CHIMI

 From rushing for the school bus at 8:00 am in the morning to eagerly anticipating lunch breaks and finally feeling ‘liberated’ with the 3’0 clock bell, an array of school routines is nothing but a distant memory, the millions of students yearn to get back. With over 1.5 million schools closed and hundreds of thousands of students completely left out of online education, the raging pandemic seems to have provided us with more than just an unprecedented vacation. A number of learned research papers and newspaper articles have been published in the last eight months revealing the flaws in our education system. While the prospect of online education can be seen as an unscrupulous and callous attempt of the government as it would do no better than adding to the 6 million students who were already out of school, one has to try and understand the larger problems they represent. While the limitations of providing distant education stand as the prime concern, we should not overlook the req...

  Politics in India can be rightly described as a treacherous pitch, where even the most seasoned batsmen can lose a wicket if they don’t play safe. So are political discussions in classrooms. It is a herculean task to solely focus on the point of debate and not make distasteful or deceitful comments which can potentially hurt religious or political sentiments. As a result, one can rarely see sensitive issues involving political or religious groups, being taken up for open debates or discussions in schools. The general image of student politics being associated with recalcitrance and rebellion, as witnessed in some institutions these days is largely responsible for this attitude. While these reasons are absolutely justified, the question on the flip side is that, should the current generation grow up in oblivion of issues that assume national significance? The obvious question that arises here is whether one has to necessarily engage in tiresome discussions when mass media, which...

                             It was a moment of disdain to realize that a 17-year-old without an Instagram account is equivalent to an Indian without an ‘Aadhar card’. For those who missed the tongue-in-cheek quality of my comment, I was recalling a recent conversation with an acquaintance of mine who simply refused to believe that I could belong to Generation Z when I confessed to her that I did not possess an Instagram account or a Twitter handle. However, her doubt began to make sense as I read from Google the various credentials one should possess to make themselves a righteous member of this prestigious generation and soon the realization dawned upon me that I did not even remotely fit within its popular definition. I do not wish to present the myriad reasons why I refuse to accept social media as a characterizing feature of the present gener...