Now that my friend @NandanNilekani has been appointed to look into India's exam woes, and has not been asked to seek the views of the people's representatives in Parliament, I thought I would send him an Open Letter to share my ideas on the steps his Committee needs to consider: https://t.co/woI1GKfnTE
Rather long but I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did:
I am an Indian,
and everyone says I lack civic sense.
They can burn streets,
and vandalize a city after a championship game.
I dance at an airport excited about my first foreign trip, and suddenly I am the face of poor civic sense.
I am an Indian,
and everyone says I steal jobs.
They move factories across oceans,
shift profits through tax havens.
I study, compete, earn a visa, work 18 hours a day, sometimes multiple jobs and somehow I am the one stealing jobs and scamming the system.
I am an Indian,
and everyone says I am everywhere.
I build your software,
treat your illness,
teach your children,
drive your taxis,
and open your stores.
The world became a village,
yet my presence remains a problem.
I am an Indian,
and everyone says I am too loud.
The evening news screams outrage.
The internet echoes with anger day and night.
I celebrate a wedding, a festival, a victory,
and I am told my joy is too loud.
I am an Indian,
and everyone says I smell of curry.
The world smells of gunpowder,
of hatred,
of division,
of endless arguments about race and religion.
I carry the fragrance of spices from my grandmother's kitchen,
and somehow that is what offends.
I am an Indian,
and everyone says I have no culture.
I come from a civilization that counted the stars
when much of the world was still learning maps.
I speak languages older than nations.
I celebrate hundreds of traditions,
yet I am told I have no culture.
I am an Indian,
and everyone says I am backward.
I send missions to the Moon.
I build vaccines for millions.
I run companies across continents.
Yet a viral video of one fool becomes evidence against a billion people.
I am an Indian.
I celebrate my favorite actor's success
with flowers, music, and a few glasses of milk.
Others worship influencers who sell outrage, turn every disagreement into a battlefield, and every opinion into a war.
Yet my celebration is the one that makes headlines.
I am an Indian,
and everyone says I gather in crowds.
We walk together in processions,
celebrating our faith, our culture, our traditions.
Everyone is welcome.
No shops are looted.
No neighborhoods are burned.
No one is threatened for thinking differently.
We sing.
We dance.
We pray.
And somehow our gathering becomes the problem.
I am an Indian,
and everyone says I bring my culture everywhere.
I light a lamp in a foreign land.
I wear a saree in the snow.
I teach my children the language of their grandparents.
Others build walls between neighbors,
argue endlessly over identity,
and forget where they came from.
Yet I am told I should leave my culture behind.
I am an Indian,
and everyone says I live in the past.
But my past gave me yoga,
mathematics, philosophy, meditation,
and the idea that the world is one family.
The future keeps borrowing from my past,
while telling me to be embarrassed by it.
I am an Indian,
and everyone says I should be ashamed.
Ashamed of my accent.
Ashamed of my food.
Ashamed of my festivals.
Ashamed of my traditions.
Ashamed of existing.
But I am not ashamed.
I am the child of farmers and philosophers,
scientists and saints, workers and dreamers.
*I come from a land that taught the world
that truth can be many-sided,
that all paths deserve respect,
and that the entire world is one family.*
*Yes, we have flaws. Every nation does.*
*But judge me by my actions, not by your stereotypes.*
For I am an Indian.
*And before you tell me what is wrong with me, look honestly at what you have normalized in yourself.*
For I am an Indian.
The world may mock my accent,
question my customs,
laugh at my celebrations,
and judge me through a thousand stereotypes.
*Yet I stand tall. For I belong to a civilization older than empires, a culture richer than prejudice, and a people whose spirit refuses to bend.*
For I am an Indian.
Vikram sawanth calendar is for India and Nepal. it is 56.7 years ahead of Gregorian calendar. Nepal is using the same. We should also follow it. @narendramodi
@narendramodi@PawanKalyan@Garikipati_Offl TTD website e-books are having reference to Jesus Christ. ( క్రీ. శ) when referring to calendar years. We should say bye to this and bring Hindu calendar to use. e-book of pothana bhagavatham
https://t.co/Mg4qwfBhjN
Let me explain what just happened today because it deserves so much recognition.
GalaxEye is a Bengaluru startup founded in 2021 by IIT Madras engineers. Today they launched Mission Drishti on a SpaceX Falcon 9. It is India's largest privately built satellite at 190 kg. And it carries a technology that no commercial satellite has ever carried before.
Normal satellites take photos of the Earth using optical cameras. Like your phone camera, but from 500 km up. The problem is obvious. Clouds. Night. Fog. Smoke. If any of these are in the way, the photo is useless. India has monsoon cover for 4 months a year. That is 4 months where optical satellites are partially or fully blind over large parts of the country.
The alternative is SAR. Synthetic Aperture Radar. Instead of taking photos with light, it sends radar waves down and reads what bounces back. Radar goes through clouds, through darkness, through smoke. A SAR satellite can image a flooded village at 2 AM during a cyclone when no optical satellite can see anything.
The problem with SAR is that the images look nothing like photos. They look like grainy black-and-white radar maps. A military analyst or a trained geospatial engineer can read them. A farmer, a disaster response team, or a city planner cannot.
Until today, if you wanted both optical and SAR data for the same location, you needed two different satellites, passing over at different times, at different angles. Then someone had to manually align and fuse the two datasets. Expensive, slow, and the data never perfectly matched because the satellites saw the same spot minutes or hours apart.
GalaxEye put both sensors on one satellite. Optical and SAR, fused into what they call OptoSAR. Three times more information than a single sensor. Processed onboard by an NVIDIA AI chip at 1.8 metre resolution.
Now in practice, during the next cyclone hitting Odisha, one satellite pass gives you a clear image of which villages are flooded, which roads are cut, and which buildings are standing. Day or night. Cloud or clear. In near real-time.
For defence, it means you can monitor a border area 24/7 regardless of weather. For agriculture, it means tracking crop health across an entire monsoon season without a single cloud gap. For infrastructure, it means monitoring construction progress on highways and bridges without waiting for a clear day.
GalaxEye tested their SAR tech on ISRO's POEM orbital platform. The satellite was tested at ISRO facilities. IN-SPACe provided regulatory clearance. NSIL, ISRO's commercial arm, will distribute the imagery globally. And it launched on SpaceX because ISRO's PSLV doesn't have the right orbit slot for this mission.
Yes, four IIT Madras graduates built a world-first satellite in 4 years in Bengaluru.
Take a bow!
Today, India takes a defining step in its civil nuclear journey, advancing the second stage of its nuclear programme.
The indigenously designed and built Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor at Kalpakkam has attained criticality.
This advanced reactor, capable of producing more fuel than it consumes, reflects the depth of our scientific capability and the strength of our engineering enterprise. It is a decisive step towards harnessing our vast thorium reserves in the third stage of the programme.
A proud moment for India. Congratulations to our scientists and engineers.
ALS has gradually taken away Kenneth’s ability to speak. Through Neuralink’s VOICE clinical trial, he’s exploring how a brain-computer interface designed to translate thought to speech could help restore autonomy in his daily life.
Watch to learn more:
Vande Bharat Sleeper tested today by Commissioner Railway Safety. It ran at 180 kmph between Kota Nagda section. And our own water test demonstrated the technological features of this new generation train.
Putin to India Today 🔥
"The U.S. itself still buys nuclear fuel from us for its own nuclear power plants.If the U.S. has the right to buy our fuel, why shouldn’t India have the same privilege?"
BIG NEWS 🚨 EAM S Jaishankar's powerful speech 🔥🔥
He said "An invasion by Pakistan was turned into a dispute by West. Attacker and victim were put on par"
"Who were the culpable parties? The UK, Canada, Belgium, Australia and USA"
"We need a strong UN, but a strong UN requires a fair UN" ⚡- EAM