Every generation of the Congress party produces its own small heresies. Some are tactical, others merely foolish. Maharashtra Congress president Harshwardhan Sapkal’s latest remarks declaring Tipu Sultan as the moral and historical equivalent of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj belongs squarely in the latter category. It is not just bad history but bad politics masquerading as ‘secular’ virtue. Sapkal’s claim rests on a fashionable syllogism that as both men fought foreign powers,

Few spectacles are more unedifying in a democracy than elected representatives rejoicing at what they believe to be their own country’s humiliation. Yet that is precisely what parts of India’s Opposition and its left-liberal entourage have chosen to do. The alleged guilty plea of Nikhil Gupt, who admitted in a U.S. federal court to his role in a failed assassination plot against Sikh separatist leader Gurpatwant Singh Pannun in New York, has been greeted by parts of the Oppos

A country unsure of itself trims its symbols whereas a confident one restores them. By mandating the full six-stanza rendition of ‘Vande Mataram’ at official functions, the Modi government has chosen confidence and in doing so has exposed the Opposition’s chronic unease with India’s civilisational inheritance. The original composition by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee which runs to three minutes and ten seconds will now be sung before the national anthem ‘Jana Gana Mana’ with atte

Indian technology stocks have long served as a barometer of global risk appetite rather than purely domestic confidence. A sudden swoon in Indian technology stocks on Thursday that saw tech biggies Infosys, TCS and Wipro slid by as much as 5 percent in a single session was a reminder that India’s IT giants remain deeply exposed to shifts in sentiment on Wall Street. The slump dragged the Nifty IT index down nearly as far and placing it among the market’s worst performers for

With the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Ritu Tawde assuming office in an unopposed election, Mumbai has broken a glass ceiling as Maximum City gets its first female mayor. It is a moment freighted with symbolism in a metropolis that prides itself on modernity. But this celebration, such as it is, should not obscure a more awkward question which is what exactly, is Mumbai’s mayor expected to do? Tawde’s opening pitch was suitably ambitious. She acknowledged that Mumbai is creaking u

The latest gambit by the Congress-led Opposition, threatening to move a resolution to remove Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, has little to do with safeguarding parliamentary propriety and much to do with disguising disorder as principle. The trigger was unremarkable by recent standards. Amid sloganeering and protests, the Lok Sabha was adjourned minutes before Prime Minister Narendra Modi was to deliver his reply to the Motion of Thanks on the President’s address. Birla later sai

India’s arguments about history rarely stay in the past and few figures provoke them as reliably as ‘Swatantryaveer’ Vinayak Damodar Savarkar. While Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat’s remarks that conferring the Bharat Ratna posthumously on Savarkar would enhance the award’s prestige predictably unsettled the Congress, he was essentially giving voice to a belief already shared by many Indians. The surprise lies not in the demand itself, but in the persist

India’s trade engagement with America has long been shaped by asymmetry. The United States, while remaining India’s largest export destination, has increasingly become its most erratic negotiating partner. Under Donald Trump, trade has been reduced to a crude calculus of deficits and punishments. Tariffs have been wielded as instruments of political theatre to be imposed and withdrawn at whim. It is amid this backdrop that Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat

Parliamentary democracy rests on a simple bargain that governments govern and oppositions oppose, but both respect the stage on which the argument is conducted. But that bargain frayed when the Lok Sabha descended into orchestrated disorder, culminating in the extraordinary sight of a Motion of Thanks passed without the Prime Minister’s reply. At the centre of the disturbance stood Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi and a Congress party that seems increasingly convinced th

The accident and the gargantuan traffic snarl along the Mumbai–Pune Expressway after a gas tanker overturned was a brutal exposure of Maharashtra’s hollowness in emergency preparedness, crisis coordination and basic administrative empathy. After a tanker carrying highly flammable propylene gas overturned in the Khandala ghat section and a gas leak was detected, traffic was completely shut for over 24 hours as the State administration merely watched commuters in hundreds of ca

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has perfected the art of governance without governing. When confronted by scrutiny, she reaches instinctively for confrontation while alleging conspiracy and claiming victimhood. Her clash with the Election Commission in Delhi over the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls in her state is less a defence of democracy than a display of her chronic inability to coexist with authority she does not control. Dragging along her poli

Rahul Gandhi’s latest intervention in the Lok Sabha offered yet another study in intellectual recklessness that the Congress leader apparently enjoys revelling in. By attempting to indict the Modi government on the basis of an unpublished memoir filtered through a magazine article, the Leader of Opposition reduced debate on national security to political ventriloquism. Critiquing decisions using material that cannot be read, verified or contextualised is not parliamentary vig

Economic surveys are not usually known for fretting about what people eat, how long they scroll or whether their children are glued to glowing screens. They are supposed to concern themselves with sterner fare like GDP growth, fiscal arithmetic, productivity trends and export projections. That is precisely why the Economic Survey 2025–26 deserves attention. In a striking departure, it treats junk food, obesity and excessive screen time not as lifestyle peccadilloes but as mat

The signing of India and the European Union’s long-delayed free-trade agreement (FTA) and the formalisation of a security and defence partnership binds nearly two billion people and about a quarter of global GDP into a meaningful economic and strategic bloc. In an age of tariff wars, sanctions regimes and maritime disruption, this itself is no small feat. While bilateral trade already exceeds $136 bn a year, the FTA promises to push it much further. But the defence partnershi

Ajit Pawar’s life in politics was a study in restless energy and permanent incompleteness. His tragic death in a private plane crash has stupefied Maharashtra, bringing an abrupt end to a career defined by constant movement and unfinished ambition. A record six-time Deputy Chief Minister, Ajit Pawar died as he lived: in motion, rushing to Baramati to address a local rally and tethered to the routines of grassroots politics even after four decades in public life. That the 66-y

After nearly a decade of drift, India and the European Union have decided to sprint ahead. The conclusion of the long-awaited free-trade agreement ever since talks were relaunched in June 2022 after a nine-year hiatus, marks one of the most consequential economic alignments of the decade. Branded with some hyperbole as the “mother of all deals,” the Indo-EU pact aims to knit together a market of nearly two billion people and roughly a quarter of global GDP. The timing is deli

India’s Republic Day is often read through its splendid military pageantry which has become the symbolic visual shorthand for every January 26. But it is, in fact, an anniversary of restraint for in 1950, India chose to govern itself not by the passions of victory or grievance, but by a Constitution. As the country marks its 77th Republic Day, the past year offers evidence not just of spectacle, but of state capacity put to work. The setting this year is heavy with symbolism.

Donald Trump’s new ‘Board of Peace’ has arrived with all the thump and glitter of a Las Vegas unveiling. Big, brash and self-regarding, it is riddled with contradictions so glaring that they scarcely need pointing out. India, the world’s most populous democracy and a country with a long record in peacekeeping, has wisely abstained itself from Trump’s jamboree. Pakistan, a state whose relationship with militancy has been documented for decades, has predictably joined in, cling

There is something faintly theatrical about Indian Chief Ministers flying to Davos to sign memoranda of understanding, as if Switzerland’s thin air confers a special aura of credibility. On the opening day of the World Economic Forum, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said his government had signed 19 MoUs worth a heady Rs. 14.5 lakh crore, promising 15 lakh jobs across sectors ranging from green energy to quantum computing. The numbers are grand. Yet back home, th

India’s federal compact was never meant to resemble street theatre. Yet that is precisely what unfolded in Tamil Nadu and Kerala, where opening sessions of the Assemblies degenerated into petty skirmishes between Raj Bhavans and elected governments. Governors deserve scrutiny for overreach. But what played out on January 20 says as much about the studied belligerence of two state governments that have turned constitutional convention into a contact sport. Start with Tamil Nad