The Commonwealth Games have once again reminded India of a sporting truth that is too often forgotten amid the deafening roar of cricket stadiums, billion-dollar leagues and celebrity endorsements. The greatest sporting stories of at the CWG have emerged from dusty fields, improvised training grounds and lives shaped by extraordinary adversity. India’s athletes in Glasgow have rewritten the meaning of sporting triumph. The story of Sharmila Dhankar is nothing short of extraor

The NEET paper leak protests at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar should have remained a legitimate expression of student anger over the collapse of examination integrity. Instead, as the agitation escalated into clashes with the police, abusive sloganeering and an increasingly radical political campaign, Meta’s algorithms emerged as an invisible force multiplying the unrest. The controversy surrounding the brief removal of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s message to the youth in the after

As the recent protests over the NEET paper leak showed, India’s examination system has reached a point where incremental repairs are no longer enough. The appointment of a high-powered task force on examination reforms, headed by technology pioneer Nandan Nilekani, is therefore not merely an administrative response to the NEET-UG paper leak crisis but a concrete attempt to rebuild confidence in one of the country’s most important public institutions. Examinations are gateways

The NEET-UG paper leak was a genuine grievance. Millions of students who spent years preparing for one of India’s toughest examinations deserved answers, accountability and justice. But what unfolded at Jantar Mantar was no movement for educational reform. It was a spectacle of rage, abuse and performative rebellion that often appeared more interested in viral clips than viable solutions. The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), which claimed to represent the anger of students, ended

A protest for a genuine cause or problem earns public sympathy by appealing to the nation’s conscience. It begins to lose it the moment its members indiscriminately start abusing the nation’s institutions. That is where the CJP agitation now stands. It has outlived its purpose. The movement began with a legitimate grievance against the NEET paper leak and demanded some systemic education reforms. Millions of students deserve an examination system that is transparent, secure a

Since the Iran crisis erupted five months ago and sent tremors through global energy markets, India’s motorists have been spared the full force of the oil shock. Despite a hike, petrol pumps have generally continued to display familiar prices even as crude surged, because state-owned oil companies quietly absorbed the damage. However, with losses now piling up at Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL) and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd (HPCL), it appears that the bill,

Rahul Gandhi’s decision to stage a protest outside the Prime Minister’s official residence was a spectacle that exposed a troubling decline in political responsibility. A Leader of the Opposition has every right to question the government, mobilise public opinion and demand accountability. But democratic protest does not mean abandoning every norm of institutional dignity. Gandhi comes from a family that has occupied the highest office in the country for generations. His fath

The shocking violence that occurred during the protests led by the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP), which left 118 policemen injured in Delhi, raises an uncomfortable question: why does the national capital repeatedly become the stage for protest movements that cross the line from dissent into disorder? When a demonstration against educational reforms results in scores of injured policemen, the issue becomes a serious question of public order and accountability. The geography of

The recent claims made by Noreen Niazi, sister of former Prime Minister Imran Khan, completely expose Pakistan’s military myth-making and underline the widening gap between India’s capabilities and Islamabad’s illusions. In a widely circulated interview, Niazi challenged the official Pakistani account of the confrontation that followed the Pahalgam terror attack, claiming that the country’s military leadership concealed the true extent of India’s military advantage during Ope

The Maharashtra government’s decision to regulate school bus fares arrives couched in the language of safety, accountability and parental convenience. GPS tracking, CCTV access, panic buttons, digital attendance and fare oversight are all welcome measures. For years, parents have had little bargaining power against private school transport operators, who have often functioned in a regulatory grey zone. But buried beneath the promise of reform lies a more uncomfortable questio

The attempt by the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) to turn activist Sonam Wangchuk into the next Anna Hazare has exposed how manufactured symbolism cannot compensate for the absence of genuine public outrage. What began as a grievance over the NEET paper leak, one of India’s gravest examination scandals in recent times, has drifted into an exercise in political pageantry, where the cause has been eclipsed by its chosen mascots. Wangchuk’s indefinite hunger strike was plainly mea

The murder of 24-year-old Kirandeep Kaur in west London is, first and foremost, a personal tragedy. A young Sikh woman from Punjab, who had moved to Britain in search of opportunity, was killed only weeks after giving birth. But her death has unfolded against a darker backdrop. Britain is witnessing an unsettling rise in anti-Sikh hostility, fuelled by the toxic convergence of identity politics, social media outrage and far-right mobilisation. A survey by the Sikh Network fou

The death of 13 Indians and the disappearance of three others in the unabating US-Iran conflict should end any illusion that this is merely another distant geopolitical crisis. For India, West Asia is not an abstract theatre of great-power rivalry but home to nearly nine million Indian expatriates. Every missile fired across the Strait of Hormuz carries the potential to claim Indian lives. While the Ministry of External Affairs has expressed concern, called for uninterrupted

The unravelling of the Mukhyamantri Majhi Ladki Bahin Yojana was always a matter of when, not if. Announced with theatrical flourish ahead of the 2024 Assembly election by the ruling Mahayuti coalition, the scheme promised Rs. 1,500 a month to women across the state. It became the Mahayuti government’s showpiece welfare programme and, by all accounts, a decisive political instrument that helped propel the ruling alliance to a comfortable victory. Less than two years later, th

Indian cricket has lived with an odd imbalance for decades. It has always been the men’s team that has commanded the money, the headlines and the expectations while women cricketers were expected merely to improve. Now, with their phenomenal Test win over England at Lord’s, it is the women who have reminded India what Test cricket looks like when played with ambition, discipline and nerve. The Indian women overwhelmed the English side by inflicting a crushing 270-run victory,

Pimpri-Chinchwad is fond of advertising itself as a model city. Its gleaming roads, industrial estates and ambitious infrastructure projects have helped make the Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) one of India’s wealthiest civic bodies. The shocking accident in which eight labourers died after a massive garbage heap collapsed onto the administrative building of the Waste-to-Energy plant at Moshi, exposes the rot beneath PCMC’s outwardly prosperous edifice. The cont

The decision by censors to withhold the Diljit Dosanjh-starrer Satluj from Indian audiences scarcely forty-eight hours after its release has elevated the film into a political cause. The controversy is now about how India chooses to remember one of the bloodiest chapters in its post-Independence history, and whether memory can survive when it becomes selective. The film chronicles the work of Jaswant Singh Khalra (played by Indian-American singer Dosanjh), the activist who in

The collapse of the United States-Iran ceasefire in less than a month is a stark reminder that peace in West Asia has become a remarkably perishable commodity. The ink on the ceasefire with Iran had scarcely dried before missiles are once again crossing the Gulf as oil tankers flee the Strait of Hormuz. Donald Trump’s triumphalist declaration last month that Iran had accepted an “unconditional surrender” has aged with astonishing speed. The latest cycle of escalation was almo

India’s shocking T20 series defeat to Ireland is a warning that the country’s greatest cricketing opponent is no longer the team standing across the pitch, but the complacency festering within its own dressing room. A team that commands the richest cricket board, supposedly the deepest talent pool and the most lavish ecosystem in the sport has contrived to lose a T20 series to a nation where cricket remains a minority pursuit. That this is Shreyas Iyer’s fifth match as T20 ca

The substantial showers over Maharashtra this year have predictably demonstrated that it is not the skies but the government that has failed the state. The intense downpour once again exposed the frailty of the infrastructure that the ruling establishment has been celebrating. From Mumbai’s paralysed roads to the shocking deaths in open manholes sans guardrails, to the collapse of transport links between Mumbai and Pune, the rains have held up an unforgiving mirror to officia