-The Hindu Without regulation, the situation could spiral out of control Recently, a professor at a business school allegedly misused his faculty position to provide fake certificates to students whom he had compelled to attend an online course that he taught. He essentially took advantage of India’s rising pre-pandemic gig economy in education. When authorities at the institution discovered the racket, they suspended him. This is a cautionary tale for the global...

-National Herald While Americans take themselves as citizens and demand responsibility and accountability from power, Indians are still slavish, says Kannan Gopinathan, who resigned from IAS What happened in Washington DC at the Capitol Hill Building was watched in horror and everybody said, “Look democracy can fail even in America.” To me it looked like the triumph of American democracy. Attempts to overturn the Presidential election failed. State after state stood up to...

-The Indian Express Legal action against Scihub and Libgen frames problem of control and governance of knowledge in a globalised world. The recent litigations against Scihub and Libgen by Elsevier, Wiley and ACS bring us to a moment of many realisations about control and governance of knowledge in academia. In the latter half of the 20th century, globalisation led to the imperative of applying “global” standards to higher education. As global standards...

-The Indian Express Nearly three-fourth of the population depends on government facilities; of the 2.60% who suffer from chronic illnesses, most have diabetes. # Two lakh children remain “out of school”, including 64,813 due to “financial constraints”. # Over six lakh between 0-6 years are outside the net of anganwadis, which cover less than half of Delhi’s pregnant women. # Over 63% people use buses for commuting, while only 6% depend on the flagship...

-TheIndiaForum.in The uniqueness of agriculture calls for continued & not less government intervention. Reform of Indian agriculture is needed, but this must be to enhance state capacities and strengthen regulatory oversight. What would be a “better government that is better”? Over the past 30-40 years, all over the world, the word “reform” has come to acquire a very specific meaning. Summed up as the Washington Consensus, it proposes reducing the role of...