Yogendra Yadav

Yogendra Yadav writes: Census is opportunity to correct injustice towards Denotified, Nomadic Tribes

March 31,2026 06:13:41 AM

Cutting across governments and parties, the Indian state has stubbornly refused to acknowledge these communities. Some of them are listed as Scheduled Castes, some as Scheduled Tribes, some as OBCs, and many find no mention anywhere.

UGC needs reform. But the new higher education bill is not the answerSign In to read

March 24,2026 06:30:11 AM

It is a mechanism for formalising the retreat of the state from the public purpose of higher education at a moment when millions of first-generation college-goers need it the most

The move to impeach CEC Gyanesh Kumar, though symbolic, mattersSubscriber Only

March 17,2026 06:12:03 AM

The more serious point about his ‘misconduct’ is his partisanship. All you need to recall is his press conference on ‘vote chori’ where he exhorted the Leader of the Opposition to file an affidavit or offer an apology to the nation.

America’s gerrymandering comes to India. In Assam, it skews playing field before assembly poll beginsSubscriber Only

March 04,2026 06:23:41 AM

Very little attention has been paid to the routine redrawing of constituency boundaries that can be weaponised to favour the incumbent ruling party. Assam could well become a model for delimitation in the rest of the country.

Yogendra Yadav writes: India’s new federal compact must be based on principle of non-dominationSubscriber Only

February 24,2026 07:11:02 AM

The conversation on a new federal compact could begin with a frank discussion on a balance of power across the Hindi and the non-Hindi states

Yogendra Yadav writes: To reclaim the Indian republic, we need a shared language and humilitySubscriber Only

February 17,2026 07:10:04 AM

From Mahatma Gandhi’s Sevagram Ashram, thoughts on “Hindu Nationalists”, fraternity, and constitutional values

India-US trade deal seals farmers’ slide — provider to poor relativeSubscriber Only

February 11,2026 10:35:12 AM

Barring short-lived attention in the first Five Year Plan or a lone voice like Chaudhary Charan Singh, the farmer has been an afterthought in India’s developmental planning.

Yogendra Yadav writes: Hiding in row over UGC Regulations is a deep fault line, social, ideological and politicalSubscriber Only

February 03,2026 08:12:27 AM

BJP's core vote bank has tolerated concessions to “lower orders” of Hindu society as the necessary price for maintaining political power. But the BJP’s electoral hegemony and relentless ideological campaign have empowered its “upper caste” supporters to believe that such concessions are unnecessary.

Yogendra Yadav writes | Let’s recover the lost meanings of ganarajya to face the political challenge of our timeSubscriber Only

January 27,2026 07:41:02 AM

A search for the ethical ideals embedded in the idea of ganrajya invites us to uncover the swadharm of our republic. And that would lead us to a stark conclusion: What we confront today is not just a backsliding of our democracy, not just a mutilation of our Constitution. We face nothing short of a determined onslaught on the swadharm of our ganarajya

Yogendra Yadav writes: Reading India’s political mood at the World Book FairSubscriber Only

January 20,2026 09:02:34 AM

It is natural that the present assault on the architecture of the constitutional republic would invite vigorous attempts to research and defend the constitutional vision

Yogendra Yadav writes: In the age of reels, a literary renaissance that connects children to their rootsSubscriber Only

January 13,2026 10:01:44 AM

It is an exciting time to be an author, an illustrator, a publisher — and a reader — of literature for children and young adults

SIR could roll back decades of progress in women’s political participationSubscriber Only

January 06,2026 06:54:01 AM

Women have been excluded for being ‘absent/shifted’. An overwhelming proportion are married whose names have been deleted from their maternal home, but not included in their married home.

Here is proof, from a natural experiment, that SIR carries a fatal design defectSubscriber Only

December 30,2025 06:02:10 AM

The problem with the SIR, as we have kept saying, is not in the idea of an intensive revision of the voters’ list. The problem is with the two unprecedented and unnecessary design elements in the SIR — compulsion of enumeration forms and the requirement of proof of citizenship

Yogendra Yadav writes: A public debate on ‘Does God exist?’ takes us away from the real issues of religion and religiositySubscriber Only

December 23,2025 07:02:10 AM

We need to debate not God but godmen. The fact is that the intellectual and moral quality of religious leadership is fast declining across major religions in India

The greater disenfranchisement: SIR 2.0 is worse than BiharSubscriber Only

December 17,2025 06:40:13 AM

If this looming disaster has not yet made headlines, it is because the information is scattered, staggered and shrouded. The repeated and state-wise extensions of the deadline by the ECI have ensured that the final figures would arrive in four instalments, thus masking the big picture

Yogendra Yadav writes: Parliament should discuss how to prevent electoral deforms, not how to bring electoral reformsSubscriber Only

December 09,2025 07:14:12 AM

The BJP with its organisational presence and support of local officials is better placed than the Opposition to rescue its loyal voters from structural exclusion. Besides, the design of the SIR and its implementation bias would lead to a targeted disenfranchisement of Muslims and other communities that the BJP finds electorally inconvenient

Yogendra Yadav writes: PM is spot on but Macaulay’s children wear suits, ties — and the tilak tooSubscriber Only

December 02,2025 07:32:22 AM

The litmus test of a colonised mind is that its ultimate dream is to become like the master. The present regime is a perfect vehicle for the colonial mindset. It is worse than the rule of the English-speaking elite.

The original thinker the thought elite didn’t celebrate — and should haveSubscriber Only

November 25,2025 07:31:54 AM

Since the socialists, unlike the communists, had very little clout in academia, his work remained largely unnoticed. It did not matter to him, but it should matter to the world of ideas that struggles for relevance in New India.

What those who celebrate Bihar verdict, and those who lament it, get wrongSubscriber Only

November 18,2025 07:13:40 AM

The simple fact is that the NDA was a much bigger political coalition — nearly 5 points larger, going by the last assembly elections — than the MGB. The NDA’s social coalition is much bigger than that of the MGB.

Yogendra Yadav writes: We need to move from a caste census with a capital C to one with a small cSubscriber Only

November 11,2025 05:54:45 AM

Only then can we have a full inventory of how assets and opportunities are distributed in contemporary India

Yogendra Yadav writes: In Bihar, it’s not just parties – voters’ aspirations are clashing tooSubscriber Only

November 04,2025 07:23:43 AM

For me, badlaav meant a change in government, something Bihar and the country need desperately, something I was campaigning for. But two weeks of travel, mostly in north Bihar, alerted me to the multiplicity and ambiguity of badlaav

Yogendra Yadav writes on nation-wide SIR: Exclusionary exercise masquerading as reformSubscriber Only

October 29,2025 07:22:42 AM

SIR has resulted in a worsening in all key respects: Sharp decline in adult-elector ratio, disproportionate deletions of women and Muslims, and continued presence of glaring inaccuracies in the voters' list. Latest announcement shows EC's unwillingness to learn from the Bihar experiment

Yogendra Yadav writes: From an IPS officer to Chief Justice of India — three incidents show caste isn’t in our pastSubscriber Only

October 14,2025 07:15:17 AM

It is not limited to the rural or traditional pockets of 'backwardness'; caste wears new masks in modern sections of our society.

Yogendra Yadav writes: Let’s audit Bihar SIR. It makes for sad readingSubscriber Only

October 07,2025 07:34:07 AM

Although SC interventions allayed fears of mass disenfranchisement, the exercise has left much to be desired from the standpoint of accuracy equity, transparency, fairness

Partha Chatterjee’s new book will change the way we study Indian politicsSubscriber Only

September 30,2025 07:12:58 AM

In ‘For a Just Republic: The People of India and the State’ Chatterjee locates the enduring crisis of the Indian state in the tension between its two layers: the ‘nation-state’ — the formal state apparatus — and the ‘people-nation’, the ground reality that refuses to play by the given script