Don’t get me wrong, I love that you are here. Come hither and make yourself comfortable in my humble digital space, by all means. But, my hopes of you staying are tiny.

Published in the Edict on Mar 29, 2023. Okay, I’ve tried–but there is no way of saying this without sounding at least mildly, if not annoyingly, self-righteous. Maybe we should hold off accusations of empty-handed activism that have so often been used to dismiss conversations about change at this University. It is simply implausible that (somehow) Ashoka has amoral psychopaths in wholesale just roaming about not caring–in fact, given what they teach us here; not caring must

Published on OpenAxis on Apr 29, 2022. However unnerving the feeling of being surveilled is, collecting information about our interactions with the government has the potential to be immensely fruitful for journalists, researchers and the public. Whenever we fill out a government form or get our vaccinations done through public hospitals, the records we leave with them can be harnessed by those looking at it to trace back that interaction. Not only does this ensure transpare

Published on OpenAxis on Apr 11, 2022. Despite being South Asia’s oldest democracy, having constituted a universal franchise as early as 1931, the island nation of Sri Lanka is far from donning the hat of a stable one and the path toward democratic prosperity remains murky. The country has seen a bloody civil war between the minority separatist Tamil Hindu community and the ruling Sinhala Buddhist majority from 1983 to 2009. Post-war, its polity has been turning the page fo

Interview for OpenAxis , published on Feb 4, 2022. In many ways, the complex interplay between fear, trust, and evidence has been the hallmark of our collective pandemic experience. We have learnt to fear large numbers in the form of mounting cases, all the while trusting the vaccines due to their efficacy data. How policy-makers communicate evidence has been crucial to which impulse our attention rests—fear or trust.  In this insightful interview, visiting Professor of Immun

By Eshna Sharma and Rutuparna Deshpande for The Edict. Published on Aug 18, 2021. Anything goes under the garb of anonymity on the internet. It unleashes some of our best and worst behaviours. The case of one anonymous Instagram account, @au.rants.23, managed by some industrious UG23s is another retelling of the story of toxic online spaces. In this first instalment in a two-part series, we speak to two of the ex-administrators of the page about their experiences and ask, wha