The 2024 Lok Sabha election in Baharampur offered a political lesson that went far beyond one constituency, yet very few seemed interested in reading it. Yusuf Pathan, a 41-year-old cricketer from Vadodara, Gujarat, entered West Bengal politics as an outsider and defeated Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, the 68-year-old Congress veteran who had represented Baharampur for five…
As someone associated with academics, I find it both surprising and disturbing that political parties opposed to the Narendra Modi government can make sweeping claims about the state of school education without acknowledging the hard data. The allegation that the Modi government has presided over the “closure” of schools, often repeated by sections of the…
As Bharat celebrates 80 years of Independence, it is worth looking beyond the familiar milestones of economic growth, technological progress and social transformation to recognise one of its most consequential democratic achievements: the steadily expanding political participation of women. The journey has been neither easy nor complete. Gender inequality continues to exist in many forms,…
What if one of the oldest images of human relationships found in India quietly challenges one of our most familiar assumptions about women in the past? At Bhimbetka in Madhya Pradesh, among hundreds of prehistoric rock paintings preserved across natural shelters, there is an intriguing depiction of a man and a woman in which the…
The greatest tragedy of our times is that a patient today enters a hospital not merely with a disease but with two things that instantly determine his fate — his health insurance card and the size of his insurance cover. The bigger the cover, the bigger the smile at the reception. Welcome to India’s new…
Students are often described as the future of a nation, and rightly so. They are the builders of tomorrow’s Bharat. During our freedom struggle and in the decades that followed Independence, student participation in public life played an important role in shaping the nation’s democratic character. Times, however, have changed. While young people continue to…
History has repeatedly demonstrated that power is never permanent. Those who believed themselves invincible, indispensable or above public scrutiny have invariably been humbled by the electorate. Democracies have a remarkable way of reminding political leaders that governments are temporary, but reputations endure. People may forget speeches, slogans and election rhetoric, but they rarely forget arrogance….
When the Telangana government launched the Hyderabad Disaster Response and Asset Protection Agency (HYDRAA), it promised a new era of urban governance. The stated objective was noble and necessary—to reclaim government lands, protect lakes and water bodies, restore drainage channels, and prevent Hyderabad from sinking under the weight of decades of illegal encroachments. Few could…
Politics in Telangana is entering a decisive phase. The honeymoon period of the Congress government is fading, while the Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), once the dominant political force in the state, continues to grapple with an identity crisis after transforming itself from the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) into a national party. As one struggles to…
Indian politics is witnessing a fascinating churn. The once-rigid walls separating political parties are beginning to crack, regional satraps are reassessing their equations, and cross-party defections are creating a new parliamentary arithmetic that may soon deliver what many consider long-pending structural reforms for the nation. For the first time in years, there is a realistic…
