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Thoughts on the Unique Identity Framework for India née Aadhaar

Background: I had written this piece many months ago when the UIDAI white paper leaked. Some of the commentary might now be dated because the goal posts have changed ever since. I have consciously...

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The Case for a Unique Identification System in Public Education

During a visit to Hubli-Dharwad in November 2009, the local pages (Hubli-Dharwad-Belgaum) of the Times of India had the following headline: “Sky is their roof; the road their classroom - Government...

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Thoughts on the Future of Journalism and the Print Media

Newspapers and the wider print media have traditionally formed an important bulwark against excessive intrusions of the State, the Fourth Pillar, as they have traditionally been referred to. However,...

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Thoughts on Wikipedia and its Language Challenges

This was written soon after Wikimania 2010 for the New Indian Express. (With inputs from Arun Ram and Wikimania 2010 attendee, Srinivas Gunta) A common point of discussion in matters regarding the...

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Thoughts at the Intersection of Publishing and Technology in India

(With thanks to Atul Chitnis, Sankarshan, Abhaya Agarwal and Sachin Malhan for their inputs.) The Indian publishing space is both vibrant and flourishing with estimates suggesting that there are...

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Thoughts on Corporate Usage of User Generated Content

Sumant Srivathsan and I have a running conversation over corporations soliciting advertising and content generation by customers without compensation and we've written up our thoughts on this and the...

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Thoughts on Creative Commons Licenses

At Pratham Books, we have a very simple mission - “A Book in Every Child's Hand” and this drives all of our work and we constantly test what we do against this goal. The mission has two parts, one is...

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Thoughts on Wikipedia in India

Wikipedia turned ten on the 15th of January 2011 and its history is both well known and fairly well documented. Globally, Wikipedia is the fifth most popular website with the English Wikipedia being...

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Thoughts on Unicode in India

I have been thinking about multilingual publishing on the Web and in other digital forms, specifically in Indic languages, in the context of my work at Pratham Books and around Wikipedia and the more...

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Thoughts on Civil Disobedience

(Written for the March 2011 issue of Pragati.) An inquiry in to the social, cultural and historical narrative around civil disobedience as a legitimate tool of public protest would traditionally...

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Thoughts on Incentives in Public Primary Education

Video of the talk I gave at The Takshashila Shala in Chennai on the 7th of Novermber, 2011. Based almost entirely on the work of Karthik Muralidharan. Video streaming by Ustream Permalink | Leave a...

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Thoughts on the Future of Content

(I recently spoke at the India Social Summit in Delhi on the Future of Content. My slides, video and a transcript of my talk is below. I am deeply indebted to Nandita Saikia for transcribing my talk.)...

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Thoughts on the Freedom to Read

(Written as part of Nilanjana Roy's series on Banned Books Week) It isn’t always necessary to ban a book to ensure it isn’t read. With six in ten children unable to read grade 2 texts and half of all...

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Thoughts on Section 66A of the Information Technology Act, 2000

(A short piece I wrote for the Mid Day) In February 2009, a few months after the close of the 2008 winter session of parliament, Pranesh Prakash from the Centre for Internet and Society in Bangalore...

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Thoughts on the Future of an Organization

This was written specifically with Pratham Books in mind but maybe you'll find something of interest here.   “A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck...

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