The President has assented to the #VandeMataram Amendment, passed without discussion in Parliament, which requires the singing of the National Song in full at the start and ending of any official function, in addition to the National Anthem.
As one who greatly respects both, and can sing the first two stanzas of the former (but not the other four, which were never required till now) as well as the entire anthem, i would like to point to just one practical consideration our zealots appear to have overlooked: human nature.
"Jana Gana Mana" requires audiences to stand respectfully and focus their attention for a reasonable 52 seconds. The National Song in full takes 3 minutes and 10 seconds. Tamil Nadu has just decided that both will be preceded by the State Song in Tamil for another 2 minutes. Do we really expect audiences to stand still and respectfully for six minutes before and after every function, a total of 12 extra minutes? Can respect and patience be legislated?
I fear that the intent of the Bill, to promote greater respect for the National Song , will not be achieved, but its opposite may well be....
Rotten meat in gourmet kitchens,
Pan stains on national monuments,
Detergent in packaged milk,
Rats in government ICUs,
Haldi-water for midday meals,
Industrial solvent in cough syrup,
NEET-PG failures among medical doctors,
Police showering roses on kawar lukkhas,
Lizard in IRCTC thalis,
Hideous clock towers,
Bridges to nowhere,
Right-angle flyovers,
And a million other things but…
Why so “blackpilled”? Don’t you know how much freight corridor we added?
Bhakti is a disease.
RSS Chief Mohan Bhagwat cleverly positions himself as an outsider when he says that the students have a genuine grievance about the education system and that it should be addressed urgently. It is well known that key decisions in education & culture are outsourced to RSS. RSS is in power today and can't escape direct accountability.
Met an Indian startup last week that built a high end ICU ventilator in just 84 days. The founders are 30yo engineers with no prior medical device experience. Today, 260 of their ventilators are being used by hospitals across India. The company has a team of 50+ people, is profitable and is competing head-on with global brands like Philips. India’s healthcare problems are massive, but they are not unsolvable. The more healthcare startups I meet, the more optimistic I feel about the future of Indian healthcare.
Hundreds of determined engineers and doctors are working together to build a healthcare system that will look radically different a decade from now.
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Join the movement and to continue this struggle for education and democracy that brought a government of dictators to its knees
A 21-year-old woman took all 5 anti-rabies injections and rabies immunoglobulin after a dog bite. Still she died of rabies.
Here are the real reasons why the vaccine sometimes fails and what we must fix.
1. Stitching the bite wound
This isn't just an NDTV problem. It's true of almost every Indian news channel and even news agencies like ANI, IANS and PTI.
One of the basic principles of journalism is to first hear the victim, then independent experts, and only then the government's version. But in the "Acche Din" era, most stories begin and end with the govt's narrative, while every other voice are ignored.
At @AltNews, we've been documenting and calling out this shift in News Channels since we started Alt News in 2017. More than half of my personal tweets over the years are about highlighting the selective reporting by mainstream media and its Starbhakt News Anchors.
Listen to the video by the Former NDTV employee and then read the article we recently wrote on Pro-BJP Propaganda News Agency.
One reason why the cockroaches succeeded was that they were also entertaining, and they were so because India has become such a suffocating place that just saying anything against Modi is entertaining. So the answer is not sending Delhi police to go after handles that made fun of Modi, but to actually relax a bit and take some jokes. If you're not so sensitive the jokes won't be so funny.
The Only reason Dharmendra Pradhan was asked to give his resignation by the BJP is bcoz the protests dented Modi’s personal image like never before. The open abuses, the memes were viral throughout the world.
was asked for resignation so that it can be stopped, not for students
Scenes at McDonald's, Connaught Place when the news of Dharmendra Pradhan resignation went viral
The whole Crowd went crazy with "Inquilaab Zindabaad" slogan
Goosebumps🔥
during the protest, i saw everything i dreamed of india as a kid.
- men protecting women.
- strangers showing empathy for others' pain.
- delhi becoming the delhi i read in books.
- food being shared without asking if you're a hindu, muslim or christian.
I think GenZ will remember that as they ran from a lathicharge the gates of a temple shut on them while a Gurdwara took them in, protected them & fed them.
GenZ will also remember that Hindu extremist groups either assaulted them or openly threatened them with no consequences.
After decades, the conversation is about education and reforms. It will be a travesty if this stops with the resignation of a minister. Families spend 20% of their income educating their children. But once in government, the same people cannot find even 4% for education. Education is a priority when the child is ours—and expendable when the child is someone else’s.
Look at where we have fallen in the last decade:
1. Between 2004–05 and 2013–14, India’s education budget rose from ₹13,098 crore to ₹71,059 crore, recording a CAGR of 21%. In contrast, between 2014–15 and 2023–24, it increased from ₹68,874 crore to ₹1,23,357 crore, but at a much slower CAGR of just 7%. School education growth fell sharply from 22% to 5%, while higher education growth declined from 19% to 10%.
2. Between 2004–14 and 2014–24, total revenue expenditure—excluding interest and grants—rose from ₹57.95 lakh crore to ₹155.57 lakh crore. However, education expenditure increased from only ₹4.05 lakh crore to ₹8.38 lakh crore, causing education’s share of revenue expenditure to fall from 6.98% to 5.39%.
3. Between 2014 and 2024, government colleges grew from 7885 to 7994, a growth of just 1%. In the same period, private colleges went up from 21,750 to 32,513, a growth of 49%. Including the Private aided colleges (which grew at 24%), the total growth has been 35%. Sadly, the growth of government colleges has been by accident and not by design.
4. Similarly, enrolment also took a turn for the worse. Students enrolling in a public institution grew by 21% (134 lacs to 163 Lacs) while those into private grew by 42% (182 lacs t0 357 Lacs).
5. We are closing 25 schools a day. Between 2014 and 2023, India’s population grew by over 12 crore, or 9.3%. Yet, during roughly the same period, the number of government schools declined by 89,441, or 8%.
6. School education is effectively killed and replaced by an entrance exam or a competitive exam. For Ex: CUET is the most useless exam that has been imposed on students in Delhi. Even a topper from Delhi cannot get a seat to study in any college in Delhi unless the student appears for CUET. And every entrance exam is against equity as only those who can afford coaching or have access to coaching succeed. The public schools are death a death blow.
7. Between 2014 and 2026, IIT tuition increased by 122%, At IIM Ahmedabad, the two-year programme fee rose by about 66%, NID and NLU fees also rose substantially by two to three times.
8. While India is seeking its Indian origin scientists working abroad to return back to India, our own research fellowships have been disbanded. The KVPY gave way to INSPIRE Scholarships. In the current year, there are no budgetary allocations for INSPIRE fellowships too.
9. The fees in Private colleges has grown beyond means of most Indians. NEET as an exam is a competition for just about 30,000 Government Medical College seats in the open category! The other 70,000 private seats are a ‘reservation for the rich’ where just about 1% of India can afford to pay the 1.25 Crores fees. All Private colleges cost about 5X to 10X of public institutions.
10. While the Government announced an additional 9911 seats for the current year with much fanfare, only 2400 are in public institutions. 78% of them are in private space and outside the reach of the common man.
11. As per Economic Survey 2025-26 report,
a. 56.2% of professor posts in central universities and other HEIs remain vacant (as on 31-01-2025)
b. 75% of HEIs lack industry readiness
c. About 2 crore adolescents (14-18 years) are out of school.
12. While we have a GER target that is much touted, what we have done is to reduce GER at secondary stage, which is at 68.5% (against NEP target of 100% by 2030). Nearly one third of children are outside the education system, the stage (class 9 to 12) that determines employability and higher education participation.
This conversation took decades coming. I do hope that we don’t stop with the resignation of a minister and demand bigger reforms. This is an opportunity that India cannot let go. This is important to every student, every parent, every young person and to our nation, INDIA.