The Delhi blast and the arrests that followed have forced India to confront an unsettling evolution in its terror landscape. Among those now in custody is Dr. Shaheen Shahid, a Lucknow-based physician who, investigators say was not merely a sympathiser but an organiser tasked by the Pakistan-backed Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) to build its women’s wing in India, the Jamaatul Mominat. Her alleged mission was to recruit, indoctrinate and mobilise women, particularly educated students

The car bomb that ripped through the road near Delhi’s Red Fort Metro Station killing 13 and injuring 24 was yet another chilling reminder for us that Pakistan’s proxy terror war is alive and well. The incident was no isolated eruption but the tail-end of a grander conspiracy that India’s security agencies, to their credit, had mostly crushed. What they uncovered in Faridabad, Pulwama and beyond was a network years in the making, guided by Pakistan’s Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) an

The Congress Party’s jibe at the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) that the latter is “not a registered organisation” and therefore of suspect legitimacy reveals more about the Opposition’s intellectual fatigue than about the Sangh itself. The attack reeks of bureaucratic pettiness dressed up as moral indignation. At a recent event marking 100 years of the RSS, Mohan Bhagwat, the RSS chief, calmly turned the argument on its head when he pointed that the Sangh, founded in 1925

The Supreme Court’s order this week over strays restores sanity to India’s debate over animal welfare against the sentimental zealotry of elite activism. Concerned by an alarming rise in dog-bite incidents, the Court has directed States and Union Territories to remove stray dogs from hospitals, schools and other public institutions meant for healing and learning, not fear and infection. The ruling, firm in tone and sweeping in scope, restores the idea that human safety is not

In a state long associated with electoral apathy, Bihar’s first phase of polling in its 2025 Assembly elections has delivered a quiet revolution. A record 64.66 percent turnout across 121 constituencies marks not merely a statistical leap, but a sociopolitical shift. It is 9.3 percentage points higher than the 2024 Lok Sabha election in the same seats, and 8.8 points above the 2020 Assembly polls and is the highest since 2010. But behind this democratic surge lies an unlikely

Congress scion Rahul Gandhi’s reckless allegations of ‘vote chori’ is a hackneyed spectacle by now. Detractors say his latest spectacle with respect to the Haryana Assembly election smacks of political desperation. Yet, the Election Commission’s tepid response risks eroding faith and makes one cast needless aspersions on India’s democratic machinery. Gandhi has trained his rhetorical guns on the Haryana Assembly elections, alleging that as many as 25 lakh ‘fake votes’ were ca

After years of bureaucratic drift and judicial rebukes, Maharashtra is finally returning to the ballot box at the grassroots. The State Election Commission has announced that voters in 246 municipal councils and 42 nagar panchayats will cast their votes on December 2, with results to follow the next day. More than 10 million voters will take part in what is, in effect, a rehearsal for larger electoral battles to come. The State’s long-delayed civic polls will test the politic

There was a time when Anil Ambani stood as the most visible emblem of India’s post-liberalisation optimism. Charismatic, articulate and ambitious, he represented the ‘New India’ that believed it could build, borrow, and brand its way to global eminence. From telecom to infrastructure, from entertainment to power, the younger Ambani’s empire seemed destined to rival his elder brother’s. Two decades later, that gleaming empire lies in ruins, its remnants now under the scrutiny

It was a victory decades in the making. Under the bright floodlights of the D.Y. Patil Stadium in Navi Mumbai, the Indian women’s cricket team lifted its maiden ODI World Cup, defeating South Africa by 52 runs in a thrilling finale to rewrite a script that has long seemed stuck on heartbreak. The victory is a social milestone and a statement of national transformation. For years, Indian women’s cricket has been on the periphery of the country’s sporting imagination, overshado

Congress leaders have revived a familiar trope once again with party president Mallikarjun Kharge’s shrill call to ban the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Few institutions in India provoke as much loathing among their critics or as much loyalty among their adherents as the RSS. Born in 1925, the RSS has survived bans, vilification and decades of political hostility. Yet, each attempt to outlaw it - by colonial authorities, by Nehru’s Congress government after Gandhi’s assa

A supposed film audition in Powai turned into a two-hour nightmare when 17 children were taken hostage by a man armed with an air gun and delusions of martyrdom. For the shocked citizens of Mumbai, it was a veritable real-life replay of ‘Dog Day Afternoon’ and other Hollywood films involving hostage situations and deranged men. The unpleasant episode exposed not just the despair of the hostage taker, a certain Rohit Arya, but also society’s own blind spots, namely parental re

The spectacle on Nagpur’s outskirts this week had all the trappings of rural discontent with tractors clogging highways, angry farmers waving placards and a fiery leader - Bachchu Kadu, the mercurial chief of the Prahar Janshakti Party – vowing to court arrest. Kadu and other leaders led a ‘Maha Elgar Morcha’ that paralysed National Highway 44 for nearly twenty kilometres, causing commuters much distress. The ostensible demand was a complete waiver of farm loans. Yet the chor

India’s megacities are rising ever higher but the ground beneath them is slipping away. Gleaming expressways, metro lines and glass towers project the image of a nation surging into the future. Yet new research suggests this ascent may rest on perilously unstable foundations. Beneath the concrete sprawl of Delhi, Chennai, Mumbai, Kolkata and Bengaluru, the earth itself is sinking and in some places, alarmingly fast. A study published in  Nature Sustainability  by researchers

When commerce collides with faith, it often leaves behind a trail of acrimony. Nothing illustrates this more clearly than the storm over the 3.5-acre plot in Pune’s Model Colony, a property belonging to the Seth Hirachand Nemchand Smarak Trust. What began as a Rs 311 crore redevelopment deal between the trust and Gokhale Landmarks LLP, a local construction firm, has now unravelled under the weight of religious sensitivities, political intrigue and public suspicion. On Sunday,

From the forests of Chandrapur to the coffee estates of Mysuru, the uneasy cohabitation between man and beast has been turning deadly of late. Over the past two months, a nine-year-old tiger killed six people across two forest divisions in Chandrapur, evading capture for weeks before finally walking into a cage baited with fresh meat. The caging of this tiger has brought to the fore the larger problem of human-animal conflict. Across India, official records show that over 100

Few stories lay bare the moral rot in India’s local institutions as starkly as the death of a 29-year-old government doctor in Satara. She was found hanging last week in her hotel room in Phaltan in western Maharashtra. Days later, it emerged that she had accused a police officer of rape, another of harassment, and a local member of parliament of pressuring her to falsify medical reports. In her final weeks, she wrote letters, filed complaints, and even an RTI application see

To buy or not to buy: that is India’s question. For nearly three years, India has reaped the benefits of cheap Russian crude. When Western buyers shunned Moscow’s barrels after its 2022 invasion of Ukraine, India stepped in, securing discounts of up to $20 a barrel and cushioning itself against the global energy shock. However, those days are now ending following sanctions imposed by United States President Donald Trump on Rosneft and Lukoil - Russia’s two largest oil compani

India’s bazaars have glittered this Diwali with the unmistakable glow of consumer confidence. The country’s festive sales crossed a staggering Rs. 6 lakh crore with goods alone accounting for Rs. 5.4 lakh crore and services contributing Rs. 65,000 crore. More remarkable still, the bulk of this spending flowed through India’s traditional markets rather than e-commerce platforms. After years of economic caution and digital dominance, Indians are once again shopping in person an

A recent video of Muslim women offering namaz within the grounds of Pune’s iconicShaniwarwada fort palace-complex has ignited needless controversy amid the festive Diwali season. Built in 1732 by Peshwa Baji Rao I as the seat of the rapidly expanding Maratha power, its stone ramparts once echoed with the ambitions of empire. Three centuries later, they again now echo with the shrill sounds of political theatre. Shaniwarwada, after all, is not a mosque. It is a protected monum

An avoidable death in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) has exposed the grotesque inversion of priorities that defines Indian governance. In Ambernath, a patient’s life ebbed away as an ambulance stood waiting not for a citizen, but for a politician who happened to be Deputy Chief Minister Eknath Shinde. The vehicle, belonging to Chhaya Sub-District Hospital, had been dispatched for the Deputy CM’s visit to inaugurate a local theatre named in memory of Shinde’s mentor, lat