The Village Republic and the Sink of Localism
Gandhi saw the village as a republic and Ambedkar saw it as a trap, and India's long experiment with panchayats has still not decided between them.
GRADFLIX Editors · Hard
Politics & Governance passages for CAT RC
Democracy, law, policy and war appear in exams as arguments with two or three competing positions. These essays train you to separate who says what, and to spot when the author is quietly taking a side.
24 long-form politics & governance essays, written at the density of real CAT passages, each with CAT, XAT and GMAT-style questions and explanations. For real exam passages, practise the solved CAT RC PYQs; for a daily routine, see CAT RC practice.
All Politics & GovernanceGeopoliticsInternational RelationsIdeologyDemocracy & RightsLaw & JusticePublic PolicyWar & Peace
The Judgment That Freed One Man and Left Slavery Standing
Lord Mansfield's famous ruling of 1772 is remembered as the end of slavery in England. The real holding was far smaller, and its reach far greater.
GRADFLIX Editors5 Qs · Medium
The Reservoir That Burst and the Rule India Chose to Outgrow
An English reservoir gave the common law a rule about dangerous things. A gas leak in Delhi showed why India needed a stricter one.
GRADFLIX Editors5 Qs · Medium
The Conviction That Fell on a Technicality and the Law That Stayed
A Tennessee teacher was convicted in 1925 for teaching evolution, and the conviction was undone two years later for a reason that had nothing to do with science. The law that put him in court lived on.
GRADFLIX Editors5 Qs · Medium
The Census That Counted Caste and the Category It May Have Made
India stopped counting caste in 1951 and is preparing to count it again. Whether a census describes a society or helps to build it is a question older than the Republic.
GRADFLIX Editors · Hard
The Acquittal That Did Not Mean Innocence
Lizzie Borden walked free in 1893, and the verdict shows what a court can and cannot declare.
Abhishek Leela Pandey5 Qs · Medium
The Charter That Failed in Ten Weeks and Won the Centuries
Magna Carta was annulled by a pope within weeks of being sealed. Its afterlife in courts and parliaments has outlasted almost everything it originally said.
Abhishek Leela Pandey5 Qs · Medium
Equal Votes and Unequal Lives
Ambedkar warned that India was entering a life of contradictions, with equal votes and unequal lives. Seven decades later, the warning has neither expired nor been fulfilled.
Abhishek Leela Pandey · Hard
The Lottery That Was Democracy
The Athenians who invented democracy filled most offices by lottery, and Aristotle called elections the mark of oligarchy. The word we use for our own system may belong to a different idea.
Abhishek Leela Pandey4 Qs · Hard
The Country That Replaced the Mirror with a Portrait: An RC Inspired by IIM Indore
North Korea did not ban mirrors. It did something more precise. It ensured that the only reflection available to its citizens was the one the state had prepared for them.
Abhishek Leela Pandey4 Qs
What Machiavelli Actually Said About Power: An RC Inspired by IIM Indore
Machiavelli was more than a ruthless strategist. His work reveals a deeper tension between political power, realism, civic virtue and republican freedom.
Abhishek Leela Pandey4 Qs
Can Water Become a Weapon?
Water is rarely a weapon by itself. But when control over its flow creates unequal dependence, rivers can become instruments of geopolitical power.
Abhishek Leela Pandey4 Qs
The CEO Is Not the Company
Why great companies outlive great CEOs. Explore corporate governance, institutional resilience, succession planning, and the myth of indispensable leaders.
Abhishek Leela Pandey4 Qs
The Art of Corporate War
An exclusive extract from Abhishek Leela Pandey's The Art of Corporate Power, exploring how capitalism transformed warfare into strategic competition.
Abhishek Leela Pandey4 Qs
The World Is Becoming Medieval Again
Is the nation state losing its monopoly on power? Discover why the twenty first century increasingly resembles the political architecture of the Middle Ages.
Abhishek Leela Pandey4 Qs
Justice Delayed, Science Delivered
Modern forensic science is solving decades old cold cases through DNA, genetic genealogy, and evidence that never forgot the truth.
Abhishek Leela Pandey4 Qs
Hormuz and the Illusion of a Borderless World
The Strait of Hormuz carries the lifeblood of the global economy, revealing how geography still shapes trade, energy, and power.
Abhishek Leela Pandey4 Qs
Why Spies Must Become Nobody
A haunting essay on spies, secrecy, and identity exploring how espionage turns ordinary people into living masks.
Abhishek Leela Pandey4 Qs
The MELODI Phenomenon
How memes, symbolism and digital spectacle transformed modern geopolitics into a new form of folklore in the algorithmic age.
Abhishek Leela Pandey4 Qs
The Death of Heroic Warfare
How drones transformed modern warfare by separating violence from vulnerability, reshaping heroism, ethics, and the psychology of conflict.
Abhishek Leela Pandey
The Strait of Gibraltar: Where Geography Becomes Power
A narrow strait that shapes global trade, migration, and power, showing how geography quietly controls the flow of the modern world.
Abhishek Leela Pandey
The Neuro-Legal Gap: Can a Neuron Commit a Crime
Can law judge intent when the brain shapes action? A sharp look at how neuroscience unsettles responsibility and reshapes justice.
Abhishek Leela Pandey4 Qs
The Dead Load of Corporate Heritage
An argument that corporate heritage, like a building's “dead load,” can quietly exhaust an organisation's capacity to adapt.
Abhishek Leela Pandey
The Communist Manifesto: An RC Inspired by IIM Indore
The Manifesto was written in six weeks by two men in their twenties. It inspired revolutions on four continents. The question is not whether its argument is correct. It is why the argument works so well.
Abhishek Leela Pandey4 Qs