Like millions across the land, I mourn inconsolably the passing of a young man who dreamed of the stars, yet despaired of our world enough to take his young life. After writing a few words of fire, of yearning and pain, in the hostel room of a friend, he quietly hanged himself to death.
Two most formidable challenges that will engage the peoples and governments of all countries on the planet during the 21st century will be the ways in which they handle inequality and deal with diversity. Historically, India has culturally sanctioned inequalities of gender, caste and class more than any other ancient civilisation.
Jay Mazoomdar recounts a telling conversation he had with three young men in Varanasi after the elections. ‘“More than Muslims here, now Pakistan and China will be scared,” one of them said disarmingly.
The centrality of fraternity in nurturing and sustaining democracy is one of Babasaheb Ambedkar’s many profound insights. The word used in the Constitution in Hindi is bandhuta, which vividly evokes ideas of comradeship and mutual belonging.
India has been conspicuously less successful than many other emerging economies in the scale, speed and depth of its reversal of poverty. But many scholars say that whatever one’s measures of poverty, young people on an average have better educational…
The country is ostensibly in the throes of a great social movement for sanitation. Gandhi’s name is evoked, Prime Minister Narendra Modi leads from the front, ministers lift brooms for cameras, and officers, college and school children take oaths against littering and to clean their surroundings.
Among free India’s gravest failures—along with its inability to end hunger, pervasive poverty and discrimination—is the continued targeting of people with violence and arson only because of their faith or caste.