Angad

Here for #metaverse / cricket / politics.

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[Angad @angad_vr]

Yes, god forbid that people who have an issue with the system that governs them say anything "explicitly political". 🙄

[Sreemoy Talukdar @sreemoytalukdar]

Probably an unpopular opinion, but the kids need not have made this so explicitly political. They have done a great job in highlighting lacunae in the system. Shouldn't have let a politician use them.

[Angad @angad_vr]

@cricketingview Jadeja's exclusion is an absolute travesty. Forget Top 25, the man has a legitimate case for being in the Top 5 / 10, at least in Test Cricket.

[cricketingview @cricketingview]

There are 7 bowlers in the top 25 players of the last 25 years - 2 in the top 12.

Few things demonstrate cricket's prejudice against bowlers as this jury's votes. Even bowlers don't rate themselves by the looks of it.

https://t.co/BijxegLiDt

[peeleraja @peeleraja]

The rich, so-called "upper middle class" of India did not care when government schools, hospitals, etc went to the dogs. They did not care about bigotry or bulldozer. They sent their kids to fake "dummy" schools that skipped actual learning and prepared them for MCQ competitive exams like IITJEE and NEET instead.

But their kids do take the NEET and CBSE. Many fancy schools are still CBSE-affiliated, and only the ultra rich tier 1 city elites go to IB schools. ICSE too isn't too common outside the big cities with British legacy.

This is their Niemoller moment but they are too dumb to understand that they are responsible for this.

[Puyangan Adiyan @Puyangan5]

You do clownery like Pairksha pe Charcha which no one really asked for but when an actual crisis hits the students - and do to the shocking ineptness of the govt - you just vanish from the scene? Waah Mr.56 Inch, waah!

Now all one needs is for some IT celliya to unearth exam iregularities which happened during Nehru's time.

[Malay Krishna @Malay4Product]

This is an unbelievable piece of work by Sarthak and something that requires amplification.

Let me explain what he found, in simple terms.

Sarthak is a Class 12 student from the 2025-26 batch, one of the 17 lakh students whose answer sheets went through CBSE's new On-Screen Marking system.

He spent days reading through CBSE's evaluation tenders, scraped all 576 tenders CBSE has issued, and tracked how the rules changed across three versions of the same tender.

The core finding is that the company that won the contract to scan and grade 17 lakh students' answer sheets is Coempt Eduteck.

Coempt used to be called Globarena Technologies. Globarena was the company behind the 2019 Telangana intermediate exam disaster, where software failures led to 3.8 lakh students getting wrong or missing marks, and 23 students died by suicide.

A government committee found systemic failure and negligence. Six months later, Globarena rebranded to Coempt Eduteck.

So a company with that track record won a contract to handle 17 lakh CBSE students. Sarthak's investigation is about how the rules were rewritten to let that happen.

The tender was issued three times.

> First tender, February 2025. It existed, then disappeared from the public GeM portal. Sarthak scraped all 576 CBSE tenders and this one was missing from the archive entirely.

> Second tender, May 2025. Four companies applied including TCS and Coempt. All four failed the technical evaluation. Cancelled.

> Third tender, August 2025. Coempt won. Between the second and third tender, a series of rule changes happened, and every single one made it easier for Coempt to qualify.

Here is what changed, one by one.

01. The old rules disqualified any company with a history of abandoning work, failing to complete contracts, or financial weakness. The new rules deleted this clause entirely. Coempt's Telangana history stopped being a barrier.

02. The old rules disqualified any company that was "blacklisted earlier." The new rules changed this to "currently blacklisted." Because Globarena rebranded after Telangana, removing the word "earlier" effectively erased their past.

03. The rules required Rs 50 crore average turnover over three years. Coempt's exact average came to Rs 50.86 crore. They cleared the bar by less than 1%. Earlier, a smaller company had asked CBSE to lower the bar to Rs 30 crore for fairer competition. CBSE refused. So the bar was kept high enough to block small players, but sat exactly low enough for Coempt to scrape through.

04. Software maturity is measured on the CMMI scale, 1 to 5. The old rules required Level 5. The new rules dropped it to Level 3. Coempt is a Level 3 company.

05. The cooling-off period for engaging retired CBSE officials was cut from two years to one. This makes it easier to use recently retired insiders to influence the process.

06. The old rules required experience with large projects of at least 5 lakh students each. The new rules removed the student count and counted cumulative answer-book volume across small projects instead. Coempt has many small fragmented university contracts. This helped Coempt and hurt TCS.

07. The old rules required bidders to own their own data centre and disaster recovery centre on Indian soil. The new rules allowed third-party MeitY-empanelled cloud hosting. Coempt runs on AWS and Azure. This helped Coempt and hurt TCS, which owns its own data centres. It also means student data is no longer on sovereign, Indian infrastructure.

08. The old rules required the bidder to own or control the complete source code of its software. The new rules deleted this. Coempt's platform runs on Microsoft's proprietary IIS, which they don't own.

09. A last-minute corrigendum, issued right before bid submission, removed CBSE's own power to blacklist the firm if its software failed catastrophically. So even a Telangana-scale failure couldn't get Coempt banned from future government tenders.

10. The penalty structure shifted from punishing mistakes to punishing delays. The old rules fined the vendor for wrong scanning, merged pages, and unscanned books. The new rules dropped those and instead levied Rs 50,000 per day for delays. This incentivises rushed scanning over accurate scanning.

11. The old rules had a hard accuracy threshold, error rate not to exceed 0.5%. The new rules removed this number entirely.

12. The old rules specified proper book and robotics scanners. The new rules just say "sufficient scanners." The definition was vague enough that, as Sarthak notes, the scanning could be done with a phone on a stand.

13. On the security side, the contract required a VAPT (vulnerability and penetration test) certified by CERT-In before go-live, and a restricted beta phase before launch. The system clearly wasn't restricted, because the other researcher, Nisarga, was able to access it and find vulnerabilities four days before go-live. So the mandatory security audit appears to have been bypassed.

These are more than a dozen rule changes, all between the failed tender and the winning tender, all pushing in the same direction, all benefiting the one company with the worst track record in the field.

The security holes Nisarga found last week now have an explanation. The system was built by a vendor that was specifically allowed to skip the security certification, the source code ownership, the data sovereignty, and the quality thresholds the original rules demanded.

Following things need to happen immediately;

1. An immediate CAG audit of the tender process.
2. A parliamentary debate on the topic.
3. An independent investigation into
> Why the first tender vanished?
> Why the disqualification clauses were deleted?
> Why the turnover bar was held exactly where it was?
> Why the security level was dropped?
> Why the blacklisting power was removed at the last moment?

Sarthak, this is genuinely exceptional investigative work. Far better than most journalists with full resources ever manage. Take a bow. :)

[Narendra Modi @narendramodi]

Different parts of India are witnessing soaring temperatures and the challenges that come with it. This heat is harsh on all of us and I urge you all to take as many precautions as possible. Please stay hydrated, keep water with you when stepping out. Offer a glass of water to others. In weather like this, such kindness goes a long way.

[Frontier Indica @frontierindica]

Easy for Sama to say this from San Francisco, where you can incorporate a Delaware C-corp from your phone and the regulator's job is mostly to leave you alone.

In Vishwaguru, even with the most advanced agentic swarms running your whole business, you will still need three guys to convince the babu's peon to push your file from his desk to bade sahab's table, four in-house tax experts to handle retrospective notices arriving for assessment years from before your CEO was born, and two legal counsels on permanent retainer to file writ petitions against random ministry circulars destroying your business model on a Thursday evening.

[Subhash Peshwa @Subhash_Peshwa]

I run a budding India GCC for an Australian firm. This is what I do (happy to take suggestions):-

- Firstly, make peace with the fact that you need to roll out 2 offers for one role (and consider yourself lucky if you're able to onboard both)

- Strive for the best interview experience. Bring them in to the office for our final round and show them around, introduce them to people.

- If selected, send out Employment Agreement (not offer letter) within 2 days via DocuSign

- Happy to wait for the notice period to complete. If a buy out option is available, compensate the candidate with a joining bonus equivalent to the buyout

- Ask them for transparency on if they're still interviewing elsewhere (doesn't matter where, I don't ask names). Make sure they understand that IT'S OKAY IF THEY ARE, I JUST WANT TO BE PREPARED, THEIR OFFER WON'T BE RESCINDED.

- Invite them to our team outings and events

- Introduce them to a few of my senior people to get a feel of who we are 

- Talent acquisition connects every two weeks 

- If they come back with a counter offer a few weeks before joining - either negotiate if it's feasible, else wish them a great career ahead

- If I still get ghosted at the very last day, I take the L, cry internally, and move on.

[Historywali @historywali]

My Dida was from Banaras, and waxed eloquent about Ramnagar ke Baingan till her last days. Her Laung Lata would melt in your mouth, crisp, flaky, glossy with syrup. My favourite Lassi shop in the country is Raja Ram Lassi Wala in Thateri Galli, lekin Banaras is not just my Dida’s - Banaras is also the 'ras' which Ustaad Bismillah Khan's shehnai took from this city and released into the world. He lived in Dal Mandi. In his last years, every night, his dinner was the mutton istew from Taj Hotel. I know this not because I read it. I know this because I went there, and I shot this story.
I shoot food-shows.

I have been to Lucknow many times - I've eaten the delightful sublime Makhhan Malai but also the delightful sublime Galawati Kabab, the Khasta and the Chaat but also the silken Nihari and warm Sheermal.
Also a most delicious cup of chai with Samosa, the chutney with the samosa was so tasty I still remember it, a simple chutney. 
I've never eaten anything in UP that has not been delicious. I have said this often. The land is blessed.

Moradabadi Dal and Moradabadi Biryani both make it to my to-eat list, why should they not? They are both delicious.
Kanpur Dehat is where I have eaten the best Bater. And I have also eaten - with equal gusto - Thaggu ke Laddu and Badnam Kulfi in Kanpur.
In Firozabad I have bought red glass bangles and eaten Naan Ghosht.
Kakori ki Train Robbery aur Kabab - dono lists se gayab hain.
If you go to Rampur, eat the Taar Ghosht, also eat the Adrak ka halwa.

The Ganga and the Yamuna have fed this land with love. The produce is so delicious. Even the Karela that grows in that blessed soil is sweet.

That blessed soil doesn’t grow Soya chaap.

I have never eaten Cake in Noida.

There is a particular grief in being erased not by violence but by omission.
To have fed a city for three hundred years and to find yourself, one Tuesday morning, absent from a ’list’s idea of what that city eats.
Erase voters names from voter-lists, erase dishes from culinary maps. Both voters and recipes will continue to exist.

[Ishaan Tharoor @ishaantharoor]

It’s weird times for Indians in America. But pull out the world’s smallest violin for the lobby group that seemed to welcome Trump’s bigotry in other directions, but is now crying foul when he turns, as was always going to happen, against them

[svs 🇮🇳 @_svs_]

Going out on a limb here - all of Modi infrastructure will amount to a net zero if not massive net negative impact over the next decade or so.

You will still be driving three hours a day in Mumbai. Average road travel speed will be stuck below 60kph.

Number of fatalities will be same.

Trillions spent for nothing.

[Surrey Cricket @surreycricket]

The best home office in the country?

We've upgraded our WiFi over the winter and there are terraces around the ground with pitch views and desk access 💻

See you there and we won't tell your boss 🤫

🤎 | #CountyChampionship

[Joe Walsh @WalshFreedom]

The strait was open. He starts a war. The strait closes. The world economy gets fucked. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, he gets bored, he declares victory, and he tells the rest of the world to open the strait, to clean up his mess. He’s such a prick. He’s such a destructive prick.

[Angad @angad_vr]

@himganj153 Dravid understood the "KL" divergence a long time back, hence moved him to the middle order in ODIs. 🙃

[Angad @angad_vr]

@LalitKModi smiling from heaven. 😂

[Dr. Sanjiv Goenka @DrSanjivGoenka]

1/ @rajasthanroyals, acquired for roughly ₹270 crore in 2008, have just been sold for over ₹15,000 crore. @RCBTweets, acquired for roughly ₹485 crore, sold for over ₹16,600 crore. Two franchises, same week, each over ₹15,000 crore.

That value was built by the architecture of the IPL. The way broadcast and digital rights were structured. The governance that gave brands confidence to invest at premium levels. Much of this traces back to the vision of @JayShah.

[Pradeep Magazine @pradeepmagazine]

John Wright told me when asked how does he deal with huge egos of Indian players: "I subtly plant an idea in their heads till a stage reaches, where they tell me 'Hey John, I have decided to play so and so way'. I let them believe it was their idea. "

[Shubh Agarwal @shubh_chintak]

This reminds me of an on-air conversation between Harsha Bhogle and Dravid during India's tour England in 2014.

There was a mention of the 2003 Adelaide Test (in which Dravid scored 233 & 72* in a winning cause) during the coverage of the Trent Bridge Test.

Harsha heaped praises on Dravid's 233. In response, Dravid only talked about the contribution of VVS Laxman (148) and Ajit Agarkar (6/42 in sec inn).

Harsha ended the discussion by saying: "That's Rahul Dravid for you. You will tell him he did well and he will tell you that somebody else also had a big part to play."

That was 12 years ago. In 2026, he is still the same - as consistent off the field as he was on the field during his long playing career ❤️

[Vinay Aravind @vinayaravind]

I remember many things from Covid - lockdown with no plan, targeting of Tablighi Jamaat, migrant workers walking 1000s of kms to get home, huge queues for oxygen, desperate calls for beds, millions of deaths underreported, Modi hiding during delta, the colossal mismanagement etc.

[Neal Gardner @Nealbackup]

Bumrah is cricket’s biggest cheatcode. In a landscape dominated by batters, the most imapactful player in the sport is a bowler. And it isn’t even close.