“A blanket ban ignores the complexity of adolescent development. As noted by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and some child rights bodies, social media is also a lifeline. For rural adolescents, urban slum dwellers, queer and differently abled teens seeking peer support, these platforms are often their only window to a community where they feel seen.”

Apar Gupta, Founder of the Internet Freedom Foundation, India, in an essay titled ‘A social media ban will not save our children’ (The Hindu, February 9)

“The files provide a sobering X-ray of some of America’s elites: Immature, full of impunity, corrupt, venal, venial, and venereal all at once. They also provide a sobering view of global politics: There are no grand purposes, not even a political economy. Instead, what we get is a world run by huckstering middlemen, vulnerable personalities, fragile egos, the perfect embodiment of Spengler’s figures of moral decline: Clever, skeptical, but licentious and morally exhausted.”

Pratap Bhanu Mehta, public intellectual, on the Epstein Files (Indian Express, February 9)

“The Budget this year has landed with a thud, not because of what it contains, but because of what it omits. Behind claims of fiscal prudence lie a more uncomfortable reality: the Indian state is shrinking not by design, but by compulsion.”

Shashi Tharoor, Congress MP, on the Union Budget 2026-27 (The New Indian Express, February 10)

“NIRF’s integration of Scopus metrics has triggered what the framework itself acknowledges as a “dangerous race for quantity over quality.” India now ranks second globally in research retractions — a distinction achieved not through scholarly excellence, but through the systematic incentivisation of misconduct.”

Sushant Kishore, professor, VIT and Navneet Sharma, lecturer, Central University of Himachal Pradesh in an essay titled ‘Inside India’s ‘metric raj’: How global rankings are reshaping higher education’ (Deccan Herald, February 8)