India in general and Maharashtra in particular have long waged a rhetorical war against VIP culture. Yet every few months a small incident reminds the country that the old habits of privilege die slowly. The recent controversy over flashing lights on the official vehicle of Mumbai’s mayor, Ritu Tawde, offers another glimpse into the stubborn afterlife of political entitlement. Social media posts earlier this week showed red and blue flasher lights mounted on the bonnet of the

A recruitment examination is supposed to test knowledge, judgement and aptitude. It should not, under any circumstances, be used to insinuate prejudice. Yet that is precisely the controversy now swirling around the Uttar Pradesh police’s sub-inspector recruitment examination held earlier this week. Among the questions posed to candidates was what is the correct one-word description for a person who “changes according to opportunity?” The options listed were “Pandit,” “Opportu

In India’s hyperventilating political discourse, foreign policy has increasingly been reduced to a morality play. The latest performance of the Opposition Congress came after the United States and Israel launched strikes against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. Congress leaders and a familiar chorus of self-appointed foreign-policy sages and a media ecosystem sympathetic to the party promptly accused the Modi government of ‘silence.’ According to them, Prime Minister Narendra M

For a country where debates on life and death are often filtered through religion, morality and medical caution, the Supreme Court’s recent order permitting passive euthanasia for a 32-year-old man in a permanent vegetative state marks a moment of quiet but profound significance. In allowing the withdrawal of life support for Harish Rana, who has remained in a coma for more than 13 years, the apex court has nudged the country closer to recognising what modern medicine has lon

Public policy often begins with a gesture. On the occasion of the recent International Women’s Day, the Maharashtra government unveiled a symbolic initiative aimed at easing the daily burdens faced by working women. The announcement came from Deputy Chief Minister Sunetra Pawar, who introduced the ‘Come Early Go Early’ scheme for female government employees in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region. By this, women employees may choose to arrive at their offices between 9.15 a.m. and

It seems Mumbai has entered the summer season earlier than usual, with temperatures already touching heatwave levels in the first half of March. The city recorded its second heatwave in less than a week, an unusual development that has raised concerns about how intense the coming months could become.   Meteorological data from several monitoring stations across the Mumbai Metropolitan Region painted a worrying picture with temperatures on an average shooting well above 40°C o

India has done it again. Before more than 85,000 spectators at the Narendra Modi Stadium, the national side overwhelmed New Zealand by 96 runs to claim a third ICC Men’s T20 World Cup title and becoming the first side to win the tournament thrice. The cricketing world quickly joined the chorus of celebration. India piled up a staggering 255 for five before dismissing the Kiwis for 159, a margin that underlined their dominance in the shortest format. Opener Sanju Samson, conti

Barely a week into the escalating conflict in Iran and the wider Middle East, India has already begun to feel the tremors of its dependence on imported energy. The immediate signs are unsettling as supply anxieties have mounted, along with abrupt policy signals from oil companies and a sharp rise in cooking-gas prices.   A flurry of directives from India’s oil ecosystem has rattled both retailers and consumers. One proposal reportedly prioritised domestic LPG supplies for hou

Maharashtra’s latest Economic Survey has arrived with the usual fanfare of optimistic projections. According to the pre-budget document tabled in the State Assembly, the economy is expected to grow by 7.9 percent in 2025–26, comfortably ahead of the national estimate of 7.4 percent. For a State that prides itself on being India’s economic powerhouse, the headline numbers appear reassuring. Yet beneath this confident arithmetic lies a far less comfortable reality of a fiscal t

For decades, India watched wars in the Middle East with the distant anxiety of a spectator. While oil prices would ratchet and shipping lanes would grow uneasy, the bombs, missiles and geopolitical brinkmanship always unfolded somewhere else. That comfortable distance has vanished after a U.S. Navy submarine torpedoed and sank the Iranian frigate  IRIS Dena  in the Indian Ocean about 40 nautical miles south of Galle, Sri Lanka. With this, America’s military strikes against Ir

As the conflict between the United States, Israel and Iran intensifies, the Strait of Hormuz - the narrow channel through which a fifth of globally traded oil passes - has become fraught after Tehran blocked the strait. For India, the consequences are already being felt in boardrooms, refineries and, potentially, household budgets. India consumes roughly six million barrels of oil a day. Of that, between 2.5 and 2.7 million barrels - nearly half - normally transit Hormuz. Aro

For a state that styles itself as India’s most industrially advanced and administratively progressive, the Nagpur blast which killed nearly 20 workers, most of them women, is a big stain on its social fabric. Maharashtra sells itself as the engine room of the Indian republic. But the explosion at the Raulgaon unit of SBL Energy Limited in Nagpur exposes the harsher truth that gleaming investment summits mean little if shop floors remain perilous.   Preliminary findings from t

The death of former Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar in a plane crash at the Baramati airstrip has shaken Maharashtra’s political establishment like no other event in recent political history. It is a personal tragedy for a family that has dominated the politics of western Maharashtra for decades. The preliminary findings into the Learjet crash at Baramati deepen the tragedy of late Deputy Chief Minister’s death and sharpen uncomfortable questions about negligence, oversight

By standing shoulder to shoulder with Israel’s leadership and unequivocally condemning the October 7, 2023 atrocities committed by Palestinian terror outfit Hamas, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made clear that India will not mumble platitudes when confronted with the deliberate slaughter of civilians. The timing of Modi’s pathbreaking visit to Israel was deliberate. Welcomed personally by Benjamin Netanyahu, Modi arrived at a moment when much of the so-called Global South

Democracies depend on institutions that command trust and on citizens who are taught to question them with care. The Supreme Court’s decision to withdraw an NCERT Class 8 social-sciences textbook that referred to “corruption in the judiciary” sits uneasily at the intersection of these two imperatives. The episode raises legitimate concerns about how constitutional bodies are represented to young students, while exposing gaps in India’s curriculum-making process and the unreso

As Canada seeks to reset a badly frayed relationship with India, Ottawa has initiated proceedings to revoke the citizenship of Tahawwur Rana, the Pakistan-born businessman accused of playing a key role in the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks that killed 166 people. Coming just ahead of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s visit to India, the decision reads less like an attempt to undo some of the diplomatic and moral damage accumulated during the Justin Trudeau years. The twist, here, i

By removing the bust of imperial architect Edwin Lutyens from Rashtrapati Bhavan with that of C. Rajagopalachari, the Modi government has made plain that independent India need no longer genuflect to the prejudices of those who once ruled it. The decision to replace the bust of Lutyens, the chief architect of imperial New Delhi, by a bust of C. Rajagopalachari, independent India’s first Governor-General, was part of a broader effort to shed the vestiges of a colonial mindset,

The death of Ajit Pawar in a plane crash near Baramati last month has left Maharashtra politically shaken and institutionally exposed. Tragedies involving powerful figures rarely remain private affairs. In India, where politics runs on suspicion as much as on trust, they demand not just investigation but finality. That is precisely what has so far been missing in this case. The Mahayuti government’s decision to request a CBI inquiry, announced by Chief Minister Devendra Fadna

There are moments when politics must yield to the national interest. The India AI Impact Summit was one such occasion. Instead, it was disfigured by a juvenile spectacle that saw members of the Indian Youth Congress barging into an exhibition hall at Bharat Mandapam, shedding their shirts, shouting slogans against Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The summit was an international forum attended by delegates from 110 countries, showcasing India’s technological ambitions at a time w

India’s decision to sign the Pax Silica declaration marks an explicit choice about where the country intends to sit in the emerging hierarchy of global power. As artificial intelligence supplants oil as the strategic resource of the age, alliances are being recast around minerals, chips and data. With this move, India has now stepped decisively into that architecture. The declaration was signed at the India AI Impact Summit, with senior US diplomatic and economic officials an