India’s “virtual middle class”
Those of us who sign online petitions, forward chain mails on fighting corruption, join threads of debate on blogs and ‘friend’ campaign groups on Facebook have finally arrived. The world-renowned trend-catcher Thomas L Friedman has captured this latest trend, naming them India’s “virtual middle class”. After his latest visit of the country he has written in his hugely followed New York Times column, “I encountered something on this trip to India that I had never met before: a whole new political community — India’s ‘virtual middle class’.” Read his column here to find out his prognosis for our Twitterati.

DIY Politics
Arguably the most important cause (or effect) of the ‘virtual middle class’ is a new mode of politics, in which more and more ‘people like us’ are readying to do politics, as exemplified by Arvind Kejriwal. Still, large sections of the middle class are not prepared to dirty their hands by doing politics – not even as much as to vote. On other hand, there is substance in the argument that political parties as they are have high entry barriers. Brian Eno, artist, composer and producer of the rock band U2 among other things, says we are not doing enough politics. When the debate site, The Edge, asked a range of thinkers and opinion-makers what they fear most for our collective future, Eno said, “Most of the smart people I know want nothing to do with politics… Whatever the reasons for our quiescence, politics is still being done—just not by us.” Read his short piece here, where there are plenty of other pieces of interest too, for example, Steven Pinker on The Real Risk Factors for War.

Machiavelli of Non-violence
Gene Sharp, about whom we have written before, is in news again. The man whose manuals of non-violent protests were the source of Arab Spring and similar movements has been conferred with the Right Livelihood award "for developing and articulating the core principles and strategies of nonviolent resistance and supporting their practical implementation in conflict areas around the world". (Read the citation here) The award led to more profiles of this quiet man, for example, in The New Statesman, which calls him Machiavelli of Non-violence. Read the article here. You can find more on Sharp at his Albert Einstein Institute.

Bill Gates’s plan to fix the world's biggest problems
Businessman-turned-philanthropist Bill Gates has a new, radical idea of how to fight poverty around the world. This was the subject of his annual letter. The idea basically is a marriage of development economics and econometrics. If we can measure what we seek out to achieve, be it in the area of child malnutrition or elementary education, if we have concrete goals, we can work wonders. Gates makes an analogy with the steam engine. “Harnessing steam power required many innovations, as William Rosen chronicles in the book ‘The Most Powerful Idea in the World’. Among the most important were a new way to measure the energy output of engines and a micrometer dubbed the "Lord Chancellor" that could gauge tiny distances.” Read more in the Wall Street Journal, with a slew of comments from readers around the world.