manedge

When Greta Thunberg accused the world leaders of having stolen her childhood, many people thought she was pointing fingers in Trumpesque style at Trump himself - "How dare you?" When I was younger than what is Greta's age today, in the 1970s and in school, the term global warming had started getting attention. We were told how the world would be hell in 50 years' time with glaciers melting and sea-levels rising. But there were comforting voices as well who brushed under the carpet the seriousness of the issue by putting up interesting convincing arguments. And so two generations - mine and the one before that - continued to plunder the world. Forests were uprooted. But weren't we planting 10 trees in place of one that we had cut? We were doing so by overlooking the reality that a tree that took thousands of years to stands on its feet was being replaced by saplings which may or may not survive a few years. After all we have been planting saplings every year a...

It is early morning. My daughter Saumya and I decide to go to the nearest town on my cycle. As we begin the journey, we come across a steep road. By instinct Saumya, who is sitting on the cycle's carrier, tries to press the brakes to regulate its speed. I prevent her from doing so. We go down the slope and suddenly it is dark. As we emerge from the trough, light returns. Suddenly I realise that we have actually an auto-rickshaw hooked to our cycle and that we have no idea who the owner is. We get into this nearby town after some time and enter a by-lane by mistake. We come out of the by-lane and return to the town. We abandon the auto-rickshaw deciding not to take the risk of towing it back to our town and getting caught. Saumya wants painting accessories. We look around for shops. Some two or three shops are open, as the light coming out of them shows, but they aren't stationery stores, I tell her. So move out to a nearby street, on one side of which is a large ground of some...

When the Right to Education (RTE) Act was promulgated in 2009-10, the most talked about provision was 'no detention' of students up to Class-VIII. The philosophy behind this provision was to ensure that all students in the age-group of 6 to 14 years would not be deprived of education. As 25% seats were being reserved for students from the disadvantaged sections of the society, this provision was supposed to ensure that such students were not thrown out of the system due to their failure to cope up with it, coming as they were from a background which had no educated parents or additional teaching support. Furthermore, there was also a provision of age-appropriate admission. If a none year old was coming to school for the first time she had to be admitted to Class-IV. The school and the teachers were supposed to ensure that such students were brought at par with others. Sadly, this did not happen. In reality, the states' education departments took some time to implement...

The case of Chandan Mitra who has jumped ship by moving from the BJP to the TMC is indeed curious. It is indeed intriguing that someone who has spent the best part of his life in Chandigarh as the editor of The Pioneer , been two-time Rajya Sabha MP from Madhya Pradesh, and could not win a Lok Sabha seat from West Bengal in 2014, has resigned because he was not able to do much for his state (West Bengal), as mentioned by him. This is political opportunism, and nothing else. We have had prior examples of journalists jumping into politics like M J Akbar, who first joined the Congress and then the BJP; Rajiv Shukla, who first joined the Congress and then moved to the BCCI and the IPL, and whose example is being partly emulated by Rajat Sharma who had the BJP's backing in the recent DDCA elections; Arun Shourie, who was a vehement champion of Hindutva in his initial days in the BJP, and is now a vociferous critic of the present dispensation; to name a few. What is worrying th...

Indian cricket team's tour itinerary to Australia is highly lopsided. India begin their tour with three T20Is, followed by four Tests and finally play three ODIs. Playing the shortest format of cricket ahead of the longest format is no practice when a majority of the Test players like Pujara, Vijay, Rahul, Rahane, and Ishant do not play T20 for India. When a team is going primarily for 4 Tests on a difficult tour to Australia, it should ideally play 2 to 3 three-day or four-day games to get a feel of the weather, pitches and playing conditions. Though it has not been mentioned specifically in the published itinerary, one hopes the team plays at least two three-day first class games in the ten days between the last T20I and the first Test.  The Test team needs a rhythm, as was seen in South Africa recently when India improved as the series went on, having jumped off the plane straightaway into Tests after playing a limited overs series at home against Sri Lanka. Virat Kohli ha...