Anuradha Rao

A country that enforces rest for pilots still relies on endurance from teachers to keep its education system airborne. AI generated image I was a student at the University of Mumbai in the late 80s, right in the middle of that unforgettable 54-day teachers’ strike of 1987. Technically, the situation should have been disastrous. The government was dragging its feet on implementing revised NEP-linked pay scales, negotiations were going nowhere, and the newspapers were full of ominous headlines....

As household agency turns into electoral agency, women are redefining what Indian politics must answer to. I grew up watching a pattern in my home. Every birthday or festival, my father would bring my mother a saree or a gift something he believed she would like. And without fail, she would wince. Not because she disliked the gift, but because she had never been asked. Her choice had been assumed for her. For years, she let it pass because life was full of bigger battles. When a woman is...

India’s SME digital revolution will succeed not through code or speed, but through context, language and patience. When I worked as an L&D head, training call-centre teams for UK and US clients, I often found myself explaining why empathy is not a script. You could teach someone to say, “I understand how frustrating that must be, ma’am,” but that wasn’t the same as feeling what it meant for a couple in Manchester to have their washing machine break down on a winter evening. Imagine being 24,...