Yastika Bhatia’s maiden Test century at Lord’s crowns the rise of an elegant wicketkeeper-batter who has quietly become indispensable to India’s new generation. Critics may say that there are flashier cricketers than Yastika Bhatia. She does not possess the raw power of a Smriti Mandhana or the aura of a Harmanpreet Kaur. She rarely dominates highlight reels or social media clips. Instead, she has built her reputation through reliability – a quality far more vital. At a time

Even as his final World Cup ends in disappointment, Cristiano Ronaldo's influence on the game remains unmatched. At 41, when most footballers are remembered through grainy highlights and nostalgic documentaries, Cristiano Ronaldo was still trying to win a World Cup. Portugal's elimination at the hands of Spain in the Round of 16 has almost certainly brought down the curtain on the greatest international career the sport has seen without its ultimate prize. Ronaldo himself ack

Hokato Hotozhe Sema, who lost a leg in Kashmir, has redrawn the boundaries of military service and transformed India’s Paralympic imagination. While there are military decorations that reward courage under fire and sporting medals that honour excellence in competition, it is rare for the two to converge in one life. That they have done so in the career of Subedar Hokato Hotozhe Sema says as much about the changing face of India’s armed forces as it does about the country’s be

Kunal Shah’s rise from city entrepreneur to global head of WhatsApp signals that India is producing genuine architects of the digital age. For much of the internet era, the world’s defining digital products were imagined in California. The next chapter looks markedly different. Artificial intelligence, digital finance and ubiquitous connectivity have flattened the distance between Silicon Valley and the rest of the world. Increasingly, the most interesting ideas are emerging

For decades Champat Rai was the quiet custodian of Hinduism’s most consequential movement in recent times. Now the man who helped build the Ram Mandir finds himself confronting questions about the temple’s accounts. If Ayodhya has a living archive, it is probably Champat Rai. For decades, the bespectacled Hindu nationalist leader has been a fixture in the temple town, a man whose memory of obscure land records, court filings and forgotten episodes during the Ram Janmabhoomi m

For decades, Swapan Dasgupta made a career of diagnosing India’s political ailments. As a columnist, editor, author and public intellectual, the erudite and scintillating Dasgupta dissected challenged orthodoxies and defended the intellectual traditions of the Indian Right. However, following his new appointment as the new Finance Minister of a West Bengal in economic doldrums, he perhaps faces the most demanding assignment of his career. His supporters however are confident

A Class 12 student from Ranchi has done what few journalists, bureaucrats or politicians thought to do. Whereas most Indian teenagers spend their final year of school navigating the familiar maze of examinations and career anxieties, Sarthak Sidhant, a Class 12 student from Ranchi, Jharkhand, forensically examined the Central Board of Secondary Education’s (CBSE) On-Screen Marking (OSM) system. Sidhant’s expose of the CBSE marking system has turned him into an overnight and u

Esha Singh’s dominance in Munich announces the arrival of a new kind of Indian shooting champion. Perhaps because of the nature of her sport, shooter Esha Singh announced her brilliance quietly, almost stealthily. Earlier this week, the 21-year-old Indian shooter stood amid one of the strongest pistol fields in Munich, Germany to snare a gold in the women’s 25-metre pistol event at the ISSF World Cup with a world-record score of 43. Munich is regarded as one of the toughest a

Abhijeet Dipke’s viral rebellion looks less like a spontaneous youth uprising than India’s anti-BJP ecosystem discovering meme warfare. Indian politics has always had room for the absurd. A country that once elevated sadhus, film stars and anti-corruption crusaders into national prominence was probably destined, sooner or later, to produce a Cockroach Janta Party. What is more revealing is how quickly India’s habitual anti-Modi commentariat which includes the activist-lawyer

Combative and relentlessly organised, Vijay’s chief aide is reshaping Tamil Nadu’s political grammar When actor-politician Vijay delivered a stunning performance in Tamil Nadu’s recent assembly elections, much of the public fascination centred on the star himself, who became Chief Minister by unseating the DMK’s M.K. Stalin. Yet, in the smoke-filled backrooms of Chennai’s political class, attention quickly shifted to a less theatrical but arguably more consequential figure: A

In India’s political imagination, the Election Commission occupies a curious space. It is one of the republic’s most powerful constitutional bodies, yet it often behaves like a nervous clerk caught between warring political factions. That is partly why Gyanesh Kumar has become such a consequential figure, especially after his recent triumphal conduct of key Assembly polls, particularly that in the volatile eastern state of West Bengal. At a time when institutions are routinel

MBZ’s break with OPEC signals a louder shift in oil geopolitics For a man who prefers deeds to words, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, President of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), has once again made news by saying very little. On April 28, the UAE, in a shock move, announced that it would withdraw from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its broader alliance, OPEC+, ending nearly six decades of membership. Against the backdrop of a world convulsed b

In India’s noisy political theatre, the armed forces are often invoked but rarely understood. In February this year, an ill-judged claim on the 2020 Galwan Valley clash by Congressman and Opposition Leader Rahul Gandhi in Parliament put former Army chief General Manoj Mukund Naravane in the spotlight. Gandhi, who had cited excerpts from Naravane’s unpublished memoir ‘Four Stars of Destiny’ during the Lok Sabha Motion of Thanks debate, had selectively interpreted a line from N

For a man who once seemed immovable, Viktor Orbán has exited the stage with surprising procedural grace. After 16 years of uninterrupted rule – the longest period by any serving leader in the European Union - Hungary’s most formidable political operator since the Cold War recently conceded defeat to Péter Magyar and his insurgent Tisza party, which secured a two-thirds majority on the back of record turnout. At a time where strongmen often cling to power, Orbán’s quiet accept

With Preeti Pawar’s win at the recent Asian Boxing Championships in Ulaanbaatar, India’s new boxing vanguard has finally come of age. In the hard geometry of the boxing ring, there is little room for flourish. Yet for 22-year-old Preeti Pawar, each bout seems to carry the suggestion of a canvas. At the in Ulaanbaatar, the youthful Preeti’s unanimous 5–0 dismantling of Huang Hsiao-wen, a three-time world champion and Olympic medallist, was a statement that Indian women’s boxin

Nirupama Menon Rao’s diplomacy of denial collides with the ugly reality of Pakistan’s history of sponsored terror against India. There is a particular kind of Indian diplomat – one who is retired, refined, erudite and reliably detached from consequence - who resurfaces from time to time with the same prescription to mend bridges with Pakistan. This prescription advocates restraint, dialogue and a fresh process to ensure that nothing fundamental changes. Nirupama Menon Rao has

For years, Rupali Chakankar embodied a certain kind of political ascent common to regional satraps: loyal, organisationally useful, and closely aligned with the power centre of her party – first, the undivided Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and later the NCP faction led by the late Ajit Pawar. Her journey, from a Pune-based party worker to chairperson of the Maharashtra State Commission for Women, was less a story of ideological crusade than of careful navigation within a p

Ali Larijani, the Islamic Republic’s consummate insider, dies as his carefully managed crises spin beyond control. In the labyrinthine politics of Iran’s Islamic Republic, few figures were as quietly indispensable as Ali Larijani. He was never one for the theatrics of revolutionary zeal nor the blunt force of military command as typified by the Revolutionary Guards. Larijani was something subtler and, in many ways, more valuable: a fixer. He was regarded as a man who could na

Nepal stands at a rare political crossroads. Six months after violent protests shook the Himalayan republic and forced the exit of former prime minister K. P. Sharma Oli, voters have delivered a sweeping mandate to a new generation of leadership. At the centre of that political earthquake is Balendra Shah, the 35-year-old rapper-turned-politician whose Rastriya Swatantra Party secured a commanding majority in the parliamentary elections of March 5. Few figures better capture

Menaka Guruswamy’s likely entry into Parliament will make history, but it also exposes the curious theatre of liberalism in West Bengal’s ruling party. When India’s Parliament next convenes its Upper House, it is likely to witness a historic first. Menaka Guruswamy, a senior advocate of the Supreme Court of India, is poised to become the country’s first openly lesbian Member of Parliament. Her path to the Rajya Sabha comes through nomination by the All India Trinamool Congres