mean a bar within a bar rather than a bar within a car? Hmmm.

[Harshit Gupta / हर्षित / ہرشت @hg6]

@dekhane_mukul Dilli walon ko lagta hai girega nahi, padega. But eventually girey ya padey, it's pretty much the same.

[Harshit Gupta / हर्षित / ہرشت @hg6]

@SwiggyCares 233612890023193

[Harshit Gupta / हर्षित / ہرشت @hg6]

The law of @Swiggy says that the night you order a bit too late, the order will get further delayed by an hour.

[Harshit Gupta / हर्षित / ہرشت @hg6]

@shawndsheeeep Listen to Anand Bakshi.

"Kuchh to log kahenge. Logon ka kaam hai kehna."