Praveen Dixit

The NEET protests at Jantar Mantar highlighted a democratic paradox: the right to protest is fundamental, but so is the state’s duty to restore order when violence erupts. The resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan marked an unusually swift act of political accountability. It acknowledged the gravity of the NEET examination fiasco, a scandal that had shaken the confidence of millions of aspirants and their families. The government cancelled the tainted examination,...

The Nashik IT scandal is forcing India’s tech industry to confront failures of power and protection. In the first week of this month, the Nashik city police registered nine cases involving attempt to religious conversion, sexual harassment and harassment at the workplace, all centred on a local branch of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). The nine accused, including seven men and two women, held positions of authority such as team leaders and are alleged to have misused their roles to harass...

India’s laws and policing must finally shed their colonial skin and learn to govern by consent rather than coercion. India’s legal and policing architecture still carries the unmistakable imprint of the Raj. Its instincts are adversarial, its reflexes coercive, and its imagination confined to order rather than justice. That gap between authority and legitimacy is not merely administrative but philosophical, and it urgently needs repair. Let us turn to statecraft as explained in the Valmiki...