Apr 01 2026 to Apr 01 2026 6:30 p.m.

Where

Bangalore International Centre

7 4th Main Rd, Stage 2, Domlur 560071

Event Description

The question has moved from op-ed to assembly floor.

Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh have announced bans on social media for children under sixteen. Goa is weighing it, Australia has already implemented it. India’s Economic Survey has urged the Union Government to follow suit.

Advocates say the evidence is damning: rising anxiety, fractured attention, and childhoods quietly colonised by algorithmic design. Opponents say the cure is worse than the disease: the bans drive harm underground, widen inequality, and mistake control for care.

This evening examines the issue through the discipline of Purva Paksha. Each speaker first presents the other’s argument, fully and fairly, before offering their own. The aim is not to win, but rather to understand what protecting a child actually demands of us.

In collaboration with:

Speakers

Nitin Pai
Co-Founder & Director, Takshashila Institution
Nitin Pai is co-founder and director of the Takshashila Institution, an independent think tank and school of public policy based in Bangalore. He teaches international relations and public policy at Takshashila’s graduate programmes. He writes a fortnightly column in The Mint called The Intersection.

Nitin was a gold medalist from the National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, an undergraduate scholar at Nanyang Technological University, and an alum of National College, Bangalore. He spent more than a decade at the Singapore government as a policymaker in the technology sector.

He is currently a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore; and serves on board of Jal Seva Foundation (WaterAid India) and the Government of Karnataka’s Vision Group on Higher Education.

Anupam Manur
Professor, Takshashila Institution
Anupam Manur is a Professor of Economics at the Takshashila Institution.

His research interests lie at the intersection of economics, technology, and public policy. He is currently working on platform economics, India’s ongoing jobs crisis, digital payments, and the New World Order. He is the Managing Editor of Indian Public Policy Review, a peer-reviewed, open-access, bimonthly journal of economics, public policy and strategy. He is the co-author of We, the Citizens, a graphic novel on public policy. He has published several editorials in the Hindustan Times, Mint, Financial Express, The Hindu, NDTV, Scroll, Deccan Herald, Bloomberg Quint, Times of India and others. He has also edited three books under the Takshashila Institution Press.

Anupam teaches economic reasoning and macroeconomics in all of Takshashila’s public policy programmes and is responsible for designing the curriculum for the educational programmes.

Vanshika Saraf
Research Analyst, Takshashila Institution
Vanshika Saraf is a Research Analyst for the Indo-Pacific Studies Program at the Takshashila Institution. She has an M.A in International Relations from Jadavpur University, Kolkata and an M.A in Applied Sociology from St. Andrew’s University, Osaka, Japan.

She has been a fellow of the Global Leaders’ Alliance Fellowship and a research fellow at the Alliance Centre for Eurasian Studies at Alliance University, Bengaluru.

She also curates the newsletter, ‘The Indian Radius’ and ‘Quad Bulletin’.