-The Hindu The Madras High Court on Friday cleared the decks for the commissioning of Units I and II of the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project (KKNPP), holding that there was no impediment to the Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd to proceed with the project. However, it made it clear that the regulatory authorities should periodically oversee the compliance and maintenance of standards of pollution. “By taking note of the overall situation,...

-The Economic Times At its root, the whole controversy on cartoons in NCERT textbooks underlines the malaise afflicting political debate in the country: passions whipped up in aid of divisive political ambitions. Here, rage and slanging matches trump reasoned debate. One of the stated reasons for the order of the six-member panel constituted to review cartoons - that politicians and bureaucrats can't be shown in an 'incorrect' way - amply reveals that...

-The Hindu The petition against the Ambedkar-Nehru cartoon, published in The Hindu (“Humour is by no means exempt from prejudice”, June 8, 2012), makes for sad reading. Sad, because it bears the signatures of some of our best scholars, universally admired for their rigorous scholarship, who nevertheless chose to sign a petition short on facts. The petition asks the NCERT's Textbooks Review Committee to “reconsider the Ambedkar cartoon (and possibly other such...

The cartoon controversy provides the possibility of interrogating the functioning of the academic system to understand its relationship with the downtrodden masses. A new deliberation is needed in order to make the academic world more sensitive and responsive towards the issues and concerns of the subaltern-oppressed communities. This will be an ethical incentive for the present-day dalit movement in India and can bring greater democratisation to the education system. Harish Wankhede...

The row over a cartoon featuring Dalit leader Ambedkar shows a lack of critical thinking in the Indian polity. The cartoon by Shankar Pillai that caused such pandemonium in the Indian Parliament on 11 May 2012 when various Dalit and non-Dalit members demanded its omission from a Class IX textbook was originally published in 1949. It depicts Dalit leader Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar with a whip riding a snail entitled ‘Constitution’...