“The shocking violence at JNU should convince you of one simple proposition: India is governed by a regime whose sole raison d’etre is to find an adversarial rallying point and crush it by brute force.”
Pratap Bhanu Mehta, former vice chancellor of Ashoka University, on the recent attack on JNU students by masked goons (Indian Express, January 7)
“Although almost half of four-year-olds (44.2 percent) and more than a quarter of all five-year-olds (26.3 percent) are enrolled in anganwadis, these children have far lower levels of cognitive skills and foundational ability than their counterparts in private LKG and UKG classes.”
Annual Status of Education Report 2019 released by Pratham Education Foundation (January 14)
“CAA is blatantly unconstitutional and combined with NRC fundamentally discriminatory.”
Pinarayi Vijayan, Kerala chief minister on the Citizenship Amendment Act and proposed National Register of Citizens (Outlook, January 20)
“Online abuse on Twitter demeans women, it invalidates their voice, it belittles them, it intimidates them, and it can silence them.”
Nazia Erum, head of media and advocacy, Amnesty International India (‘How Twitter became so toxic for India’s women politicians’, CNN, January 23)
“By undermining the secular principles of the Constitution, Mr. Modi’s latest initiatives threaten to do damage to India’s democracy that could last for decades. They are also likely to lead to bloodshed.”
The Economist on how the BJP government’s Citizenship Amendment Act is creating divisions that imperil the world’s biggest democracy (‘Intolerant India, January 25-31)
“Nothing integrates a nation better than economic prosperity. Divisions in society begin to dissolve when there is a feeling of all-round well-being.”
Aroon Purie, editor-in-chief, India Today on why the BJP government needs to make the economy its most urgent priority (India Today, January 27)