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  The global race for artificial intelligence dominance is not just about computing power or capital; it is fundamentally about human capability. According to the newly released Global Skills Report 2026 by Coursera and Udemy , a stark "readiness disconnect" is threatening to derail global AI investments, with the report revealing that 88% of leaders believe their planned AI investments will fail without greater investment in human skills training.

  It was the second time I visited a temporary museum in Raleigh, a major city in North Carolina , south of Washington, D.C. The visit was primarily meant to be an educational experience for an eight-year-old girl I happen to know intimately. She displayed an unusual curiosity, but what interested me even more was the manner in which both young and elderly people, high school children and experts, seemed extraordinarily keen to tell children about the insects on display .

  The other day, I was talking with a non-resident Indian (NRI) in a middle-level city off the eastern coast of the United States. The tête-à-tête took place as we were returning from a religious ceremony at a well-established Hindu temple, where several hundred NRIs had participated, many of them actively.

Following my blog , in which I cited renowned mythologist Devdutt Pattanaik , who mocked Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “Dimagi Naxal” remark by stating that the word “Naxal” refers to a “special river reed that grows in North Bengal (kash grass) with silvery flowers”, and that “Naxali” would be the name of Lord Shiva’s son Kartikeya, who was “born amongst these reeds”, I received an interesting rejoinder.

A new World Bank report , Building Human Capital Where It Matters , has revealed that India's human capital deficits are entrenched across homes, neighborhoods, and workplaces, with maternal education creating lifelong skill gaps, rural health quality varying by 46 percentage points between villages, and self-employed workers earning barely half the returns to experience of their salaried peers.

A new report released by the World Bank has delivered a sobering assessment of global human capital development , finding that progress has stalled or reversed across much of the developing world. The report, Building Human Capital Where It Matters , quantifies how deficits in nutrition, learning, and employment can erase 51% of future earnings in low- and middle-income countries , while exposing stark inequities rooted in the settings where people live, learn, and work.

A few days ago, we went to San Francisco, ordinarily a six-hour drive from Los Angeles. However, it took us more than eight hours because a fire had broken out on one of the mountains along the highway, forcing us to take another route, part of which ran along the seashore.

The heavy military presence and frequent communication blackouts in Jammu and Kashmir are taking a disproportionate toll on female education, reversing years of progress and driving up school dropout rates for girls, according to a recent analysis published in The Conversation . ​Writing for the publication, Shambhavi Siddhi , a PhD candidate in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at Western University , highlights that while the Indian government cited " women's empowerment " and the eradication of gender discrimination as key motivations for revoking Jammu and Kashmir's semi-autonomous status in August 2019, the reality on the ground has told a vastly different story for young women seeking an education. ​Rising Dropout Rates and Low Literacy ​According to data presented before the Indian parliament in March 2026, the secondary-level dropout rate for girls in the region peaked at 12.6% during the 2023–24 academic year—surpassing India’s national average of 9....

  A public appeal by local advocate  Kamlesh S. Madhiwala  has drawn attention to a growing crisis in urban India’s smaller towns—the steady disappearance of accessible sports infrastructure and its ripple effects on children and youth.

India’s human capital outcomes in health and education remain below global averages, with the latest World Bank report warning that learning levels and health indicators are stagnating compared to peer countries such as Vietnam and Peru. The report highlights persistent gaps in maternal education, child nutrition, and learning outcomes, underscoring the urgent need for investment in homes, neighborhoods, and workplaces.

A preliminary working paper by Arvind Virmani, economist and member of the Government of India think tank NITI Aayog, has concluded that the Right to Education (RTE) Act — enacted to guarantee free and compulsory schooling for children between six and fourteen — has actually worsened learning outcomes rather than improved them. The paper, published in March 2026 and reported by The Print on 16 April, has drawn sharp pushback from education rights advocates, who argue it builds a politically motivated narrative against constitutionally guaranteed entitlements.

 More than a decade ago, when I was with The Times of India, I used to write a regular weekly column called True Lies. The column—which still continues—was mainly about gossip surrounding Gujarat government bureaucrats, though I occasionally wrote about ministers as well. In that column, I would often refer to what IAS officials described as their informal weekly Monday morning tit-a-tat over tea.

    The other day, I visited what is being billed as the  Ahmedabad International Flower Show 2026 , currently underway at the  Sabarmati Riverfront Event Centre . This was my second visit to the Ahmedabad flower show. I went with my NRI friends, who remarked that the display this year was far superior to what they had seen when they visited Ahmedabad around the same time last year.

A new  Government of India  study,  Internationalisation of Higher Education in India: Prospects, Potential, and Policy Recommendations , prepared by  NITI Aayog , regrets that India’s lag in this sector is the direct result of “several systemic challenges such as inadequate infrastructure to provide quality education and deliver world-class research, weak industry–academia collaboration, and outdated curricula.”

I have in my hand a representation addressed to the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), Gujarat, urging the Election Commission of India (ECI) to stop “atrocities on teachers and education in the name of election work.” The representation, submitted by Dr. Kanubhai Khadadiya of the All India Save Education Committee (AISEC), Gujarat chapter -- its contents matched  what a couple of teachers serving as Block Level Officers (BLOs) told me a couple of days esrlier during a recent visit to a close acquaintance.

The recent ghastly incident in Ahmedabad's sprawling Maninagar (East) area, in which a 10th-class student of the Seventh Day Adventist School was stabbed to death by a boy from the 9th (or 8th?) standard, made me look up what kind of school it is. I found it to be part of the larger Adventist movement, which began in the United States in the 19th century within the Protestant Christian framework.

This one was a shocker for me. I was talking with the principal of a government-supported school, and this person told me that the district education office (DEO) of Ahmedabad insists on having details of the high school examinations conducted in his school in a video format—and only on compact discs (CDs)!

The Gujarat government’s reported decision to discontinue the ₹50,000 financial assistance provided to students from Nomadic and Denotified Tribes (N&DTs) pursuing diploma engineering courses has drawn strong criticism from social activists and concerned journalists across the state.

   The other day, I received a message from education rights activist Mitra Ranjan, who claims that a whopping one lakh schools across India have been closed down or merged. This seemed unbelievable at first sight. The message from the activist, who is from the advocacy group Right to Education (RTE) Forum, states that this is happening as part of the implementation of the National Education Policy (NEP), 2020, which floated the idea of school integration/consolidation.

   Researchers from the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A) have attributed the failure to address inhalant misuse among teenagers to "existing domestic policies." While the Juvenile Justice (JJ) Act 2015 penalizes the sale or provision of narcotics, psychotropic drugs, alcohol, and tobacco to minors (under 18), it notably omits inhalant misuse. Even the Gujarat Juvenile Justice Rules 2019, formulated for the Act's enforcement, also fail to "recognize the issue," the researchers highlight.