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

After Ajit Pawar’s death, Rohit Pawar moves swiftly to claim moral authority, and perhaps the future of a fractured dynasty. When the tragic plane crash near Baramati on January 28 killed Maharashtra’s Deputy Chief Minister, Ajit Pawar, the immediate focus was on loss. But in the days that followed, the attention has inevitably shifted to succession and the future of the Nationalist Congress Party, regardless of the factions. At the centre of it all stands Rohit Pawar, Ajit’s

Paras Dogra’s record-breaking Ranji season has carried Jammu and Kashmir into uncharted cricketing territory, offering a quieter counter-narrative to decades of turmoil. Indian domestic cricket rarely pauses to take stock of its longest servants. But the spotlight suddenly turned on 41-year-old Paras Dogra, captain of Jammu and Kashmir, achieved a historic milestone when his latest innings of 58 against Bengal in a semi-final made him the fastest player to reach 10,000 runs a

Guyanese minister Vikash Ramkissoon’s calm defiance in Hindi turned a parliamentary slight into a lesson in power, memory and India’s farthest civilizational echo. Some politicians raise their voices when challenged. Vikash Ramkissoon raised a language. In Guyana’s Parliament, where debate usually proceeds in the safe neutrality of English, an opposition lawmaker chose to question Ramkissoon’s knowledge of Hindi. The insinuation was familiar and faintly patronising, the sort

A female suicide attacker signals how Pakistan’s longest insurgency is mutating and why the state still has no answer. Hawa Baloch Shot on a mobile phone in the dark hours before a recent coordinated wave of attacks across Pakistan’s restive Balochistan province, a chilling video has become emblematic of the province’s struggle with the Pakistani state. It showed a young woman calmly firing at security forces, smiling at the camera and delivering what the Balochistan Liberati

India’s Commerce Minister has turned marathon trade talks into a muscular instrument of statecraft. At first glance, Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal does not resemble the romantic idea of a trade negotiator. There is little of the bonhomie of Geneva salons about him, less still of the lyrical globalism that once animated India’s approach to free trade. Yet it is precisely this flinty and transactional temperament that has delivered what both he and Brussels call t

Gita Gopinath tells India to look past tariffs and focus on the air it breathes but speaks from the IMF’s Olympian perch. Gita Gopinath has the air of someone who expects to be listened to and usually is. Soft-spoken, rigorously precise and conspicuously unimpressed by political fashion, the IMF’s First Deputy Managing Director speaks less like a public intellectual than a judge reading out a finding. At Davos this week, she delivered one such verdict on India. Forget tariffs