-The Indian Express Normalisation of surveillance destroys what sustains a civilisation — human interaction filled with trust, care. Even though Delhi Government’s decision to install CCTV cameras in school classrooms has generated an interesting debate, it is important to see beyond the classrooms, and reflect more intensely on the meaning of living in a society that normalises and sanctifies surveillance. As an ideology that seeks to become hegemonic, the practice of surveillance...

-Business Standard Till the time you don’t give water to a farmer’s fields, you can’t save him from suicide. Intervening in a debate in the state Assembly on July 21, 2015, the Chief Minister of Maharashtra remarked that the state has 40 per cent of the country’s large dams, “but 82 per cent area of the state is rainfed. Till the time you don’t give water to a farmer’s fields, you can’t...

-Newsclick.in The tragedy unfolding in Muzaffarpur has been turned into a sensationalised TV serial. Dear parachute reporters from Delhi, Mumbai and elsewhere, please stop the drama of Lights, Camera, Action. You are a reporter not an actor. The nation is shocked and pained by the death of scores of children in Muzaffarpur in Bihar and instead of presenting the facts or investigating the causes, instead of sympathy and understanding towards the weeping kin,...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: After years of existing as a repulsive mound of festering garbage, the landfill at Okhla has got a look that is more attractive. One face of the stabilised landfill has finally been “greened” and the capping work continues on the other sides. When the work is over, the overused landfill will get a new avatar as an ecopark. Tufail Ahmed, the engineer in charge of the...

-TheWire.in To rectify this gap between perception and reality, inequality of opportunities and the lack of emphasis on primary education need to feature more prominently in Indian policy discussions. We are constantly reminded of how Narendra Modi started from humble beginnings by selling tea and rose to occupy the position of the prime minister of India. Irrespective of which side of the political divide one is on, there is no disputing the...