Writing & Ideas | KAKANI.NET

04OCT
2026

The Referee Cannot Play: The Case Against NSE Self-Listing

A Panchatantra cat, a stock exchange, and why the referee cannot play. Self-listing by India’s dominant exchange collapses the separation between regulator and participant — a separation global capital treats as non-negotiable.

09AUG
2026

Why attention should be listed as a competency in higher education

RAM KUMAR KAKANI•7 MIN READ

The fix for our shortening attention is not more willpower, but less noise. The knowledge gap is not between what students know and what they should know — it is between what we ask of their attention and what we have built to support it.

13JUL
2026

The Guest Who Cannot Vote

RAM KUMAR KAKANI•4 MIN READ

Why inviting AI into the room where syllabi are made is the easy part; and where the harder part begins. A Jataka parrot, a Board of Studies, and the difference between a voice that recites and an authority that must answer for the choice.

03JUL
2026

India’s AI jobs are booming: Can our graduates do the work or only talk about it?

RAM KUMAR KAKANI•5 MIN READ

While employers seek AI talent, a stark reality is that many graduates, despite having degrees, lack the hands-on skills to be deployable.

19JUN
2026

The Owl That Knew It Did Not Know: South India's Universities and the Long Work of Becoming

RAM KUMAR KAKANI•6 MIN READ

South India's universities have genuine strengths especially emerging research cultures, demographic advantages, and geographic proximity to industries. The silence needed is around rankings obsession, credential inflation, and the habit of announcing transformation rather than practising it quietly, until it is real.

02MAY
2026

Ten Characteristics of an Ideal Academic Administrator: Notes from RV University

RAM KUMAR KAKANI•5 MIN READ

A working framework drafted for academic administrators at RV University with ten cultural premises on language, judgement, accountability, and community in a multidisciplinary university. Offered here as one practitioner's notes, not as policy, in the hope that colleagues elsewhere may find some of it useful.

30APR
2026

AI is Rising: Our Attention is Fading, That's the Real Crisis

RAM KUMAR KAKANI•5 MIN READ

The jackal in the Panchatantra survived by wit, not by brute strength. In a world where machines will increasingly supply the answers, the human being who can frame the right question, who can notice the bandit at the bend, will be more valuable.

16APR
2026

Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Framework: A First-Time Visitor’s Orientation Guide

RAM KUMAR KAKANI•2 MIN READ

A concise, accessible guide to Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory - showing how human development is shaped by five nested layers of influence, from family to culture to historical time, with practical applications for education, families and students in Indian contexts.

All pages

Quest for Insight

The Referee Cannot Play: The Case Against NSE Self-Listing

Why attention should be listed as a competency in higher education

The Guest Who Cannot Vote

India’s AI jobs are booming: Can our graduates do the work or only talk about it?

The Owl That Knew It Did Not Know: South India's Universities and the Long Work of Becoming

Ten Characteristics of an Ideal Academic Administrator: Notes from RV University

AI is Rising: Our Attention is Fading, That's the Real Crisis

Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Framework: A First-Time Visitor’s Orientation Guide