Democracies need dissent. Young Indians have every right to demand credible examinations, transparent recruitment, accountable institutions and a responsive government. To delegitimise all youth anger as foreign manipulation would be intellectually lazy and politically dangerous. But it is equally naive to pretend that geopolitics ends at the border of domestic protest.
Workplace accidents impose costs far beyond the immediate loss of life and injury. Families lose breadwinners, enterprises suffer productivity losses, projects face delays and governments incur healthcare and compensation costs. The social consequences can be particularly severe for migrant and informal workers
For decades, these states invested heavily in women’s education, public health, industrialisation, literacy and population control. Fertility rates in many southern states have already fallen below replacement levels. In contrast, several northern states lagged behind for years on precisely these indicators. If parliamentary representation now shifts overwhelmingly toward states with higher population growth, the message becomes deeply perverse: governance discipline weakens political power.
At its heart, the challenge to Section 62(5) is a test of constitutional sincerity, of whether the Indian Republic truly believes that citizenship endures even behind bars. Enacted in the infancy of the republic, the provision has long outlived its moral logic. It collapses the distinction between confinement and culpability
Do note that the BJP because of its sloganeering and expectation-setting has to cross its previous mark of 303 to be seen as victorious; the INDIA alliance has to pull the BJP below 272 to claim victory. Barring the possibility, extremely remote at this time, of the Congress and/or the INDIA alliance faring very poorly at these polls, what we have is a party that will shape the direction of policy in India in the days ahead.
Despite learning a bitter lesson from Covid-19, our governments, whether at the state or national level, have failed to recognise the importance of ensuring trouble-free access to public health.
The rich build gated communities for themselves, in which they pay for their own private services of security, and 24X7 power and water supply. They lose sight of the needs of people living outside their walls.
Mixing politics with national security in sensitive border regions like Manipur and Ladakh can cost us dearly. China is a rogue state with aggressive designs and well well-advanced in hybrid and conventional conflict with an expanding arsenal of nuclear weapons.
One of the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations calls for a reduction in inequality. On that count, India must exert more by making the income tax net wider and ensuring a lower indirect tax burden
Contrast this exchange against the utterly crass and debased rhetoric, both during the election season and otherwise, that India’s political and cultural leaders, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, employ.
The narratives elucidate how historical marginalisation, compounded by contemporary socio-economic inequities, lays fertile ground for the propagation of Naxalite ideology, which promises liberation from caste-based oppression and economic deprivation.
The war clouds just keep getting thicker and darker. And the warmongers have so far outshouted those pleading for peace. The leaders have failed to bring any sanity, let alone ceasefire or peace talks. All this does not bode well for the Indian economy, which has already been struggling with the challenges of inflation, stagnant private investment, high youth unemployment and widening inequality.
This is the inner rottenness of India’s growth story, a self-imposed colonisation of a nation that has lost its standing, never mind the growing GDP.
The significance of American investment is that it plays an important role in transforming India’s industrialization and paving the path to challenge China to become the next-generation supply chain hub.
Why then is Modi sullying the glory of his third term by going to the polls with Arvind Kejriwal possibly barred from campaigning?
The national mood was well summed up by a cartoon that showed all others in the race locked up, with just the incumbent in the field, and then the question, half in jest: ‘Who is winning?’.
But how does one counter the Swiss-based air-quality monitoring group IQAir which reports that India was the third most polluted country in the world after Bangladesh and Pakistan in 2023 and Delhi was the “most polluted” capital in the world?
Essentially the world is looking for alternate supply chains which began with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and continues even today with growing trade tensions between the two camps.
The largest persecuted groups in recent times have been Tamils (largely Hindus) in Sri Lanka and Rohingyas (largely Muslims) in Myanmar. Why have they been left out from the list of the ones who will be given shelter citizenship here in India under the CAA?
