Opinions
Some years ago, I painted a provocative sentence on a wall in my classroom: “Taxation is theft.”
I was not asking my students to accept it as economic gospel. I wanted them to challenge it. 22 MBA...
Long ago, in a town whose name the storyteller has forgotten, four friends set out to seek their fortune. Three of them had spent years mastering the sacred sciences of their time. The fourth had studied...
India Prints PhDs Faster Than It Prints Jobs
In 2015, the Uttar Pradesh government advertised 368 peon posts. The only qualifications were Class 5 pass and the ability to ride a bicycle....
India Needs 76 Years to Train Enough Therapists. Your Dividend Expires in 15
Every 10 October, India performs the same ritual. Companies post a lotus-pose graphic, a minister tweets a helpline number, and HR schedules a wellness...
Respected Gyanesh Kumar, it is ‘We the People’, Not ‘We the Registered’
A democracy rarely dies on the day it stops holding elections. It weakens on the quieter days, when the question changes from "who will...
Why China Still Remembers the Opium Wars as National Trauma
The Opium Wars stand as one of the most consequential chapters in modern Asian history. These mid-19th century conflicts between Qing China and Western...
Teach Your Sons Before You Curfew Your Daughters
Every few months, a case shatters the national conscience. In December 2012 it was a young physiotherapy student on a Delhi bus. In August...
Ask an Indian to Lower the Volume and See the Angry Face
Every morning I step into a Mumbai local with a book in my bag and hope in my heart. The hope usually dies by...
India’s Growth Story Has a Casteist Footnote Nobody Reads
India tells itself a comforting story – that caste was a village issue, a feudal remnant, a dying way of life, a thing that...
What Germany’s Apprentices Know That India’s Toppers Don’t
I have spent close to 14 years moving between two worlds that most people assume are separate: the classroom and the industry floor. I...
The Audit We Promise After Every Building Falls Down
A five-storey building in Satya Niketan fell on a Sunday afternoon. It had been under renovation for months, reopened to tenants in August 2026...
What Ancient Bharat Understood About Faith That Many Hindus Today Have Forgotten
There is a verse in the Rig Veda, in the Nasadiya Sukta, the Hymn of Creation, that ends not with a declaration but with...
Mumbai Is Nepal’s Future: Just With the Floods Coming From the Other Direction
On the morning of 26 August 2026, a stretch of the Trishuli River in central Nepal simply stopped behaving like a river. A section...
Why India’s Workplaces Keep Failing the Women They Promised to Protect
13 years after Parliament passed the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013, an uncomfortable question refuses to go...