Bhutan and its people

Where Happiness is a Measure of Governance: What Bhutan’s Democratic Consolidation Can Teach Global South Nations

As democracies around the world confront public dissatisfaction, Bhutan reminds us that the health of a democracy cannot be measured only through the ballot box.  It must also be evaluated through the well-being, dignity, security, and trust experienced by citizens.

India's Education Deficit: Real Reforms Lie in Making Coaching Redundant

India's digital infrastructure can certainly deliver free coaching to millions. But an even greater achievement would be to build an education and employment system in which families no longer feel compelled to buy coaching in the first place. Making bottled water cheaper is useful. Making the water from taps trustworthy is the real solution.    

India’s Education Report Card: Student Retention, not Enrolment is Key to Success

The message is clear. India needs not merely more children entering classrooms, but more children staying, completing and learning. Achieving the ambitions of NEP 2020 and SDG 4 will require sustained public investment, stronger secondary-school retention, better support for vulnerable learners and a sharper focus on completion.

For a Developed India, Its Young Need to Be Instilled with Civic Values First

The virtues like civic discipline or gender sensitivity in India are not at premium. Basic civic sense is conspicuous by its absence. It gets manifested as indiscriminate littering, spitting, traffic indiscipline, vulgar or derogatory comments against women etc. Such attitudes find manifestation in foreign destinations as well.

More on Education and Gen Z Voices

A dose of hope and cheer

If Sunshine eludes you then be your

The pandemic has held a mirror to humanity

2019 and 2020 – the former, closing, and the latter, enclosing a decade - have emerged victorious in warning us of our fragile existence

Only inspired leadership can fight COVID-type pandemics; not shock and awe

Mankind in the last 100 odd years has faced much bigger perils than the COVID-19 pandemic

Unique Hackathon: India's young techies take on the app challenge

Indian entrepreneurship and technology potential, lying dormant in its universities, has now been summoned when a unique hackathon was launched by TERRE Policy Centre and MIT ADT University in Pune on July 18, 2020

Rulers are using pandemic to amass more power; Bangladesh is an example

If you think rulers are now using the pandemic to grab more power then you won’t be wholly wrong. Around the world, the pandemic is being used by the ruling elite as a chance to grab more and more power

How South Asian cultural mores affect pandemic management

At first glance, the COVID-19 pandemic seems pervasive, unsparing, and indiscriminate

India's studied silence on Hagia Sophia conversion

It is interesting that India opted not to be part of an international chorus of protests against the Turkish president’s decision to revert Istanbul’s iconic Hagia Sophia museum into a mosque, a decision which not just hits at the foundation of the modern Turkish state, envisioned in the early 20th century by Kemal Ataturk, founder of modern Turkey, but also against the universal values of secularism

Twilight

Twilight, that time between sunset and nightfall

When truth-telling is replaced by agenda-setting: Media in an 'illiberal democracy'

India ranked 142nd out of 180 countries in the World Press Freedom Index, 2020, an annual document published by Paris-based Reporters Sans Frontiers (RSF)

CHRI urges court-monitored investigation of encounter killings in Uttar Pradesh, ‘investigate each officer under suspicion’

New Delhi, July 13, 2020 – The India Executive Board of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) today called on the Allahabad High Court to institute and monitor an investigation into the encounter killing of Vikas Dubey and his associates, in line with the requirements laid down by the Supreme Court in the 2014 landmark judgement (PUCL v. State of Maharashtra and Ors)

Environment as an enabler of identity in South Asia

Appreciation of the natural environment has been an integral part of human society

Wishes aren’t horses...

The Morning Sun, that intrepid Ball of Fire

Eleven million saplings to be planted in 2020 under Cauvery Calling

"Cauvery Calling is currently running at a project scale, we need to transform this into a movement," said Sadhguru, Founder, Isha Foundation, speaking at the Rally for Rivers (RfR) Board meeting

Of media hype and misinformation: Be positive when you test positive

On the sixth day of fever that was resistant to flu antibiotics, I lost my sense of smell, which was when my doctor ordered the COVID test; and within a few hours I was declared positive!

51 years of bank nationalization in India: Crying need for a better corporate work culture

Bank nationalization in India happened 51 years back, part of the measures undertaken by then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to bring in a socialist economy