The HT newsroom put out a bunch of specials to mark India@75. For starters, there’s 1947: The road to Indian independence, a podcast anchored by Prashant Jha, featuring experts such as William Dalrymple, Rajmohan Gandhi, Srinath Raghavan, and Durba Ghosh. open.spotify.com/show/2PLudY…

When the personal attacks and name calling comes as a flood, you know that change is imminent in the insurance industry! An industry and distribution system that has ripped people off for decades.

The promise and peril of Delhi's public spaces. In the wake of a minor girl's rape at Aastha Kunj, a spot check by HT found that Delhi's biggest and most popular parks are poorly lit, unguarded and have few safety mechanisms. @somyalakhani @mullickjamie @sanyamathur29

The first farewell lunch — by the old Mint Money team, the gold standard in personal finance journalism (and some plus-ones).

Reservations at IITs, Delhi’s influencers get singed by SIR, and Coltrane. This week’s newsletter hted.substack.com/p/reluctan…

One of the last few good air days of the year in Delhi. But that sky!

Today is the 100th anniversary of the birth of John Coltrane. To mark it we have selected a number of essays and reviews from back issues of The Wire going back over 40 years, all attempting to come to an understanding of the meaning and significance of Coltrane’s life and music.

In my latest substack post, I write about John Coltrane on his birth centenary. About how I have experienced his music over the decades, the connections I see between his style and Indian classical music, and some impossible birthday wishes. srajagopalan.substack.com/p/…

I am disturbed to see Prof. Suryanarayana Doola being vilified over the recent controversy at IIT Bombay. I know Surya personally. He is one of the finest faculty members I have known in the IIT system, and a gentleman of the highest integrity. Whatever concerns have been raised should be examined fairly. A public campaign against an individual serves no one. With over 25 years of experience at IIT Bombay and IIT Delhi, here is my take on the entire controversy and also a solution, which I believe we must look into. The problems we are seeing are all primarily because of the one size fits all approach in IITs. With students coming through an intensive coaching culture, and classrooms bringing together students whose JEE Advanced ranks range from single digits to five digits (in the same class -for example CSE in IIT Delhi), we now have highly heterogeneous classrooms across the IIT system. Language also further adds to the challenge. The question to ask therefore is, with such heterogeneity, can we expect every student to learn at the same pace? There is nothing wrong with opening the doors of our best institutions to students from different backgrounds. The question is whether we have addressed this heterogeneity in our teaching-learning methods. A faculty member cannot pitch every class at several levels at once. Move too slowly, and some students lose interest. Move too quickly, and others are left behind. In my classes, I have also seen students with excellent JEE Adv ranks struggle. Coaching had prepared them to solve familiar types of questions quickly. Many are lost when they see a question which they haven't solved before. This is not a difficulty confined to any admission category. The move from coaching to independent learning can be hard for anyone. Here is a solution. I feel we should consider moving our B.Tech programmes to five years in IITs. Those who meet the credit requirements could complete it in four years, or perhaps three and a half. Others could spread out their courses over five years and receive more academic help, including recorded lectures, online material and support with language where needed. The pace would be decided by performance within the IIT, not by a student’s admission category or entrance rank. Calling it a five year programme for everyone has a psychological advantage. Students who need more time would simply be following the programme as designed, while those who are ready could complete it sooner. No one would be singled out for taking a fifth year. We must uphold academic standards. We must also recognise that students do not all arrive at the same point, or learn at the same pace. Giving them the time and support to meet those standards is a responsibility of the system. @iitbombay #IITs @iitdelhi

#AsianGames #IndianLegends The swimming gold has endured for 75 years. So has the wait for recognition, a battle his son Ashok continues to wage. This is Sachin Nag's incredible story. @ninansusan with a read that is worth your while hindustantimes.com/sports/ot…

A sharp and cohesive developing country perspective on a critical period in tech. Pre-order @matthan's 'Ex Machina: Essays on a Decade of Tech Policy' today: amzn.in/d/0fISIiGY

From tomorrow, @DialogueEarth_ will begin publishing twenty extraordinary voices, from different parts of the world, about “The Earth Ahead”. Today, this is where I wanted to begin. We will not vacate the space. dialogue.earth/en/climate/di…

"In elite sport, everything can become an adversary – the air, the water, the resistance around a body in motion. The margins are so fine that even the invisible matters." Lovely piece by @ninansusan hindustantimes.com/sports/fa…

Excited to announce my role as part of the founding curating team for the inaugural Corbett Literary Festival! 🐯📖 Bringing together two of my absolute passions—#wildlife and #books —in a landscape so deeply tied to both is a dream. Head over to @corbettlitfest for details. @corbett_gov Look forward to meeting (old ) friends some great minds @NamitaGokhale_ @Saket_Badola @GargiRawat @karmanomad @jprasada @nehaa_sinha

Niranjan is the smartest person I’ve ever worked with (and I’ve worked with lots of people over the past three-and-half decades). He is also among the clearest writers I know. This book is going to be so good!

That Chennai folks are not braggy by nature is well known. One doesn’t need to flaunt. But at least talk about your city once in a while. Talk with pictures, stories, reels, blogs, vlogs, caricatures, reviews, critiques... whatever you feel like. Please speak up. And talk where it matters. Places like TripAdvisor, where your reviews can actually be useful to a visitor. Many people don’t realise that there are international agencies that rank cities. A city’s digital visibility, reputation, reviews and online presence can influence how it is perceived globally. And perception matters. Businesses, investors, tourists and talent increasingly look at how a city is seen and spoken about before making decisions. So, if you want to help bring more jobs, tourism and investment to Chennai, there’s one very simple thing you can do. Talk about your city. Rave about your favourite coffee. Give that crispy rocket dosa some love. If you dig kuska, tell the world. The stand-up act you loved, the concert you enjoyed, your go-to hangout, that hidden-gem meetup joint... tell all. Post a review. Upload a picture. Make a reel. Write a blog. Recommend a place. Critique something that can be better. Add your voice to Chennai. At Super Chennai, we’ve even created a website for this specific purpose. It’s called Letstalkchennai.com. Please go over there. And start expressing yourself. Not for us. Just do it for the city. Vaanga Talkalaam.

Am currently reading what’s perhaps the most important book that will be written this century on the state of Indian birds. Comparisons to Silent Spring are inevitable. Full disclosure: published by my wife’s imprint @indianpittabook

Running in the rain in the wooded campus that’s almost in the backyard of our new city home. I could get used to this

In this week's edition of What's on My Mind @HT_ED covers it all 🇮🇳 Nationalism: songs, symbols & citizenship 📊 Census: caste data & privacy 📚 Goscinny, Asterix & books 🎵 King Gizzard & ZZ Top Read and subscribe hted.substack.com/p/on-the-s…

Hello friends please welcome @Pranavenstein to the SIDIN company. 🎉 Late last year, when I launched my solo strategic comms company (sidin.co), the idea was to take it step by step. Slowly cultivate a client list, develop my own muscle, and take things in a gentle, orderly fashion. Thanks to a group of early clients, and great investor friends who recommended their portfolio companies, business has grown to the point where I had become the bottleneck. I was perpetually exhausted. Plus, any growth would have adversely impacted the service I provide to clients. Last week in Bangalore many stars aligned. I decided that it was time to bring on someone to build this with me. My friend @_swanand asked me if I knew a certain Pranav Srivilasan. I was dumbstruck. Many years ago, Pranav worked with me on Mint on Sunday. And it had been a blast. Way before Google Meet, Zoom and WhatsApp, we ran an entire weekend supplement from London and Delhi via a Trello board. Two hours later, I went to a film screening and there he was, two rows in front of me. Wow. Frantic meetings in Bangalore followed, and Pranav has now embarked upon this rocketship. Pranav is a computer science engineer turned journalist with experience and bylines at @livemint, @TheKenWeb and @MorningContext. He brings an enthusiasm for technology and business, plus the scepticism and story-sense of an experienced journalist. Both are absolutely necessary to do the work that we do with early-stage, growth-stage and enterprise clients. Please welcome him to the err... company. (We now have a Trello board and Google Meet and some sort of Slack thing.) This also means it is probably time to change this from SIDIN to something else. I genuinely thought I would never have to hire anyone. So I just named it after myself. More on that shortly. If you are a client, old or new or prospective, I thank you for your custom and support. I could not have reached this point without you. Also very special thanks to a host of people who have been mentors and well-wishers along this journey. (Swanand, @ku1deep, @ponnappa, @TheHolyKau, @gonsalves_r, @_svs_ and many others I may have now forgotten.) Onwards and upwards.

First look, first taste: Gaggan Anand’s hot new Delhi restaurant, Raga hindustantimes.com/s/1dedeym