Welcome to Brainstorm.
We live in an age when political discourse has become personal, and is filled with people shouting past each other. Brainstorm is Pragati’s attempt to create a space where diverse minds can discuss big issues in a respectful way. It is a discussion panel that will unwind over a month, with no scope of shouting someone down, and plenty of space for reflection and elaboration. Here is how it will work.
Every month, we’ll assemble a panel of five people, coming together to discuss one big subject. One of us at Pragati will moderate. The moderator will write an introductory post on the subject, raising questions and delineating the scope of the topic. Each participant then writes an essay on the subject. When they are done, the moderator will write a post attempting to synthesize their observations, and raising further questions. Each of them will then write one more post each, after which the moderator will write a closing post and bring the discussion to an end. So you will get a total of 13 posts, which will appear one at a time every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
In this first month, our subject is ‘The Future of the Indian Republic.’ The five panelists are (in alphabetical order of last name) Pratap Bhanu Mehta, JP Narayan, Nitin Pai, Shruti Rajagopalan and Shashi Tharoor. I will moderate this particular discussion, which begins on Friday, March 10.
Listen in!
