Miscellany

The Uttar Pradesh government's high-profile pledge to spend 25,000 crore on AI quickly became a story of promises or what actually follows, after admitting the deal with puch AI was just a sketchy MoU - not a firm commitment.

Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath painted a bold picture: AI parks, data centers, an AI university, and even an "AI city" near Lucknow. The scale of it inspired interest, Mainly as UP positioned itself as a rising player in india's AI space.

It seems hard to ignore that within 24 hours, officials stepped back and said the MoU wasn't binding at all - just a starting point meant to be studied closely before anything real happens. The state emphasised that any project would proceed only after evaluating the investor’s financial and technical capabilities.

The backtracking was triggered largely by credibility concerns around Puch AI. Industry watchers and social media users asked if a young startup - just 12 employees, under 10 crore in revenue, no public AI products, could actually deliver such a big project. The company's valuation at 250 crore and absence of major releases only deepened doubts.

The government's pattern of signing large MoUs to show progress often clashes with what real startups can do. Digital groups now monitor these deals instantly, comparing promises to actual progress. Is it just optics?

Puch AI said the MoU was a shared push with no state cash outlay. They rejected the revenue claims as misread data, arguing that their model is about open access, not building apps for scale.

“I didn’t drop the course,” Yulia told me over a patchy call. “The war dropped into it.”

She is a management student from Ukraine, enrolled in a partner programme linked to Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. When the conflict intensified, her classroom moved underground—literally. Lectures continued in bunkers, assignments were submitted between power cuts, and exams were taken with one ear tuned to sirens.

“Sometimes,” she said, almost laughing, “the Wi-Fi is stronger than my nerves.”

Thousands of kilometres away, in the Gaza Strip, 19-year-old Ahmed,an engineering aspirant who had hoped to join Islamic University of Gaza, never got to begin his semester. His school was destroyed. His books are buried. Now, he studies from scanned PDFs on a borrowed phone.

“You don’t plan your day,” he told me through a local volunteer. “You wait for a quiet hour—and then you try to remember what normal studying felt like.”

Between these two realities,one of interrupted continuity, the other of suspended beginnings,lies the fragile spectrum of what it means to be a student in a war zone.

The Day the Classroom Shifted

Ranya, a business student from Israel studying at Tel Aviv University, remembers the exact moment her semester changed.

“We were discussing a case study on risk management,” she said. “And then suddenly, risk was no longer theoretical.”

Her university shifted to hybrid mode within days. Some students attended classes online from safer areas; others joined from shelters. Attendance was flexible, deadlines negotiable.

“But concentration?” she paused. “That wasn’t negotiable. You either had it, or you didn’t.”

Across the border, in the West Bank, Noor, a literature student from Birzeit University, described a different kind of disruption.

“We still have classrooms,” she said. “But the mind doesn’t always arrive there.”

Her words stayed with me longer than any statistic. Because they capture a truth institutions rarely measure: presence is not the same as participation.

Russia: Continuing, But Changed

In Russia, Artyom, a computer science student at Moscow State University, described a quieter shift.

“There are no sirens where I am,” he said. “But there is a constant awareness.”

International collaborations have thinned. Exchange programmes have stalled. Conversations in classrooms are more cautious, more coded.

“You still study algorithms,” he added. “But you also learn what not to say.”

For him, education hasn’t stopped—it has narrowed.

The Myth of Seamless Learning

In policy rooms and institutional statements, the phrase “hybrid learning” appears as a solution—flexible, adaptive, resilient.

And yes, it works. To an extent.

When students from the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad’s Dubai cohort were relocated amid rising tensions in West Asia, classes resumed quickly. Some continued from Ahmedabad, others logged in from different countries. The system absorbed the shock.

But as one student—who preferred not to be named—told me, “Just because the class continues doesn’t mean your head is in it.”

She had returned home temporarily, attending lectures at odd hours.

“You’re present on screen,” she said. “But part of you is elsewhere—tracking news, checking on people, wondering what happens next.”

Hybrid learning preserves structure. It does not guarantee absorption.

The Unequal Geography of Education

What struck me most across these conversations was not just the disruption—but how unevenly it is distributed.

Yulia still submits assignments.

Ranya still attends classes.

Artyom still writes code.

Ahmed is still waiting to begin.

Global education prides itself on being borderless. But conflict redraws those borders sharply, dividing students not just by geography, but by possibility.

Some adapt.

Some pause.

Some are left behind entirely.

What Students Carry Forward

When I asked Yulia what she had learned from the past year, she didn’t mention her coursework.

“I’ve learned to focus on chaos,” she said. “I don’t know if that’s a skill or a survival instinct.”

Noor spoke about memory.

“I write things down more now,” she said. “Because I don’t trust the day to stay stable.”

And Ranya reflected on ambition.

“You stop planning too far ahead,” she admitted. “You think in weeks, not years.”

These are not lessons listed in any syllabus. But they shape how students will move forward—into careers, into decisions, into a world that increasingly mirrors the instability they studied through.

As our conversations ended—calls dropping, messages delayed, time zones colliding—one thought stayed constant:

Education, in conflict, does not simply stop. It transforms.

Sometimes into resilience.

Sometimes into compromise.

Sometimes into absence.

And somewhere, in between a bunker lecture in Kyiv, a disrupted campus in Tel Aviv, a quiet room in Moscow, and a phone-lit study session in Gaza, students are still trying to hold on to the same idea:

That learning, somehow, must continue. Even when everything else does not.

There is something deeply political about a missing roti.

At Jawaharlal Nehru University, where debates on ideology, policy, and nationhood are routine, the current protests are not about abstract ideas—but about food. The disappearance of rotis from hostel mess menus and the shrinking of meal hours have triggered student unrest, exposing a crisis that goes far beyond campus kitchens.

At the heart of the issue lies a 20% cut in Piped Natural Gas (PNG) supply, reportedly enforced by Indraprastha Gas Limited following upstream restrictions from GAIL. On paper, it is a supply-side adjustment. On campus, it translates into empty plates.

The Politics of Infrastructure Failure

What is unfolding at JNU is not an isolated logistical hiccup—it is a case study in how infrastructural decisions ripple through everyday life. When gas supply is curtailed, messes cannot function. When messes fail, students—many of whom rely on subsidised meals—are pushed into precarity.

This is where policy meets lived reality. A Gazette notification may justify a reduction to “80% of average consumption,” but it does not account for the lived economies of students who cannot afford alternatives. The shutdown of spaces like Sabarmati Dhaba is not just about food—it is about the erosion of informal student ecosystems that sustain campus life.

From Classrooms to Crisis Lines

The irony is stark. Universities are expected to produce critical thinkers, yet students are being forced to protest for basic necessities. The demand is not ideological—it is infrastructural: ensure gas supply, restore food services, and prevent financial burden.

But beneath these demands lies a deeper question—why are students repeatedly pushed to the frontlines of systemic failures?

The reported black marketing of LPG cylinders adds another layer to the crisis. Scarcity breeds opportunism, and in the absence of robust institutional response, informal—and often exploitative—markets take over.

A Crisis of Accountability

While Indraprastha Gas Limited cites upstream constraints from GAIL, the chain of accountability becomes diffused. Who, then, is responsible for ensuring that essential services in a central university remain uninterrupted?

This diffusion is precisely the problem. In India’s layered governance structure, responsibility often evaporates between agencies, leaving institutions—and individuals—to absorb the shock.

More Than a Campus Issue

To dismiss this as a “JNU issue” would be a mistake. The crisis reflects a broader national anxiety around energy supply, affordability, and access. If a premier central university struggles to maintain basic food services, what does it say about smaller institutions, or rural hostels operating with fewer resources?

Food, after all, is not a luxury in education—it is infrastructure.

The Politics of the Plate

Student protests at JNU have often been framed through ideological lenses. But this moment demands a different reading. This is not about left or right—it is about survival within systems that are increasingly stretched.

When rotis disappear, politics becomes personal.

And perhaps that is the most telling lesson here: the future of higher education in India will not only be decided in policy documents or academic councils, but also in mess halls—where the absence of something as basic as a roti can ignite a movement.

A recent decision by the Bombay High Court is not just a legal interpretation, it is a strong recognition of the women's agency, their dignity and the fact of modern parenthood. The court ruled that a child brought up only by their mother cannot be forced to mention the name or caste of the father who is not living with them in the school records. And by this the court confirmed a truth that single mothers have been longing for: No mother needs to have a father figure around her child to be a full parent.

For years, the systems and institutions in this country have been designed on a male chauvinistic assumption, that a child's identity, both legally and socially, must be linked with the father. The father's name has always been a requirement in school admission forms or government records, whereas in these documents the mothers role is often secondary or less prominent. This way of running things has without any pomp given the community a notion: that being a mother on one's own is to lack.

The High Court’s judgment challenges that narrative.

By stating that recognising a single mother is not an act of charity but a constitutional right grounded in equality and dignity, the court has shifted the conversation from sympathy to justice. Women who raise children on their own — whether due to abandonment, divorce, widowhood, or personal choice — should not be forced to validate an absent father’s identity in order to secure their child’s place in society.

For many women, this ruling represents more than a procedural change. It is a symbolic recognition of the emotional, financial and social labour they carry every day. Single mothers often navigate not only the challenges of parenting but also the stigma attached to raising a child outside traditional family structures. Bureaucratic requirements that insist on the father’s name can become painful reminders of that stigma.

The court got it right, identity should match real life. When one mom raises, teaches, and guards a child, the system should see that, not stick to old rules.

This case shows change is needed. Schools, government offices, and online records must check their forms and rules so they work for all kinds of families. Parenting now isn't just about men in traditional roles.

It's also about women doing the hard work quietly, staying strong, full of hope, often unseen. The court made clear: a mothers role stands on its own. She doesn't need approval from society to be whole.

By giving single moms their place, the law moves closer to fairness. Dignity, equality, and real life now shape public decisions.

Thousands of contractual employees associated with the Samagra Shiksha scheme in Maharashtra have decided, in a big way, to stage an indefinite hunger strike at Azad Maidan, Mumbai, starting from March 9 to get their job security.

A recent letter from Samagra Shiksha Sangharsh Samiti to School Education and Sports Minister Dada Bhuse has given the state government a deadline till March 7 to issue a government resolution (GR) regularising the remaining 3, 378 staff members.

The letter is a repercussion of a huge demonstration in Nagpur during the Winter Session of the Legislative Assembly, when employees of 13 different cadres including resource persons, data operators, and engineers protested demanding the end of the alleged injustice.

Samagra Shiksha is the flagship, a major centrally sponsored scheme in Maharashtra which is covering the school education from pre-school till the finishing of Class 12.

It is a unified scheme which combines the three different former schemes i.e. Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) that is directed towards providing elementary education; Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) whose objective is to develop secondary education; Teacher Education (TE) designed to support State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT) and District Institutes of Education and Training (DIETs).

In October 2024 the state government regularised a total of 3, 000 employees out of which nearly half were employees working for differently abled children. But 3, 378 employees were still left out.

"We have been in this profession for 25 years. We are the people on the ground who bring the RTE Act to life, " said Yogita Balakshe, the state president of the Samiti.

"If you can regularise 50 per cent of the staff, why this injustice toward the rest of us? Many of us are nearing retirement; if we retire now, we get zero benefits and are forced to work as security guards to survive."

The regularisation issue

The regularisation issue stems from the financial manual established in 2004 by the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development, which discouraged the creation of permanent positions and instead preferred contractual or deputation hiring. For more than 20 years, Maharashtra has avoided permanent hiring by granting these employees a one-day break every six months to reset their contractual status.

In October 2024, a study committee was formed to look into regularising all staff. On March 4, 2025, A new GR modified the committee and ordered a final report within three months.

Balakshe said, “Even though the report of the committee has now been submitted, no GR has been released yet. We will not leave Azad Maidan before a GR in our favour is released, because this is our third protest in a year.”

The letter to the minister added that the previous protests were suspended as government representatives assured that the issue would be resolved.

Ramdev has spoken for years on health and healing, yoga and our culture, on stress and spirituality. Building the nation has remained a thread running through his discourses over the years. In an exclusive interaction with author Akshat Gupta for The Times of India, yoga guru Baba Ramdev discusses why it’s time to reboot India’s education system. The interview which begins on a lighter note – with Baba ji being asked what law he’d enforce if he were the Health Minister for a day – soon segues into a serious discussion about how our education system has let us down, why gurukuls don’t exist anymore, and how he envisions a “global gurukul” going forward. Watch and hear him loudly, boldly lay out his vision: because when you change the way a nation learns, you change the way that nation thinks.

Who is Baba Ramdev and why does his view matter?

Baba Ramdev rose to fame through televised yoga sessions in the early 2000s. He later co-founded Patanjali Ayurved, building one of India’s largest homegrown FMCG brands. For many, he represents a blend of yoga, Ayurveda and cultural pride. For others, he is a controversial public figure who speaks strongly on politics and policy.

That is why his views on education attract attention. He does not speak as a policy expert. He speaks as someone who believes education defines character, confidence and national identity.

During the interview, he calls himself a “Universal Health Minister,” a phrase that reflects how he sees his role, not limited by office, but driven by influence.

The Gurukul argument: Loss or transition?

One of the central themes of the interview is the disappearance of the traditional gurukul system. Ramdev claims that India once had lakhs of gurukuls, where education was not limited to literacy but focused on wisdom and character.

He argues that colonial policies, especially those introduced in 1835 under British rule, changed India’s education model. Historians do confirm that in 1835, Thomas Babington Macaulay introduced reforms that promoted English education in India. Ramdev views this shift as the beginning of “mental slavery,” a phrase he uses to describe dependency on Western frameworks.

His concern is not just about language. It is about mindset. He believes education should build self-respect, not imitation.

Yet this raises a question: was the old system entirely ideal, or has modern education also brought access and scientific progress? The answer likely lies somewhere in between. India’s current literacy rate stands above 77 percent, according to recent government data. Access to education has expanded dramatically in the last century. But debates around quality and cultural relevance remain active.

Ramdev repeatedly says that education must combine two elements. First, awareness of one’s roots. Second, connection with the modern world.

He does not reject science or innovation. In fact, he stresses that knowledge, research and invention are essential. He points to countries like Israel, Japan and South Korea as examples of nations that built global influence through education despite smaller populations.

His message is simple: population size does not create power. Education does.

He also makes a strong distinction between being a consumer and being a creator. According to him, education should produce innovators, not just employees. It should remove fear and inferiority, not create competition-driven anxiety.

The idea of a “Global Gurukul”

Perhaps the boldest part of the conversation is his vision of a global education board under Patanjali. He speaks about a future where students from 200 countries come to study in India.

He imagines a system where ancient Indian philosophy sits alongside modern science. Where agriculture, entrepreneurship and public speaking are taught along with textbooks. Where discipline and character are part of the curriculum.

He insists that such education would reduce depression, addiction and moral confusion among youth. That is a powerful claim. It also invites scrutiny. Education alone cannot solve every social problem, but it can shape resilience and clarity of thought.

The idea of a “global gurukul” reflects a larger national conversation. India’s National Education Policy 2020 also speaks about holistic and multidisciplinary learning. The difference lies in interpretation and execution.

“Vishwa Guru”: Vision or rhetoric?

The phrase “India as Vishwa Guru” appears again in this discussion. Ramdev connects it to education rooted in pride, ethics and knowledge.

He argues that political slogans alone cannot build greatness. Social media noise cannot replace substance. Only a strong education system can create confident citizens.

At one point, he says education should not create aggression or blind pride. Instead, it should remove darkness and build inner strength. That statement stands out. It shifts the focus from dominance to development.

Becoming a global leader in education would require measurable outcomes, research output, global university rankings, innovation patents, and inclusive access. Cultural confidence must walk alongside scientific credibility.