Correspondent

Artists perform during the 'Uttarakhand Kauthig Mela' a traditional cultural festival organised by the Garhwali community at Rangers Ground, in Dehradun, Uttarakhand. Woman offers prayers at Vindhyavasini Temple during Sharad Purnima festival, in Mirzapur. Participants take part in a state level bullock cart race, near Chikkamagaluru, Karnataka. A woman offers prayers to Goddess Lakshmi during Kojagari Lakshmi Puja festival, in Birbhum, West Bengal. Indian Coast Guard ships during patrolling...

An artisan shapes an earthen pot at Kumhar Mandi in Kanpur on Friday. People throng the Kedarnath Dham as fresh snowfall blankets the surrounding mountains in Rudraprayag district in Uttarakhand on Friday. An artist paints a thangka at Norbulingka festival 2026 in Dharamshala on Friday. Devotees carry palanquins of deities on the third day of the seven-day International Kullu Dussehra festival in Kullu district in Himachal Pradesh on Friday. People take part in river rafting on the Ganga...

The digital theater of Indian politics has just witnessed another carefully choreographed performance. Congress leader Sonia Gandhi’s debut on Instagram, staged alongside the reveal of her memoir Belonging, is being treated by her handlers and partymen as a historic milestone. Yet, this curated descent into the algorithmic playground of the youth cannot mask the profound decay of a political party that remains stubbornly tethered to the principle of hereditary entitlement. For decades, the...