Timing, in politics, is often everything. And the Centre’s decision to retain central armed police forces in West Bengal for 60 days after the Assembly elections is not just timely—it is, in many ways, a vindication of a position this e-papeer had already taken. In these very columns, we had argued that a token extension…
With the second phase of polling in West Bengal concluded, the familiar ritual has begun. Television studios are buzzing, graphics are flashing, and a clutch of pollsters—half a dozen at least—have rolled out their “exit poll” projections. For the uninitiated, exit polls are meant to capture the mood of voters immediately after they cast their…
The Calcutta High Court has done what constitutional institutions must in moments of political heat—stand firm, remain restrained, and uphold the larger democratic purpose. By refusing to interfere with the Election Commission of India’s decision to deploy 2,500 companies of central forces for the second phase of the West Bengal elections, the court has reinforced…
One of India’s sharpest tech minds, Sridhar Vembu, has articulated what many in the country’s strategic and technological circles have long believed—but hesitated to say so bluntly. Coming in the backdrop of a US President dismissively calling India a “hellhole,” his appeal to the Indian diaspora in the United States to “come back home” is…
When Narendra Modi urges every Indian household to participate in the long-delayed Census, it is not a routine administrative appeal—it is a reminder of something far more fundamental. Nations don’t just run on rhetoric or electoral arithmetic; they run on data. And in a country as vast, layered, and complex as India, the Census is…
Nearly three years after the violence of May 2023, Manipur continues to simmer—periodically exploding into fresh tragedy. The recent killing of two children in a suspected rocket attack is not just another grim headline; it is a damning reminder that the state is nowhere near normalcy. What began as an ethnic confrontation between the Meitei…
If democracy is measured not just by ballots cast but by the belief that those ballots truly matter, then the recent surge in voter turnout in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu deserves far more than a passing mention. It demands a hard look at what changed—and why. Credit, where it is due, must go to…
If there is one constant in India’s political theatre, it is this: corruption scandals erupt with thunder, dominate headlines with moral outrage, and then quietly dissolve into procedural fog. The Kaleshwaram project—once showcased as an engineering triumph and later exposed as a multi-crore controversy—now risks becoming another case study in how India’s political class and…
The latest hearings before the Constitution bench on the Sabarimala Temple entry case have once again exposed a fault line India has long refused to confront honestly: can a modern republic afford multiple, competing religious codes operating under the same Constitution? What began as a legal debate over women’s entry into the Sabarimala Temple has…
The collapse of the much-hyped second round of talks between the United States and Iran in Islamabad is not just another diplomatic setback—it is a stark reminder that Pakistan was never the right broker to begin with. When a nation struggling to hold its own economy together attempts to mediate one of the world’s most…
