May Issue: Rise of the ‘spiritual gurus’; Seeking Shah Rukh Khan; Judicial inaction; & more

Friday 06 May 2022

Hindu Spiritualism for a Neoliberal Age The rise of tele-gurus signals a Hindu spirituality that resonates with the language of global capitalism, political Hindutva, and cultural consumption. Surya Prakash Upadhyay

Talking Film Icons, Understanding Society What can social science researchers discover if they stepped out of rigid frameworks of understanding deprivation and asked 'subjects' about their joys and pleasures? Shrayana Bhattacharya

How Judicial Inaction is Killing Constitutional Faith with a Thousand Cuts The Supreme Court has forgotten that its primary duty is to protect the citizen from the excesses of the state and its instrumentalities. The time is ripe for the judges to get down to their actual job of administering justice. Rohin Bhatt

Making Sense of Covid-19 Mortality Estimates for India The government should not issue bad-faith rebuttals of international Covid-19 mortality estimates that challenge official figures. It should instead release data that could better resolve uncertainties. Murad Banaji

Kashmir: Loss, Memory and a Shared History 'Is there something in the shared, yet dissimilar, histories of Kashmiris that might yet contain the hope of a more viable future, with all its challenges and difficulties?' Suvir Kaul

The End of a Political Model in Uttar Pradesh The BSP's strategy of combining a core base with moneyed candidates no longer works in Uttar Pradesh. The BJP has crafted a new winning formula that uses only elements of this old model. Gilles Verniers

What Went Wrong with the Samajwadi Party and What Should it do Now? Akhilesh Yadav and the SP have paid the price for going into a shell after the 2017 defeat in the Uttar Pradesh elections. The party needs to be on the streets as it used to earlier and it needs to actively engage with Hindutva. Radhika Ramaseshan

The Many Lives of Rani Gaidinliu The Sangh Parivar's valorisation of Rani Gaidilniu is a rare instance when a tribal leader from the North East is celebrated as a national icon over and above other — often Christian — leaders from the region. Arkotong Longkumer

How a Village in Delhi Influenced Public Healthcare in India The periurban space of Najafgarh has been a site of continuous experimentations in delivering rural primary healthcare since the 1930s. The model of the health visitor developed there has worked its way into present day national programmes and education curricula. Aprajita Sarcar

An Indian Green Deal A Green Deal for India could successfully address the triple crisis the country is now facing: an economic slowdown, poor health services and a high carbon intensity of economic activity. Rohit Azad , Shouvik Chakraborty

The Perils of the Digital University Without proper regulatory clarity and oversight, the emerging policy on online education threatens to turn the university into a shell institution, commandeered by industry for profiteering. Chaitanya Ravi , Juhi Sidharth

Some Reflections on Effective Teaching and Learning A teacher of many decades in schools and colleges reflects on what students get energised by and what teachers could stimulate in their pupils. Maithreyi Krishnaraj

Rohan Jahagirdar discusses finance and data privacy In this episode on finance and data privacy, Rohan Jahagirdar discusses regulation of data collected by fintech companies, the recent introduction of the Account Aggregator system, as well as the Non-banking Financial Company–Account Aggregator Framework introduced by RBI in 2016. Rohan Jahagirdar

Reflections on Illness, the Body and the Mind A 23-year-old reminisces about her 16-year-old self that was afflicted by a lifelong autoimmune illness, prompting recollections of the questions she asked herself then to make sense of life. There are new questions now and her search for answers continues. Poornima Kumar

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