Avijit Pathak
Avijit Pathak teaches at JNU
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More From Avijit Pathak
In Good Faith: Life in the city is being drained of love and enchantment
September 04,2025 07:10:25 AM
Are we fast losing the art of direct face-to-face communication? Is technology, far from emancipating, enslaving us?
Thu, Sep 04, 2025
Private vs public universities: Education fails where ‘knowledge’ has a market valueSubscriber Only
April 17,2025 12:09:20 PM
The emergent politics of knowledge tends to devalue critical thinking, or the very idea of liberal humanistic education. The result is the mushrooming growth of all sorts of technical institutions selling education as an overpriced packaged commodity
Thu, Apr 17, 2025
There is nothing to celebrate in Grok’s response. Humane touch is more important than AISubscriber Only
March 28,2025 17:34:14 PM
I have no hesitation in saying that I would give more importance to the ground reporting and analytical skills of a hard-working/intellectually alert journalists than what “Grok” or AI can present before me within a fraction of a second.
Fri, Mar 28, 2025
Clamour for death penalty for R G Kar convict is self-defeatingSubscriber Only
January 24,2025 07:35:20 AM
While it satisfies those who demand instant justice, it diverts our attention from the real task at hand — resisting the normalisation of a culture that promotes brute and toxic masculinity and the objectification of a woman.
Fri, Jan 24, 2025
The Guru and the Politician: The broken spirit behind the spiritualism industrySubscriber Only
January 08,2025 15:24:15 PM
It is high time you and I began to distinguish the market-driven/neoliberal packaging of conformist spirituality from the emancipatory potential of what the likes of Mahatma Gandhi, Thich Nhat Hanh and Martin Luther King (Jr) embodied.
Fri, Jan 10, 2025
US reduces student visas: You don’t need to be obsessed with foreign degreesSubscriber Only
December 13,2024 08:35:00 AM
My discomfort with this obsession does not mean that I am pleading for the closure of the mind. Instead, I am pleading for symmetrical dialogue and conversation — a respectable exchange of ideas between Indian and Euro-American universities
Fri, Dec 13, 2024
Why we celebrate capitalist icons like Ratan Tata but have little time for those who fight for the rights of the poorSubscriber Only
November 11,2024 15:20:40 PM
Stories of pain and struggle do not sell. Perhaps that is why many of us remain reluctant to talk about yet another kind of story of love, courage and compassion — those of the likes of Stan Swamy and Professor G N Saibaba.
Mon, Nov 11, 2024
Avijit Pathak writes on toxic work culture: Imagine a life outside the officeSubscriber Only
September 27,2024 06:00:54 AM
Productivity should not only be about generating profit for the corporation that has hired you
Sat, Sep 28, 2024
Dear teachers, let’s remember, we are not docile techniciansSubscriber Only
September 05,2024 12:58:17 PM
No matter whether we teach physics or history, the quality of our engagement with young students will play a key role in shaping the fate of our democracy. Are we ready to urge young minds to see the meaning of life-affirming education beyond the neoliberal mythologies of ‘placements and salary packages’?
Thu, Sep 05, 2024
Lesson from coaching centre tragedy: Don’t break the dreams of studentsSubscriber Only
August 07,2024 15:00:07 PM
Let some of us acquire the courage to say that the meaning of being a student is to be a life-long wanderer or a seeker. Studentship is about learning and unlearning; it is about asking critical questions, and striving for a new world filled with love and compassion.
Thu, Aug 08, 2024
NET, NEET and Kota suicides: We aren’t talking about the root causeSubscriber Only
June 29,2024 15:14:14 PM
We can move forward only when we accept that there is something more to life than becoming a doctor/engineer with a huge salary package, and above all, the deeper riddles of life and society cannot be reduced into the form of MCQs
Sat, Jun 29, 2024
CBSE Board results out: Why I won’t celebrate the toppersSubscriber Only
May 13,2024 18:46:38 PM
These days many middle-class parents love to see their children as commodities with appropriate ‘placements and salary packages’. A one-dimensional pattern of schooling destroys many young minds
Wed, May 15, 2024
From JNU to Columbia, CAA to Gaza — in a cynical world, students show the waySubscriber Only
April 29,2024 18:16:38 PM
Ruling establishments loathe the kind of education that inspires one to ask critical questions, strive for a democratic world. It may be time for us to wake up, and sing once again the songs of John Lennon and Salil Chowdhury and walk with the students trying to activate our lost conscience
Mon, Apr 29, 2024
Attack on foreign students for offering namaz at Gujarat University: Bigotry’s new normalSubscriber Only
March 18,2024 19:25:02 PM
Unless as concerned citizens, teachers, students and public intellectuals, we come forward, assert the importance of cross-cultural dialogue, it will be exceedingly difficult to save our schools, colleges and universities from the virus of this toxic culture
Mon, Mar 18, 2024
CBSE’s open book exam experiment: How to make exams about critical thought, not surveillance and anxietySubscriber Only
February 23,2024 10:00:57 AM
We can orient young minds for open-book examinations only if we succeed in revolutionising the ethos of the classroom — from the pedagogic practice to the mode of teacher-student engagement
Sat, Feb 24, 2024
Mandir politics, Palestine and Israel: When did religion lose its compassion?Subscriber Only
February 07,2024 14:36:32 PM
Religion has lost its love and become yet another form of manipulative politics; priests and mullahs have replaced seekers and wanderers; the bricks and stones of temples have become more important than our inner poetry
Wed, Feb 07, 2024
I am not sad that India lost the World Cup. Hyper-nationalism has ruined cricket for meSubscriber Only
November 21,2023 12:01:47 PM
India's World Cup defeat conveys a message to all those “warriors” who seek to reduce cricket to a surgical strike. It is asking them to remain humble, see a game as a game, understand how the lens of militant nationalism distorts their ways of seeing, and celebrate the spirit of international solidarity and togetherness
Sat, Nov 25, 2023
Dear Narayana Murthy, here’s why you need to read Karl Marx, Thoreau and John RuskinSubscriber Only
November 02,2023 07:17:40 AM
We need to rescue the power of our imagination or aspiration for good and meaningful life from what Murthy seems to be pleading for — work, work and work with the sole aim of ‘economic prosperity’
Thu, Nov 02, 2023
Avijit Pathak writes: Why I could not celebrate Chandrayaan-3 landing — and the muscular nationalism of the ruling regimeSubscriber Only
August 28,2023 14:50:25 PM
It was an extraordinary moment on August 23 when — because of the brilliance and hard work of ISRO scientists/technologists — Chandrayaan-3 finally landed on the moon. Yet, India as a whole — especially the political class — has not embraced scientific temper, openness or discarded bigotry and superstition
Tue, Aug 29, 2023
After Pune teacher’s arrest: Fear and surveillance in the classroomSubscriber Only
August 06,2023 13:39:07 PM
If, as a teacher, you become overly cautious before you utter a word, if you worry that a student is recording your lecture, or the administration is continually monitoring your every move, how can you teach Marx, Gandhi, Ambedkar, Tagore, Iqbal, Manto and Premchand freely, spontaneously and creatively?
Wed, Aug 09, 2023
Iqbal and hijab in Madhya Pradesh: When a bulldozer comes to school, we are all diminishedSubscriber Only
June 19,2023 18:31:45 PM
Assaults of the kind on the Ganga Jamuna High School can be resisted only if teachers, educationists and students come together, communicate with the larger society, and initiate a movement for saving education
Mon, Jun 19, 2023
Rajeev Bhargava’s Between Hope and Despair encourages readers to reflect on public and private moralitySubscriber Only
June 03,2023 12:00:16 PM
The collection of essays is a creative blend of objectivity and reflexivity, philosophical reasoning and critical insight
Sat, Jun 03, 2023
Avijit Pathak writes: Textbook deletions are an assault on curiosity and debate in the classroomSubscriber Only
April 07,2023 12:31:33 PM
As students and teachers, we must rediscover ourselves as wanderers and fight for the recovery of the classroom, free from the technologies of surveillance and the authoritarian gaze
Fri, Apr 07, 2023
On Kota suicides, Avijit Pathak writes: We are all responsible for the coaching centre-driven anxietySubscriber Only
December 15,2022 16:00:21 PM
As teachers, we must introspect about our failures. As parents, we ought to ask uncomfortable questions about the values of success we inculcate. And as citizens, we must make the political class accountable for its failure to address the aspirations of youngsters
Sat, Dec 17, 2022
Why our obsession with ranking universities does more harm than goodSubscriber Only
November 18,2022 08:00:32 AM
University rankings harbour a dubious notion about education — everything has to be measured, whatever is immeasurable is insignificant
Sat, Nov 26, 2022a better experience