Avijit Pathak teaches at JNU
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, 2025April 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, 2025March 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, 2025January 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, 2025January 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, 2025December 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, 2024November 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, 2024September 27,2024 06:00:54 AM
Productivity should not only be about generating profit for the corporation that has hired you
Sat, Sep 28, 2024September 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, 2024August 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, 2024June 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, 2024May 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, 2024April 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, 2024March 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, 2024February 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, 2024February 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, 2024November 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, 2023November 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, 2023August 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, 2023August 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, 2023June 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, 2023June 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, 2023April 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, 2023December 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, 2022November 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, 2022