Serendipity : Musings of an Islander

From Jantar Mantar to Instagram: The Protest that Changed More than a Policy By Debkumar Bhadra Every mass protest leaves behind two legacies. One is visible in government action. The other is written into public memory. The recent agitation over the NEET paper leak was no exception. The immediate outcome appeared significant. Under sustained public pressure, the Union Education Minister resigned and Parliament enacted a law prescribing stringent measures against examination paper leaks. For many, these developments represented the successful culmination of a public campaign. Yet that would be an incomplete reading of the episode Beyond the legislative response and the political outcome lies a far more consequential story—one about how protests are changing in the age of social media, and how governments, organisers and participants alike may have to rethink their roles. The first striking feature of the protest was the contrast between its physical and digital presence. Whi...

A Curious Case of Selective Compliance and Deviation from the Approved Policy on Fare Revision One order, one rate, and eleven years of fare hikes that don't add up. By the policy's own arithmetic, the two-wheeler ferry fare that should have been ₹33 today stands fixed at ₹65 — 97% above what the approval permits. That deviation is not a rounding error. Not an inflation adjustment. It is the story. So is the silence that followed every attempt to have that story heard. By Debkumar Bhadra   In administrative and legal parlance, an umbrella order is one that covers a broad area uniformly, bringing multiple sectors, categories, and classes within the ambit of a single directive. When the Andaman & Nicobar Administration issued Letter No. 5-1/2010-TR(PF) in February 2015, authorising a uniform annual upward fare revision of 5% across all sectors and classes of DSS-operated vessels, it issued exactly what fits into that definition of an umbrella order. One directive. One rate....

Breaking the Tyranny of Distance: How twelve years of connectivity, infrastructure and institutional expansion brought India’s farthest islands closer to the national mainstream By Debkumar Bhadra For decades, many regions, located far from India's political and administrative centres, including North Eastern States and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, quietly lived under what Hon'ble Union Minister of Parliamentary Affairs and Minority Affairs Shri Kiren Rijiju described as the "tyranny of distance," speaking at the Andaman Ideas Summit 2026, organised by The Wave Andaman, at Sri Vijaya Puram (earlier Port Blair) on the evening of June 20. I watched him say it live on YouTube, from thousands of kilometres away in Nagpur. That I could watch it in real time is itself a telling marker of how far the islands have come. A live broadcast out of Sri Vijaya Puram, watched anywhere in the country as it happened, would have been a near impossibility before the Chennai-Anda...

Emergency Helpline 100 and 112 Temporarily Down: Alternative Police Helpline Numbers Released   By Debkumar Bhadra   Most of us, have grown up with one number to call in crisis. Whether it was 100 or recently, 112, the reflex was the same — dial that number, help will come. It did not matter whether you were in a crowded Mumbai street or in a quiet lane in Sri Vijaya Puram, the emergency helpline number was the same. That assumption was quietly shaken here in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands on June 14, 2026, when the A&N Police through a social media post in X (formerly twitter) issued a public advisory informing residents that both emergency helpline numbers 100 and 112 are presently not functioning due to what they described as "unforeseen technical snags."  Many of you have probably already seen it. Many may have seen it, scrolled past it. By evening, other forwards push it down. By next week, it is gone. And when one actually need that number, you are scrolling ...