The Economist reviews “The Age of the Strongman”: “The harm is not just to the people they oppress or the national political systems that they corrode. Strongmen also chip away at global institutions, international norms and multilateral co-operation. Many are suspicious of free trade. Few are inclined to endure much inconvenience to curb climate change. They are prone to adventurism and aggression in foreign policy.”
Debashis Basu: “Look at the extortive power of the state when it comes to paying tax or when it loses a major legal battle. Successive governments have made unjust tax demands, lost in court, and then promptly changed the law! Businessmen and citizens must always lose. In infrastructure projects, subsidies and arbitration awards are withheld, causing a cash crunch and bad loans, but no one is held accountable. When Narendra Modi asked thousands of assembled youngsters in an election rally “Apko naurki chahiye ki nahin chahiye?” (do you want jobs or don’t you?), he was surely not promising them government jobs. From small restaurants to mighty software companies, it is businesses, not the government, that create jobs. Yet, in a cruel irony, they have to fight extortive and brutal state power every step of the way. Why are they silent?”
Neri Oxman: “The idea behind material ecology is to enable total synergy between grown and built environments by deploying new digital technologies that allow us to augment bio-based materials for large-scale construction…We work with the most abundant biopolymers on the planet which include cellulose, found in plant cell walls; pectin, found in apple and lemon skins; and chitin, found in the shells of crustaceans…Using technology, we can program biomaterials to degrade in response to changing environmental conditions. At MIT, we built three biopolymer pavilions [the Aguahoja pavilions] which, instead of concrete, were built using shrimp shells, fallen leaves and apple skins. We programmed the pavilions to decay at a certain point when exposed to rainwater. This, in turn, nurtures soil microorganisms to fuel new growth.”
