Goa, March 8 -- Vivek Menezes

Last month, the intense and engaging (and extremely brilliant) data scientist Nilakantan RS gave the Goa Arts + Literature Festival an exclusive, highly illuminative preview of the national imbroglio that has been raging the past few days, as Tamil Nadu chief minister Muthuvel Karunanidhi Stalin - ably supported by his star cabinet colleague Palanivel Thiaga Rajan - launched an emotive public battle against the three-language recommendations in the National Education Policy (which they see as an imposition of Hindi), as well as prospective "electoral delimitation" to rearrange seats on the basis of population growth. All this, exactly as it is being debated at the highest levels in India today, was neatly la...