Ed Luce: evaluation

Transcript context

…He moved here in 1939, right? I think he’s underrated, because he’s been forgotten. I think he was one of the most brilliant poets. I think we should judge him on his poetry and forgive the fact that he wanted to get the hell out of Dodge in 1939, because he wasn’t. His contemporaries questioned why he was crossing the Atlantic at that particular moment. But his poetry is brilliant and eternal. I’d say he’s been forgotten. You’ve written one of my favorite books on India, “In Spite of the Gods,” which I recommend to you all. If we think about the fate of liberalism in India, right now there’s an enormous effort going on to biometrically record people, have markers of their identity, and possibly tie this in to some notion of a Universal Guaranteed Income, or at least greater reliance on cash transfers. There will be much more aid to people, but also much more control of people under the Modi regime, which has pushed for both aid and control in different ways and hasn’t liberalized as much as many people had expected. Is India right now moving in a liberal direction?…

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