Year-end lists conventionally are a compilation of high achievers who made a major impact. But 2023 is better reflected not by winners, but the losers who defined the year. Three institutions come to mind, whose below-par performance has wider implications for the country Parliament This year, we got a new parliament building. Its architecture was… Read More Coomi Kapoor: Losers list 2023
“If Hindu Raj does become a fact, it will, no doubt, be the greatest calamity for this country.” — B.R. Ambedkar In a recent talk in Bengaluru, the writer, Parakala Prabhakar, made a perceptive observation about the changing language of political discourse. In the late 1980s, when the Bharatiya Janata Party was first becoming a… Read More Ramachandra Guha: Reign of faith
Bharat Bhushan The protestors in the Parliamentary attack of December 13, 2023 were clearly naive, and their method patently criminal. But even while policing failures are examined threadbare, their political message should not be lost. Ignoring caste and regional affiliations, they just wanted to send a message to the entire political class about youth unemployment. They appear… Read More No jobs and a bleak future: Has the political class failed India’s youth?
These professors had to finish their doctoral research, write papers, present in conferences, and yet miraculously also had time for that extra reading that a student requested, or for lunch at D-School Canteen to give a serious answer to a question. Abinash Dash Choudhury Education as the practice of freedom—as opposed to education as the… Read More An Ode to the ‘Ad-Hoc’ Teachers of Ramjas English Department
Seizing electronic devices in the absence of proportionality checks violates the right against self-incrimination Soutik Banerjee On 6 December 2023, in the hearing of a petition filed by the Foundation of Media Professionals, Additional Solicitor General S.V. Raju told the Supreme Court that the central government will issue “some guidelines” for the seizure of electronic… Read More Constitutional principles go for a toss in the criminal law of search and seizure
No one expected the abrogation to be reversed. But SC’s judgment lacks the reassurance that it has the integrity to uphold the Indian Constitution, in whose name it speaks, in full measure The judgment of the Supreme Court, upholding the abrogation of Article 370, is a massive legal victory for the Narendra Modi government’s approach to Jammu and… Read More Pratap Bhanu Mehta on abrogation of Article 370: Has SC established a dangerous precedent for federalism?
‘Selfie-points’ in universities: What purpose do they serve? Bharat Bhushan The selfie is no longer dismissed by behavioural analysts as symptomatic of self-obsession or narcissism. Experts believe that selfies are also a way to connect and communicate with others. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, for example, was a serious serial selfie-taker with world leaders during his… Read More University Grants Commission aiding the cult of personality
HARTOSH SINGH BAL The transformation of the relationship between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the Sikhs embodies the problems the community faces in a climate where the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s worldview prevails in the country. The story begins with a photo the Bharatiya Janata Party would once display with great pride, of a turbaned Modi disguised as… Read More Sikhs are the proverbial bone stuck in the RSS’s gullet
How legal frameworks are being used to throttle free speech and the media…The dangerous beauty of this framework is that each bill touches upon only certain key aspects that may be crucial for freedom of speech, but, together, they constitute a gargantuan web that is difficult to escape. ANANT NATH On 10 November 2023, the… Read More Drowning Voices
How an amoral technocracy powers Modi’s India… For the engineers of Bengaluru and their allies in neoliberal think tanks, the BJP’s Hindutva politics is the necessary condition to put their designs to work. In 2023, this ideology has become the common sense of how India should be governed, shared by all major political forces in… Read More The Bangalore Ideology
After the truth-shower 