Notes of Nagesh

Chuppala Nagesh Bhushan An appeal to reason in an age of godmen, gullibility, and engineered ignorance   The Constitution's Forgotten Promise Article 51A(h) of the Indian Constitution places a remarkable obligation on every citizen: to develop the scientific temper, humanism, and the spirit of inquiry and reform. This is not a guideline. It is a fundamental duty — as binding in its moral weight as any right we jealously claim. And yet, in 2026, India is watching that promise drown in a flood of sacred ash, miracle water, and prime-time astrology. We are a nation that sends spacecraft to the Moon and Mars. We produce world-class mathematicians, biologists, and engineers. And simultaneously, we are a nation where stadium-sized crowds prostrate before men who claim to materialise gold from thin air, cure cancer with cow urine, and commune directly with the divine — for a fee. This is not a contradiction we can afford to be proud of. It is a crisis.   The Godman I...

  శతాబ్దం పాతదైనా జవాబుదారీతనం లేదు: RSS నమోదు కోసం వాదన భారతదేశంలో అత్యంత శక్తివంతమైన పౌర సంస్థ అనధికారికత అనే ముసుగులో దాక్కుంటోంది. ఇంత ప్రభావం కలిగిన సంస్థ పట్ల ఇలాంటి అపారదర్శకతను సహించే ప్రజాస్వామ్యం తన విధిని తానే కొని తెచ్చుకుంటుంది. చుప్పల నాగేశ్ భూషణ్  జూన్ 18, 2026 ఆధునిక జవాబుదారీతనం నుండి తప్పించుకోవడానికి పురాతన సంప్రదాయాన్ని సాకుగా చూపే పరిపాటి భారతదేశంలో చాలా బలంగా ఉంది. గత సంవత్సరం తన శతాబ్ది ఉత్సవాలు జరుపుకున్న రాష్ట్రీయ స్వయంసేవక్ సంఘ్ ఈ కళలో నిష్ణాతులు. తాను ఎందుకు ఏ భారతీయ చట్టం కింద నమోదు కాలేదని అడిగితే, దాని అధిపతి మోహన్ భాగవత్ ఒక ప్రశ్నతో జవాబు ఇచ్చారు: RSS స్థాపకుడు పోరాడిన బ్రిటిష్ ప్రభుత్వం దగ్గర మేము నమోదు చేసుకోవలసిందా? వాక్చాతుర్యం ప్రశంసనీయం. తర్కం మాత్రం సిగ్గుపడేలా ఉంది. భారతదేశం సార్వభౌమ గణతంత్రంగా 77 సంవత్సరాలు గడిచాయి. కాగితాలు పూర్తి చేయడం మరచిపోవడానికి ఇది చాలా ఎక్కువ సమయం. భారత పౌర జీవితంలో RSS కి సాటి లేని స్థానం ఉంది. కోట్లాది మంది సభ్యులు ఉన్నారని పేర్కొంటుంది, దేశవ్యాప్తంగా రోజూ వేలాది "శాఖలు" నిర్వహిస్తుంది, మరియు అధికార భారతీయ జనత...

  Century-old and Unaccountable: The Case for Registering the RSS India's most powerful civil organisation cloaks itself in informality. A democracy that tolerates such opacity from an entity of such influence is only asking for trouble. HYDERABAD  ·  Jun 18, 2026 There is a reliable Indian tradition of powerful organisations invoking ancient precedent to escape modern accountability. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, which celebrated its centenary last year, has mastered this art. Asked why it remains unregistered under any Indian law, its chief, Mohan Bhagwat, replied with a question of his own: should the RSS have registered with the British, against whom its founder was fighting? The rhetorical flair is admirable. The logic is embarrassing. India has been a sovereign republic for 77 years. That is a long time to forget to fill out the paperwork. The RSS occupies a position in Indian public life without parallel. It claims millions of participants, operates tens of thou...

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE & HIGHER EDUCATION The Empty Classroom When students outsource learning to AI and companies cut the engineers who know better, both ends of the talent pipeline fray at once. India is not watching from a safe distance. Chuppala Nagesh Bhushan At the University of California, Berkeley, something unremarkable happened in spring 2026: a professor held office hours. The unremarkable part was that nobody came. Dan Garcia, who teaches CS 10, a broad introductory computing course popularly called “The Beauty and Joy of Computing,” found his calendar conspicuously clear at the very moment his gradebook became conspicuously alarming. Of the students who sat CS 10’s final examination, 35.3% received an F—five times the historical norm of roughly 7%. Two other courses in Berkeley’s elite Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences department suffered similarly: 10.6% of CS 61A students failed, and 16.8% of those in EECS 127, an upper-division optimi...

  Spies in the Classroom: How Universities Are Training the Next Generation of Intelligence Officers Chuppala Nagesh Bhushan From the Paris suburbs to the banks of the Thames, a quiet revolution is reshaping how democratic nations develop their intelligence professionals. The Campus That Trains Spies On a grey morning on the outskirts of Paris, a university professor takes attendance. It is, by most appearances, an ordinary ritual — except that several names on his list are almost certainly false. Professor Xavier Crettiez, a researcher specialising in jihadism at Sciences Po Saint-Germain-en-Laye, has grown accustomed to the uncertainty. "I rarely know the intelligence agents' backgrounds when they are sent on the course," he says, "and I doubt the names I'm given are genuine anyway." Welcome to France's so-called 'School for Spies': the Diplôme sur le Renseignement et les Menaces Globales — the Diploma on Intelligence and Global Threat...