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.