The rape and murder of a four-year-old girl has left Maharashtra grieving and demanding accountability from a system that failed to stop a known offender. She was only four years old. She was spending her summer holidays at her grandmother’s house in Nasrapur, a quiet village in the Bhor area of Pune district. She liked playing outside. On the afternoon of May 1, 2026, a 65-year-old man from the same village walked up to her and said he would show her a calf. She smiled and f

The Union Cabinet’s decision to raise the Fair and Remunerative Price (FRP) for sugarcane for the 2026–27 season to Rs. 365 per quintal, based on a 10.25 percent recovery rate, represents a deliberate strengthening of rural incomes and sectoral stability Aimed at benefiting nearly five crore farmers, it will be a major bounty for farmers in Maharashtra’s sugar-rich western belt. The increase of 2.81 percent over the previous season ensures that cane remains one of the few cro

The rape and murder of a four-year-old child is not merely a crime but the collapse of the most basic covenant that binds a society together. When such brutality is inflicted upon someone so young, so defenceless, the usual language of law and order feels woefully inadequate. The shocking rape and murder of a four-year-old Pune has rattled Maharashtra. Such was the grief and anger that hundreds of protestors blocked the Mumbai–Bengaluru highway for hours. The child’s body, pl

On occasion of its diamond jubilee, the Marathi Vidnyan Parishad is adapting its mission of vernacular science outreach to a more digital age without losing sight of its founding ideals. The Marathi Vidnyan Parishad (MVP), Mumbai, one of India’s most respected science communication movements, recently completed 60 years of its inspiring journey. Over the past six decades, the Parishad has played a pioneering role in promoting scientific temper, disseminating scientific knowle

While the state’s Vidarbha region is accustomed to weather extremes, the current heatwave has crossed the line from intense discomfort into danger. In Akola, the mercury has surged to a searing 46.9°C - the highest recorded in the country - while Amravati, Wardha and Yavatmal districts have hovered perilously close behind. Nagpur, the region’s largest city, has been left sweltering above 45°C. This is a glimpse of a harsher normal. Meteorologists point to an anticyclonic circ

Maharashtra is wilting under the onslaught of successive heat waves. What was once dismissed as the predictable discomfort of an Indian summer has taken on a harsher character this summer. Cities like Pune, long celebrated for their temperate climate and breezy evenings, are now enduring heat conditions more reminiscent of the parched interiors of Vidarbha than the gentler Deccan plateau. Across districts, thermometers have climbed to unfamiliar highs while more tellingly, th

With Ashwini Bhide helming the BMC, women in Maharashtra are no longer merely breaking bureaucratic ceilings but redesigning the building itself. India has a powerful legacy of women power in the political and administrative field, and when the power is in the administrative government, the power game is different. Take Kiran Bedi, who became India’s first woman to join the Indian Police Service in 1972, was known for her fearless approach and innovative policing techniques,

Maharashtra’s decision to keep ready reckoner (RR) rates unchanged for 2026–27 is a rare moment of restraint in a property market accustomed to incremental inflation. The move, justified by the government on grounds of the ongoing US–Iran conflict and a visible cooling in parts of the real estate sector, offers immediate, if modest, relief. In cities like Mumbai, where even marginal policy shifts can swell transaction costs, the freeze is sensible. But it is not sufficient. I

As the Centre expands PG medical seats, Maharashtra is losing both seats and standards—amid faculty shortages and allegations of corruption in contractual appointments. Even as the Union government expands PG medical seats nationwide, Maharashtra is losing ground due to a chronic faculty shortage in government medical colleges. At Rajarshi Shahu Government Medical College, vacancies across seven departments have already cost 23 PG seats, with the total likely to rise to 40 as

In India’s farm policy, arithmetic often collides with reality. Nowhere is this more evident than in Maharashtra, where the official logic of Minimum Support Prices (MSP) struggles to keep pace with the lived economics of cultivation. As the 2025–26 agricultural season unfolds, fresh evidence from the state’s Agricultural Price Commission suggests that the gap between what farmers spend and what they earn is widening. At first glance, Maharashtra appears an agricultural power

Renaming hostels may soothe stigma, but it does little to fix the conditions that define students’ lives AI generated image Pune: Recently, the Social Justice and Special Assistance Department decided to excise the term ‘Backward Class’ from the names of its government hostels and rechristen them after revered historical figures. While the move to replace them with names that evoke dignity and achievement is, on the face of it, a step towards psychological emancipation, it is