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There are films on patriotism, and there is a film like #Raazi. Shot in the thriller format, this is an edge-of-the-seat entertainer with a heart. And what raises it's level many notches higher than the ordinary patriotism-spouting Hindi film, is the deft and sensitive direction and acting. The most important takeaway from the film is the view that most people are essentially good; their motivations may come from wrong purposes or bad politics. #Raazi depicts the life of an Indian girl - Sehmat, who is married to a Pakistani army major, with the specific purpose of spying on them and supplying vital information for the Indian government during the 1971 pre-war stage. But nowhere does the film accuse or point fingers at any one. Characters from both sides of the border are shown as credible human beings, no matter what their nationality is. In fact, the ending makes us veer more towards the devastated major, who had come to genuinely love and respect Sehmat. The fact that Sehma...

Much has been written about how the Indian education system is hopelessly out of times and needs to be changed drastically. Its another matter that whenever some radical change is introduced, parents and schools are the first ones to protest. Like the time when CBSE made Higher Secondary  Board exams optional, parents of teenage children were up in arms. Why such a move? What about standardized exam system? Why continuous assessment of students, etc.etc. Currently, the CBSE proposal to make sports compulsory in classes 9-12 is similarly being hotly debated, and given a thumbs down by most Indian parents.  So what do Indian parents really want? To stuff their children with as much academic knowledge as possible, in the hope of making them mathematical or scientific wizards, or brilliant historians, economists or geologists? Or to make them successful politicians by teaching everything that is there to be learnt in political science? Coming to political science, the way ...