In the ferment of post-independent India, in 1959, the late Raj and Romesh Thapar gave birth to a seminal platform of fearless debate, Seminar.

Every month, the magazine voices a range of viewpoints on an issue that dominates the consciousness of the Indian public. Celebrating its 50th anniversary at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study (IIAS) in Shimla, South Asia’s most influential thinkers debated the role of institutions like Seminar on the state of public discourse and its impact on the future of the Indian polity.

This compelling volume offers the reader an opportunity to be a part of this seminar and reflect on the burning questions raised by Nayantara Sahgal, Shyam Benegal, Gopalkrishna Gandhi, Ramachandra Guha, Sunil Khilnani, T.N. Ninan, Salman Khurshid, Shiv Visvanathan, Amita Baviskar, C. Rammanohar Reddy, Hameed Haroon, Kamal Hossain, Kanak Mani Dixit, among others.

Tune into India Alive and enjoy a discussion of ideas that spin a vivid narrative of the Indian democracy today, through the life and times of Seminar.

Rupangi Sharma is a writer and an educationist. Her collection of poems, A Loving Embrace, was published in 2007. The late K.S. Duggal hailed her as ‘a poet who sings to the new age’. Her focus in the field of education is on the power of technology and its transformational role in learning and teaching.

She has worked with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab, Central Institute of Education Technology (a constituent unit of NCERT) and the Riverside School in Ahmedabad, among other leading educational institutions in India and abroad.