Sunday View: The Best Weekend Opinion Reads, Curated Just for You

In his column for The Indian Express, Congress leader P Chidambaram says that while Artificial Intelligence (AI) promises huge gains in productivity and opportunity, it also poses serious risks, especially to employment in India’s already fragile labour market, where many people lack advanced education or skills. "If AI will do all our work, and bring prosperity to all, what will humans do?" he asks.Hon’ble prime minister is right that AI will open the doors to the future and fortune. But there is also fear that jobs will be lost. Routine and repetitive jobs such as ticket issuers and checkers, bus and train conductors, rail signal persons, traffic police officers, stenographers and typists, tourist guides, translators, lab technicians, bank tellers, private tutors, etc may vanish. Microsoft’s CEO said that many tasks in white collar jobs will be automated. The company axed thousands of jobs in 2025. Tata Consultancy Services announced in 2025 that it would ‘let go’ of more than 12,000 employees as part of a restructuring exercise. Mr Vinod Khosla predicted that AI could eliminate IT services and BPO firms could almost disappear within the next five years.P Chidambaram, The Indian ExpressPratap Bhanu Mehta, in this piece for The Indian Express, argues that AI is reshaping the very foundations of capitalism and the relationship between states and capital, moving beyond familiar debates over jobs or inequality to a deeper structural shift. He says that this marks a move away from the globalization-era model of relatively mobile, market-driven capital and "embedded" liberal economies toward a "techno-nationalist" order.It looks like AI may shift this calculation. First, as is obvious, frontier AI is extraordinarily capital-intensive and infrastructure-dependent. It requires massive computing power, advanced semiconductors, energy supply, and highly specialised talent pools. The firms leading this transformation — Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google — no longer resemble “light” digital platforms. They look more like early 20th-century infrastructure monopolies: Vertically integrated, asset-heavy, and territorially anchored. Data centres, chip fabrication plants, and energy grids are not footloose assets. They bind firms to specific jurisdictions and regulatory regimes.Pratap Bhanu Mehta, The Indian ExpressIn this column for The Telegraph, historian and author Ramachandra Guha presents Madhav Gadgil (ecologist) and André Béteille (sociologist) as exemplars of scholarly practice in India.He draws attention to the unexpected but profound similarities in their scholarly lives, noting that despite different disciplines and backgrounds, both were interdisciplinary thinkers, deeply committed teachers and institution-builders, engaged public intellectuals who communicated beyond academia, and generous mentors who rejected hierarchical “guru” cultures.In a gurukul, shakha, or party school, the novice or fresh recruit is instructed, ordered, talked down to, in a word, indoctrinated. Scholarly research, on the other hand, proceeds through reciprocal learning, through exchange and dialogue among people of different disciplines, theoretical orientations, research styles, social backgrounds, national affiliations, and — not least — generations. I learnt these lessons first from Madhav Gadgil and André Béteille, and have had them repeatedly underlined for me in recent years, when I have myself benefited so much from younger scholars and writers who come looking for guidance and end up teaching me a good many things too.Ramachandra Guha, The TelegraphIn his piece for the Hindustan Times, Karan Thapar criticizes the Indian cricket team's recent refusal to shake hands with Pakistani opponents after matches in Colombo (last Sunday) and Dubai (September), calling it a violation of cricket's core identity as a gentleman's game that demands basic decency and sportsmanship.Cricket, they say, is a gentleman’s game. It follows that there is a certain decorum that should be observed. Shaking hands with your opponents is part of the spirit of cricket. Not to do so flouts it. There is an important point to remember about sport. The opposing side are not your adversaries. They are certainly not your enemies. They are merely opponents as keen to win the game as you are to defeat them. Shaking hands with your opponent exemplifies the spirit of sport. Shorn of that spirit, sport is reduced to just physical exercise. It loses its higher meaningKaran Thapar, Hindustan TimesIn this piece for The New York Times, columnist Maureen Dowd writes about the US Supreme Court's recent 6-3 ruling (written by Chief Justice John Roberts) striking down President Trump's sweeping tariffs as unconstitutional, ruling he exceeded his authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) without congressional approval. She portrays it as a rare, refreshing check on Trump's "petulant man-child" behavior and "Emperor of Chaos" style.Friday was a landmark day in the Trump reign. It was refreshing to finally see someone tell this petulant man-child: “No, you can’t do that!” And it was especially refreshing that the Supreme Court, which has been awash in its own ethics crises and acting subservient to the megalomaniac in the White House, suddenly found a spine. The highest court firmly instructed the Emperor of Chaos on why his tariffs were unconstitutional without the blessing of Congress. Maureen Dowd, The New York TimesIn this piece for The New Indian Express, S Vaidhyasubramaniam notes that the future of education lies in striking a balanced integration of AI with human-centered learning.He believes that education's future depends on a balanced, calibrated integration of AI with traditional pedagogy, avoiding extremes of technophilia (uncritical enthusiasm for tech) and technophobia (fear-driven rejection), especially as India aims for AI superpower status by 2027.The AI scaffolding in education undoubtedly is improving access to education which was once the privilege of a few or addressing the challenging contours of learners with a huge baggage to be unburdened. However, digital temperance for students is non-negotiable as students should wrestle unaided and not forfeit their opportunity to build their meta-cognitive resilience. Resorting to a quick-fix solution deploying AI derails the youthful and formative stages of cerebral salience. Equally important for teachers is the realisation of the fact that AI in education is not a tool to wriggle themselves and outsource their core responsibilities to an agentic AI but to transform themselves into a positive catalyst for knowledge transfer in a manner that addresses learner heterogeneity adequately. S Vaidhyasubramaniam, The New Indian ExpressIn this column for The Guardian, Majdoleen Abu Assi contrasts the joyous, lantern-lit Ramadans of the past — with bustling markets, communal iftars, and family gatherings — with the grim reality of 2026 Gaza under a fragile "ceasefire." "I mourn the vibrant life we lived before. But though our faces anxiously turn to the sky, our hands are joined in a solidarity that rises above hunger," she writes.I did not welcome Ramadan this year with the golden lanterns that once adorned our balconies. I welcomed it to the roar of bulldozers clearing the bones of neighbouring houses and with the constant buzz of the zanana, the Israeli surveillance drones, overhead. Even as we stand in prayer, that metallic humming drowns out the adhan, the call to prayer, reminding us that we are still watched and that our “calm” rests at the mercy of a sudden strike.Majdoleen Abu Assi, The GuardianMohamed Zeeshan, in this column for the Deccan Herald argues that the Jeffrey Epstein scandal reveals deep cracks in modern democracy. He states that Epstein's case highlights how wealth, inherited privilege, and elite networks allow powerful individuals to bend or evade democratic institutions, undermining equality and accountability.One, people believe that Epstein was able to continue committing heinous crimes with impunity because he was rich and powerful. Two, to become so rich and powerful, people now think that networks, connections, and favours matter as much – if not more than – skill or merit. That structural fact was part of Epstein’s power: by virtue of knowing him, many benefited where they otherwise may not have. In that regard, Epstein’s success was the result of an institutional failure. The role of laws, norms, and institutions is to maintain a level playing field for the rich and the poor, the powerful and the weak. That level playing field forms basis of a meritocratic economy in which people with few resources can rise up the ranks.Mohamed Zeeshan, Deccan HeraldIn this piece for the Deccan Herald, Venkatesh Nayak criticises the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) for blocking parliamentary questions and scrutiny on high-profile funds such as the PM CARES Fund, Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund (PMNRF) and the National Defence Fund, arguing these are not funded through parliamentary-approved budgets and therefore, are surpassing Parliamentary oversight. The government reasons that these funds are not supported by any budgetary allocation approved by Parliament. So, questions about their affairs cannot be admitted there. RTI replies I obtained from central public sector enterprises and the data gleaned from their annual CSR expenditure reports show that between 2020-2021, they had contributed more than Rs 2,330 crore to the PMCARES Fund.The President, the first citizen of our country, is the majority shareholder in these companies. Should other citizens not ask how this money was spent during the COVID pandemic? As I am an Intervenor in the PMCARES Fund case pending in the Delhi High Court, propriety prevents me from commenting further except to say that the 40th hearing to decide whether it can be made answerable to the people under the RTI Act will on the 1st of April!Venkatesh Nayak, Deccan HeraldCan India’s Entrepreneurs Withstand the Free Trade 'Shock'?Food Jihad: AP Muslim Vendor's Harassment by YouTubers Tests TDP's Secular CredBy Rejecting Plea Against Assam CM, CJI Surya Kant Overlooks SC's Own PrecedentModi's 'MANAV' Vision: India's AI Leap Hinges on What Happens After the ApplauseA 'Pink' Rebel in a Sea of Saffron: The Quiet Cheek of Taapsee PannuChinese Dog, Indian Problem: Galgotias Chaos at AI Summit Reveals Deeper Rots

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