In West Bengal, the line between political authority and administrative complicity has long been thin. The siege of seven judicial officers in Malda last week has crossed all limits. The officers were held hostage for over nine hours in a government office, denied food and water and released only after midnight into a gauntlet of stone-pelting mobs. This is the logical culmination of a system that has under Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, reduced governance to a mixture of in

The recent grenade attack outside the BJP’s Punjab headquarters in Chandigarh was not a spectacular act of terror but a cheap, modular and outsourced one directed by handlers in Europe, backed by Pakistan’s ISI and executed by a loose network of local recruits. That such an attack could be mounted so easily and so cheaply ought to worry the Punjab government far more than the blast itself. The emerging details are grimly instructive. The attackers were promised a modest sum

In the vocabulary of governance, tragedy is often described as an “unfortunate incident.” This bureaucratic phrase that absolves as much as it explains. But the recent accident in Nashik district, where nine members of a single family, six of them children, were killed resists such anaesthetised language. The accident occurred because their car veered off a poorly secured road in Dindori and plunged into an unprotected, water-filled well while returning from a family function

The shocking events in Malda, West Bengal, where seven judicial officers were held hostage for hours during a Special Intensive Revision (SIR) exercise while being denied basic amenities, are the logical outcome of a political ecosystem nurtured under the state’s mercurial Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. The officers, acting under court orders were gheraoed, deprived of food and water, and released only after a late-night rescue involving central forces. The Supreme Court of

Maharashtra’s rivers have long borne the burden of the state’s economic success. As cities expanded and industries multiplied, waterways such as the Mithi and the Mula-Mutha were reduced to conduits for sewage and effluents. Against this backdrop, the state cabinet’s decision to establish the Maharashtra State River Rejuvenation Authority is both timely and laudable. With 54 of India’s 296 polluted river stretches located within its borders, Maharashtra’s problem is emblemati

Maharashtra’s decision to keep ready reckoner (RR) rates unchanged for 2026–27 is a rare moment of restraint in a property market accustomed to incremental inflation. The move, justified by the government on grounds of the ongoing US–Iran conflict and a visible cooling in parts of the real estate sector, offers immediate, if modest, relief. In cities like Mumbai, where even marginal policy shifts can swell transaction costs, the freeze is sensible. But it is not sufficient. I

There are moments in a republic’s life when the state reasserts not merely its authority, but its moral clarity. Home Minister Amit Shah’s declaration that India stands on the cusp of becoming free of the Maoist scourge marks one such moment. The deadline of March 2026, that was predictably dismissed by the Opposition as political bravado, has, by all accounts, been met with a resolve that is as consequential as it is overdue. For decades, Left Wing Extremism cast a long, dar

The Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) has been feted as a model bureaucrat on paper, at least. Under the state government’s 150 Days Sevakarmi Plus Programme, it recently clinched the top rank. In the parallel 150 Days E-Governance Reform Programme, it placed fourth - no small feat in a state keen to advertise its digital credentials. The larger point is such metrics, however carefully designed, measure processes more than outcomes. They reward complian

Mumbai’s narcotics enforcement apparatus has once again found itself in the dock. The booking of Amit Ghawate, the Narcotics Control Bureau’s (NCB) Mumbai zonal director, in connection with a suicide case is not merely an aberration. It is the latest episode in a pattern that raises uncomfortable questions about the conduct, culture and accountability of one of the country’s most visible law-enforcement agencies. Ghawate, a 2008-batch Indian Revenue Service officer, now faces

Donald Trump likes to claim he has already “won” the war with Iran. The trouble is that no one, least of all his own administration, seems quite sure what that victory means while his European allies are tuning him out. Barely a month into a conflict that began with joint American and Israeli strikes on February 28, the White House has offered a masterclass in inconsistency. At various points, Trump has said the war would last “four to five weeks,” could go on “far longer” an

India’s space programme has long thrived on a careful blend of ambition and thrift. It has sent probes to Mars on a shoestring, soft-landed on the Moon, and readied astronauts for orbit. Yet prestige projects can sometimes cast long shadows. The recent failure of the last operational atomic clock aboard IRNSS-1F, a satellite in India’s homegrown navigation system, has exposed a sobering reality: when it comes to strategic infrastructure, India cannot afford such lapses. The N

Few things unsettle a government more than a constitutional grey zone exposed in full public view. That ambiguity was recently dragged onto the floor of Maharashtra’s Legislative Council and briskly tidied up by Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis. His intervention, delivered amid a rancorous debate, did more than settle an immediate dispute. It reaffirmed a basic, if often blurred, principle that legislatures may question and even censure, but they do not govern. At the heart o

Coalitions, like marriages, are tested less by grand crises than by small humiliations. The ruling Mahayuti – a coalition between the Bharatiya Janata Party, Eknath Shinde’s Shiv Sena and the late Ajit Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party - has found itself rattled by precisely such an episode. The proximate cause was the election of the Satara Zilla Parishad president. The controversy hinges on allegations that local police prevented some elected members from voting during the

The recent arrest of Ashok Kharat, a self-styled ‘godman’ accused of rape, blackmail and occult manipulation, has rightly horrified Maharashtra. Yet to view this as the story of a lone predator is to miss the larger, more uncomfortable truth. Men like Kharat do not rise in isolation. They are legitimised and ultimately shielded by networks of influence that extend deep into the state’s political and social elite. The investigation, now in the hands of a Special Investigation

In India, few symbols command as much reverence or as much rhetorical opportunism as the Ganga. To millions of Hindus, it is not merely a river but a civilisational artery, imbued with sanctity and myth, woven into rites of passage from birth to death. Recently, when a group of minority community youths boarded a boat on the Ganga in Varanasi, consumed non-vegetarian food, and flung the remains into waters regarded as sacred, what followed was less a sober reckoning than the

Few cases in recent memory have so starkly exposed the intersection of superstition, sexual predation and political complicity as the sordid affair surrounding Ashok Kharat. What began as a criminal investigation into a self-styled astrologer in Nashik has metastasised into a political crisis that now engulfs the state’s institutions and most worryingly, those tasked with protecting women. The allegations are as chilling. Kharat, a retired merchant navy officer who styled him

Gudhi Padwa, the Marathi New Year, is a celebration of renewal of homes, hearts and hopes. This year, however, the festival comes with an uninvited guest at the table: global oil prices, restless tanker routes and the uneasy hum of the Iran conflict. Since late February, the strikes and counter‑strikes involving Iran, the United States and Israel have disrupted oil and gas facilities across the Gulf, sent Brent crude above $110 a barrel and left energy markets jittery. The St

For a state that prides itself on both pluralism and pragmatism, Maharashtra’s passage of the Freedom of Religion Bill, 2026 is less a rupture than a correction. By targeting conversions secured through coercion, fraud, inducement or the pretext of marriage, the law seeks not to police belief, but to protect consent. And in doing so, it shores up a constitutional principle too often invoked in abstraction and too rarely defended in practice. Predictably, critics have been qui

A familiar ritual unfolds in Washington every few years. A little-known American body issues a stern report about Hindu majoritarianism and the alleged persecution of its minorities while solemnly diagnosing its democratic decline and prescribing remedies with the confidence of an imperial magistrate. Regardless of whether the Democratic or Republican Party administrations occupy the White House, the pattern endures. This week it was the turn of the United States Commission o

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