Author: Bikash C Paul
India’s public-school network was built village by village, habitation by habitation, over decades. It carried the constitutional promise of universal education into the country’s poorest districts. Today, that map is being redrawn. And the scale and consequence are quite large. Official data show a measurable decline in the number of government schools over the past decade. The shift is not anecdotal. It is recorded in the national education database maintained under the Unified District Information System for Education Plus, commonly known as UDISE+. The database captures every recognised school, teacher and enrolment across India. The most recent UDISE+ releases indicate…
For months, Washington appeared determined to force New Delhi into a corner. Tariffs were announced, revised, and raised again. Public remarks from the White House grew increasingly sharp, often straying from trade into open disparagement of India’s economy and its leadership. The tone was unmistakable: pressure applied loudly, publicly and repeatedly, in the expectation that India would eventually yield. That assumption proved wrong. Instead of reacting, India absorbed the blows without theatrics. When, yesterday, Donald Trump finally announced the rollback of tariffs from a punitive 50 per cent to 18 per cent, it marked the end of months of uncertainty.…
When a sitting chief minister physically intervenes during an enforcement action by a central investigative agency, removes files from the premises under search, and publicly dares constitutional authority to act, the issue ceases to be one of politics. It becomes a constitutional crisis. The recent episode involving Mamata Banerjee obstructing an Enforcement Directorate (ED) raid at the residence of I-PAC chief Prateek Jain in Kolkata marks not merely a new low for West Bengal, but a dangerous rupture in India’s federal compact. It raises a question that New Delhi has carefully avoided asking aloud for years: has constitutional governance in…
The Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in West Bengal has exposed not merely administrative rot but a deeper, more disturbing truth: the systematic corrosion of democratic processes in a state where elections have long ceased to be a neutral civic exercise and have instead become a carefully choreographed spectacle of manipulation. As the Election Commission of India (ECI) releases the draft electoral rolls, the findings are nothing short of grotesque. Minors listed as fathers. Underage mothers recorded as heads of households. Voters with implausible ages, duplicated identities, missing addresses and fictitious family trees. These are not clerical errors…
West Bengal, bordering Bangladesh, is India’s most compromised frontier The morning sun casts long shadows over the paddy fields of Murshidabad in West Bengal, where the only sign of an international border is a weathered Border Security Force (BSF) post. Here, in the soft soil of West Bengal’s frontier, a war of stealth is being waged against the very idea of India. It is not fought with artillery, but with fake voter IDs, suitcases of hawala cash and a curriculum of hate taught to children in clandestine seminaries. Over the past decade, a toxic confluence of unchecked infiltration, state-sponsored appeasement…
From exile in New Delhi, Taslima Nasrin continues to hold a mirror to her homeland, Bangladesh, and what she sees is alarming. In this searing conversation with Bikash C Paul, the renowned author and dissident speaks with unflinching candour about her country’s descent into political decay, moral collapse and religious radicalisation. She argues that Bangladesh’s crisis is not sudden but the outcome of decades of corruption, authoritarianism and the betrayal of the secular ideals of 1971. From Sheikh Hasina’s downfall to the rise of Islamist forces and the erosion of women’s rights, Taslima dissects a nation’s slow unravelling, and warns…
Some elections change governments, and some political physics. Bihar’s 2025 mandate falls firmly into the latter category. A staggering 202 out of 243 seats for the NDA is not just a win; it is a political restructuring, the kind that forces every party to redraw its maps, recalibrate its calculations and rethink its assumptions about what drives the Bihari voter. The easy conclusion would be to call it Modi’s victory. The equally tempting narrative would be to attribute it to Nitish Kumar’s durability, his uncanny ability to reinvent alliances and political identities every few years. But neither explanation captures the…
In 2014, Rajan and Swati Singh were the picture of middle-class aspiration. With a modest two-bedroom flat on the outskirts of Pune, steady jobs and a daughter in a good school, they believed they had secured a stable future. Their combined income of ₹18 lakh a year placed them comfortably within India’s “secure” middle class. They budgeted carefully, saved diligently and even planned an annual holiday. A decade later, in 2025, that stability has crumbled. Swati’s school froze increments three years ago. Rajan’s IT firm replaced annual hikes with “performance-linked bonuses” that rarely materialise. Food and grocery bills have nearly…
Despite Washington’s 20-point roadmap to end the Gaza conflict, a true sense of closure remains elusive. The deal offers a flicker of hope, but also exposes the deep, unresolved fault lines that still define one of the world’s most intractable conflicts. Israel’s Ambassador to India, Reuven Azar, in an exclusive interview with New Delhi Post’s Bikash C Paul, said that despite the agreement, Hamas is showing clear signs of violation. However, he added, “Israel remains committed to the stabilisation process.”The ambassador offered a blunt defence of his country’s war policy. “Hamas has to go,” he said, vowing the group would…
Professor Jeffrey Sachs, one of the world’s most influential economists and public intellectuals, has long been a fierce critic of US foreign and economic policy. In this exclusive interview with Bikash C Paul, Prof Sachs dissects President Donald Trump’s 50% tariff on India—denounced in New Delhi as “selective, unfair and unjustified”. Far from projecting strength, he argues, the move exposes America’s decline, frays bilateral trust and hastens a multipolar world where India and China shape the global order. Excerpts: Q: How do you assess Trump’s move of a 50% tariff on India in terms of both economic coercion and its…
