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.