I receive a lot of unsolicited material in my line of work — op-eds, press releases, open letters, manifestos. But the document that landed in my inbox recently gave me pause in a way that most don't. It came formatted as a formal submission, signed by a Chandigarh resident called Sumeet, addressed to me in my capacity as someone who works with editorial and public interest content. The subject line read: Submission as Cyber and Human Rights Volunteer – Cyber Ethics and Human Rights Concerns.

A preliminary working paper by Arvind Virmani, economist and member of the Government of India think tank NITI Aayog, has concluded that the Right to Education (RTE) Act — enacted to guarantee free and compulsory schooling for children between six and fourteen — has actually worsened learning outcomes rather than improved them. The paper, published in March 2026 and reported by The Print on 16 April, has drawn sharp pushback from education rights advocates, who argue it builds a politically motivated narrative against constitutionally guaranteed entitlements.

Author and legal commentator Gajanan Khergamker has made his  ebook  '10/3: Exile, Empire And War In The Andamans' publicly accessible online, a month after its limited offline digital launch on 10 March 2026. What began as a publication has, in Khergamker's own framing, transformed into a live, evolving research framework — Project 10/3 — inviting participation from researchers, institutions and citizens.

Following my recent blog on former IAS bureaucrat Atanu Chakraborty’s sudden exit as non-executive chairman of HDFC Bank, a few colleagues from the Gujarat cadre — mostly those I interacted with during my Gandhinagar stint (1997–2012) as the Times of India representative — reacted rather sharply. Most of them sent their responses directly on WhatsApp, touching upon on the merits and demerits of Chakraborty’s controversial move. One former IAS officer, a Dalit, however, went further, raising a broader question: why do some officials like Chakraborty secure plum post-retirement assignments, while others are overlooked?

Dr. Narasimha Reddy Donthi, a noted public policy expert and public interest campaigner, in a  detailed critical analysis  of two Bills introduced in Parliament in April 2026—the  Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill, 2026  and the  Delimitation Bill, 2026 , has warned that the twin bills "raise significant constitutional, political and methodological concerns — most critically, a structural inconsistency in the census basis used for Parliament versus State Assemblies, and an over-reliance on population as the sole parameter for delimitation." 

  A perfect storm of geopolitical crisis and policy paralysis is pushing India’s poorest into a devastating double-bind. The ongoing war in Iran has sent shockwaves through global oil markets, and as LPG prices skyrocket and factory slowdowns ripple across urban centers, a massive exodus of migrant workers is underway. But for millions fleeing the city’s hardships, the safety net of rural employment has all but vanished, leaving them stranded without work or income.

  A growing body of scientific evidence linking ultra-processed food (UPF) consumption during pregnancy to adverse maternal and neonatal outcomes has sparked fresh concern among public health experts, with Indian nutrition advocates warning of serious implications for the country’s already strained maternal health landscape.

  Over the past decade and a half,  Gujarat  has witnessed a remarkable resurgence of Dalit agitations that mark a decisive shift from accommodation to confrontation, according to a major new study published in the journal  National Identities . The research, conducted by  Mahendra Parmar  of the  Central University of Gujarat , draws on 18 in-depth interviews with victims and activists to document how  B.R. Ambedkar ’s radical thought has become the central political resource shaping Dalit identity and mobilisation in the state.

 A new report,  Toxic Finance , has sought to expose the critical role of the global financial sector in driving a massive and controversial expansion of the  petrochemical industry  across the United States. The analysis, compiled by a coalition of environmental and human rights organizations including the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) and  Break Free From Plastic , claims that banks and investors have provided the vast sums of capital necessary to build over 100 new facilities or expansions, despite significant risks to human health, the climate, and the financial system itself.

  M. K. Bhadrakumar , a career diplomat with three decades of service in postings across the former Soviet Union, Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, and Turkey, has warned that the current truce in the  US–Iran war  is “fragile and ridden with contradictions.” Writing in his blog  India Punchline , Bhadrakumar argues that while Pakistan has emerged as a surprising broker of dialogue, the durability of the ceasefire remains uncertain.

  A recent report published in the British media outlet  The Guardian , titled “Workers carved the largest modern Hindu temple in the west. Now, some have incurable lung disease,” took me back to my visits to the  New Jersey mandir —first in 2022, when it was still under construction, though parts of it were open to visitors, and again in 2024, after its completion.

  Civil society organisations and stakeholders from across India have presented stark evidence before the  Parliamentary Standing Committee on Rural Development and Panchayati Raj , alleging systemic violations of the  Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement (RFCTLARR) Act, 2013 , particularly in  Scheduled Areas  and tribal regions.

A new report published in March 2026 by the  Centre for Financial Accountability  and the Tax The Top campaign paints a stark picture of deepening economic disparity in India, documenting a concentration of wealth that it argues is “comparable to colonial times.” Titled  Wealth Tracker India | Tax the Top. Close the Gap , the compilation presents data from the  World Inequality Database  and the  Hurun Rich List  to illustrate the meteoric rise of the ultra-wealthy alongside the stagnation and debt burdens of the majority.

  In a compelling new analysis that challenges conventional geographical assumptions about the ancient epic, writer and mythologist Devdutt Pattanaik has traced the roots of the Ramayana to the forests and river systems of Central and Eastern India, rather than the peninsular south or the modern island nation of Sri Lanka.

  A comprehensive new study by environmental research and advocacy organisation Toxics Link has painted a worrying picture of India's fading repair culture, warning that the trend towards replacement over repair is accelerating the country's already critical e-waste crisis.

  India’s residential real estate market witnessed a continued slowdown in the first quarter of 2026, with housing sales across the top nine cities falling below the one lakh unit mark for the first time in over four years, according to data released by P.E. Analytics Ltd (PropEquity).

  A recent opinion piece published in  The Quint  by  Subhash Chandra Garg  has raised questions over the circumstances surrounding the resignation of  Atanu Chakraborty  from  HDFC Bank , with Garg stating that the exit “raises doubts about his own ‘ethics’.” Garg, currently Chief Policy Advisor at Subhanjali and former Secretary of the Department of Economic Affairs, Government of India, writes that the Reserve Bank of India ( RBI ) appears to find no substance in Chakraborty’s claims, noting, “It is clear the RBI sees no merit in Atanu Chakraborty’s wild and vague assertions.”

  In a candid and wide-ranging conversation, three generations of feminist activists from Maharashtra have taken stock of the women's movement in India, tracing its evolution from the labour struggles of the 1970s to the complex, identity-driven challenges of the present day. Hosted by  Gagan Sethi  and  Minar Pimple , the discussion, featured on the podcast  Unmute , brought together veteran activists to reflect on 50 years of mobilization, legal battles, internal debates, and the daunting political landscape that lies ahead.

  An analysis of the official data on donations received by national parties from  Gujarat  during the Financial Year 2024-25 reveals a staggering concentration of funding, with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) accounting for nearly the entirety of the contributions. The data, compiled in a document titled "National Parties donations received from Gujarat during FY-2024-25," lists thousands of transactions, painting a detailed picture of the financial backing for political parties from one of India’s most industrially significant states.

  India's official GDP figures have misrepresented the trajectory of the world's fifth-largest economy for the better part of two decades, according to a major new working paper published by the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE). It finds that India overstated annual growth by up to two percentage points after 2011 — and understated it during the boom years of the 2000s.

I was a little amused by the abrupt March 17 resignation of Atanu Chakraborty—a Gujarat cadre IAS officer of the 1985 batch who retired in 2020—as chairman of HDFC Bank. Much of what may have led to his decision to quit this ostensibly high post—actually a non-executive, part-time role—is by now well known. I followed most of it online with considerable interest, partly because I had interacted with him umpteen times during my stint as The Times of India correspondent in Gandhinagar from 1997 to 2012.

The  Gujarat Information Commission ’s  annual report  for 2024-25 presents a striking paradox: an institution that is technologically modernizing at a rapid pace, yet remains fundamentally undermined by the very government apparatus it is meant to hold accountable.

Following  my recent blog on Dalit cuisine —where I argued, citing several studies, that it is deeply shaped by the caste system and the history of untouchability—I received an intriguing response on a private WhatsApp chat from a retired Gujarat-cadre bureaucrat. A likeable and thoughtful official, I have known him since the early 2000s, when I was covering the Gujarat Sachivalaya for The Times of India.

“What has gone wrong with the Congress? Why is it making such stupid demands? That’s the only reason why none trusts the party,” exclaimed someone close to me after reading a Gujarati daily report that the Congress had demanded the cow be declared India’s national animal.  

  A violent confrontation between Adivasi residents and a joint team of Forest Department, Revenue, and Police officials in Padaliya village, Banaskantha district, on 13 December 2025, was not a mere law and order breakdown but a direct consequence of the state's systemic failure to implement the Forest Rights Act (FRA), according to a damning fact-finding report released by the People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), Gujarat.

  A few week ago, I was forwarded an article that  appeared  in the British weekly  The Economist . Titled “Caste and cuisine: From honeycomb curry to blood fry: India’s ‘untouchable’ cooking”, it took me back to what I had blogged about what was called a “ sattvik  food festival”, an annual event organised by former Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad professor Anil Gupta.

A new study by a top consulting firm has found that  India’s cleantech sector  is entering a decisive growth phase, with strong policy backing, record capacity additions and surging investor interest, but facing mounting pressure on talent supply and  rising compensation costs .

  The other day, a discussion broke out among ten friends on love marriages—a contentious issue in Gujarat following moves in the corridors of power to regulate them by making parental consent mandatory. One of us claimed that, unlike in the past, nearly 70 percent of weddings today are love marriages. Another person, who had eloped to get married years ago, remarked, “Problems exist everywhere, whether it is a love marriage or an arranged one.”

  A major new scientific report reveals that Tamil Nadu has emerged as India's largest contributor to plastic waste, generating approximately 7.82 lakh tonnes annually and accounting for nearly one-fifth of the nation's total plastic pollution, despite having only six percent of India's population. The  report , titled "Reducing Plastic Pollution in Tamil Nadu, India: A Science-Based Strategy," was released under the India-Norway cooperation project INOPOL, a collaborative effort between the Norwegian Institute for Water Research, Mu Gamma Consultants, and the Central Institute of Petrochemicals Engineering and Technology.

  This should sound almost hilarious. Not only did Subhas Chandra Bose not die in a plane crash in Taipei, nor was he the mysterious Gumnami Baba who reportedly passed away on 16 September 1985 in Ayodhya, but we are now told that he actually died in 1975—date unknown—“in oblivion” somewhere in the former Soviet Union. Which city? Moscow? No one seems to know.

  A  consensus statement  authored by a distinguished group of twenty-eight public health and nutrition experts, including  Arun Gupta , Chandrakant Lahariya, and Banshi Saboo, underscores a critical public health crisis in India where non-communicable diseases (NCDs) such as obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular illnesses now contribute to roughly 60% of annual deaths.

  In a candid conversation that blended personal memoir with sharp critique, veteran civil society leader Ingrid Srinath painted a sobering picture of a sector adrift—caught between corporate metrics, regulatory chokeholds, and a fading sense of purpose. Speaking on the  latest episode  of the YouTube series Unmute, hosted by Gagan Sethi and Minar Pimple, Srinath—former Secretary General of global watchdog CIVICUS and founder of the Centre for Social Impact and Philanthropy (CSIP) at Ashoka University—urged civil society to reclaim its soul before it's too late. 

It is always sad when a journalist colleague passes away — more so when that person has remained firm in his journalistic moorings. Compared to many others, I did not know R.K. Misra, who passed away on February 23 after a long illness, very intimately, but we interacted occasionally over the years.

  Across the West, immigration has increasingly been framed as a cultural threat or a political liability, a stance most visibly associated with Donald Trump but echoed in varying degrees across Europe and other advanced economies. What this debate often ignores is a hard demographic and economic reality: without sustained immigration, much of the Western world faces a shrinking workforce, rising dependency ratios, and long-term stagnation.

  The  first page image  of the paper "Corona Virus Killed by Sound Vibrations Produced by Thali or Ghanti: A Potential Hypothesis" published in the  Journal of Molecular Pharmaceuticals and Regulatory Affairs , Vol. 2, Issue 2 (2020),  has gone viral  on social media in the wake of the controversy surrounding a Chinese robot presented by the  Galgotias University  as its original product at the just-concluded  AI summit in Delhi . The resurfacing of the 2020 publication, authored by   Dharmendra Kumar , Galgotias University, has reignited debate over academic standards and scientific credibility.

  By Rajiv Shah  A recent book, " Luminous Footprints: The Christian Impact on India ", authored by two Jesuit scholars,  Dr. Lancy Lobo  and  Dr. Denzil Fernandes , seeks to counter the current dominant narrative on  Indian Christians , which equates  evangelisation  with conversion, and education, health and the social services provided by Christians as meant to lure -- even force -- vulnerable sections into Christianity.

The other day, I was talking with Martin Macwan, a well-known Gujarat Dalit rights leader. He revealed to me an interesting chapter of the Gandhian movement in Gujarat — how Ravishankar Maharaj (1884–1984), a prominent Gandhian social reformer of the state, played a pivotal role in the struggle for temple entry for Dalits (then referred to as Harijans) in the late 1940s.

Decades ago, when I was a student at Delhi University, the Left-wing student organisations, one of which I was a part of, would hold a highly negative view of NGOs. They would go so far as to castigate them as imperialist or CIA agents -- just because they were foreign-funded, by bodies such as Amnesty, Oxfam, Human Rights Watch, and Greenpeace.

On the evening of February 14, after banking hours, I received a strange SMS from Bank of India (BOI)—where I maintain a very small, largely inactive account. I had opened it years ago simply because a branch was located near my home. However, finding their services quite poor, I rarely use it anymore.

I am compelled to refer to a blog by communications expert Tushar Panchal titled "The Grip, the Choke, and the Follow-Through." Forwarded to me by a friend, it calls Rahul Gandhi's Parliament intervention on February 11, 2026, the "most strategically constructed speech of his parliamentary career."

  A new study titled “From Tobacco to Ultraprocessed Food: How Industry Engineering Fuels the Epidemic of Preventable Disease”, published in  The Milbank Quarterly , warns that  ultraprocessed foods  are deliberately engineered in ways similar to cigarettes and should be treated as a major public health threat rather than as ordinary food products.

  By Rajiv Shah  More than a decade ago, when I was with The Times of India, I used to write a regular weekly column called True Lies. The column—which still continues—was mainly about gossip surrounding Gujarat government bureaucrats, though I occasionally wrote about ministers as well. In that column, I would often refer to what IAS officials described as their informal weekly Monday morning tit-a-tat over tea.

The advocacy group Centre for Financial Accountability (CFA) has sharply criticised the  Union Budget 2026–27 , calling it a “budget sans kartavya” that weakens public welfare while favouring private corporations, even as inequality, climate risks and social distress deepen across the country.

​India’s once-unstoppable residential real estate rally has hit a significant roadblock, as new data reveals that housing sales in 2025 plummeted to their lowest levels since 2022. According to the  Real Insight: Residential CY 2025  report by  PropTiger.com , the sector is grappling with a cooling demand cycle that has seen annual sales tank by 12%, dropping to 3,86,365 units from the high of 4,36,992 units recorded just a year prior. 

A  new study  from the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad suggests that television in India is far from fading away amid the digital boom, but is instead poised for significant growth, potentially reaching a staggering 1 billion viewers by 2029. Titled "Future of TV in India," the report by Professors Viswanath Pingali and Ankur Sinha challenges the notion of TV's decline, arguing that it is "quietly preparing for its next expansion" driven by rising internet penetration, economic improvements in rural and low-income areas, and demographic shifts.

  A new report sheds light on the urgent human rights challenges within  India’s vast textile and garment industry , as global regulations increasingly demand corporate accountability in supply chains. Titled “ Beneath the Seams ,” the study reveals that despite the sector employing over 45 million people, systemic issues of  poverty wages ,  unfair purchasing practices , and the exclusion of workers from decision-making persist, leaving millions vulnerable.

The recent report, " State of Finance in India Report 2024-25 ," released by a coalition including the  Centre for Financial Accountability , Focus on the Global South, and other organizations, paints a stark picture of India's burgeoning digital economy, particularly highlighting the exploitation faced by  gig workers  on platform-based services. 

Findings by two Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi, scholars, Sampurna Kundu and Prof Sanghmitra Sheel Acharya, has revealed that despite the efforts of the Reproductive and Child Health Services, that provided free or nominal cost public health services, the average out of pocket expenditure (OOPE) per delivery in public health facilities has increased for many states.

    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.

  In a new episode of the  Unmute Podcast , activist  Deepa Pawar , founder of  Anubhuti Trust  and a voice from India's Nomadic and Denotified Tribes (NT-DNT), laid bare the deep-seated wounds inflicted by colonial-era laws that branded her community as criminals. Speaking with hosts Gagan Sethi, a veteran development practitioner with over 40 years in policy advocacy and minority rights, and Minar Pimple, founder of YUVA and former Amnesty International director, Pawar dismantled the myths of progress that sideline these marginalized groups, urging a reckoning with dignity, citizenship, and mental health in the fight for justice.

  The global health landscape is witnessing a decisive shift toward aggressive regulation of the food industry, a movement highlighted by two significant policy developments shared by Dr. Arun Gupta of the Nutrition Advocacy for Public Interest (NAPi).