There is something profoundly disturbing when political leaders begin treating India’s armed forces as collateral damage in their war against the government. On Vijay Diwas — a day meant to honour sacrifice, courage, and national resolve — former Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chouhan chose to perform a political low that should shame even a party…
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar is once again in the news—but regrettably, not for his governance credentials or administrative record. Instead, a recent public interaction has triggered an avoidable controversy after he was seen adjusting, or pulling down, a minority woman’s hijab while handing over an employment certificate under his government’s job guarantee promise. The…
The Union government’s decision to replace MGNREGA with the Viksit Bharat Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission (Gramin) – VB-G Ram G Bill, 2025, has triggered predictable political outrage. The loudest protest, unsurprisingly, is not about livelihoods, wages, or accountability—but about the removal of Mahatma Gandhi’s name. This reaction, while emotionally charged, avoids the real…
Donald Trump’s foreign policy has never been accused of subtlety. But his so-called “Core 5” (C5) proposal—an alleged attempt to replace the G7 with a new power club comprising the US, China, Russia, India and Japan—takes strategic recklessness to an entirely new level. It is not a blueprint for a new world order; it is…
Every few months, a familiar script returns to India’s political theatre: a leader from the Congress–PDP ecosystem rises dramatically, points a trembling finger at the BJP, and declares that “minorities are under attack.” The latest performer is PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti, who has taken to X to accuse the Centre of “erasing” Waqf properties. According…
India’s aviation sector has just suffered one of its worst public humiliations in years, and yet the one agency at the heart of the disaster—the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA)—remains curiously untouched. Instead, the Ministry of Civil Aviation has reached for its favourite crutch: punish the airline, scold the symptoms, and leave the disease…
UNESCO’s inscription of India’s Deepavali festival into the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity is far more than a symbolic pat on the back. It is a global affirmation that one of India’s oldest and most unifying civilisational practices stands tall among humanity’s living treasures. And the timing could not have been…
Two crises erupting within days — Indigo’s spectacular operational collapse and Goa’s horrifying Birth Club inferno — have placed the 12-year-old Narendra Modi–led NDA government in an unusual position: on the defensive, not before a roaring Opposition in Parliament, but before an unforgiving and unusually united media. For once, the criticism didn’t come from political…
The Modi government today faces a crisis not born of opposition attacks, but of its own unwillingness to confront glaring failures in civil aviation oversight. The continuing Indigo fiasco — from its defiance of newly mandated winter norms to the DGCA’s baffling indulgence — has exposed a disturbing pattern: a regulator asleep at the controls,…
For nearly eight decades, India’s cultural core has been chipped away not by foreign powers, but by the very political establishment that claimed to defend the Republic. The Congress-led governments, since Independence, presided over the systematic dilution of India’s civilisational narrative — rewriting, pruning, and often amputating the symbols that shaped our national consciousness. And…
