If I could swim the meadows and walk the rivers
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
COVID-19 will leave a temporary scar; world economy will bounce back
In living memory, the worst disaster and miseries took place during the World War II. A large number of manufacturing units, airports, and seaports were destroyed and buildings demolished. Japan suffered the worst when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, causing the death of millions of innocent people
India's response to coronavirus is based on fear, not planning
There are indications/allegations that COVID-19 or coronavirus was accidentally released from a Wuhan lab
Expand Ehsaas, Extend Lockdown
Pakistan’s health crisis could explode, gravely crippling the economy and national security, if the lockdown is lifted prematurely. The whole world is grappling with the lives vs. livelihoods debate
India can shape the new world order
At a time when America’s role is tragically missing and as the world steps up its scrutiny of China, global leadership is suffering from a crisis. It is India that can step in to fill this void in leadership
Institute a global social contract to defeat pandemics
As the world is under the grip of coronavirus, there appears to be a universal breach of social contract. World leaders in democracies, autocracies or monarchies have grossly failed to give birth to a clear roadmap to mitigate the despair and desolation amid the COVID-19 outbreak
Indian Armed Forces at the forefront of COVID-19 war
India’s Armed Forces and Defence Ministry production units continue their countrywide assistance in combating the effects of COVID-19, a dirty and deadly biological 'weapon', which allegedly emanated from a laboratory in Wuhan, China and spread infection worldwide, though there has been no authoritative corroboration of this so far
1918 flu pandemic killed 12 million Indians, and British overlords' indifference strengthened the anti-colonial movement
In India, during the 1918 influenza pandemic, a staggering 12 to 13 million people died, the vast majority between the months of September and December. According to an eyewitness, “There was none to remove the dead bodies and the jackals made a feast.”
Communal profiling and media hate-mongering may have grave consequences
Arthur Koestler, a Hungarian British author, and journalist, once observed that “Man's deadliest weapon is language. He is susceptible to being hypnotized by slogans as he is to infectious diseases
In India's cities, life is lived on the streets – how coronavirus changed that
India’s coronavirus lockdown of 1.3 billion people is unprecedented in size and scope, particularly in a country where city streets are so thronged with life in all its guises
The wrath of the gods
The frenzy that we see around
The trepidation and the terror,
India should use its temple gold reserve to lift economy
Extreme times call for extreme measures. India is reeling under a chronic economic crisis. If the Indian government takes these measures then it will go a long way in mitigating the economic fallout of the COVID-19
The Ashok Desai I knew: A tribute
On 13 April 2020 Supreme Court advocate Ashok Desai, a legal luminary and former Attorney General of India, passed away in Mumbai. He was 77
Sermons and substance: Did the Indian state abandon all responsibility towards the poor?
The novel coronavirus is causing havoc worldwide. For a country like India, on top of the creaky public healthcare system and scanty health care data, lies a widespread social media campaign recommending yoga, inhaling cannabis and consuming cow urine and dung as measures to prevent infection has made the battle against COVID-19 even more challenging
When I feel ashamed to be a Muslim
I had penned articles under the same agonising title in 2006, followed in 2007, in the spate of terrorist attacks by some wayward Muslim youth, who, totally misinterpreting Islam, took innocent lives either as murderers or as suicide bombers
