Shashidhar Nanjundaiah

Your daily nudge: Why raucous news debates are preferable over quieter deliverers of narrative

August 19, 2020

Let us remember Rajiv Tyagi. By the end of a heated television debate on a leading Hindi channel one evening this month, the Congress spokesperson suffered a heart attack and died. Really, nobody killed him—not the anchor nor the original outshouter Sambit Patra. Yet this episode is not going away...

National Education Policy 2020: A reform at last

August 3, 2020

Such is the nature of this government’s articulation that it believes in big bang and dramatic policy announcements, and the latest one is here. In the case of the recent National Education Policy (NEP), which the cabinet has passed, the structural reform may either mean a long, stepwise process of...

Visuals are narrative constructions too

July 17, 2020

In many countries, what the news media calls “official sources”—usually spokespersons or statements released by a government or organisation—are having a field day. Being official somehow lends the assumption of credibility. Sometimes, a news agency could become a de facto media outlet for these official sources. On the other hand,...

Three to tango: Global corporations are beginning to fight for universal values

June 30, 2020

A lot is happening in the world of corporate ethics, and it is heartening because it heralds the beginning of a new corporate-society-regulation tango. Social responsibility among corporations is not new. Corporate foundations have invested in public education and healthcare, helped in disaster relief and village electrification. Many traditional Indian...

How we nudge information towards fakeness

June 19, 2020

News: “A group of biomedical scientists have found that countries without universal policies of BCG vaccination have been more severely affected compared to countries with universal and longstanding BCG policies.” Social media inference over the next several days: “Indians are immune to coronavirus.” In the party game of Chinese Whisper...

Binary buckets: Echo chambers are important organisational rooms

June 5, 2020

A newspaper reported on May 27 that the Rashtriya Kamadhenu Aayog in Gujarat has begun clinical trials of what it claims is medicine for Covid-19 made from cow dung, cow’s urine, milk, butter and ghee. If you wish to believe in this form of medicine, you might feel a rush—...

Mulling over the National Education Policy

May 23, 2020

In recent years, when a new National Education Policy (NEP) is released, it has seemed idealistic and ideological, deregulatory and centralising at the same time. Let us examine some spotlights just over the past three years, including the current draft: July 2018: Nearly two years ago, the Ministry of Human...