The Cockroach movement protesters used memes, mockery and collective action to cut through mainstream media’s refusal to tackle problems plaguing the country’s politics Niha Masih Hello! Welcome to This Is India from the Guardian. I’m Niha Masih and I’ll be writing to you every week about the stories, ideas and news makers of modern India. I’ll do… Read More How gen Z exposed India’s prime-time propaganda machine
How the NEP’s killing of the public university brought Gen Z out on the streets… According to the National Crime Records Bureau, student suicides have jumped eighty percent in the last decade—more than a hundred and twenty thousand over ten years—and over two thousand students die annually due to exam failures भारतीय ज्ञान परंपरा या… Read More Teaching a Lesson
Bharat Bhushan With little in the Gen-Z campaign that the Modi government could turn against it, a State-ordered take down of content seemed the only option to limit reputational damage How women protesters became targets after the Jantar Mantar protest Bharat Bhushan A highly curated image of Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the supreme leader of… Read More Why Gen‑Z’s satire will outpace State control
Aslı Bâli and Samuel Moyn America is in decline. And so is Pax America: the American-led world order. While there are many genuine dangers of American decline, there has never been a better chance to say clearly how much the unipolar order always left to be desired, and to imagine a multipolar world that might secure… Read More What should replace the American-led world order?
Socrates: If the whole is ailing the part cannot be well / Kautilya: Disaffection among Subjects Kautilya’s observations on the causes of discontent in a polity New Delhi: Most weekend memorial lectures by sitting judges pass with little public attention. Not those delivered by Supreme Court Justice Ujjal Bhuyan, who has often used such platforms to candidly critique the… Read More In SC judge Ujjal Bhuyan’s candour beyond the courtroom, some questions for the judiciary
Edward Luce “Tweets don’t overturn signed agreements,” said a Saudi official last week. Amid America’s broiling ocean of surrealism, being instructed by a dynastic autocracy on the sanctity of the contract stands out. Donald Trump had claimed to amend a US-Saudi nuclear deal on his Truth Social site the day after it was signed. That… Read More Trump’s waning sway over the world
Watch: The reason why the RSS wants to maintain an iron grip over Indian education: इंडियन एक्सप्रेस ने छापा प्रधान के इस्तीफे की हकीकत RSS क्यों रखना चाहता शिक्षा मंत्रालय अपने अधीन? Kautilya’s observations on the causes of discontent in a polity NB: From a Facebook post by Anikendranath Sen, journalist Gogia Pasha, or his ilk,… Read More A Note of Caution for India’s Gen Z movement: The BJP/RSS scheme for a permanent take-over
Once you learn what the “uni-context” is, you won’t stop seeing it everywhere Derek Thompson Here are some questions that I consider self-evidently compelling about the modern world: Why is the news media so interested in telling you how much the world sucks all the time? Why are so many of us obsessed with distraction… Read More A Philosopher’s One-Word Theory to Explain Why the World Feels So Weird
The Cockroach Janta Party won this battle partly because the legions it led seemed armoured with an alloy of innocence and insouciance. This had something to do with how young they were Mukul Kesavan It was the 6th of June. Abhijeet Dipke had set out his stall at Jantar Mantar after returning from Boston. I… Read More Dawn for democracy
NB: Listen to Arvind Anjum’s interviews with the new arrivals at the protest site. Pakistani youth express their admiration and solidarity with struggling Indian students: BBC report. DS The protest has convincingly established not just the irrelevance of legacy TV channels but also their continued abandonment of basic journalistic norms Kalpana Sharma There were broken… Read More The media missed the biggest story: How a generation fed on consumerism and hate found its voice
After the truth-shower 