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The Aeroplane’s Gaze: Mountain, Market and Martyrs

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  The Aeroplane’s Gaze: Mountain, Market and Martyrs Posted on 23rd June, 2026 (GMT 07:15 hrs) DEBAPRASAD BANDYOPADHYAY ⤡ ABSTRACT In this climate horror narrative with a positional paper disrupting the narrative flow, the author weaves personal flights over a rapidly thawing Himalaya with a critique of the “Three Ms”—Mountaineering, Market, and Martyrs—to expose how post-1990 commercialization has transformed high-altitude climbing into a neoliberal experience economy that commodifies risk, normalizes preventable deaths, and externalizes massive ecological waste onto fragile ecosystems. Drawing on observed glacial retreat, shrinking snowlines, data from Everest expeditions (e.g., 2019’s 877 summits and 11 deaths; 2025 permit hikes and ongoing congestion), the Chhanda Gayen case study, and corporate sponsorship spectacles, the analysis reveals how market logic—sunk-cost pressures, sponsorship demands for novelty, and regulatory filters—produces economic fatalism and “regulatory mar...
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Damn the Dams!

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  Damn the Dams! Rivers, Resistance, and the Political Ecology of Hydraulic Power Posted on 23rd June, 2026 (GMT 08:38 hrs) DEBAPRASAD BANDYOPADHYAY ⤡ ABSTRACT This paper critically examines the political ecology of mega dams and hydroelectric power through historical, scientific, and activist lenses, exposing the profound environmental, geological, and social costs that often eclipse their touted benefits. From Lenin’s GOELRO electrification drive and Nehru’s “temples of modern India” to the suppressed warnings of scientists Meghnad Saha and Kapil Bhattacharya, the analysis reveals how hydraulic nationalism has repeatedly silenced ecological knowledge, leading to reservoir-induced seismicity (as in Koyna), catastrophic siltation, landslides, and dam failures. Drawing on cases like the Tehri Dam, Farakka Barrage, Vaiont, and Banqiao disasters, alongside Gandhian resistance by Sundarlal Bahuguna, Baba Amte, and the Narmada Bachao Andolan, and cultural critiques in Tagore’s Muktadhar...
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