“An important reason why Chinese higher education has galloped ahead of India is that it strengthened its primary and secondary education systems first, which India is only now attempting to achieve.”
Devesh Kapur, professor at the University of Pennsylvania (Mint, June 1)
“At present, six Dalit women are raped every day and mostly with inhumane brutality. But neither do these cases evoke any response from the society at large nor do they outrage the consciousness of judges to merit their treatment as rarest of rare. Perhaps Dalit rapes are a normalcy for them!”
Anand Teltumbde, civil rights activist with the Committee for Protection of Democratic Rights, Mumbai (Economic & Political Weekly, June 3)
“Let’s be clear: no state institution and no political personality is above criticism in a democracy not even the Constitution and President of the republic. Once we put the Indian military on a pedestal we become Pakistan — and look at where that unhappy country is.”
Kanti Bajpai, foreign policy commentator, on right-wing breastbeating over criticism of the Indian Army (Times of India, June 17)
“The gist of the study is that the absenteeism numbers for teachers from schools is about 2.5 percent. This is sharply different from the popular imagination of absenteeism, with numbers between 25 and 50 percent routinely brandished with no basis... Rarely does any non-teacher attempt to understand their reality and even rarer is any public counter to the false narrative.”
Anurag Behar, CEO of Azim Premji Foundation, criticising The Economist for its editorial on India’s failing school education system (Mint, June 22)
“Lynching reflects a collapse of the rule of law. Mob violence in one part of the country, left unchecked, fuels mob violence elsewhere... it is time to say enough.”
Patralekha Chatterjee, development journalist, on the spiralling number of mob lynching incidents in India (Deccan Chronicle, June 29)