The other day, I visited what is being billed as the  Ahmedabad International Flower Show 2026 , currently underway at the  Sabarmati Riverfront Event Centre . This was my second visit to the Ahmedabad flower show. I went with my NRI friends, who remarked that the display this year was far superior to what they had seen when they visited Ahmedabad around the same time last year.

  India must confront its accelerating ecological emergency with systemic reforms rather than symbolic gestures, climate and energy expert  Soumya Dutta  warned during an interactive workshop in  Ahmedabad  titled “India’s Environmental Crisis: Where Do We Go From Here Living?”. Introduced by  Jesuit activist Cedric Prakash  as both a scientist and people’s movement organiser, Dutta said India was already facing life-threatening consequences of environmental neglect.

  A few days ago, I received an  email alert  from a veteran human rights leader who has fought many battles in  Gujarat  for the  Dalit  cause — both through ground-level campaigns and courtroom struggles. The alert, sent in Gujarati by Valjibhai Patel, who heads the Council for Social Justice, stated: “In 1935,  Babasaheb Ambedkar  burnt the  Manusmriti . In 1972, we broke the idol of  Krishna , whom we regarded as the creator of the  varna  (caste) system.”

Professor Ghanshyam Shah ’s latest book, “ Caste-Class Hegemony and State Power: A Study of Gujarat Politics ”, published by  Routledge , is penned by one of  Gujarat ’s most respected chroniclers, drawing on decades of fieldwork in the state. It seeks to dissect how caste and class factors overlap to perpetuate the hegemony of upper strata in an ostensibly democratic polity. The book probes the dominance of two main political parties in Gujarat—the  Indian National Congress  and the BJP—arguing that both have sustained capitalist growth while reinforcing Brahmanic hierarchies.

  Initially, I was not considering writing this blog about why I found Airtel —one of India’s premier communication service providers—to have an outrageously poor sales and customer-service experience, at least in Ahmedabad , Gujarat ’s business capital. However, the last SMS I received from Airtel regarding my request for a Wi-Fi connection in my flat in the Vejalpur area left me stunned.

A new  Government of India  study,  Internationalisation of Higher Education in India: Prospects, Potential, and Policy Recommendations , prepared by  NITI Aayog , regrets that India’s lag in this sector is the direct result of “several systemic challenges such as inadequate infrastructure to provide quality education and deliver world-class research, weak industry–academia collaboration, and outdated curricula.”

Has the Government of India finally moved to completely change important provisions of the Right to Information (RTI) Act, that too without bringing about any amendment in the top transparency law? It would seem so, if one is to believe well known civil society leaders' keen observations on the nuclear energy Bill passed in the Lok Sabha.  Senior RTI activist Amrita Johri has sharply criticised the recently passed Sustainable Harnessing and Advancement of Nuclear Energy for Transforming India (SHANTI) Bill, 2025, saying that it has effectively “nuked” the Right to Information (RTI) Act through the back door. 

  By Rajiv Shah   In what might be interpreted as a move to globalise the contentious issue of India's judicial independence, a new academic study published in a  research journal  associated with the  Heidelberg University, Germany , "Indian Politics & Policy", delivers a devastating verdict on the  Supreme Court of India ’s performance during  Narendra Modi ’s tenure from 2014 to 2025. 

I first came in contact with Himmat Shah in the second half of the 1970s during one of my routine visits to  Ahmedabad , my maternal hometown. I do not recall the exact year, but at that time I was working in  Delhi  with the  CPI -owned People’s Publishing House (PPH) as its assistant editor, editing books and writing occasional articles for small periodicals. Himmatbhai — as I would call him — worked at the People’s Book House (PBH), the CPI’s bookshop on  Relief Road  in Ahmedabad.