While the Mumbai–Pune Missing Link project will cut travel time, its real story lies in the tunnels and engineering ingenuity that overcame one of India’s most challenging landscapes For most motorists, the Mumbai–Pune Expressway is one of modern India’s great infrastructure success stories. Since opening in 2002, it has dramatically reduced travel time between Maharashtra’s political and financial capitals while becoming a critical artery for industry, logistics and commerce

As conflict in West Asia continues unabated, India finds itself confronting the rising cost of economic patriotism AI generated image On 10 May, Prime Minister Narendra Modi stood before a crowd in Hyderabad and asked Indians to change how they live. Avoid foreign travel for at least a year. Work from home where possible. Stop buying gold. He called it economic patriotism. A war involving the United States and Iran had disrupted oil supply routes, driven up the price of every

From Raja Bhoj’s famed seat of learning to a modern legal flashpoint, the Bhojshala dispute reflects India’s enduring struggle over its heritage and cultural identity. AI generated image The Madhya Pradesh High Court’s recent ruling declaring the Bhojshala to be a temple dedicated to Goddess Saraswati has brought the millennium-old heritage site back in focus. Located in Dhar, often described as the cultural capital of the ancient and medieval province of Malwa, the Bhojsha

At Kuala Lumpur’s Rain Water Festival, music, tourism and urban order blend into a portrait of a modernising nation. After landing at Kuala Lumpur airport, the very first thing that catches your eye is its grandeur, neatness, and discipline. Despite the flow of people, there was no chaos. There was ease and spaciousness. Most importantly, there was no sign of the rush to overtake or get ahead of one another. The purpose of visiting Malaysia was to cover a unique and extraordi

China’s environmental awakening has brought cleaner skies and greener industries, but the costs of decades of ecological devastation remain immense. Mao Zedong was not a farmer. Though born into a peasant family, he had little farming experience. It was political struggle that interested him. This struggle would come to define his whole life; struggle against everything he thought was holding China back from becoming the Marxist utopia it was destined to be. In 1917, as a you

As daughters and sisters stake their claims, succession in Indian political families is getting increasingly contested. Dynastic politics has long been a defining feature of Indian democracy. Since independence, parties have often witnessed leadership transitions along familial lines, most notably the Indian National Congress. Over time, this tendency deepened, and nepotism became a recurring critique of the system. In recent years, however, dynastic politics has evolved into

Once a powerhouse, the state now faces debt, deindustrialisation and a steady flight of capital and labour For a state that once stood as one of India’s foremost economic engines, West Bengal, for the better part since Independence, has been caught in a prolonged cycle of stagnation, fiscal stress and outward migration. The promise of political change has come and gone across regimes, from the Communist Party of India (Marxist) to the All India Trinamool Congress, but the und

Trump’s Hormuz blockade seeks to weaponize a chokepoint that history shows is far easier to disrupt than to control. Across centuries, for rulers and states alike, to command a narrow strait has been to wield power far out of proportion to its geography. From the Hellespont of antiquity to the Danish Sound, chokepoints have tempted them with the promise of effortless leverage. The Strait of Hormuz is the latest test of that enduring illusion. If the latest stream of conflicti

The recent conviction of Amit Jogi underscores how, despite delays and distortions, India’s justice system can still bring the powerful to account Amit Jogi The complexities of India’s judicial system, and its eventual credibility, are best illustrated not in abstract doctrine but in the fate of the powerful. Few propositions are more frequently doubted and more intermittently vindicated than the idea that the law can reach those once thought untouchable. The recent convictio

Iran’s multi-front strategy of blending proxies, cyberattacks and economic pressure shows how hybrid warfare is emerging as a complex challenge for international security. Sometime last month, four ambulances engaged in humanitarian service were set ablaze on the streets of North London. These vehicles belonged to a Jewish volunteer organization dedicated to saving lives in medical emergencies, without discrimination of religion or race. The very next day, in Bahrain, an Iran

With the Harish Rana case, the Supreme Court has turned a philosophical right into a practical pathway, redefining dignity at the end of life. For years, India’s debate over euthanasia lingered in the realm of theory while being ethically fraught, legally ambiguous and emotionally charged. Now, with its verdict in the Harish Rana case, the Supreme Court has moved the question from abstraction to application. In doing so, it has redrawn the boundaries of life, death and dignit

Cyber fraud, human trafficking and weak states have fused into a criminal ecosystem that even China’s heavy hand struggles to dismantle Chinese actor Wang Xing with Thai police authorities In January of this year, eleven members of the mafia family Ming were executed in China. Their crimes included homicide, illegal detention, and the operating of cyber scam centres across the border in Myanmar. Five members of the family Bai were sentenced to death back in November, and ther

The US–Israel strikes on Iran have shown how artificial intelligence will dictate the future of warfare. Military history is punctuated by moments when technology abruptly shifts the balance of power. The machine gun, radar and nuclear weapons each transformed warfare in their time. Artificial intelligence now appears poised to join that list. Recent clashes involving Israel, the United States and Iran suggest that algorithms are beginning to shape the outcome of conflicts as

From Roosevelt’s ‘big stick’ to today’s Tehran strikes, intervention has been the enduring grammar of American power After a week of relentless US-Israeli air strikes on Tehran, the war in the Middle East is threatening to blow up into a major regional conflagration. There is no let-up in retaliation from Iran either. President Donald Trump has declared that Washington must have a role in choosing Iran’s next leader, dismissing the possibility of Mojtaba Khamenei, son of the

West Asia’s combustible geometry suggests that any strike on Iran has a habit of widening into systemic crises that no single power can neatly contain Barely eight months after Operation Midnight Hammer, Washington and Jerusalem have once more moved from calibrated warning shots to direct blows against Iran. In broad daylight on Saturday, Israel, with overt American participation, launched a “preventive attack” on Tehran, triggering an immediate exchange of missiles and pushi

Tarique Rahman’s ascent offers India and Bangladesh a chance to reset a relationship battered by ideology, geopolitics and neglect. On February 17, Bangladesh turned a new page following the return of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) to power with Tarique Rahman emerging as the new Prime Minister. India extended unwavering support to its neighbour at this historic juncture, reigniting hopes for mending relations strained under Mohammad Yunus interim government. Prime Mi

UNESCO’s recognition elevates the Maratha fort network into global history as a model of terrain-led defence. Earlier this week, amid ceremonial rhythms in Paris, a piece of Indian history was quietly elevated to the global stage when Maharashtra’s Minister for Culture Ashish Shelar was presented with the official certification from UNESCO recognising a clutch of twelve forts which have played a key role in Maratha history as a World Heritage property. The newly inscribed p

It was not once, but thrice, that Maharashtra came close to having a woman as its chief minister. Destiny—and party calculus—intervened each time. As January drew to a close, 67 years after the state’s formation, Maharashtra finally saw its first woman deputy chief minister: a grieving Sunetra Pawar. The moment was marked not by celebration but by tragedy. She had lost her husband, the powerful Ajit Pawar, in an aircraft crash just days earlier. Her elevation came less from c

From individual travellers to the regional economy, the Navi Mumbai International Airport is no longer just an infrastructure project but a lived experience. When Vineeta Garg boarded her flight for a year-end holiday, infrastructure was the last thing on her mind. An IT professional originally from New Delhi and now based in Pune, she was more concerned with the usual anxieties of air travel and the tensions that preceded it - traffic jams, long queues and frayed nerves. But

As the Arctic thaws and power politics return, Greenland is no longer a peripheral curiosity but a test of Europe’s strategic nerve and America’s imperial impatience From Viking outposts to Cold War airstrips, Greenland has always mattered for reasons larger than itself. Geography has been its calling card. When Donald Trump stood before the World Economic Forum in Davos this week and declared Greenland as American territory, he was asserting maximalist leverage in a world wh