Editorial

Time for Gandhian two states solution

The israel-hamas war now into its third week has taken a terrible toll in the Gaza strip, a narrow (41×9 km) land parcel sited between Israel and the Kingdom of Jordan to the east.

Although the latest casus belli is the surprise attack on Israeli civilians in a border town on October 7, and taking of […]

Long road to prevarication

The constitution (one hundred and Twenty Eighth Amendment) Bill, 2023, introduced in Lok Sabha in the new Parliament building on September 19, and almost unanimously legislated into an Act of Parliament on September 20, reserves one-third of seats in the Lok Sabha, state legislative assembles and the assembly of Delhi NCR state, for women. However […]

Invoke equity law against bulldozer raj

Great injustice is being meted out to a large number of citizens by several state governments countrywide by demolition of homes and shops — especially of the Muslim minority community — by bulldozers called in at short notice. The flimsy excuse proffered for the heart-rending razing of painfully accumulated property of bottom-of-pyramid citizens is that […]

Restart Sino-India border negotiations

The conclusion of the 19th meeting of top-level commanders of the Indian Army and China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to discuss confidence building measures after the bloody River Galwan clash of May 2020, concluded in Chushul on August 14 without any apparent progress. On September 9-10, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to meet with […]

Carry liberalisation to natural conclusion

In a season of climate change induced by excessive rains and floods whose death and destruction fury has been exacerbated by man-made disasters, news from the UNDP and Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative study saying that 415 million citizens of this benighted republic have escaped multi-dimensional poverty in the years between 2006-2019, has not […]

Two factors accelerating climate change

It’s undeniable that the rain, floods and landslides that swept North India — Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and inundated Delhi, the national admin capital — last month are the outcome of global warming and climate change that are Nature’s revenge against unchecked exploitation and carbonization of Planet Earth. However floods fury that routinely […]

Three lessons from wrestlers protest

The prolonged stand-off between India’s international medal winning wrestlers and Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, chairman of the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI), over allegations of the latter having taken advantage of his position to sexually harass seven women wrestlers, highlights much that is wrong with Indian sports and the justice system which seems beyond redemption.

On […]

Don’t spurn american handshake again

The warm bipartisan welcome accorded to Prime Minister Narendra Modi by President Joe Biden and the American establishment on his latest visit to the United States is indicative of belated awareness in India and the US that the two countries are natural allies with common interests and objectives. That this awareness dawned on both countries […]

Exasperation with double taxation

The recently concluded legislative assembly election in Karnataka won by the Congress party with an absolute majority, offers several important lessons for politicians and citizens of all hues and ideological persuasions. Driven by transformational new digital technologies and instant communication provided by social media, electorates across the country are not what they were ten — […]

foot-dragging on skills development

A report released early last month (April) by the transnational accounting and corporate consultancy firm Ernst & Young and iMocha — billed as the world’s leading skills intelligence and skills assessment platform — titled Tech Skills Transformation — Navigating the Future of Work in 2025 and Beyond reveals a huge deficit of adequately technology skilled […]

Reckless distortion of history

The omission of the epochal Mughal era (1526-1857) and references to the importance Mahatma Gandhi attached to Hindu-Muslim unity as also his assassination by a Hindu/RSS fanatic in 1948, in the model class XII history textbook written and commissioned by the National Council for Educational Research & Training (NCERT) — an autonomous subsidiary of the […]

Ugly face of medical profession

The 17-day strike called by private medical practitioners in Rajasthan in response to the Rajasthan Medical Care (RMC) Act, 2022, which ended on April 4 after unaided private hospitals which have not received aid or facilitation by the government were exempted, was a national disgrace and exposed the ugly face of the medical profession. The […]

Parliament & Broken Windows Message

Frequent disruption of the business of Parliament is giving India a bad image abroad and perhaps worse, domestically. For instance at the time of writing this editorial, in the Budget session of Parliament during which the Union Budget 2023-24 was presented the expenditure priorities of the Rs.45 lakh crore budget of the Central government in […]

Time to End Higher ed Infantilisation

The resignation of bhushan Patwardhan, executive committee chairperson of the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC, estb.1994), on March 5 has opened up a can of worms and aroused fears relating to smooth implementation of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. In his resignation letter to University Grants Commission chairman M. Jagadesh Kumar, Patwardhan alleged […]

Sachin Tendulkar of India inc

The disruption of parliamentary business for two whole days (February 2-3) by the Congress and opposition parties demanding a JPC (joint parliamentary committee) probe into allegations of fraud and stock price manipulation made by an obscure US-based securities firm is a telling example of how public money is wasted by politicians. According to a study […]

Don’t ignore talent & capital flight

Except to left ideologues and academics who the global rejection of communism/socialism notwithstanding, continue to dominate the academy and public discourse, the data is alarming, if not horrifying. According to a front-page banner headline in The Hindu (February 10), 225,000 skilled professionals and/or HNIs (high net worth individuals) renounced Indian passports, migrating abroad last year.

Moreover, […]

Important lesson of pandemic lockdown

Contrary to alarmist headlines in mainstream media proclaiming steep learning loss experienced by children in elementary (class I-VIII) education in rural India, careful reading of the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2022 suggests the opposite. Although because schools in India were ill-advisedly shuttered for 82 weeks to check the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic […]

Basic structure must remain inviolate

The clarion call of vice President Jagdeep Dhankar and Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, for review of the Supreme Court’s judgement in the landmark Kesavananda Bharati Case (1973) in which (accepting the argument of eminent jurist Nani Palkhivala (1920-2002)), the Supreme Court held that legislation enacted by Parliament which violates the “basic structure” of the […]

Covid Pandemic Management Lessons

The resurgence of the covid pandemic in the neighbour People’s Republic of China (PRC) has quite rightly triggered alarm bells in New Delhi and several state admin capitals. Although the PRC government of a communist dictatorship has stopped publishing data on the number of Covid infections and fatalities, by all indications the deadly virus and […]

Seize opportunity to settle border row

In an official statement made in Parliament on December 13, Union defence minister Rajnath Singh made light of a December 9 scuffle between Chinese and Indian soldiers on the McMahon line which marks the border in the north-east between the world’s two most populous countries.

However, the clash which prompted banner headlines in the media, is […]

Harsh country for little children

In 1957 Jawaharlal Nehru, independent India’s first prime minister, designated November 14 — his birthday — as Children’s Day, because he wanted to “create an atmosphere in the country where the attention is constantly focused on children and their welfare”. Yet in this editorial written on Children’s Day 55 years later, it is the lamentable […]

Reconsider 103rd Amendment Verdict

A recent (November 7) judgment of the Supreme Court upheld the 103rd Amendment to the Constitution. By a three-two majority the learned justices validated a patently politically motivated additional 10 percent reserved quota in higher education institutions and government jobs for economically weaker sections (EWS) from the general category. This apex court verdict requires reconsideration […]

Spreading extreme deprivation warning

Even as the print media and television channels are flooded with advertising inviting the middle class to purchase luxury goods and services ranging from smart TVs, consumer durables, SUVs and foreign holidays during Diwali/Deepavali, the latest Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2022 report published by Concern Worldwide and Welthungerhilfe (Germany) ranks India #107 among 122 countries […]

Growing awareness of holistic education

The enthusiastic response of school promoters, trustees, principals and teachers to the 12th EducationWorld India School Rankings (EWISR) 2022-23 Awards conclave which concluded in Gurgaon (Delhi NCR) on October 12, is proof that the tectonic plates of the country’s moribund K-12 education system are shifting. Over 1,400 leaders of the country’s most reputed schools listed […]

Self destructive sub-nationalism

Road traffic mismanagement and chaos witnessed 24×7 on the roads of Bengaluru, the administrative capital of the southern state of Karnataka (pop.64 million), is pervading the state’s politics and all sectors of government. A few decades ago, Karnataka had the deserved reputation of being ranked among the country’s most well-governed states offering a business and […]

Enforce 74th Amendment

Heavy rain, flooding and waterlogging of Bengaluru (in 2014 foolish parochial politicians mindlessly surrendered its global brand identity as Bangalore, the IT capital of India) in early September caused substantial damage to business and industry variously estimated at Rs.500-700 crore by way of loss of material, stock-in-trade and production. The tragedy is that such water-logging […]

Justice not seen to be done

The alacrity with which the BJP government of Gujarat state accepted a report of the Sentences Review Board (SRB) packed with state government officials including two BJP MLAs (members of legislative assembly), to release 11 convicted criminals serving life sentences for gang-rape of survivor Bilkis Bano, and the daylight murder of her three-yearold daughter and […]

Rhetoric & Action shadow

The prime minister’s 75th Independence Day address to the nation from the ramparts of Delhi’s historic Red Fort on August 15, was a departure from usual speeches delivered on this day to mark the end of almost two centuries of British rule over India. Unlike earlier speeches that boasted the tremendous progress the country has […]

Power management lessons from Lanka

“All power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” wrote 19th century English historian Lord Acton (1834-1902). Quite clearly, neighbouring Sri Lanka’s recently ousted president Gotabaya Rajapaksa, swept to highest office in 2019 with a massive majority, became power drunk. Three of his brothers were brazenly appointed prime minister, irrigation and finance minister; his […]

Independence day: Time for introspection

For sentient citizens with memory and/or knowledge of India’s unique freedom struggle led by Mahatma Gandhi, Nehru, Sardar Patel, Dr. Ambedkar and a galaxy of leaders invested with genuine idealism and integrity, the nation’s 75th Independence Day (August 15) is likely to be an occasion for sober introspection. To be sure, commemoration of the day […]

Agnipath: Inadequate ground preparation

The violent protests that erupted last month countrywide against the Central government’s Agnipath armed forces short-term recruitment scheme have further destabilised the post-pandemic economic recovery process already slowed by communal violence, rising unemployment and inflation.

The Agnipath schema reduces the tenure of new recruits into the defence services — army, navy and air force — from […]

Palkhivala should be alive at this hour

The sights and sounds of bulldozers razing homes of citizens who had allegedly encroached on government land, which played out on 210 million television screens across the country last month, have severely damaged India’s image as nation of orderly governance and rule of law. Outrage over dispensation of executive justice has provoked six former Supreme […]

Judges should not pander to BJP leadership

The spate of lawsuits being filed in courts countrywide by Hindu zealots and sangh parivar outfits questioning the titles of Muslim wakf properties on which religious mosques — some of them several centuries old — have been built, has the potential of inflaming religious passions and igniting rioting and mayhem which will destabilise the social […]

Inherent contradiction of NEP 2020

From Left: Dilip Thakore, editor, EducationWorld; Dr Ravindra Dattatraya Kulkarni, pro-VC, University of Mumbai; Prof Rajesh Khanna, president, NIIT University, Neemrana; Dr Madhu Chitkara, pro-chancellor, Chitkara University; Professor C. Raj Kumar, VC, OP Jindal Global University; Dr Parth J Shah, founder president, Centre for Civil Society at the panel discussion on “NEP 2020: […]

History lesson for Hon’ble home minister

Evidently, union home minister Amit Shah is not a student of history. If he was, he wouldn’t have advised chief ministers of India’s 28 states and eight union territories to adopt Hindi as the medium of inter-state communication, as he did while addressing the 37th meeting of the Parliamentary Official Language Committee on April 7. […]

Time for unambiguous message from PMO

It’s surprising that the prime minister and top BJP leadership seem unaware that the rising tide of hate speeches and demonitisation of the country’s 220 million-strong Muslim minority by BJP’s affiliated sangh parivar and hindutva fringe groups could derail the economy limping back to normalcy after two years of serious pandemic disruption. They need to […]

Ukraine invasion not entirely unprovoked

Russia’s invasion of the independent Republic of Ukraine on February 24 and the substantial damage to lives and property that the inconclusive 30-day war has caused in the heavily outgunned and outnumbered latter country, have been universally condemned. Quite rightly, because Russia and particularly its autocratic President Vladimir Putin mounted the largest land offensive since […]

BJP’s mere welfarism won the day

The BJP’s 4-1 sweep of the five state legislative assembly elections held in February-March has attracted detailed reportage and analysis by respected media pundits and prophets. However, few, if any, have provided a satisfactory explanation for the triumph of BJP in four of the five states which went to the hustings, especially the comprehensive re-election […]

Complex issues in Hijab controversy

Karnataka’s hijab controversy which broke out in early January when six girl students of a government pre-university college were denied entry into their classrooms for wearing hijabs (headscarves) is spreading in ever widening circles across the country, and has even drawn the attention of the Jeddah (Saudi Arabia)-based Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), which has […]

Education as usual in Budget 2022-23

The union budget 2022-23 presented to Parliament and the public last month has generated considerable confusion and anxiety within the small minority of educationists and educators who look at the big picture. Although India’s education sector is emerging from the pandemic crisis of the longest lockdown of education institutions (82 weeks) worldwide, and a huge […]

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