There is a particular kind of loneliness that lives inside a marriage, not the loneliness of an empty room, but the loneliness of being unseen while doing everything. Many people, particularly in Indian households, do not walk into a coaching session describing dramatic cruelty or betrayal. They describe exhaustion. They describe an unequal partnership in…
Six years after the launch of National Education Policy 2020, its implementation across India remains uneven, fragmented, and unbefitting of a transformative policy that emerged after one of the most extensive consultative exercises in Indian education. The optimism and intellectual excitement that NEP 2020, and the multiple National Curriculum Frameworks, once evoked, has now given…
How a Lakshadweep nurse prevented a premature delivery mid-air and went on to receive the National Florence Nightingale Award In 2004, a 19-year-old nursing student fled the burns unit of Rajiv Gandhi School of Nursing in Hubli, North Karnataka. The screams of severely burnt patients were too much to bear. Aysha Beebi K walked out,…
There are men who believe beds make themselves & fresh parathas appear by magic at midnight. They woo passionately, but afterwards the woman plays second fiddle to MIL, cricket, and PlayStation Last week, a neighbour asked me for love advice. Because of my recent, very recent, divorce, I was surprised. “Isn’t it a terrible idea…
Xi dealt with Trump as his equal, pitting Beijing’s grand strategic concerns against Washington’s transactionalism. Yes, both sides outwardly agreed on some issues. But Beijing is playing a long game When Xi Jinping and Donald Trump met in Beijing on Thursday, they walked away with two very different stories. The US readout emphasised market access…
There is a growing alignment between Tokyo and Washington in the defence sector. In January, Japanese defence minister Shinjiro Koizumi met Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth in Washington, and they agreed to expand joint defence production and strengthen supply chains. This will include joint production of air-to-air missiles and surface-to-air interceptors, as well as collaboration on…
New India doesn’t know what it means. Price signals are a better way to influence its consumption choices “Austerity” is a word people are using a lot this week. It means living carefully, spending less, and avoiding waste. But most Indians today have never really lived through a time of austerity. That’s because two out…
Thirty years ago, while teaching a robotics lab course at the University of Illinois, my senior colleagues gave me a piece of advice that stayed with me: quit AI and robotics, because the breakthroughs were always “twenty years away.” Decades later, looking at the massive wave of hype surrounding programs like ChatGPT, I wondered if…
Every time a new jobs report drops and AI is mentioned in the same breath, the conversation follows a familiar script. How many roles are at risk. Which sectors will recover. Whether universal basic income is the answer. Whether reskilling pipelines can move fast enough. The debate is urgent, well-funded, and organized around a single…
It’s hard to understand why the education ministry still hasn’t properly fixed the National Testing Agency (NTA). NTA is the group that conducts big exams like NEET, but it has many weaknesses. It is not created by a law passed in Parliament, so its accountability is unclear. It depends a lot on temporary workers, and…