“The new National Education Policy is expected to revolutionize the educational sector in India and lay the path for the next 25 years as per the Vision 2047 of prime minister Shri Narendra Modi. He stressed that education has to make each one of us more responsible and become global citizen.” – Dharmendra Pradhan, union education minister (NDTV, September 5)

“At AICTE, I have been able to completely eliminate corruption and transform the body from being a mere regulator to becoming a facilitator.” – Anil D. Sahasrabudhe, AICTE (All India Council for Technical Education) chairman, on the ongoing reforms in engineering education (India Today, September 20)

“I am not a big fan of the Modi government and the Hindu nationalism business. But on Afghanistan in particular, and on the foreign policy crisis and the immediate effect on national security, I tend to speak with the same voice. At the end of the day, I believe that domestic politics should stop at the water’s edge, and we should all think of our national interest first.” – Shashi Tharoor, MP, on Taliban’s return to Afghanistan (The Federal, September 23)

Also read: “Top priority needs to be given to education & skill development”: Dr. Shashi Tharoor

“Who is defending Earth today? It’s so often just the poorest and most vulnerable people who have this incredible apparatus of state power ranged against them.” – Amitav Ghosh, well-known author, on the climate crisis (Mint, October 9)

“It violates the principle of academic autonomy. It is the university’s business to decide what it wishes to teach, not the business of the government of the day… It violates the democratic principle of freedom of expression.” – Yogendra Yadav, former president of Swaraj India, on Kannur University dropping lessons on the works of hindutva icons V.D. Sarvakar and M.S. Gowalkar from the syllabus (The Hindu, October 1)