The results of the recent assembly elections in Delhi, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan underline strong indicators for future. Political parties that ignore these will be upstaged, as the Congress found out the hard way.

Thinly spread welfare measures are no good without addressing and understanding the real aspirations of the people.

The voter, literate or illiterate, fully understands that doles such as free food are not long-term solutions. They are just clever vote-garnering stratagems of politicians, writes Siddharth Srivastava.

Lately, India is going through interesting times and strange events, and reactions even stranger continue to dot its varied landscape. For the past month, the country has been involved in a major fracas with the U.S., an issue that has strained bilateral relations and brought into fore many skeletons from the cupboards of the haloed Indian services and caused experts to sieve for interpretations on immunities granted to diplomats serving in different capacities, writes Priyanka Bhardwaj.

A majority of Indians living in the United States believe the United States was justified in arresting India’s New York Deputy Counsel General Devyani Khobragade. In addition, a vast majority of Indians also agreed that Khobragade took advantage of her domestic worker and paid her a mere fraction of legal minimum wage.

India is facing major challenges in higher education. In 2007, Prime Minister Singh noted that in almost half of India’s districts, higher education enrollments were “abysmally low” and that two-thirds of Indian universities and 90 percent of Indian colleges were rated as below average on quality parameters. Massive Open Online Courses may be one potential solution, not to overcome India’s higher education challenges entirely, but to help alleviate some of the country’s access and quality issues in higher education, opine Gayle Christensen and Brandon Alcorn.

It is celebration time! As we wish our readers, friends and contributors, a very happy new year ahead, we would also like to thank them for this very special moment in our lives. This year marks the 15^th year of existence for Siliconeer.

We thank all of you for your continued support and love that you have showered on us over the years. It is this love that has kept us going for this long, even during tough times. We look forward to continuing this relationship for many more years to come. Cheers!