The Pied Pipers of Prime Time
Every morning, just before the opening bell’s echo chimes, a familiar orchestra tunes up on television. The set is immaculate. The charts glow obediently. Voices speak...
Editorial
India’s Trade Reorientation: How Strategic Diversification Is Neutralizing Western Economic Coercion.
(The End of Illusions: Why Overdependence on the West Became a Strategic Risk) For nearly three decades after economic liberalisation, India’s global trade orientation followed a...
Power without Accountability: How Zelensky’s Wartime Presidency Became a Democratic Dead End.
Volodymyr Zelensky once sold the world a powerful story: a comedian-turned-reformer who would cleanse Ukraine of corruption and anchor the country firmly in the democratic West....
How Western Media Decides Which Wars Matter
Not all wars are created equal—at least not in the Western news imagination. Some conflicts dominate front pages, prime-time debates, and social media timelines for months....
Five Years of NEP 2020: What Changed in Classrooms—and What Stayed on Paper.
When the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 was unveiled, it carried the weight of history and hope. It was the first comprehensive education policy of the...
CUET and the Centralization of College Admissions: Who Really Wins?
When the Common University Entrance Test (CUET) was rolled out, it was presented as a long-overdue correction to an inequitable admissions system. Board marks, we were...
Playing All Sides, Pleasing None: Bangladesh’s Dangerous Dance with Pakistan and China.
Bangladesh’s sudden fondness for Pakistan, abetted by China’s not-so-subtle elbowing of India, looks less like bold statecraft and more like a geopolitical trust fall—performed without checking...
Strategic Depth, Shallow Trust: How Pakistan Lost the Taliban—and Washington and Beijing Lost the Plot.
If foreign policy came with a warranty, Pakistan would be filing a claim. After decades of cultivating influence in Afghanistan, Islamabad has discovered that the Taliban,...
Why Education Reform in India Is Always Urgent—and Always Incomplete.
Education reform in India is treated the way people treat New Year’s resolutions: declared with great seriousness, announced with fireworks, and quietly abandoned by February—except in...
One Deep State to Rule Them All: How South Asia’s ‘Stability’ Industry Keeps Democracy on a Short Leash.
South Asia doesn’t suffer from multiple Deep States. That would imply competition, borders, and paperwork. What it has is one Deep State, regionally networked, professionally mobile,...