Abhilash Khandekar

A farcical censorship row at Bhopal’s lit fest shows how in trying to protect Hindutva from imagined enemies, its most overzealous foot-soldiers have embarrassed the very ideas they claimed to defend. Syed Akbaruddin, easily among the most effective communicators, was singing paeans for Narendra Modi’s foreign policy; a top Pune industrialist, Aditya Pittie, was fondly talking of ‘Viksit Bharat’ vision while detailing his book on the theme. Earlier, Bhupendra Yadav, Union Minister, discussed...

Maharashtra’s leopard attacks are the bloodied consequence of unbridled urbanisation, where the appetite for ‘development’ has devoured habitats. The growing number of leopard attacks in ‘progressive’ Maharashtra should be a concern for all those humans who seemingly insatiable appetite for infrastructural development and expansion of cities comes at the cost of nature. Thus far, almost 40 casualties have been reported from Nashik, Jalgaon, Nandurbar, Pune and Ahilya Nagar areas. A lethal...

India’s lethal air has become so routine that even mass mortality now struggles to provoke political urgency.   India’s national capital is choking as it always does, under a winter blanket of smog that has long ceased to shock. Delhi Chief Minister Rekha Gupta has responded by urging half the city’s office workforce to work from home - a palliative that only serves to starkly underscore the enduring helplessness of governments in tackling the poison in the air. Delhi is not the only city...