Kuldeep Ambekar

Maharashtra’s new policy promises to streamline its educational welfare institutions but leaves deeper structural flaws untouched. For years, Maharashtra’s alphabet soup of educational welfare institutions - SARTHI, BARTI, Mahajyoti, TRTI and AMRUT - has invited the same complaints. Students have grappled with differing eligibility rules, opaque procedures and uneven implementation. A unified policy governing these bodies, announced by the state government on July 1st, ought therefore to have...

For two decades, India’s obsession with engineering and medicine has created not merely competition, but a generation burdened by fear, exhaustion, and borrowed dreams. AI generated image Roughly two decades ago, a new dream took hold across Maharashtra. Two words began to dominate the aspirations of countless households: “doctor” and “engineer.” Success came to be defined so narrowly that all other careers appeared secondary, even meaningless. From farmers in villages to middle-class...

Renaming hostels may soothe stigma, but it does little to fix the conditions that define students’ lives AI generated image Pune: Recently, the Social Justice and Special Assistance Department decided to excise the term ‘Backward Class’ from the names of its government hostels and rechristen them after revered historical figures. While the move to replace them with names that evoke dignity and achievement is, on the face of it, a step towards psychological emancipation, it is also a reminder...