Thoughts In A Wandering Mind

Indian politics has discovered a new location, and surprisingly, it is not Parliament, a television studio or a press conference where five people shout into five microphones while the original question quietly dies under the table. It is the smartphone—and increasingly, the road outside it. In Rajasthan, CJP spokesperson Ashutosh Ranka was reportedly assaulted during a school visit linked to the “School Thik Karo” campaign, which has been drawing attention to the condition of government schools. CJP has alleged political involvement in the assault, adding the usual ingredients to the political recipe: accusations, denials, outrage, counter- outrage and enough social-media content to keep several smartphones busy until Sunday. But beneath the immediate controversy is potentially more important story. Gen Z is discovering that after making the reel, somebody occasionally has to leave the room and enter the real world. For years, Gen Z was treated as a generation permanently attach...

From Broken Benches to Bright Futures: The School Revolution in Andhra Pradesh There is a photograph that every Indian should see. It is not of a rocket launch or a cricket victory. It is of a government school classroom in rural Andhra Pradesh before 2019. The walls are stained with dampness. The windows have no glass, only rusted grilles. The blackboard is a patch of faded green, illegible from the third bench. The toilet is a locked door with a broken latch, because there is no running water and no one dares open it. The fan hangs motionless from the ceiling, a relic from another era. This was not an exception. This was the norm. When the state government took office in 2019, the condition of government schools in Andhra Pradesh was not merely poor—it was a national shame. Decades of apathy had reduced these institutions to ghost buildings where education was theoretical and infrastructure a cruel joke. Toilets were either non-existent or unusable, forcing girl students to return ho...