Anshuman Sahoo

Acknowledgement : I co-wrote this piece with Aditi Shirpurkar. She owns this piece as much as I own it. However, we both have agreed on making this content open to public for reproducing, so long as due credit is given to the authors. I also acknowledge the valuable inputs of Swaraj Barooah. This piece was first published here . I also acknowledge that this piece was made possible only because of the students who came forward voluntarily to participate in the survey on such a short notice - it is for them and them only that this piece could be published on time, and go on to spark a debate on whom actually the copyright law is serving. Individually, each of us have played a little role; together, we made this happen! ____________ We, humans, love stories; so much so that we built our whole social, cultural, and economic structures around fictional stories. The story of democracy, the story of justice, the story of nation-states, and the list keeps growing. We can’t touch ‘democracy’, w

2020 is gone, and 2021 is already on board!  2020 was unprecedented, unforeseen, and terribly tragic at best. A lot of us saw our near and dear ones suffer and pass away, and the remaining of us witnessed the whole world come to a pause. Apart from the 'pandemic', the most defining feature of 2020 was probably the ' lockdown ' that lasted almost a year. The lockdown was something most of us never expected to experience ever. On the grimmer side, it brought with it a bunch of socio-personal issues ranging from depression and domestic abuse to misinformation and governmental overreach. However, it also had a brighter side, thankfully! On the brighter side, it brought us opportunities and inclusions that come with a digital society.  The most significant gift of the lockdown was probably the months of free time we got. Being the solitude-loving reader that I am, the lockdown period was the best gift I could have asked for. And the same goes for other book lovers as well, I