Informal atmosphere at the Pioneer Day parade in Salt Lake City

Currently in Salt Lake City, which hosted Winter Olympics 2002, and will again host them in 2934, it quite a spectacle to watch the Pioneer Day parade just about half a mile from where we currently live.

The parade marks the foundation day of Utah State of the US, and the city happens to be its capital.

It was very informal, with people sitting on folding chairs, squatting on ground, many of them underneath the small makeshift canopies they had installed -- all on two sides of the road along a small park and the huge library on the side.

There was virtually no security, I could see no cops pushing people to one or the other side, though there was traffic police at a crossroad nearby to ensure people crossed the road without any difficulty, even as allowing smooth movement of the very has running trams (they call them metro).

Some people -- mostly families with children -- who perhaps had come from other areas of the State had put up their rents in the garden, and were living in there from the previous night. We stood one the other side along the footpath, clicking photographs on our mobile phone.

Ironically, I couldn't spot any Indian looking person watching the parade. There were, however, four Sardarjis who were distributing mineral water bottles, telling people, "Hydrate yourself..." This despite the fact that one can spot Indians on streets, though they are still very few of them in the city.

Comments

The khadi he wore, the Gandhi he kept: A Dalit memoir that refuses easy answers

By Rajiv Shah Recently, I received a message from someone I had known since my Gandhinagar days, when I represented the Times of India from 1997 to 2012. He wanted to send me the English translation of a memoir he had written: " Homes Without Windows ". Thin, short, and darker in complexion than me, he would occasionally come down to my office in Akhbar Bhawan. His name is Chandu Maheria .

World's largest banks pumped $906 billion into fossil fuels in 2025, NGO study finds

The world's 65 largest banks collectively committed $906 billion to fossil fuel companies in 2025, an increase of nearly 8 percent from the previous year, according to the seventeenth edition of the Banking on Climate Chaos report released in June 2026. The report , produced by a coalition of environmental and advocacy organisations including Rainforest Action Network , tracks lending and underwriting by major financial institutions to companies across the oil, gas, and coal sectors. Since the Paris Agreement went into force in 2016, the report finds that these banks have together channelled $8.7 trillion into fossil fuels — an amount the authors argue, had it been directed toward renewables, would have made the global energy system significantly more affordable, resilient, and climate-proof.

Labour codes, lost rights: India’s new rules weaken unions, empower capital

In a detailed discussion on the Unmute podcast, leading labour scholars Professor Ernesto Noronha and lawyer-researcher Anusha Ravishankar have issued a stark assessment of India’s newly notified labour codes , arguing that the long-pending reforms are designed to attract capital at the expense of worker security, weaken collective bargaining , and exacerbate the vulnerabilities of the country’s vast informal workforce .

RajivBuzz

Search This Blog