Author: Tushar Panchal
Tushar Panchal
(Tushar Panchal is founder and chief executive of 'WarRoom Strategies'. He has spent three decades in Indian political communication, advising several chief ministers and party stalwarts . He writes on politics, power and governance)
There is no debate about the state of government schools. Even the government’s own report confirms this. The debate now centres on who is allowed to audit and film these conditions. Inspired by the success of the Jantar Mantar protests, school students in at least 10 states and 25 districts held protests. They demanded more and qualified teachers, access to clean drinking water, working toilets, working fans and lights, safe school buildings, better mid-day meals, and roads they could use during the monsoon. Most of these students were born after 2010. They are younger than Gen Z and belong to…
Why the government’s record-breaking Instagram campaign failed to control the narrative among India’s Gen Z In one week, the government broke a world record, lost a Cabinet minister and kept posting. In that order. Let’s begin with the sequence of events, because the sequence itself is the argument. On July 23, the Prime Minister posted a selfie video on Instagram about the examination paper leak controversy, calling the scandal painful for students and their parents. It crossed 300 million views within a day. His profile gained 1.1 million followers overnight, taking the total past 104 million. The press described it…
Why the Modi Cabinet’s Instagram Push Is Built on a False Assumption Before you read any further, remember that every Union minister in the Modi cabinet already has a dedicated social media team supporting them. While the directive has been issued to expand onto Instagram, produce Reels, connect with the younger demographic (Gen Z), and look beyond X, no one is beginning from scratch. The accounts are already active, editors remain on retainer, and graphics follow set templates. Consequently, this mandate will merely yield a higher volume and greater output of the same material these teams are already generating. This…
A woman lost her life in a road accident in November 2001. She was a homemaker and had no formal income. It took almost twenty-five years for the courts to decide what her work was worth. When the answer finally came on June 11 this year, it was higher than any value the Indian state had ever placed on such labour. Justices Sanjay Karol and N Kotiswar Singh decided that if a homemaker dies without her own income, her lost domestic work should be valued at no less than ₹30,000 a month. The Court created a new category of compensation…
