When Ayushman Bharat and Private Insurers Feed Corporate Hospitals, Not Healing Health insurance was sold to Indians as a humanitarian promise—a guarantee that nobody will be bankrupted or denied care for financial reasons. And, schemes like Ayushman Bharat–Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB-PMJAY) were heralded as revolutionary, providing up to ₹5 lakh per family annually…
Union Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal’s blunt assertion that “the ball is now in the US court” is not rhetorical bravado. It reflects a strategic recalibration in Washington—forced, not voluntary—after years of arm-twisting, veiled threats and tariff theatrics failed to extract concessions from New Delhi. The prolonged India–US trade negotiations have reached a moment where America’s…
Diplomacy, in the hands of seasoned practitioners, is a craft. In the hands of amateur showmen, it is often a ping-pong match—complete with theatrics, overacting, and unforced errors. In the last few months, the India–US equation has offered a strange combination of both, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi and U.S. President Donald Trump engaged in…
Tamil Nadu is once again at the centre of a religious confrontation — and not by coincidence. The escalating battle over the Karthigai Deepam ritual at Thiruparankundram Hill has turned into a direct clash between the Hindu majority’s centuries-old religious practices and a DMK government whose ideological hostility toward Sanatana Dharma is a matter of…
If Parliament ever needed a reminder of why the Congress continues to dig itself into deeper irrelevance, Rahul Gandhi kindly delivered it—live, unfiltered, and in prime-time clarity. The Leader of the Opposition, who often sounds more like a leader of confusion, opened the debate on SIR with the confidence of a man who had skimmed…
China has once again demonstrated that it remains tone-deaf to a changing geopolitical reality and blind to the fact that India of 2025 is not the India of 1962. Its latest provocation—the arbitrary detention of an Indian woman traveller at the Shanghai airport—may look like a routine immigration episode in Beijing’s telling. But New Delhi…
In a democracy that prides itself on periodic and peaceful elections, it is rather shocking that Booth Level Officers (BLOs)—the grassroots backbone of the electoral process—are now being portrayed as victims of unbearable institutional pressure. A recent report in a national media outlet, based on what it calls a “research study,” claims that some teachers…
Telangana is preparing for one of its most ambitious exercises in future planning: the Rising Telangana Global Conclave, where Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy and his team will unveil the Telangana Rising Vision Document 2047 on December 9. It is a moment that deserves recognition. For a state still shaping its identity in the national…
The latest manufactured outrage over the Central government’s decision to pre-install the Sanchar Saathi app on new smartphones exposes the Opposition’s chronic habit of attacking first and understanding later. Congress, predictably leading the chorus, has rushed to label the app “intrusive” and “dictatorial,” as if the government were trying to plant surveillance tools inside every…
For decades after Independence, India’s military posture was defined by defensive restraint—often necessary, often costly. From the trauma of 1962 to the surprise of Kargil, our armed forces were too frequently asked to fight with limited technological support, outdated doctrinal thinking, and a political class nervous about projecting power. But over the last decade, that…
