January 14, 2023

Good morning. On account of Pongal, the team will take a break for a couple of days. We will be back with the newsletter on 18th January (Wednesday). Enjoy the festivities and the long weekend!

🗳️ POLL RESULTS – Week 107

🗓️ THE WEEK THAT WAS

Remote Electronic Voting Machines: Yay or Nay?

Daily | 9 January 2023

The Election Commission of India (ECI) believes that Remote Electronic Voting Machines could lead to a “social transformation” for migrants who do not register to vote in the area of their work. Opposition leaders, however, allege that these are tamperable devices that undermine India’s and the ECI’s ethics of free and fair elections. Read more on this here.

Village Defence Guards: An effective counterinsurgency strategy?

Daily | 10 January 2023

In the aftermath of violence in Jammu and Kashmir’s Rajouri district, authorities are distributing weapons to members of Village Defence Guards (VDG), formerly Village Defence Committees (VDC), in the district’s Bal Jallaran village. Is this the right strategy? We discuss it here.

Foreign universities in India: A good thing for the Indian education sector?

Daily | 11 January 2023

The UGC has released its draft regulations for foreign universities to set up campuses in India. The government and students are generally supportive of the move. However, academics and experts are divided. Will allowing foreign universities to set up shop help or hurt the Indian education system? We unpack the issue here.

CCI vs Google: What in the Android are they on about?

Daily | 12 January 2023

India’s antitrust watchdog found Google guilty of abusing its monopoly in the mobile operating systems markets. And Google is putting up a fight. So what do both sides have to say for themselves? Are the CCI’s concerns valid or misplaced? Find the debate here.

The different faces of the RSS: Is their ideology changing?

Daily | 13 January 2023

Mohan Bhagwat’s two opinions that have caught public attention are his seemingly progressive views on homosexuality and an apparent sanctioning of rising communal tensions in the country. People are so taken aback by the former that they’re wondering if the RSS is changing its core beliefs. The latter comment, too, has knocked some socks off because of its apparent double standards. So how do we understand Bhagwat’s one-step-forward and two-step-back argument? Is it genuinely prescient of a changing model? Follow the story here.