I am sharing a message received from a student at IGP, a colleague in the field of education. It was not anticipated that anyone would compose such an extensive reflection on my professional journey; however, I am deeply moved by this gesture. https://t.me/udaaaninstitute_GPSC/1975 I express my sincere gratitude for this display of appreciation and regard. Thank you @dancewiththeflow

The Bank, the Buyer, and the Question of Ownership What the IDBI sale tells us about a nation that wants to be strong India has not merely sold a bank. It has answered, in public, a question it has avoided for thirty years: who should hold the keys to our money? The facts, without the noise. The sale process began in October 2022. It took four years, which is its own confession. The bank was once a wounded institution, rescued with public money, and the state and LIC nursed it back to health. Critics say the public paid for the recovery and a private group collects the harvest. Supporters say a government should not run banks at all, and that capital, discipline and management are better supplied by an owner who answers to results. One detail deserves attention: IDBI's shares closed at ₹89.85 on the day of approval, above the ₹81 offer, yet the government judged the bid reasonable. Both sides of the argument can point to that number. The mood of the economy The deal arrives at a delicate moment. The RBI expects 7.1% growth for 2026-27, and the first quarter grew 7.8%. Yet the RBI also raised interest rates for the first time since 2023 on October 7. Strong numbers sit beside nervous prudence. I have learned to distrust any country that celebrates growth without asking who owns it. The deeper question. A nation can be wealthy and still dependent. The mind that cheers a headline figure, whether a record GDP or a record price, is the mind of the herd, comfortable and asking only for reassurance. Sovereignty is different. It means the capacity to decide for oneself, and to bear the consequences. Seen this way, the sale is neither triumph nor betrayal. It is a test of character. If the state truly steps back, it must regulate with a steady hand and without favour, and it must let the market's discipline apply to its friends as well as its rivals. If it merely changes the name on the door while the old habits of patronage and forbearance remain, we will have exchanged one dependence for another. Foreign capital is not the danger. The danger is a country that never learns to stand on its own judgment, whoever holds the shares. There is also a lesson for us as citizens. We were comfortable when the bank was "ours" and slow to ask how it was run. Ownership without responsibility is only sentiment. A public asset is truly public only when the public demands accountability for it, in good years as in bad. India should neither mourn nor boast. It should ask the harder question: after the sale, will we have become more capable of ruling ourselves? To sell what you cannot manage is prudence. To sell what you have never learned to govern is only forgetting. #Economy #Banking #RBI

Dussehra and Society: The Ravana We Keep Burning Every year we burn Ravana, and every year he returns. That is not a failure of the ritual. It is the lesson of it. The effigy is easy to burn because it is outside us. It stands thirty feet tall, made of bamboo and paper, and the crowd goes home feeling clean. But Ravana was never a villain without learning. He was a scholar, a devotee, a king of immense ability. What destroyed him was not ignorance but unchecked appetite: power that answered to no one, a mind that mistook its own desire for dharma. That is a far more uncomfortable Ravana, because he lives in offices, institutions and ordinary households. Look at our society and ask which heads are still standing. Ego, in those who confuse rank with worth. Envy, in those who cannot celebrate another's success. Entitlement, in those who demand rights and defer duties. Cruelty, in those who still treat a woman's safety as her own responsibility. Greed, in those who have enough and still take from the commons. We are quick to find Ravana in the neighbour, the rival or the opposition, and slow to look for him in the mirror. Ram's victory was not only military. It was discipline: exile accepted without bitterness, power used with restraint, a promise honoured at great cost. The real victory of Vijayadashami is the one nobody applauds, the quiet refusal to do the wrong thing when no one would know. In Gujarat we mark the day with fafda and jalebi, something salty to sharpen the mind and something sweet to soften it. Perhaps that is the right balance for a society: the courage to be honest, and the grace to be kind. Burn the effigy by all means. Then spend the year on the harder work of cutting the heads that grow back in us. The enemy outside is burned in an evening. The enemy within needs a lifetime. #Vijayadashami #Dussehra #Culture