India had asked the United States not to allow reporters to ask questions during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s meeting with President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the G7 summit in France in June, US Ambassador to India Sergio Gor said on Saturday.

Speaking at the Economic Times World Leaders Forum, Gor said the Ministry of External Affairs had made the request shortly before the June 17 meeting between Trump and Modi in Evian-les-Bains.

According to Gor, Trump was told that India preferred “no questions” and agreed to the arrangement.

Gor said: “We were behind the scenes…And he [Trump] said, do they have any asks? And the MEA [Ministry of External Affairs] had one ask. He said, and it was, let's bring in the media, but let's not do a full press conference.”

“I told the president, I said, the Indians prefer no questions,” the US envoy added. “He said, sure, no problem.”

However, Gor said the meeting then began with journalists and around 50 cameras in the room. Modi and Trump made opening remarks, after which Trump turned towards the cameras and asked, “any questions?”

According to Gor, Trump’s invitation turned the meeting into a 45-minute press interaction, with Modi seated beside him as reporters directed their questions primarily to the US president.

“MEA had one ask… let’s do a press conference and let’s not do any questions…”, says US Ambassador Sergio Gor. And then President Trump took questions, indirectly embarrassing @narendramodi.

Why is the Prime Minister afraid of taking questions? The MEA, instead of working for… pic.twitter.com/rmxhXQwkJF

— Dr. Shama Mohamed (@drshamamohd) August 23, 2026

The Indian government and the Ministry of External Affairs have not officially responded to Gor’s account.

Modi’s meeting with Trump came days after three Indian mariners were killed in a US Navy attack on a commercial vessel in the Strait of Hormuz. During the interaction, Modi had raised concerns over the safety of Indian seafarers operating in the conflict zone.

A month earlier, Modi’s reluctance to hold press conferences, along with growing concerns over India’s deteriorating press freedom, had come under renewed scrutiny during his visit to Europe.

Journalists in Amsterdam and Oslo questioned foreign ministry officials about the prime minister’s approach to the media.

Among them was Norwegian journalist Helle Lyng, who directly asked Modi whether he would take questions “from the freest press in the world”. The prime minister did not respond. Lyng later attended a press conference by Indian diplomats in Oslo, where she had a tense exchange with Sibi George, the Ministry of External Affairs’ secretary (West).

US envoy flags ‘fake news problem’ in India

During his address at the event, Gor highlighted what he described as a “fake news” problem in India.

“I used to think we have a fake news problem back home,” he said. “Some of the things that get reported here are just nowhere close to the ballpark.”

The envoy specifically referred to a conversation with Union Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal over one such report. “I told him, I said I’m going to put something out publicly,” Gor said, adding that Goyal did the same.

“Rarely has a minister here in India put out something calling out fake news,” Gor added.

On July 13, Goyal rejected a Reuters report that India declined a quick trade agreement with the US during talks in June and is holding out for a better deal.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

An Indian national was killed in a shooting incident in New York on Friday night, said the Indian consulate general in the city.

The man, Gurdeep Singh, was killed on Crescent Street in the city’s Brooklyn area, in what police believe may have been a road rage incident, CBS News reported.

No arrests have been made yet and the investigation is ongoing.

Surveillance camera footage obtained by CBS News showed what appeared to be two persons fighting on a street, followed by a flash of light from apparent gunfire. One person was seen falling to the ground, while the attacker entered a car and drove away.

The consulate general of India in New York said it was in touch with Singh’s family and was extending all possible assistance. “Our thoughts and heartfelt condolences are with his family during this difficult time,” it said.

We are deeply saddened to learn about the untimely demise of Mr. Gurdeep Singh, an Indian national, who tragically lost his life in a shooting incident in Brooklyn, New York.

Our thoughts and heartfelt condolences are with his family during this difficult time. The Consulate is…

— India in New York (@IndiainNewYork) August 24, 2026

Edited by Sneha.

Three newborns died after a fire that broke out in the neonatal intensive care unit of a government hospital in Maharashtra’s Amravati district in the early hours of Monday, PTI reported.

The fire broke out at the Amravati District Women’s Hospital around 3.15 am when a ventilator in the unit sparked, the news agency quoted an unidentified official as saying.

Nine infants were in the room when the blaze began, The Indian Express reported. Hospital staffers evacuated all nine babies, but three of them died.

The remaining six babies have been admitted to a super speciality hospital.

Amravati Deputy Commissioner of Police Shyam Ghuge said that the fire was confined to one room in the neonatal intensive care unit and was doused within about 30 minutes, The Indian Express reported.

“There was a technical fault in the thermal unit, following which the fire broke out,” the official was quoted by the newspaper as saying. “The attendants immediately took out the nine babies from the room, of whom three died.”

STORY | Three newborns die in fire at govt hospital's NICU in Maharashtra's Amravati

Three newborns were killed when a fire broke out in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) of a government hospital in Maharashtra’s Amravati district early on Monday, officials said.

READ:… pic.twitter.com/0fbXlL0nr1

— Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) August 24, 2026

The authorities will investigate the reasons for the blaze and whether the hospital followed fire safety norms, Ghuge said. “The technical equipment involved in the incident, as well as the fire-safety arrangements at the hospital, are likely to be examined as part of the probe,” he was quoted as saying by The Indian Express.

Edited by Sneha.

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s three-day visit to New Delhi in July 2026 for the India-Japan summit appears to have elevated relations between the two Asian countries into a fresh phase of strategic expansion. Ties had already undergone a remarkable transformation over the past decade, evolving from a largely economic and development partnership into one of Asia’s most consequential strategic relationships.

At its core, the logic of India-Japan convergence rests on a growing recognition that both countries have a stake in preserving a stable balance of power in the Indo-Pacific amid China’s expanding influence, safeguarding critical sea lanes, and strengthening economic resilience through diversified supply chains and trusted technology partnerships.

This convergence has produced tangible cooperation through defense dialogues, maritime exercises, and collaboration in areas such as semiconductors, critical technologies, and economic security. The defense understandings reached during the Takaichi visit, including progress on defense equipment and technology cooperation, reflect a growing focus on developing each other’s defense industries alongside strengthening military cooperation.

As Japan moves beyond the constraints of its post-war security framework toward a more proactive strategic posture, its partnership with India is often framed as a natural and necessary pillar of the Indo-Pacific regional order. From the articulation of the “Free and Open Indo-Pacific” vision to sustained efforts for the consolidation of minilateral platforms such as the Quad, a grouping that includes Australia and the US in addition to India and Japan, the normative and strategic convergence between New Delhi and Tokyo is widely acknowledged.

The conventional view is that India and Japan will emerge as the central democratic pillars of the Indo-Pacific, with the expectation that their relationship will deepen in areas such as economic security, maritime capacity-building, and critical technologies.

Yet, this very consensus risks obscuring a more fundamental question – if the logic is so compelling, why has India-Japan cooperation not translated into deeper strategic integration? Understanding the answer involves examining a set of structural constraints that continue to limit the operationalisation of their strategic convergence.

Structural Limits

The most immediate of these is what may be described as the geography trap. Despite the conceptual foundations of the “Indo-Pacific,” hard geography continues to tether both countries to their primary theatres. India’s strategic bandwidth is anchored in the continental challenge along its northern borders and its maritime responsibilities in the Indian Ocean Region.

Japan, by contrast, is embedded in the security dynamics of the Western Pacific, with acute concerns in its near seas, including the East China Sea and the Taiwan Strait. Hence, defense-related operational reach, whether in terms of logistics, basing, or sustained deployment, remains limited by distance, capacity, and political constraints. While both have made incremental progress through logistics agreements and joint exercises, these do not fundamentally alter the fact that each country’s military posture is optimized for its immediate periphery.

Yet geography, while visible, is not the most binding constraint. More consequential are perhaps the differences in strategic culture and risk thresholds that shape how India and Japan respond to regional crises. Japan’s security posture is deeply rooted in its alliance with the US, which provides both assurance and obligation. Tokyo’s evolving defense policies, reflected in its recent national security strategies, indicate a willingness to take on greater security responsibilities, but always within the framework of US-led alliance coordination and deterrence signaling.

India, by contrast, continues to privilege multipronged partnerships. New Delhi’s approach is deliberately flexible, issue-based, and intentional about entanglement in conflicts beyond its immediate interests. This divergence produces different thresholds for risk-taking. In a crisis involving China, for instance, Japan is more likely to act in concert with the US, while India is likely to calibrate its response based on a narrower definition of national interest. The result is a partnership that converges in principle but could diverge in practice when escalation risks rise.

Closely linked to this is the question of theatre prioritisation and the nature of threat hierarchies. Both India and Japan identify China as the central challenge to regional stability, but the nature of that challenge differs significantly across geographies.

For Japan, the threat is immediate, maritime, and carries a credible risk of military confrontation. Chinese activities in the East China Sea and the prospect of a contingency in the Taiwan Strait create a sense of urgency that shapes Tokyo’s defense planning. For India, the challenge is more diffuse, spanning a contested land border, expanding Chinese presence in the Indian Ocean, and broader concerns about regional influence. This results in both countries responding to the same systemic pressure, but in different theatres and through distinct operational priorities. Each country, thus, remains reluctant to overextend beyond its respective primary theatres, limiting the scope for genuine strategic cooperation.

The ambition-capacity mismatch

A further constraint lies in the institutional thinness of the relationship, particularly in the security domain. India and Japan have built an impressive architecture of dialogues, agreements, and consultative mechanisms over the past decade. However, these have yet to evolve into the kind of operational coordination seen in other non-alliance partnerships such as Japan–Australia or India-France.

Compared to these relationships, India-Japan cooperation remains centred on consultation and exercises, and even though military exercises have become more frequent and complex, the focus is more on signaling than on developing interoperable capabilities. In times of crisis, when the capacity to act collectively depends not just on political will but also on pre-existing systems for coordination and execution, the lack of institutional depth becomes especially important. In this regard, India–Japan ties remain a step removed from deeper integration.

A persistent gap between expectations and capabilities compounds these constraints. Japan’s growing interest in the Indian Ocean reflects a recognition of the region’s strategic importance, but its ability to sustain a significant presence there is limited. Although India plays an increasingly important security role in the Indian Ocean, its capacity to support sustained operations beyond its immediate maritime neighborhood remains constrained by geography, logistics, and capacity.

Similarly, expectations that India might play a more active role in East Asian contingencies run up against both political caution and operational limitations. The result is a pattern of symbolic alignment, joint statements, shared visions, and coordinated diplomacy, that is not always matched by material capabilities. This gap does not negate the value of the partnership, but it does constrain its strategic impact.

Questions of economic security add another layer of complexity. Both India and Japan have sought to reduce vulnerabilities arising from their respective dependencies on China, particularly in critical sectors such as supply chains and technology. However, their economic relationships with China differ in scale and structure. Japan remains deeply integrated into Chinese manufacturing networks, while India’s engagement is more uneven but still significant in key sectors. This limits the extent to which either nation will engage in economic strategic competition.

As a result, initiatives aimed at strengthening resilience — whether through supply-chain diversification, trusted technology partnerships, or critical mineral cooperation—have tended to be incremental rather than transformative. Economic interdependence, in this sense, constrains the scope for coordinated measures as these would impose significant commercial costs or provoke direct economic retaliation from China.

Durable framework

Taken together, these factors suggest that the limits of India–Japan strategic cooperation are not merely contingent, but also structural. Geography constrains operational reach, but it is the deeper asymmetries, including threat perceptions, institutional capacity, and economic vulnerabilities, that define the scope of the partnership. The Indo-Pacific, as a strategic construct, has brought India and Japan closer together. Yet translating that convergence into a coherent and effective strategic framework remains an unfinished project.

To overcome these limitations, Tokyo and New Delhi will have to assume a more adaptable, networked approach to collaboration. This would entail deeper institutionalisation in specific areas where incremental gains can cumulatively enhance operational synergy, such as maritime security.

Over time, regular information-sharing, coordinated maritime surveillance, and greater familiarity between their naval forces can reduce uncertainty and improve coordination when common interests are at stake. Such steps may appear modest individually, but collectively they can make coordination during periods of crisis faster, more predictable, and more effective. Finally, regular strategic dialogues focused on specific contingencies, such as disruptions in the Indian Ocean, a Taiwan Strait crisis, or major maritime incidents in Southeast Asia, could help narrow differences in threat perception and clarify expectations during periods of instability.

Similar scenario-based consultations have become an important feature of partnerships such as Japan-Australia and Australia-India, helping participants develop a shared understanding of potential crises. Such mechanisms remain underdeveloped in the India–Japan context, in part because both countries continue to prioritize different theatres and face different immediate security challenges.

The 2026 India-Japan summit has undoubtedly injected fresh momentum into the bilateral relationship, particularly in areas such as economic security, critical technologies and defense-industrial cooperation. Whether this momentum translates into deeper strategic integration, however, will ultimately depend less on the announcement of new initiatives than on the ability of both countries to navigate these structural constraints with strategic clarity.

In that sense, the partnership’s potential lies in developing more effective mechanisms for coordination across areas where interests genuinely converge. Geography, threat perceptions, and institutional realities are likely to continue imposing limits on the relationship.

The real test, therefore, is not whether India and Japan can eliminate these constraints, but whether they can build a more durable framework for cooperation that works despite them attempting to link the disparate security and economic dynamics of the Indian Ocean and the Western Pacific. In that regard, the two countries could aim to strengthen regional resilience through deeper maritime cooperation, economic security, critical technologies, and capacity-building initiatives that help preserve a favorable balance in the Indo-Pacific. The partnership’s long-term value lies less in overcoming its structural constraints than in managing them effectively to support a stable regional order.

Pratnashree Basu is an Associate Fellow (Indo-Pacific) with the Strategic Studies Programme at Observer Research Foundation, focusing on Japan's role in the region and maritime geopolitics.

In April 2025, the Modi government made a dramatic U-turn and announced that it would count caste in India’s next census. At the time, it made sure to take potshots at its predecessor, the Manmohan Singh-led United Progressive Alliance government, for not including caste in the 2011 census.

“Most political parties recommended conducting a caste census,” the Cabinet had snidely noted in a press release then. “Despite this, the previous government opted for a survey instead of a caste census, known as the Socio-Economic and Caste Census.”

A year later, however, the Modi government has disclosed that it will follow the same method for counting caste that was used by Manmohan Singh’s administration. This has triggered allegations of sabotage, given that the data collected in 2011 was seen to be so faulty that it was never released.

Scroll spoke to analysts, activists and politicians who advocate for a caste census to understand why these charges have surfaced. Most of them described the chosen methodology for counting caste as a flawed one. They questioned the Modi government’s call to stick to the 2011 model when states such as Bihar and Telangana have, in recent years, carried out caste surveys which they consider to be more robust.

Some critics have even argued that the caste data collected in this census will be useless. But others were hopeful that researchers will still be able to clean it up and work with it.

On September 21, 2021, the Modi Govt had filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court categorically rejecting the plea for a caste census.

However, Para 12 (d) in the affidavit says the following: “There was no registry of caste prepared prior to the conduct of 2011 Census. It would… pic.twitter.com/gHdPZSMiQw

— Jairam Ramesh (@Jairam_Ramesh) August 18, 2026

‘Designed to fail’

The population enumeration phase of the census, during which enumerators go door-to-door collecting data from individuals, will begin in snowbound parts of north India next month. This will be the first time since 1931 that caste will be counted as part of the exercise.

To do so, enumerators will first ask respondents whether or not they belong to a Scheduled Caste or a Scheduled Tribe and then ask them to state their caste. People will also have the option to say that they have no caste or that they do not wish to declare their caste, The Hindu has reported.

Critics argue that having an open-ended question on caste leads to an enormous range of responses that make any meaningful analysis nearly impossible. The 2011 survey, which too had an open-ended question on caste, reportedly threw up an astounding 46 lakh entries.

Sociologist Satish Deshpande, who has written extensively on caste and has been advocating for counting it since the 2001 census, called this a “planned failure”.

“Variations of spellings alone will account for tens of thousands of entries,” he said. “It is quite tragic that a deliberate attempt is being made to prevent usable data from coming out.”

In addition to spelling errors, an open-ended question about caste is also likely to lead to members of the same community identifying themselves using different caste names. In a news conference on August 17, Anil Jaihind, chairperson of the Congress party’s Other Backward Classes department, illustrated this using the example of carpenters from his home state of Haryana.

“Some from this caste identify themselves as Badhais, while others prefer Jangid,” he said. “Yet others in the same caste group go by Jangda, Khati, Dhiman, Suthar, Tarkhan, Ramgarhia and Vishwakarma.”

Counting India: This is the first in a special Scroll series tracking the census, being held after 15 years.

The alternative to an open-ended question, Deshpande suggested, was to have a drop-down list of caste names which were already available with the state. Respondents could chose their caste from it. For those who do not find their caste on this list, an “Other” option could be included, the sociologist added. Those choosing “Other” could state their caste in response to a follow-up question.

“This data can then be rationalised at the regional level by forming expert committees, as is done for the language, religion and occupation data collected in the census,” he recommended.

In the absence of a drop-down list, though, this analysis will have to be done for all responses. Activist-politician Yogendra Yadav contended that the design of the census was a clear sign that the Modi government lacked the “political will” to count caste.

“When they don’t even have the political will for putting together a drop-down list, how will they find the political will to analyse the findings?” he asked. “The whole point is to make the data useless. It is designed to fail.”

Quota wars

For many activists, this is not just a problem of shoddy data collection, but a question of social justice for the Other Backward Classes.

They worry that this census will not reflect the group’s actual share in the population because it does not recognise them as a distinct category. As mentioned earlier, enumerators will only ask respondents whether they belong to the Scheduled Castes or the Scheduled Tribes, and not the Other Backward Classes.

In 1980, the Mandal Commission had estimated that the Other Backward Classes made up 52% of India’s population. That is why some Opposition parties have long held that the current 27% quota for them in government jobs and educational institutions is inadequate.

The Congress, too, has come around to this view in recent years with its leader, Rahul Gandhi, promising to remove the Supreme Court’s 50% cap on reservations if voted to power. But doing so will require irrefutable data to get past judicial scrutiny, activists say.

“The Supreme Court keeps asking for data,” complained Sushil Gautam, an Ambedkarite activist from Meerut in Uttar Pradesh. “The data does not exist because a proper caste census has never been done. And so laws favouring the OBCs are not enacted even though they vote for the Bharatiya Janata Party in big numbers.”

Gautam went so far as to allege that the BJP was never sincere about conducting a caste census. It had made a U-turn on the issue, he claimed, only because it had its eyes set on Bihar, where Assembly elections were held in November.

The state had already carried out a caste survey, which established that the Other Backward Classes accounted for over 63% of its population. To win the favour of such a substantial segment of the electorate in Bihar, the saffron party felt compelled to say that it would hold a nationwide caste census, Gautam suggested. Several spokespersons from the BJP declined to answer Scroll’s questions for this story.

Could the supposedly faulty design of the census lead to political backlash from the Other Backward Classes? Jaihind of the Congress party was certain that it would. The Opposition outfit plans to launch “a programme” to take this issue to voters soon, he told Scroll.

Activists from the community, however, were less optimistic. “If the Other Backward Classes were like the Dalits, they would have hit the streets and forced the government’s hand,” said Dharmendra Kushwah, a Gwalior-based lawyer and a core committee member of the OBC Mahasabha. “This community is fast asleep, or rather intoxicated. It does not care about rights.”

In his view, the Modi government had “betrayed” the Other Backward Classes by not treating them at par with the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes in the census. The open-ended caste question will “make it hard” for people to draw conclusions from the census, he alleged.

Enter AI

Hard is not the same as impossible, though, if Praveen Chakravarty, a Rajya Sabha MP from the Congress, were to be believed. The former investment banker heads the grand old party’s data analytics department and served as convenor of an 11-member committee of experts that studied the Telangana caste survey data.

While Chakravarty, too, agreed that drop-down lists of castes helped produce “structured” data, he contended that their absence would not completely foreclose the possibility of analysis.

“For example, if you declared your caste as ‘Rajput’ and another person said ‘Rejput’, artificial intelligence today would say that these two are the same,” he explained. “But back in 2011, they would have been counted as two different castes. So yes, it’s a bad idea to leave it open, but not as bad as it was in 2011.”

Deshpande, the sociologist, also stated that cleaning up the data was possible, but would need a lot of work. A completely open-ended caste question with no drop-down list “multiplies the work that we have to do”, he complained. For him, however, the caste census had less to do with data and more to do with the political will for social justice in India, or the lack thereof.

“You could say that this is a repeat of 2011,” he rued. “Clearly, this is a deliberate undermining by the government of the government’s own programme. These are features, not bugs. They tell you the caste-marked character of governance.”

Former Indian diplomat Navdeep Suri has raised concerns about the verification process under the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls.

Suri, a retired Indian Foreign Services officer, went through the process in Punjab. It is among the 16 states where the voter roll revision is being carried out in the third phase of SIR.

In a social media post, Suri said that he had to submit his voter ID and Aadhaar card to a booth level officer and “was assured that everything is in order”.

He said that he was later informed that some of his details did not match the electoral rolls from 2003, which are being used to verify voters during the exercise.

“Spoke with booth level officer, was told that I should come and collect the notice,” he said in the post. “And then come again with unspecified documents that show I am an Indian citizen.”

He added: “Replied that I was not in India in 2003, so they have asked for passport as proof.”

.@ECISVEEP
I happen to have documents other than voter ID and Aadhaar card. But can’t help asking:
If I have trouble establishing my citizenship after representing India in three countries, what’s the fate of the common citizen?
Ease of Living, I presume!

— Navdeep Suri (@navdeepsuri) August 23, 2026

Suri said that he was able to provide other forms of identification in addition to his voter ID and Aadhaar card.

“But can’t help asking: If I have trouble establishing my citizenship after representing India in three countries, what’s the fate of the common citizen?”

Suri has served as India’s high commissioner to Australia and ambassador to the United Arab Emirates and Egypt.

Voter roll revision

In 2025, the first phase of the exercise was conducted in Bihar. It was extended to 12 states and Union Territories in the second phase in late 2025 and the first half of 2026.

Since it began, concerns have been raised that the revision could eliminate genuine voters from the rolls and even shape electoral outcomes, as Scroll has reported.

In May, the Supreme Court upheld the legality of the revision, but said that the exercise does not mean that the Election Commission can decide on whether the person is an Indian citizen.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Also read: Scroll’s SIR experience is a microcosm of what urban India is facing

An estimated 8.7 crore Indians aged 15 to 29 are not studying, working or undergoing training, said a report by the NITI Aayog, the main public policy think tank of the Union government.

The report, titled Reimagining Skilling for Viksit Bharat@2047, is based on data from the 78th round of the National Sample Survey conducted in 2021. It classifies India’s workforce and learners into five categories: those attending school, going for tertiary education, involved in formal and informal work, women and those not in education, employment and training, or the NEET youth.

“NEET youth are constrained by the absence of income and the sunk cost of prior education,” said the report. “Students often cannot layer paid skilling onto existing financial commitments.”

This group, along with women, needs affordable or subsidised training and financial support, underlined the NITI Aayog. It also said that skilling programmes should be linked to the demand of emerging sectors and self-employment opportunities.

“Across segments, the ability to combine learning with earning remains a central requirement,” it said.

The report further pointed out that only 8.25% of persons who have graduated from college are employed in roles aligned with their qualifications.

“Limited exposure to practical learning and industry-aligned training continues to constrain employability, even among formally educated youth,” it said.

It added that students from low-income households often cannot afford to pay for additional skilling alongside college expenses. It is because of this that many take up whatever work provides a stable income after graduation, even when it is low-paying, said the NITI Aayog.

Those who are unable to do so struggle to enter the workforce and become NEET, said the report.

To address this, skill development programmes should be introduced in schools, rather than treating it as an option after formal education, said the NITI Aayog. It added that Universal General Employability and Entrepreneurship Skills should be taught from Class 6 to Class 12, along with structured vocational pathways from Class 9.

Edited by Sneha.

On the evening of February 19, 58-year-old Anbukarasi sat alone in the usually bustling marketplace at the coconut grove in Puducherry’s Eden beach. Until a couple of days earlier, local residents were running temporary stalls selling fried fish, boiled corn, cucumbers, mangoes, toys and hats to tourists visiting the beach.

But on Sunday, February 15, the commissioner of the Ariyankuppam Commune Panchayat issued an eviction notice demanding that the stall owners vacate the area by Monday. On Tuesday, the police came and started pulling the tarpaulins off the 50-odd stalls. “They took about a hundred of us to the police station at Ariyankuppam,” said Anbukarasi, “We asked them to not remove the shops and that this is our only livelihood and we need our beach.”

After some negotiation and the involvement of a local legislator, the stall owners were given an extension till the 19th. While most stall owners left by then, Anbukarasi stayed put, urging every visitor to buy the cucumbers and boiled corn that she was selling. “I’m making the most of the three days that I am allowed to run my shop,” she said. “This is my only source of income other than the Rs 2,500 [a month] I get from the government as a widow’s pension.”

The eviction has impacted the livelihoods of all the stall owners in the village. Half of them managed to get stalls near the parking area, while the other half, like Anbukarasi, have no alternative. And all of them say they are facing severe financial loss.

This eviction was part of the beach’s compliance under the “Blue Flag” certification, based on 33 criteria that focus on environment education, water quality, beach management and safety. In 2019, the Indian government had selected 13 beaches for “development of facilities and infrastructure” to prepare them for the certification.

ISignal visited three Blue Flag-certified beaches – Eden in Puducherry, Kappad in Kerala and Padubidri in Karnataka – between February and July 2026, and found that these projects are leading to violation of coastal regulations, some of which are later legitimised through post-facto orders, and has also led to alienation of local communities from public beaches, disrupting their livelihood.

Experts warn that these activities are leading to irreversible changes to the sensitive systems.

ISignal has reached out to the governments of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Puducherry, and the Union government, for comment. We will update this report when we receive responses.

What are Blue-Flag beaches?

The Union government developed Eden Beach as an eco-tourism project. It is managed by a Beach Management Committee that includes an official from the tourism department, the district collector and a local body representative. Day-to-day operations are overseen by a beach manager who reports to the tourism department. In 2021, it received the “Blue Flag” certification from the Denmark-based nonprofit called the Foundation for Environment Education.

The Society of Integrated Coastal Management, an environment ministry agency, issued tenders for infrastructure development with funding from World Bank’s Integrated Coastal Zone Management Project. The government launched a programme called the Beach Environment & Aesthetics Management Services to facilitate the development of these beaches.

The prime objective of the Beach Environment & Aesthetics Management Services programme, as stated by the government, was to “protect and conserve the pristine coastal and marine ecosystems through holistic management of the resources”. The government’s push to get more beaches this certification is also to boost local economies, in line with its “blue economy” policies that aim to sustainably extract the most economic value from ocean resources.

One of the criteria for Blue Flag certification is that the local authority or the beach operator must comply with all laws and regulations affecting the location and operation of the beach. India’s coasts are governed by the Coastal Zone Regulation notification of the Environment Protection Act 1986.

Since the notification was introduced in 1991, it has been amended over two dozen times, steadily diluting the level of protection given to the coast. The latest notification, passed in 2019 opened up the coast for eco-tourism projects on beaches and “temporary facilities” in no-development zones.

It divides the land upto 500 metres from the High Tide Line into seven different categories and lists the activities that are prohibited in these areas. They are implemented using Coastal Zone Management Plans which demarcate these areas and define where the High Tide Line falls.

Based on the ecosensitivity of the area and other features like population density, level of urbanisation and infrastructure facilities, different kinds of activities are permitted on different beaches.

For example, Eden beach is in an environmentally critical and eco-sensitive area, so fewer activities are permitted there. Padubidri beach is in a “relatively undisturbed” area and hence is comparatively less protected. Kappad falls under a developed land area that is close to the shoreline, receiving the least amount of protection.

However, irrespective of categories, the notification only allows “temporary facilities” for tourism purposes. And even that is dependent on being marked as such in the tourism plan of the Coastal Zone Management Plans, and needs to be at least 10 metres from the High Tide Line.

Environmental violations

Until March 2018, the southern end of Padubidri beach looked like a lush green forested patch sandwiched between the Kamini river and the Arabian Sea.

By November, most of the green cover in the area had disappeared and by March 2020, a portion of the river had been reclaimed to set up a parking lot, solar panel, solid waste management plant and a grey water treatment plant.

Such concretised reclamation is a violation of the Coastal Zone Regulation notification. No one used to visit the end-point beach, as it is called, said Vijaya Shetty, the beach manager. “Only fishing communities used to visit it, there was not even a road,” he added. Infrastructure development began in 2018, he said, with funding from the Union government under the supervision of the Society of Integrated Coastal Management.

“Initially we faced some issues with CRZ [Coastal Zone Regulation] norms, especially with construction of concrete pillars but that was later resolved by the central government by giving relaxations to all Blue Flag beaches,” said Shetty.

The relaxation that Shetty refers to is a July 2019 order by the environment ministry allowing 12 types of structures and facilities within 10 metres of the High Tide Line in the selected beaches. But the reclamation at Padubidri violates this relaxation order as well by overshooting the HTL and encroaching the Kamini river and the inter-tidal area.

“The protective provisions of the notification are seldom applied. Relaxing, diluting provisions are always applied, and violations are seldom questioned,” said Nityanand Jayaraman, an independent journalist and social activist.

In January 2020, the Union government issued another order superseding the July 2019 one. This order broadened the scope of permitted activities by listing 17 facilities and any “Other associated facilities or infrastructure, as per requirements of Blue Flag Certification”. It also removed the specifications mentioned in the 2019 order on what each of these facilities should be composed of.

For example, the 2019 order said that the pathway to the bathing zone has to be made of interlinking paver blocks, while the 2020 order changed it to just “Beach access pathways”. In 2021, the Bombay High Court, while hearing a Public Interest Litigation against this order with reference to Miramar beach, had called the phrasing of “other associated facilities or infrastructure” open-ended.

It also commented on how the 2020 order “quite consciously omits reference to temporary structures”, in reference to treatment plants for grey water and solid waste.

This lack of specification and ambiguity in the notice is one of the reasons why violations happen, said an official from Puducherry Coastal Zone Management Authority who did not wish to be named. “Most of the inferencing happens on the ground and if you look at permanent or temporary, there is no definition,” they said.

To illustrate, they said, “If I am laying the ground in concrete but using thatched roof and green materials for the rest of the structure, can that be treated as temporary or permanent?”

In 2017, when the Eden beach project received Coastal Zone Regulation clearance, the conditions were that the structures have to be made of eco-friendly materials that are resilient to natural disasters like cyclones, without disturbing sand dunes or any other eco-sensitive areas and in conformity with the provisions of the Coastal Zone Regulation notification 2011, that was applicable then.

The residents from Chinna Veerampattinam village, where Eden Beach is located, approached the National Green Tribunal alleging that the beach construction violated Coastal Zone Regulation norms after a private company started constructing a resto-bar.

Based on the tribunal’s order, the Regional Coastal Zone Management Committee, Puducherry conducted an inspection in December 2025 and found that three sets of permanent structures including the entry archway were constructed before 2019. It also found construction on a part of the sand dunes – which receive maximum level of protection under Coastal Zone Regulation . The Puducherry Coastal Zone Management Authority directive was issued based on this inspection report.

In March 2026, the Puducherry Coastal Zone Management Authority issued a directive to remove unauthorised construction at Eden Beach, including on sand dunes.

The directive ordered removal of the tile work laid down for opening the restaurant and removing unauthorised buildings on sand dunes and restoration of the area. In July, when ISignal visited the beach, the walls of the restaurant collapsed from erosion while the tile work remained. The National Green Tribunal is still hearing the case.

“Because of the vagueness in the CRZ, municipalities and local governments that want to implement these projects can just go ahead and do it and then the violation will have to be questioned later,” said Nityanand.

“A dune that is gone is gone. Often when they demolish such construction, they leave the debris there. The quality of the dune has been destroyed already,” said Nityanand.

Public beaches behind paywalls

India’s beaches are generally very dynamic ecosystems, said Naveen Namboothri, Programme Head at Dakshin, a non-governmental organisation that works extensively on coastal conservation and community wellbeing.

“Coasts always need some buffer space. When there is a strong monsoon, a lot of the beaches can get eroded, and then they come back also if there's sufficient sediment supply,” he said, adding how most beaches constantly work on this cycle of erosion and accretion.

And any construction disrupting this cycle not just has ecological impacts but also economic ones, he said, “Because those constructions have to be constantly maintained and constantly repaired.”

In both Kappad and Eden, concrete platforms that were constructed as the base of the beach pathways had broken off and were visibly eroded.

“This had fallen the last time there were strong winds and it was replaced. It will fall again and will have to be replaced. This cycle has repeated at least 14-15 times already,” said 64-year-old Nasar Kappad while pointing at a tin roof above a resting area in Kappad Blue Flag beach.

Over the next 20 minutes, Nasar pointed at each piece of infrastructure that has either corroded or become defunct. “None of the lights work, the metal structure propping up the solar panels corroded and fell. Those are now lying in a corner as scrap metal,” he said, adding how none of the permanent infrastructure was made to last.

“Two-three years ago, the beach was really good. But now everything has fallen apart,” said one of the women workers responsible for cleaning the beach. The workers showed the now-defunct solid waste management machine. “The waste here is often mixed with heavy wet sand. The machine helped dry all the waste and segregate it from the sand. But it has been defunct for a while now,” another worker said.

When asked what is the most challenging part of managing the beach, Padubidri beach manager Shetty said maintaining the infrastructure. “Because of the salt water, iron corrodes easily, so all the infrastructure requires frequent replacement and maintenance,” he said.

Kappad beach was completely off-grid, relying on solar panels for electricity. Since the collapse of the solar panels, the beach has started having power cuts, which has impacted the functioning of toilets and showers, said beach manager Gireesh Babu. “The water tank is at the ground level and works with a power motor. So when there is no electricity, there is no water supply. We are in the process of building an overhead water tank.”

Blue flag is not a project but a standard, said Shriji Kurup, the National Operator of Blue Flag India and Programme Director at the Centre for Environment Education. “The Blue Flag idea is to make the beach as simple as possible and pristine, not infrastructure-heavy.”

He said that the initial batch of beaches which include all the ones ISignal visited were developed as part of the Beach Environment & Aesthetics Management Services programme and have a similar model of infrastructure development, adding that newer projects such as the one in Silver beach in Tamil Nadu’s Cuddalore and Chal beach in Kerala’s Kannur are much simpler.

The programme has been discontinued, it was last mentioned in the 2021-22 annual report of the environment ministry. The initial World Bank ICZM project that supported these beach development projects ended in 2020.

In 2018, the bank announced the Enhancing Coastal and Ocean Resource Efficiency, or ENCORE, project with a total cost of $360 million. Between December 2019 and January 2020, SICOM issued notices seeking bids to develop a total of 24 beaches – four each in Karnataka, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu.

By the time that project ended, Society of Integrated Coastal Management was de-registered and was merged with the National Centre for Sustainable Coastal Management. The next round of World Bank funding for these blue flag projects came through the Strengthening Coastal Resilience and the Economy Project (SHORE) programme. Announced in 2023, with a total project cost of $240 million, the programme is being piloted in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu as K-SHORE and TN-SHORE respectively.

While Karnataka and Tamil Nadu have announced plans to develop 11 and six beaches respectively as part of this programme, there is no clarity on what kind of infrastructure would be installed at these beaches.

Besides infrastructure, a key expense for these beach projects is waste management. Cleanliness and waste management are some of the most important criteria for Blue Flag. Most of the staff hired at Kappad and Padubidri are cleaning staff. Moreover, handling the waste is cost-intensive, said Babu from Kappad.

“We have to pay the panchayat Rs 100 per kilogram to handle the plastic waste. A bigger expense is handling the needles that fall from the Casuarina trees. For handling one load of the needles, accumulated in a few days, we have to pay Rs 2,000,” he said.

The only way to pay the salaries and generate revenue for the recurring costs is to charge an entry fee, said the beach managers of both Kappad and Padubidri. “We are able to self-sustain only because of the fees that we charge. This is the only beach that is able to manage its costs with the revenue it generates,” said Shetty from Padubidri.

But the entry fees and restricted access to these once open beaches have changed people’s relationship with the coast.

Local communities sidelined

In November 2020, when the Kappad beach was being reopened after the Covid-19 lockdown, the District Tourism Promotion Council announced an entry fee of Rs 50. Immediately, a group of local residents rallied and protested against the move.

“I grew up running around on this beach. I refuse to pay to access it,” said 54-year-old Noushad (he uses one name), a fisherman from Kappad. The protests led to slashing of the fee to Rs 25 for the general public and Rs 10 for residents of the Chemanchery Panchayat. Moreover, in practice, residents of the nearby villages are able to access the beach for free.

This was not the only contention local residents had with the Blue Flag beach project in Kappad. Earlier, the project was planned on another beach, around a kilometre north. But local fishing communities protested and moved the beach to its current location. “That is an important area for small fishers like us. We park our boats there, so we did not want to lose that,” said Noushad.

India’s beaches are important common spaces for coastal communities and are collectively managed by the communities. Blue-flag beach development projects warp this management of commons, said Nityanand, adding how the beach is entrusted to a Beach Management Committee that has elected local body representatives, members of the government and district administrators.

“So all of a sudden, the space that people have been using for their livelihood, for storing your gear, children playing gets transferred to a committee in which they don't have a voice. Their voice will have to be mediated through an elected representative who can have a variety of interests and might not be from the fishing community,” said Nityanand.

At the Kappad blue flag beach, a small section at the northern end of the beach remains outside the purview of the project. As the sun started setting, the Blue Flag beach became deserted and people started trickling into this open stretch. “The reason we can sit here freely is because these children fought for it,” said Abdul Khader, a resident pointing at boys who were playing football on the beach, “They did not want to lose their playground.”

The blue flag certification is a system that works in countries where ample unclaimed beach spaces are available and there’s not much contestation over coastal commons, said Naveen from Dakshin, “Bringing similar models to coastline of India absolutely makes no sense. The Indian government is building alternative certification models that take local contexts into account. On such committees, we have always pushed for beach management committees that’s run and operated by local fishing communities, where their interests are also taken care of and benefits of tourism go back to the communities.”

While the Coastal Zone Regulation notification refers to the traditional rights and customary use of communities, it falls short in protecting communities’ access to these spaces. This has prompted a nationwide demand for a comprehensive Coastal Rights Act.

With respect to Blue Flag beach projects, the government’s January 2020 order providing Coastal Zone Regulation relaxations continues to be the prominent legal framework. In addition to allowing certain facilities, it also does away with the requirement for a public notice for such projects.

Rules under the the Environment Protection Act 1986 say that the Union government must issue notice before imposing any prohibition or restrictions, but a subsequent amendment adds an exception: This requirement for notice can be dispensed with if it is in public interest. The January 2020 order relies on this exception to exclude Blue Flag beach projects from the need for a public notice.

This was the main contention of the PIL filed with the Bombay High Court by Goan residents. The court quashed the order with respect to the Miramar beach and said that dispensing with the public notice has deprived the stakeholders of valuable opportunity of filing their objections.

The order also does not address existing usage of the coast by local communities. At Eden beach, residents had been operating temporary stalls for over two decades, long before it was developed. But the October 2025 inspection lists 43 food stalls among the list of violations citing that it is not permitted as per the 2020 order. It recommended shifting them to another place.

For local stall owners, the location mattered. “The business was good there. It was cool and breezy. People stayed for long enjoying the view and hence ate more,” said 38-year-old Shobana T, who along with her husband Dinakaran G runs a fried fish stall. After the eviction, the couple, like many others, shifted to a space outside the beach near the parking area. “Here, people just walk through hurriedly and don’t stop. Also, these tin roofs and walls make it really hot, so people don’t want to eat much,” said Dinakaran.

In addition to “preserving the coast”, these projects are meant to serve as a source of income for local communities and boost local economies. But other than providing employment to the cleaning staff and lifeguards, they have barely helped local communities.

While the 2020 order does not list cafes or business stalls as permitted facilities, all the beaches have some. At Eden beach, right in the middle of the coconut grove is an air-conditioned glass box with massage chairs and a fish spa and a children’s adventure park, both lie largely defunct. Padubidri has a boating set-up near the Kamini riverfront and all three have cafes or restaurants.

The only way to operate these is to win the bid for the tender, which can often be prohibitive. In Padubidri, beach supervisor Kiran Karkera’s brother operates the boating set-up. He said that it is not profitable at all, “He won the online bid for Rs 13 lakh a year but there is not that much business. After paying parking fees and entry fees, people do not want to spend another Rs 200-300 for boating.”

The intention is not to keep locals out, but to keep anything that is not a capitalised business out, said Nityanand, “An owner-operated small stall where the family puts in the labour and keeps the surplus is not seen as a legitimate form of business, the only legitimate form of business will have to be incorporated and has to be set valid within the capital economy, and that's the only thing that is permitted.”

In 2024, when Anbukarasi’s daughter urged her to set up the stall, she had to borrow money. “Over the next year, the business was good. I was earning between Rs 300 and 500 every day,” she said. She had managed to pay off her loan and in February had borrowed another Rs 30,000 to replenish her stock. “All of that is lying at home, rotting. All I want is my stall back,” she said.

Shreya Raman is an independent journalist and a resident at the Climate Change Media Hub at the Asian College of Journalism.

This article first appeared on ISignal, a data-driven and public-interest journalism non-profit.

The Maharashtra Transport Department has issued notices to 777 drivers for lacking practical knowledge of Marathi, The Hindu quoted unidentified officials as saying on Saturday.

A total of 5,211 drivers were tested during a statewide inspection campaign that began on August 20, including 3,942 in Mumbai. On the third day of the campaign, drivers found to lack functional knowledge of Marathi were served notices and given one month to learn the language.

The inspection campaign began after the August 15 deadline for taxi and auto-rickshaw drivers to acquire functional knowledge of Marathi had expired.

Transport Minister Pratap Sarnaik said that drivers are being given sufficient time to learn Marathi, the newspaper reported.

He added: “Strict action will be taken against those who do not follow the rules even after the given deadline.”

On April 14, the state government made it mandatory for all licensed taxi and auto-rickshaw drivers to have a basic knowledge of Marathi from May 1. However, on April 29, it deferred the implementation of the decision until August 15.

Transport Minister Pratap Sarnaik had said in July that licences of taxi and auto-rickshaw drivers who fail to clear a Marathi language test will be cancelled from August 16.

On August 12, he said that the Marathi language requirement will also apply to those working with Ola, Uber and Rapido.

The Regional Transport Office has deployed marshals to take exams on roads, rickshaw stands and junctions, the newspaper quoted the Transport Department as saying.

“Where do you want to go?”, “Please start the meter” and “Do you have change?” are among the questions and statements being asked by the marshals.

In 2025, several attacks were reported in Maharashtra on persons for not speaking or allegedly insulting Marathi.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Karnataka Food Safety and Drug Administration department has banned the manufacture and sale of analogue or non-dairy paneer marketed as paneer in the state for one year, the Hindustan Times reported.

Analogue paneer is a non-dairy or partially synthetic substitute for paneer. It replaces milk fat and milk solids with cheaper vegetable oils, making the dairy products cheaper.

A notification issued on August 17 prohibits the processing, packaging, storage, transportation, distribution and wholesale or retail sale of analogue paneer in the interest of public health.

The ban also applies to food business operators that use analogue paneer as an ingredient. Restaurants, food manufacturers, caterers and other food establishments have been prohibited from using, storing, supplying or selling such products in food preparation.

However, the notification does not cover standardised food products for which the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India has prescribed separate quality standards. Products such as frozen desserts, processed cheese and mixed-fat spreads, which have their own recognised standards, are excluded from the ban.

The Food Safety Division said enforcement measures would be carried out across Karnataka to ensure compliance with the order.

On July 30, Maharashtra banned the production and sale of analogue paneer for one year, citing public health concerns.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Three first information reports were filed against 14 identified and more than 200 unidentified persons on Saturday in connection with clashes between the police and student protesters a day earlier, PTI quoted Ranchi Superintendent of Police Paras Rana as saying.

In neighbouring Hazaribagh district, an FIR was registered against 200 identified and 500 unidentified persons for allegedly clashing with the police, The New Indian Express reported.

Under the banner of the Jharkhand Public Service Commission-Jharkhand Staff Selection Commission Reforms Manch, students had staged a protest on Friday against the Jharkhand High Court’s stay on the cancellation of recruitment appointments.

The protesters accused the state government of “deceiving” and “betraying” job aspirants.

They tried to burn effigies of Chief Minister Hemant Soren and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi in Ranchi, leading to clashes with police and Jharkhand Mukti Morcha workers.

The Mahagathbandhan alliance, led by Soren’s Jharkhand Mukti Morcha and comprising the Congress, Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation, is in power in Jharkhand.

On Saturday, the police in Ranchi registered FIRs against the protesters for allegedly obstructing government work, deviating from the prescribed route for the procession and clashing with the police.

Students in Jharkhand had been protesting since July 25 against alleged irregularities in the conduct of competitive examinations for government jobs.

They called off their agitation after the Jharkhand government cancelled 44 examinations conducted since 2014 by the Jharkhand Staff Selection Commission and the Jharkhand Public Service Commission through testing firm TSR Data Processing Private Limited.

Later, candidates who had cleared some of the examinations approached the Jharkhand High Court, challenging the state government’s decision.

On Thursday, the High Court stayed the state government’s decision to cancel the 11th to 13th Jharkhand Public Service Commission Combined Civil Services examinations and the Food Safety Officer exam.

The court also directed candidates selected through the examinations to resume their duties immediately.

Following this, student leaders accused the state government of failing to effectively defend its decisions before the High Court.

Edited by Sneha.

One afternoon in 1907, a young accountant named Chandrasekhar Venkata Raman walked into the laboratory of the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science at 210 Bowbazar Street in Calcutta.

Though he had a passion for the sciences, colonial India offered no stable careers in the field, so Raman had joined the Indian Finance Service.

But after work, Raman started a series of pathbreaking experiments – first in sound, then in optics – at the laboratory of the IACS, an institution that had been established just over three decades earlier specifically to popularise science and encourage Indians to conduct research at a time when such opportunities were scarce.

Soon, Raman (who would go on to become the secretary of the IACS) along with his associate KS Krishnan started experiments related to light. The phenomenon he recorded, where light changes its wavelength when scattered by molecules of a liquid, is called Raman Effect.

In 1930, this work earned Raman the Nobel Prize in Science, making him the first person from Asia to win this award.

Raman’s illustrious career was the fulfillment of the dream of Dr Mahendralal Sircar, who had started the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science on July 29, 1876, with an express ambition: “to invite, encourage and enable the natives of India to cultivate science in all its departs”.

The story of the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science offers a snapshot of the tireless efforts of Sircar and others in 19th-century India to create a self-reliant scientific culture that would allow the subcontinent to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the rest of the world.

When Sircar died in Calcutta on February 23, 1904, the obituaries were effusive.

“It is no exaggeration to say that he was the father of whatever scientific spirit we find in New India,” wrote Banwarilal Chaudhury in New India on April 27, 1904. “Here was a Caesar. When comes such another?”

A medical doctor by profession, Sircar firmly believed that God’s great gift to humankind was the power of observation and reasoning, to be applied to the material world.

On Sunday afternoons, he would invite friends over to his home in North Calcutta, for discussions on science at which he would conduct demonstrations about heat, electricity and magnetism.

Sircar strongly felt that ordinary Indians should have a space for experimentation that should be indigenously managed, free of the control of the colonial government.

“We want an institution where lectures in scientific subjects will be systematically delivered and not only illustrative experiments performed by the lecturers, but the audience should be invited and taught to perform themselves,” he wrote in 1869. “And we wish that this institution be entirely under native management and control.”

Concepts of western science had begun to circulate in Bengal through popular journals from the beginning of the 19th century. As early as 1818, the Bengali periodical Digdarshan, published by the Serampore Mission Press, carried news of scientific discoveries made in Europe.

The journal Pashavali, established in 1822, carried illustrated articles on nature and the workings of the human body. In the magazine Jnanodaya, the editor Krishnadhan Mitra published articles on natural science to challenge deep-rooted superstition.

As writings on science in Bengali journals were slowly picking up, Akshay Kumar Dutt appeared in the scene. In 1840, he joined the Tattwabodhini Sabha or Truth-Propagating Society that had been started by reformer Devendranath Tagore, the father of writer Rabindranath Tagore.

In 1843, Dutt became the editor of the Sabha’s journal Tattwabodhini Patrika. Through his sustained advocacy, the journal became a powerful vehicle to propagate scientific ideas.

Dutt promoted evidence-based scientific rationalism, arguing that understanding nature and physical laws was just as important as spiritual contemplation.

Dutt’s essays helped the Bengali reading public, for the first time, to gain an understanding of the diurnal movement of the sun and the rhythms of season change. He developed a modern scientific vocabulary in the Bengali language to make complex scientific concepts understandable to the lay reader.

Already, Indians were advocating for the study of science in the country.

Among them was the reformer Raja Rammohun Roy, who contended that India’s path to modernity lay through the study of science.

In 1823, he wrote to the governor general, Lord Amherst, expressing the hope that European teachers would be employed to teach Indians about subjects such as mathematics, natural philosophy, chemistry and anatomy. These disciplines, he said, had carried Europe “to a degree of perfection that has raised them above the inhabitants of other parts of the world”.

But Roy’s appeal went largely unheeded. When the University of Calcutta was established in 1857, it did not have any science facilities. In Bengal, only the Calcutta Medical College, established in 1835, had a chemistry laboratory and a dissection room.

When Madhusudan Gupta, a student in the first batch of the Medical College, dissected a human corpse in 1836, the event was lauded with a 50-gun salute. An Indian had at last overcome the age-old superstition against touching human remains.

It was a turning point in the study of medicine in India. Gupta silenced his detractors by citing passages from the Sanskrit medical text Sushrut Samhita, to prove that anatomical examination had existed in ancient India.

Mahendralal Sircar as a student of the medical college dissected human cadavers too. He took advantage of the laboratory facilities of the Medical College to carry out scientific experiments.

But the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science was the country’s first indigenous research institute for modern science.

Instruments were purchased with generous donations from “native” science enthusiasts. To maintain the laboratory and to fund the salaries of laboratory assistants, several people paid monthly subscriptions of Rs 25.

Though Sircar had a thriving medical practice, he found time to make sure that the instruments in the association’s laboratory were in perfect working order.

He hoped that young Indians would walk into the laboratory and unlock the mysteries of nature through experiments.

The novelist Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay was an enthusiastic supporter of the campaign to spread modern science. After the Association was established in 1876, he introduced a regular column called “Vigyan Rahasya” in his journal, Bangadarshan. Chattopadhyay himself wrote articles on physics, chemistry, and astronomy to demystify advanced concepts for ordinary people.

At the IACS, lecture-demonstrations were held regularly to acquaint laypeople with the latest developments in science. Starting from 1885, Fr Eugene Lafont, the rector of St. Xavier’s College and vice president of the IACS, gave lectures on topics of fundamental science such as the “Properties of Gases”, “Velocity of Light and Means of Measuring it”. At one session in 1891, he elaborated on technological developments such as Edison’s phonograph. In 1898-’99, he spoke of experiments with colour photography.

In July, 1900, Sircar gave a lecture-demonstrations on wireless telegraphy and pointed out the similarities and differences in Jagadish Bose’s experimental set up and those of the Italian engineer Guglielmo Marconi. He also gave an elaborate talk on X-rays and called it “new photography”.

The day after Mahendralal Sircar died in 1904, the Hindu Patriot wrote: “Dr Sircar’s one view, one aim, one ambition was to instill into his lagging countrymen’s minds, a genuine desire for scientific research.”

One hundred and fifty years after he set up the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, the institution has flourished. It has grown into a deemed university located in Jadavpur with more than 400 research students and 67 faculty members who specialise in the physical sciences, chemical sciences, biological sciences, material sciences, mathematical and computational sciences and applied and interdisciplinary sciences.

“The present times are vibrant and filled with enormous possibilities,” said Kalobaran Maiti, the institute’s director. “It puts the new generation in a unique position to invent and innovate.”

Subha Das Mollick is a documentary filmmaker working in Kolkata. She also teaches media studies and film studies.

At a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday, Union ministers were handed report cards. They were not being assessed for their performance as ministers but on how active and effective they have been on social media.

Each minister was ranked based on an evaluation of their social media presence between May 1 and August 15, a period that includes the nationwide youth protests over the alleged irregularities in competitive exams.

Each minister was compared not just with their Cabinet colleagues, but also against leaders of other political parties on platforms such as Instagram, X and Facebook, according to reports.

The parameters included average number of posts per day, engagement per post, the number of likes, number of followers their accounts have and the overall level of public interactions.

The ministers were told to step up their activities on social media and focus more on expanding their presence online.

Not everyone was impressed by this approach. The Modi government, it seemed, was privileging online engagement over real governance. “The priorities of this government are clear,” one social media user wrote. “It’s mostly about propaganda.”

Ministers have public relations teams to handle their social media accounts. But including their online presence in the matrix to evaluate their performance would incentivise them to spend more time recording vertical videos – presumably to the detriment of the many urgent tasks at hand.

The advisory comes at a crucial juncture for the ruling alliance.

For months, it has been clear that its messaging strategy is not working effectively any longer. In March, it responded with characteristic high-handedness, tightening regulations to exert greater control on news online, as this newsletter pointed out at the time.

But with the youth protests in July, it seems to have decided that these tactics alone were ineffective.

Ordering ministers to focus on their social media feeds was only one of several alterations the Bharatiya Janata Party has made to its publicity strategy in recent weeks.

In July, during a Parliament debate on a bill to amend the paper leaks law, the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance fielded younger MPs to put forward the government’s views. The legislators – some actually in their 40s – used slang popular with Gen Z (those born between the late 1990s and 2010) and or Gen Alpha (born between 2010 and 2024) such as “delulu” (delusional) and made “clock it” gestures, although as social media users pointed out, in the wrong context.

In an effort to connect with Gen Z himself, Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the midst of the youth protests in July turned to vertical videos, optimised for the youth-friendly Instagram platform – repeatedly posting late in the night for a demographic that is reputed to be nocturnal.

His videos were roundly mocked and parodied.

For the first time since 2014, a government that once prided itself on setting the narrative is struggling to stay on top of it.

Here is a summary of last week’s top stories.

Opaque money not spent. The Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations Fund had a corpus of Rs 8,452 crore by the end of the financial year 2024-’25, showed audit statements. It reported an expenditure of only Rs 87.8 lakh, mainly towards the PM Cares for Children Scheme. This meant that the fund had utilised only 0.01% of the corpus available in the financial year, social activist Anjali Bhardwaj noted.

During the fiscal year, the fund received more than Rs 1,270 crore in domestic and foreign donations, interest on deposits and refunds from implementing agencies. Nearly 93% of the funds available at the end of the financial year had been held as fixed deposits.

The fund was created in March 2020 as the Covid-19 pandemic started with the objective of being a dedicated national corpus to deal with “any kind of emergency or distress situation”. But Opposition parties have raised questions about its transparency and the need to create the new reserve when the Prime Minister’s National Relief Fund already existed.

Organisational changes. Former Union minister Smriti Irani was appointed as one of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s eight national general secretaries, while Amit Malviya was dropped as the chief of the party’s social media department. Ram Madhav, a leader of the BJP’s parent organisation Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, was named as one of its 13 vice presidents.

Union minister Piyush Goyal will replace Rajesh Agarwal as the party treasurer.

This was part of the first major changes in the Hindutva party’s national leadership since Nitin Nabin became the BJP chief in January.

State of the economy. India has replaced Indonesia as Asia’s least-preferred stock market, Bloomberg quoted a Bank of America survey of fund managers as showing. The Indian stock market has been one of the world’s worst performers this year.

The survey of panellists managing $272 billion in assets between them found that 32% were allocating a smaller share of their portfolios to Indian stocks.

Their biggest concern was that there are not enough listed Indian companies with a strong presence in the artificial intelligence sector. Weak economic growth was the second-biggest concern, followed by the lack of policy reforms to improve the business environment in the country and high valuations of the stocks.

Also on Scroll last week

• How a bureaucrat has forced Maharashtra’s eateries and other food businesses to clean up their act
• Ayodhya land deals yield rich dividends for relatives of politicians
• How adulterated fairness creams led to a surge of mercury poisoning cases in rural Maharashtra
• For weeks, an Assam district stared at drought. Then it got hit by floods
• Why Gen Alpha protests show India’s official school data is unreliable
• Anand Teltumbde: Why after 80 years, ‘polluting’ touch of a Dalit still needs ‘purifying’
• ‘Dimagi naxals’: The freedom to disagree is a political right – and is economically valuable
• ‘Holy cow, filth and squalor’: Why India was unhappy with its image in Sweden in the 1960s
• ‘1942: A Love Story’ review: A treat for the eye and the ear
• ‘A microcosm that reflects a larger reality’: Why small-town crime works for ‘Vadhandhi’

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The police in Maharashtra’s Latur have registered a first information report against Abhijeet Dipke, the founder of the Cockroach Janta Party political campaign, for allegedly entering a government school without permission, threatening teachers and defaming the institution, reported PTI on Saturday.

The FIR was registered on a complaint filed by Sayyed Shamshadbano Khairatali, a teacher at a Zilla Parishad Urdu school. He alleged that Dipke had entered the school in the Jawali area near Ausa, sat among students and asked them several questions. This disrupted education and government work, alleged Khairatali.

Dipke had met the students as part of the political campaign’s nationwide drive to improve the condition of government schools. The Cockroach Janta Party has been sharing videos on social media recorded by its volunteers showing government schools functioning in poor condition in several states.

After visiting the school near Ausa, Dipke shared a video on social media in which students could purportedly be heard saying that they had been brought there from another institution.

In his complaint, Khairatali alleged that Dipke had defamed the school by claiming that students from another institution were made to sit in the classroom before his visit. He also alleged that the Cockroach Janta Party founder threatened to get the teachers suspended.

The FIR against Dipke was filed under Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita sections pertaining to assault or use of criminal force to deter a public servant from discharging their official duty, house trespass, criminal intimidation and criminal defamation, reported PTI.

Counter-FIR in Jaipur

Meanwhile, an FIR was registered against team members of the Cockroach Janta Party that had gone to inspect a government school in Rampura Kanwarpura village of Jaipur’s Bagru Assembly constituency earlier that day.

The team had been assaulted during their visits, with videos shared on social media showing some persons shouting slogans, hitting them with sticks and throwing rocks at their vehicle. The Cockroach Janta Party had alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party sent “goons” to assault its team.

Ashutosh Ranka, the campaign’s co-convener, had said that residents of the village were not involved in violence. He also shared videos on social media, showing that the school in the village had been operating in a buffalo shed for several years. The school building has reportedly been declared unsafe.

A member of the team had filed a complaint and demanded that those responsible for assaulting them should be arrested immediately, reported PTI.

Later on Friday evening, a villager filed a complaint, alleging that Cockroach Janta Party members had intimidated the residents of the area, Rajesh Gautam, the station house officer at Shivdaspura, was quoted as saying by the news agency.

Gautam said the villager had also claimed that children were scared about attending school after the incident.

Following this, Ranka said that the campaign had evidence to prove that who attacked the team were workers of the BJP. “If they also have evidence, let them show it,” he was quoted as saying.

Edited by Sneha.

I first learned to think about ethanol as a fault line in conversations with my friend Joan Martinez Alier, a political ecologist. We met in 1987, drawn together by a shared question: how much energy really goes into producing our food once you count what nature and human labour truly cost?

My own interest was in the energetics of marine fisheries: the input-output balance of energy in that world. Ethanol was one of the clearest examples Alier used of that balance being falsified elsewhere.

Energetics involved converting everything – a litre of diesel, an hour of a fisherman’s labour, a kilogramme of fish – into the same currency: the calories, or kilocalories, of energy each one represents.

Simple bookkeeping can then be done: for every calorie that goes into fishing, how many calories of food come back out? When the return is high, the fishery is productive. When it costs more energy to catch the fish than what the fish give back as food, there is a deficit – even if the market still calls the catch a success.

When I met, Alier he was writing about Brazil, whose ethanol programme, Proálcool, was being celebrated by economists as a triumph of energy planning.

The programme, Alier pointed out, benefited the car-owning fifth of Brazilians. But its costs – water diverted from other uses, land turned over to cane and sugarcane workers whose life expectancy was shortened by brutal harvesting conditions – fell on people who never saw a drop of the fuel they were subsidising with their bodies and their land.

He called this an ecological distribution conflict: where the gains from a resource are captured by one group while the losses are pushed onto another with no voice in the decision.

That framework, which he explained in his book Ecological Economics: Energy, Environment and Society, has stayed with me. It is the lens through which India should look at its own ethanol programme.

There are three hidden ledgers to India’s ethanol push: the diversion of food, the strain on water and land, and the uneven technical burden on the vehicle fleet.

There is, of course, the debate over mileage loss, corroded fuel lines, E10 versus E20. But the central issue is who bears the weight of a policy being sold as a national benefit in a country that remains, by any honest reckoning, one of the hungriest, most polluted and most unequal societies on the planet.

Cleaner mobility is driven by smarter resource management.

Through diversified feedstocks, efficient irrigation, Zero Liquid Discharge (ZLD) distilleries and science-backed practices, India's Ethanol Blended Petrol (EBP) Programme is advancing a more sustainable clean energy… pic.twitter.com/UVGKRS6ZWc

— Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas #MoPNG (@PetroleumMin) August 6, 2026

Food on the altar of fuel

In July, the government told Rajya Sabha that India’s three state-run oil marketing companies had purchased 705.43 crore litres of ethanol up till June 2026, for the ethanol supply year 2025-26, at a cost of Rs 49,577 crore. In the last three years, the oil marketing companies had spent over Rs 1.72 lakh crore (roughly $20.6 billion) procuring ethanol. India also had 501 ethanol distilleries with a capacity approaching 16 billion litres annually.

The government’s defence is that only surplus stocks are being diverted to make ethanol after food-welfare needs are met. This saves precious foreign exchange from being spent on crude oil imports while shielding farmers from price crashes.

But look at the economics of that “surplus”.

The Food Corporation of India procures rice from farmers at roughly Rs 44 per kg. That rice is then sold to ethanol distilleries at around Rs 23 per kg. So public money for food security is subsidising fuel for private vehicles.

Meanwhile, the National Food Security Act underwrites free foodgrains for nearly 80 crore Indians and rice makes up roughly two-thirds of what they receive. Diverting rice toward ethanol, even at the margin, tightens a food system that covers a population larger than Europe.

As maize is pulled into ethanol production as well, farmers are shifting away from pulses and oilseeds – the crops that provide essential nutrition to poor households. The result is a double burden: higher prices for essential food items and greater market volatility. A policy to manage surplus grain is, in practice, reshaping what the country grows and who can afford to eat well.

It is also worth asking who controls this enterprise. India’s ethanol market is a mix of state-owned refineries and private conglomerates. But public-sector oil marketing companies are the sole purchasers of fuel-grade ethanol: they set prices, decide quotas and approve supplies.

When the government sets a blending target, oil marketing companies are obliged to buy the ethanol to meet it, guaranteeing a market for private producers regardless of the social or environmental costs. Private producers capture the profits, public agencies absorb the market risk and the socio-ecological costs are dispersed onto the rest.

Innovation is driving a more sustainable ethanol ecosystem.

Modern ethanol plants are designed to promote resource efficiency through Zero Liquid Discharge (ZLD) systems, process water recycling and reuse. By combining advanced technologies with responsible resource management,… pic.twitter.com/KfXHVlkfIH

— Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas #MoPNG (@PetroleumMin) August 6, 2026

Water, land and bodies

The environmental costs of ethanol add to the food costs.

Here, it helps to separate the two kinds of water sources. Green water is rainfall absorbed directly by soil. Blue water is surface and groundwater drawn for irrigation, which competes with drinking supplies and other demands in a water-stressed country.

On this measure, India’s three main ethanol feedstocks look strikingly different:

Rice: Monsoon rainfall means green water dominates nationally, but western and southern regions rely heavily on blue water pumped from aquifers. In India, it takes between 2,800 cubic metres per tonne and 3,500 cubic meters to produce a tonne of rice – more than double the global average of 1,325.

Sugarcane: Sugarcane, which requires more than 1,500 cubic meters per tonne, relies heavily on blue water drawn continuously from rivers and aquifers in already water-stressed states like Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh.

Maize: Maize in India is the most water-intensive relative to global benchmarks. India’s maize water footprint runs to roughly 2,500 cubic meters per tonne (against a global average of 1,220), largely because low hectare yields require vastly more water to produce a single tonne.

1.58 lakh crore paid to farmers under the Ethanol Blended Petrol Programme from Ethanol Supply Year (ESY) 2014–15 to 31 May 2026.

Transforming farm produce into green fuel, India's ethanol blending programme is strengthening rural livelihoods while advancing the nation's clean… pic.twitter.com/bzmUpoTNvN

— Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas #MoPNG (@PetroleumMin) June 11, 2026

Then there is land. Meeting India’s ethanol targets is expected to require diverting seven million hectares to eight million hectares of cropland. Land conversion on this scale risks pushing agriculture into the margins of forests, releasing stored soil carbon and undoing the climate benefits ethanol is meant to deliver.

Combined with the intensive fertiliser and groundwater use for high-yield farming, India’s ethanol policy is reducing vehicular emissions while piling up ecological debt upstream.

The human cost is severe. Across India’s sugarcane belt, harvesting is done manually, often in punishing heat. Studies document severe heatstroke and chronic kidney disease among agricultural labourers, a heavy health penalty that is omitted from cost-benefit analyses.

Sugarcane cutting exacts such a severe physical toll that a true thermodynamic ledger must account for the energy cost of replacing the workforce – the premature deaths, chronic illness and bodies worn out before their time.

The technical burden

The mechanical impact of ethanol similarly maps onto India’s socio-economic fractures.

The impact of ethanol on an engine depends on whether its fuel system can automatically adjust to ethanol's lower energy density and corrosive properties. Vehicles built after April 2023 feature the Electronic Fuel Injection and upgraded materials, which means they adapt better to ethanol’s lower energy density and corrosive properties, suffering a modest 2% to 5% drop in efficiency.

Older, carburetted vehicles cannot adjust. Their mileage drops by 15% to 20% while fuel lines swell and crack, and carburettors corrode, leaving owners to pay for out-of-pocket repairs without manufacturer retrofit support.

India’s vehicle fleet is dominated by older automobiles used by the working-class and middle-class.

Two-Wheelers are 70% to 75% of all registered vehicles in India, with an average working life of 12 to 15 years. The vast majority of two-wheelers on the road predate the 2023 Electronic Fuel Injection mandate and belong to delivery workers, commuters and traders for whom a two-wheeler is an economic necessity.

Cars: Private cars are owned by 7.5% to 8% of Indian households. These owners skew wealthier and are far more likely to drive post-2023 fuel-injected vehicles. (While three-wheelers are rapidly shifting to electric drive, the two-wheeler majority remains bound to petrol.)

Triple strain

Combine these three threads – food security, environmental strain, and vehicle mechanics – and it is evident that a policy aimed at financial and fuel efficiency is being paid for by Indians carrying the heaviest burdens: poor households dependent on public grain, water-stressed farming regions, and the two-wheeler-riding majority.

Cleaner tailpipe combustion and reduced crude oil imports are genuine gains from the ethanol transition, but the social and ecological costs must also be considered.

There are viable alternatives, like second-generation or 2G ethanol produced from agricultural waste, such as paddy straw and sugarcane bagasse, rather than food crops. India has demonstrated this potential with plants like Indian Oil’s 2G facility in Panipat. This technology is expensive and faces waste-logistics bottlenecks, but it does not compete with the dinner plate and nor does it demand that India’s most vulnerable citizens underwrite an energy transition they had no role in designing.

John Kurien is a reflective development practitioner and former professor at the Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram.

The Supreme Court on Saturday set aside a 2017 National Green Tribunal order that held the Art of Living foundation responsible for damaging the Yamuna floodplains during its three-day event in 2016, Bar and Bench reported. The court also directed the Delhi Development Authority to refund the Rs 5 crore fine that the foundation had paid in 2016 for restoration work.

A bench of Justices Satish Chandra Sharma and NK Singh passed the order on an appeal filed by Vyakti Vikas Kendra India, an organisation associated with the Art of Living Foundation led by spiritual leader Sri Sri Ravi Shankar.

The foundation had held the World Culture Festival in Delhi in March 2016 to mark 35 years since it was founded. Environmentalists and non-governmental organisations had protested against the event being held on the floodplains of the Yamuna, saying that it would irreparably damage the ecologically-sensitive zone.

Before the event was held, a scientific panel of the National Green Tribunal took note of the concerns and recommended a penalty of Rs 120 crore on the Art of Living Foundation. Two days before the event, the tribunal allowed the foundation to go ahead with the celebrations, but fined it Rs 5 crore.

The National Green Tribunal’s final judgement in December 2017 held the Art of Living Foundation responsible for damage to the Yamuna floodplains, based on the findings of an expert committee. It directed that the Rs 5 crore already deposited be used by the Delhi Development Authority to restore the floodplains.

The foundation challenged the judgement before the Supreme Court, arguing that the site had not been demarcated as a floodplain and that there had been no scientific assessment establishing the extent of environmental damage caused by the festival, Bar and Bench reported.

It also questioned why liability had been imposed on the organisation when the event had received permissions from the Delhi Development Authority.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

The Maharashtra government disbursed Rs 9,605 crore to 92 lakh ineligible beneficiaries under its Mukhyamantri Majhi Ladki Bahin Yojana in two years, reported the Hindustan Times citing data obtained through a Right to Information application.

The scheme, launched in June 2024, provides a monthly transfer of Rs 1,500 to women aged 21 to 65 whose families earn less than Rs 2.5 lakh per year.

Though verification drives removed several categories of ineligible recipients, payments had already been made to them, the Hindustan Times reported.

Of the 92 lakh beneficiaries removed by June 2026, sixty-two lakh had failed to complete the e-KYC, or Know Your Customer process, the newspaper reported. In the case of 16 lakh beneficiaries, the Rs 2.5 lakh annual family income limit had been exceeded.

Another 3.6 lakh women were already receiving benefits under the Sanjay Gandhi Niradhar Anudan Yojana, 2.5 lakh were removed because another family member was enrolled, 1.8 lakh were over the age limit of 65 and 4.5 lakh were government employees.

A further 1.7 lakh beneficiaries were excluded after district-level verification, the Hindustan Times reported.

However, more than 2.1 crore women received payments for 17 months till November 2025 and the number of beneficiaries was 2.4 crore between February 2025 and May 2025, the newspaper reported.

This pushed monthly payouts above Rs 3,640 crore, compared with Rs 2,450 crore that should have been disbursed.

The scheme is said to have played an important role in the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Mahayuti alliance winning 230 seats in the 288-member Assembly in November 2024.

It sparked a controversy due to the strain it has placed on the state’s finances. In October, Nationalist Congress Party leader and state minister Chhagan Bhujbal claimed that all government departments were facing a fund crunch because of the Ladki Bahin scheme.

In February, state minister Ganesh Naik acknowledged that the scheme had put financial strain on government departments but said it would not be discontinued.

RTI data showed that over two years, the state government spent Rs 76,261 crore on the scheme, recording 46.1 crore payments instead of the 39.7 crore that should have been made, the newspaper reported.

The excess 6.4 crore credit entries accounted for Rs 9,605 crore paid to beneficiaries later found to be ineligible.

The government will recover the money only from government employees and officers who received the payments, the Hindustan Times quoted an unidentified official of the state women and child development department as saying.

The money will not be recovered from other ineligible beneficiaries, the official said.

About 1.6 crore women remain eligible under the scheme, the newspaper reported.

In July 2025, a review of the scheme had revealed that more than 14,000 men allegedly received monthly payouts under the scheme for 10 months.

Opposition leaders alleged that the government was reducing the number of beneficiaries because of the state’s financial constraints.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Also read:

• The cash handout burden and its underlying politics

• ‘Election stunt’: Anger, confusion among Maharashtra women as Ladki Bahin payments falter

• As Ladki Bahin squeezes Maharashtra welfare schemes, will discontent surface in civic body polls?

The Armed Forces Tribunal on Thursday upheld an administrative censure for a brigadier who was commanding a sector of the Rashtriya Rifles in Jammu and Kashmir’s Poonch district in December 2023 when three civilians died during an interrogation following a militant attack.

The Chandigarh bench of the tribunal rejected retired Brigadier P Acharya’s challenge to the “severe displeasure” award by the Indian Army against him.

The case relates to an incident in 2023. On December 22 that year, a day after a militant attack in Poonch killed four soldiers, Army personnel picked up nine residents of Topa Peer village. Three of the detained civilians – 45-year-old Safeer Ahmad, 26-year-old Mohammad Showkat and 30-year-old Shabir Ahmad – died due to alleged torture in Army custody.

The incident took place in the area of responsibility of 48 Rashtriya Rifles, a battalion operating in a sector commanded by Acharya at the time.

On Thursday, the tribunal found that the officiating commanding officer of 48 Rashtriya Rifles battalion involved in the incident had directed a company commander to use “slightly harsh” methods while interrogating suspects.

The order also noted that Acharya had himself displayed anger, assaulted a suspect and had been unable to ensure that the officers under his supervision showed restraint while interrogating civilians.

The tribunal said that “in the conflict between human emotions and requirements of discipline...human emotions must yield”.

A court of inquiry convened to examine the circumstances in which the three civilians died had issued a show-cause notice to Acharya in April 2024. The notice cited his alleged failure to exercise proper command and control during the interrogation of civilians, the failure to prevent the use of excessive force against them and for not issuing clear directions to his officers in the matter.

Following Acharya’s response, the General Commanding Officer of the 16 Corps had in July 2024 awarded Acharya the “severe displeasure”. The censure is an administrative action that remains in effect for two years.

Acharya had challenged the censure before the tribunal.

The death of the three civilians had caused outrage in the Union Territory. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh had met the families of the victims and assured them of justice.

Written by Nachiket Deuskar. Edited by Sara Varghese.

Also read: ‘They died in front of my eyes’: Eyewitness recounts torture of Poonch villagers in Army custody

Students protesting the Jharkhand High Court’s stay on the cancellation of recruitment appointments tried to burn effigies of Chief Minister Hemant Soren and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi in Ranchi on Friday, leading to clashes with police and Jharkhand Mukti Morcha workers, PTI reported.

The protesters, under the banner of the Jharkhand Public Service Commission-Jharkhand Staff Selection Commission accused the state government of “deceiving” and “betraying” job aspirants.

The Mahagathbandhan alliance, led by Soren’s Jharkhand Mukti Morcha and comprising the Congress, Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation, is in power in Jharkhand.

On Thursday, the High Court stayed the state government’s decision to cancel the 11th to 13th Jharkhand Public Service Commission Combined Civil Services examinations.

The court also directed candidates selected through the examinations to resume their duties immediately.

Following this, the Jharkhand Public Service Commission-Jharkhand Staff Selection Commission Reforms Manch had called on students to burn effigies of Soren across all 24 districts of Jharkhand, ANI reported.

Tension rose in Ranchi when students moved forward with the effigies and police seized them, the news agency reported.

Lalpur police station officer-in-charge Rupesh Kumar Singh said the students had changed the designated route for the march and gone towards the Jharkhand Public Service Commission office, bringing traffic to a halt, The New Indian Express reported.

On the other hand, the protesters alleged that the police and Jharkhand Mukti Morcha workers tried to prevent them from holding a peaceful demonstration, PTI reported.

They also alleged that Jharkhand Mukti Morcha workers confronted the protesters and assaulted female protesters during the clashes.

Police and administrative officials intervened as the two groups came face-to-face at Albert Ekka Chowk. The march resumed after the situation was brought under control, The New Indian Express reported.

Similar clashes were reported in Hazaribag and Giridih, where Jharkhand Mukti Morcha workers confronted students who were trying to burn effigies of Soren, ANI reported.

The protests followed a series of orders by the Jharkhand High Court concerning the cancellation of recruitment examinations and appointments.

On Thursday, besides staying the state government’s notification cancelling the 11th and 13th Jharkhand Public Service Commission Civil Services examinations, the court also stayed the cancellation of food safety officer appointments.

On Friday, the court stayed notifications cancelling the appointments of Child Development Project Officers and candidates recruited through the Jharkhand Staff Selection Commission Combined Graduate Level examination.

Student leaders accused the state government of failing to effectively defend its decisions before the high court.

The protesters had earlier called off their agitation after the Jharkhand government cancelled 44 examinations conducted since 2014 by the Jharkhand Staff Selection Commission and the Jharkhand Public Service Commission through testing firm TSR Data Processing Private Limited.

Later, candidates who had cleared some of the examinations approached the Jharkhand High Court, challenging the state government’s decision.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Bangladesh has yet to decide whether Prime Minister Tarique Rahman will visit India next month, his office told PTI on Friday.

The statement came amid uncertainty surrounding Dhaka’s demand for extraditing former prime minister Sheikh Hasina.

“No decision has been made yet on his India visit,” the prime minister’s Press Secretary AAM Saleh Shibly told the news agency.

He said Bangladesh was awaiting New Delhi’s response to its request for the extradition of Hasina and “other fugitive criminals” currently staying in India.

Rahman’s possible visit could coincide with the BRICS summit which is to be held in New Delhi on September 12 and 13.

The BRICS grouping comprises India, Brazil, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates. Washington views the group as attempting to become an economic counterweight to the US.

Bangladesh has received two invitations from India. One is from Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a bilateral visit, while the other is for Rahman, in his capacity as chairperson of the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation to attend the BRICS summit.

Bangladesh’s Foreign Minister Khalilur Rahman said earlier this month that no decision had been taken on either invitation, The Daily Star reported.

The uncertainty was further amplified on Friday when an email from the Rashtrapati Bhavan to the media said a ceremonial Change of Guard at the presidential residence would not take place on Saturday because of a “full rehearsal for the ceremonial welcome of the Prime Minister of Bangladesh”, The Hindu reported.

The notification briefly fuelled speculation that Rahman’s visit was imminent.

However, the Rashtrapati Bhavan later withdrew the release, stating that the press release issued on August 21 on the Change of Guard ceremony “stands withdrawn”, according to The Hindu.

The developments came as Bangladesh and India continued discussions over a possible visit by Rahman.

On August 16, Dhaka has said that a “propitious” environment needs to be created before any top-level visit and has urged India to expedite Hasina’s extradition.

The neighbouring countries have had strained relations since massive student-led protests erupted in Bangladesh in July 2024 against a controversial quota scheme for government jobs and later snowballed into a broader agitation against Hasina’s government. Her government was eventually brought down, forcing her to flee to India.

Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal in November sentenced Hasina to death for crimes against humanity in connection with the deadly crackdown on protesters in 2024. In February, a court sentenced her to 10 years’ imprisonment in two corruption cases relating to alleged irregularities in the allocation of land in a government housing project in Dhaka.

Dhaka has repeatedly demanded that Hasina be extradited. It has also expressed concerns about the ousted leader being allowed by the Indian authorities to address her supporters from Delhi.

New Delhi has previously said that it was for Hasina to decide whether she wants to return to Bangladesh.

Rahman took office in February and has since visited Malaysia and China, departing from the tradition of Bangladeshi leaders heading to India for their first overseas trip.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

In 1825, English artist George Chinnery left Calcutta for Macau, chased away by his disgruntled wife Marianne and his creditors. He’d been based in India for the past 23 years, having previously lived in Hyderabad and Dacca.

Besides running a debt of around Rs 30,000 (£232 today), Chinnery was, according to one Dictionary of National Biography, a “penniless fornicator” and “begetter of an uncertain number of illegitimate Chinnerys white, brown and yellow”.

While he became famous as a portraitist, Indian landscapes also take pride of place in Chinnery’s legacy. His vision of an early morning in the Bengal countryside projects an image of peace and harmony far removed from the realities of colonial India under the British Empire.

From the 1760s, a number of British artists arrived in India. These men were motivated both by the economic prospects of catering to expatriate communities and portraying unique subject matter for those back home. In so doing, these artists presented India not as it was, but remade it into an exotic land ripe for colonial rule.

In their artistic representations, India was dangerous but also a place of opportunities. Travelling across provinces, artists’ visual documentation helped claim and appropriate Indian landscapes. As these spaces were endowed with new meanings, in turn, the question of imperial authority’s legitimacy became entangled with art.

Indian picturesque

Besides just a few unkempt and passive human figures, the foregrounding of decayed buildings in Chinnery’s painting speaks directly to the picturesque aesthetic that rose to prominence in the late 18th century. This style focuses on asymmetrical compositions, dramatic chiaroscuro (light and shadow), rugged textures and landscapes with classical ruins and rustic life. In this, picturesque artists turned rural England into a national ideal.

The picturesque style occurred in a time when the process of enclosure was increasing. This involved taking commonly used land and dividing it into privately owned fields to the benefit of wealthy landowners, while limiting poorer people’s access to land. The picturesque helped justify social inequalities by presenting wealthy landowners and their estates as natural and idyllic parts of the landscape.

In a similar way, as wealthy imperial officers returned to Britain and invested their money in land, the picturesque also helped present Britain’s colonial power as taming and improving foreign lands.

In India, artists were using the picturesque to reshape colonial landscapes according to British ideas of progress and civilisation and to tell stories that celebrated colonial power.

In their painting of India, the British fascination with ruins became a visual trope to signify Indians’ political decadence and loss of connection with their histories and heritage. Take Thomas Daniell’s 1795 depiction of an ancient building near Feroz Shah Kotla in Delhi (above). This image fed into wider commentary on the gradual decline of Delhi as the seat of the Mughal empire.

The building is reduced to a shadow of its former eminence, the limited life in its surroundings generating an impression of neglect that might be solved by British intervention. The new colonial masters were celebrated as harbingers of modernity. Through depictions like this, travelling artists, though attracted for mercenary reasons, became a mouthpiece for burgeoning imperial power.

How a monument became a cliché

Such picturesque visions enabled Britons to understand India on their terms and it was ultimately a process of objectification. Pre-colonial cultural and religious references came to be relegated to the background.

Take the Taj Mahal in Charles Ramus Forrest’s 1824 painting (below), which is divested of political metaphors central to how the Mughal Empire presented its identity and power.

The garden complex of the Taj is based on a quadrilateral plan, in the Mughal Charbagh style, replicating the four gardens of paradise mentioned in the Quran, symbolising divine grace and approbation. The architecture drew on Timurid traditions (1370 to 1507), as Shah Jahan, the fifth Mughal emperor, was proud of his lineage and sought to actively revive the legacy of his ancestor, Timur (Tamerlane). The building is believed by certain scholars to be a replica of the throne of God on the Day of Judgement in Islam, which consists of Allah’s throne (the Arsh) and the gardens of Paradise.

Simplifying these architectural complexities, however, Forrest reduces the Taj to an ornamental delight to be enjoyed by a European audience during their boat rides along the river Yamuna, pictured in the foreground.

Memorialisation of conquest

While visual imagery of travel made it possible for the British to control the interpretation of India’s past and insert themselves, it also facilitated the creation of imperial mythologies.

Commemorating sites of war played an important role. During the Third Anglo-Mysore war (1790 to 1792), successes against the ruler of Mysore, Tipu Sultan, led the British to envision themselves as the incumbent power. Destruction cleared the path for occupation as territories were laid bare for takeover, as evident in Robert Home’s 1794 depiction of Tipu’s gardens in Bangalore (below).

Devoid of its vegetation and former grandeur in wartime, the once beautifully ordered landscape is turned into a picturesque scene. This ruggedness is romanticised as the remnant of a bygone era, to be discarded in favour of a new beginning.

Mysore soon evolved into a site of British personal and collective memories, embedding sacrifices for imperial cause as a matter of national pride. Previously, more tragic sites had served this memorial purpose. For instance, The Black Hole of Calcutta, a small, cramped dungeon at Fort William, where supposedly more than a hundred imprisoned Britons suffocated in 1756.

It is telling that, by the 19th century, British tourism was built around and reinforced the idea that Britain’s empire and territorial conquests were things to be proud of.

Tourists often fail to appreciate the experience of ordinary Indian people, which has influenced how destinations are marketed. These 18th-century western artists wandering across South Asia, their fortunes and, above all, their art, can tell us how this perspective surfaced.

As a place bereft of its own political identity by conquest, India was ripe for romantic projections of western might. In our age of travel, we must question these ways of seeing.

Apurba Chatterjee is Visiting Research Fellow Department of History, University of Reading.

This article was first published on The Conversation.

The Union government on Friday told the Supreme Court that it could not consider awarding grace marks to students who claimed that they suffered due to faulty evaluation by the Central Board of Secondary Education’s On-Screen Marking system in the Class 12 examination, The Hindu reported.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing before a bench headed by Chief Justice Surya Kant, said that a one-week window had been opened for re-evaluation and 1.68 lakh students had applied for changes in their scores.

“Now, they [petitioners] are asking for grace marks, that is not possible,” Mehta said, according to The Hindu.

However, advocate Laxmikant Matadan Shukla, appearing for petitioner Rakesh Binjola, contended that one week was too short a duration, as the number of students who required re-evaluation was very large.

Shukla said that students who suffered because of faulty evaluation went on to clear entrance examinations, but were stuck because they did not get the minimum qualifying marks in the Class 12 exam, The Hindu reported.

Mehta maintained that while the Centre did not consider the litigation to be an adversarial one, the petitioners appeared to have missed the chance when the one-week window for re-evaluation was open.

The Supreme Court asked the Union government to file an affidavit giving details about remedial measures taken after irregularities were found in the On-Screen Marking process. It also told the petitioner to file a rejoinder listing out cases where candidates seeking re-evaluation could not access the portal due to infrastructural inadequacies, the newspaper reported.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

Hours after a sit-in protest by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi demanding that a first information report be registered on a complaint by a student who was injured by pellet gun fire during the youth protest in the national capital, the police filed a case on Friday.

The Congress said that the student, Sahil Lochav, submitted a written complaint on August 14. But the police refused to register an FIR, the party alleged.

Lochav approached the police again on August 17, but his emails and calls were ignored, the Congress alleged.

“This is blatant injustice,” the Congress said on social media.

Gandhi has repeatedly alleged that the police had used pellet guns against Lochav and other protesters when they were marching towards Parliament on July 20.

Lochav had been “severely injured by the pellets” and his “vision in one eye is now at risk”, the Congress leader has alleged.

Before the FIR was filed, Gandhi had once again criticised Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the police crackdown.

He asked Shah why he was “so scared of justice” and asserted that an FIR will be filed.

“A judicial inquiry will take place,” Gandhi added. “And action will be taken against everyone – from top to bottom – who is guilty of this brutality.”

The July 20 march to Parliament had been organised over alleged irregularities in competitive examinations. Thousands of protesters participated in the march. Several demonstrators were injured after the security personnel used lathis, fired tear gas and pellet guns to disperse the crowd.

The police had denied firing pellet guns at protesters. However, a Right to Information response showed that 10 people had been treated for pellet injuries at government hospitals.

The protests against alleged mismanagement of several competitive examinations had begun on June 6, when the Cockroach Janta Party political campaign staged a demonstration at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar to demand the resignation of Dharmendra Pradhan, the Union education minister at the time. Pradhan resigned as the education minister on July 25.

On July 20, thousands joined the protest. This came two days after the police forcibly took activist Sonam Wangchuk, who had been on a hunger strike for three weeks, to hospital.

The police action during the Parliament march turbocharged the agitation, which spread to other parts of the country.

On Tuesday, Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju claimed that no one was seriously injured in the police action in Delhi on July 20.

Rijiju claimed: “Not a single person was harmed, not a single person suffered a broken bone. Not even one protester is in the hospital with a serious injury.”

Written by Sara Varghese. Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Several protesters were detained in Delhi on Friday as thousands joined an agitation to demand that quotas in educational institutions and government jobs should be based on economic criteria rather than caste, PTI reported.

Though the police had given permission for the event to be held at Ramlila Maidan, protesters gathered at Jantar Mantar in the heart of the capital.

The police and the Rapid Action Force detained several protesters from the Jantar Mantar area for violating orders barring public gatherings.

#WATCH | Delhi: Delhi Police, along with the Rapid Action Force, detain protesters gathered at Jantar Mantar.

A large number of people have gathered here to protest against caste-based reservation.

Protestors say, "We were holding a peaceful protest over UGC and SC-ST..." pic.twitter.com/AQHDpNANEr

— ANI (@ANI) August 21, 2026

The protesters gathered under the banner of an organisation named Reservation Hatao Andolan. Demonstrators – most of them men – held posters and saffron flags, and shouted slogans emphasising their demands.

“Our demand is that economic condition should be considered while deciding who needs government support,” PTI quoted a protester from the Akhil Bhartiya Kshatriya Mahasabha as saying. “A poor person, irrespective of caste, should be provided assistance for education, coaching and other needs.”

Some protesters also demanded income-based prioritisation within the quota for the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and the Other Backward Classes.

“We are not saying that economically weaker people should be left without support,” PTI quoted another protester as saying. “We are saying that assistance should be targeted at those who need it, including through scholarships, fee support and coaching.”

Earlier this month, the Union government had opposed income-based prioritisation within the quota in a submission to the Supreme Court. The government maintained that the quotas are based on historical and social backwardness, not just on economic status.

Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

For the past year, with the drawdown of US climate commitments under President Donald Trump and the slowing of Europe’s green ambitions following the energy crisis triggered by the Ukraine war, there has been much talk of a shift in climate action from the Global North to the Global South – or, at the very least, of an increasing focus on regional or subnational coalitions.

That talk has also been driven by China consolidating its position as the world’s largest investor in renewables as well as the largest producer and market for electric vehicles, in addition to the expansion of solar power in countries like Brazil and India. The shift was signposted in a smaller way in February by Mumbai Climate Week, the inaugural edition of a global forum that was touted as “India’s first dedicated platform to accelerate climate action for the Global South”.

The original “Climate Week” was started in New York in 2009 by international non-profit Climate Group as a forum to discuss climate action outside official negotiations, and has since scaled up to become an important networking event for advocacy groups, community leaders, start-ups, and policy experts – as well as for corporates, whose presence at the event has increased over the years (one expert told The New York Times that it had transformed from “Burning Man for climate geeks” to the “Davos of climate”).

Because it coincides with the annual UN General Assembly, New York Climate Week has a global reach, giving world leaders and business a platform for big-ticket announcements. Similar events in other countries – including those organized by the UN – tend to be more local or regional.

India’s inaugural version, led by local NGO Project Mumbai in partnership with the government of Maharashtra, certainly had ambition. The event convened participants from over 30 countries, featuring more than 400 speakers and 4,000 attendees from business, local government, NGOs, and research, and included discussions on everything from waste systems to sustainable cooling solutions.

The state government signed a clutch of partnerships with international bodies including C40, UNEP, and WRI, spanning urban planning, climate finance, and nature-based resilience.

US-based delegates at the conference, especially of Indian origin, were taken with the potential for projects in the region, and with the palpable energy that had been missing from New York’s event the previous September, where dismay with Trump’s budgets cuts and policy reversals had dominated conversations. But India’s first Climate Week also reflected the challenges of climate action, from finance to equity, especially when that action flows from global to national or local systems in the south.

Southern limits

The foremost problem is financing the shift away from fossil fuel-based economies and of protecting communities most at risk from the impacts of global warming. Current climate finance commitments of at least US$300 billion per year by 2035 remain far below the US$2.4 trillion that will be annually needed by developing countries, excluding China.

India alone is estimated to need nearly $467 billion in additional capital expenditure through 2030 to transform the four key sectors of steel, cement, power, and road transport, according to an assessment by the Centre for Social and Economic Progress. This funding gap has been the central tension in climate negotiations between developing countries and developed countries in recent years.

Most global finance also currently goes to mitigation – the reduction of warming emissions – rather than adaptation, or the preparation and defense of communities from climate impacts such as heatwaves and floods. Developing countries, which have contributed the least to warming emissions historically, are on the frontline of such impacts.

Domestic finance is the prime driver of climate action in India, but New Delhi has been moving to create a national climate finance taxonomy to facilitate more external and private investments. Unlocking global capital markets was a key focus at Mumbai Climate Week, where the Maharashtra government launched several programs to facilitate investments into the state, explicitly selling Mumbai to the array of international banks in attendance as a gateway for global finance. “If climate capital must flow at scale,” said state chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, “Mumbai is ready to become a medium for that flow.”

Many of the global partnerships signed were focused on urban climate, reflecting the growing recognition that cities are on the frontline of heat and other climate impacts, and that municipal governments can make for effective local partners.

Parallel paths

A question remains – who receives this finance? Critics say funds tend to go to larger players and big projects rather than local grassroots groups who are unable to, or don’t know how to access them. Another issue is that such finance, while necessary, runs the risk of creating a parallel industry of solutions rather than transforming existing development pathways.

That gap was evident in Mumbai, where the same week the state government signed climate partnerships, its forest department moved to clear thousands of mangroves for a coastal road. The project wasn’t isolated; a spurt of infrastructure and construction projects has dented green cover and increased air pollution in Indian cities over the past few years.

Regulations mandate pollution control and compensatory greening for such projects, but the former isn’t well enforced and the latter is often dispersed to distant locations, which is of no use to the communities affected by the loss of trees.

The irony was not lost on Mumbai residents who turned up to protest at the Climate Week venue – they got to hear politicians who have ignored community opposition and encouraged private car use trot out the jargon of climate resilience, from “walkable cities” to “inclusivity.” The forum venue exemplified the gap, located in a new “planned” business district that lacks adequate public transport and green cover.

For all these contradictions, India’s inaugural climate week seemed to reflect a genuine moment of transition – a shift toward regional and local mobilisation at a time of faltering global action. Economics is a driver; solar energy is now cheaper than coal in many markets, and the ability to generate it locally rather than depend on central grids or imported fuels is an advantage.

The recent West Asia crisis could sharpen that calculus. The conflict disrupted India’s cooking gas supply and raised diesel and petrol prices. The crisis coincided with one of the region’s hottest summers, the high temperatures leading to strained power grids and outages even in Mumbai, whose electricity supply has historically been among the country’s most stable.

In May, more than two months after the climate forum, and following an austerity call by the Prime Minister, the Maharashtra government directed officials to carpool their commutes. And in June, the business district started Public Transport Fridays to encourage employees to leave their cars behind. Whether authorities can make that work may be the first real sign of change.

Vaishnavi Chandrashekhar is an award-winning science and environment journalist. She was a CASI Fall 2025 Visiting Fellow.

This article was first published on India in Transition, a publication of the Center for the Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania.

The Ministry of External Affairs on Friday dismissed a United States religious freedom panel’s call for sanctions against members of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, describing the organisation as “biased” and lacking credibility.

On Wednesday, the US Commission on International Religious Freedom said that RSS leaders should not be given high-level meetings or diplomatic courtesies. The statement came ahead of RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s planned visit to the US.

The RSS, a Hindutva organisation, is the ideological parent of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

The panel’s chair, Asif Mahmood, said that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a member of the RSS. He also described the RSS as an umbrella organisation “whose sub-groups have perpetrated attacks on religious minorities, including Christians and Muslims”.

On Friday, Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said that the US panel had been making “misleading and provocative statements” about India for years.

“The organisation you are talking about is known to everyone as a biased organisation,” Jaiswal said. “We should stay away from such organisations because they have their own agenda and at the same time have no credibility.”

Panel says India a ‘country of particular concern’

In March, the panel had recommended in its annual report that the US government designate India as a “country of particular concern” over alleged systematic, ongoing and egregious violations of religious freedom.

This was the seventh time that the panel had made this recommendation.

The March report also recommended targeted sanctions against individuals and entities, including the RSS and India’s Research and Analysis Wing, including by freezing their assets or barring them from entering the US. The Research and Analysis Wing is the country’s foreign intelligence agency.

The commission is an independent US government agency that monitors the universal right to freedom of religion and makes policy suggestions to the White House. The suggestions are not binding.

In an India-specific issue update released in November, the commission had noted that the “interconnected relationship between the RSS and BJP allows for the creation and enforcement of several discriminatory pieces of legislation, including citizenship, anti-conversion and cow slaughter laws”.

India rejected the report in March, describing it as a “distorted and selective” picture of the country based on “questionable sources and ideological narratives”.

Written by Tanya Shrivastava. Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

At first glance, the Gomti Riverfront appears to be a triumph of urban transformation. Gleaming promenades, landscaped gardens, cycling tracks, and illuminated riverbanks have recast the Gomti as a symbol of a moderniding Lucknow. Yet beneath this carefully curated landscape lies a more unsettling question: when cities attempt to beautify rivers, what exactly are they restoring and what are they erasing?

The Gomti Riverfront is not merely a story of infrastructure; it is a story of competing visions of development. While the project has delivered public spaces, enhanced real estate values, and a renewed civic relationship with the river, it has also narrowed floodplains, simplified habitats, and failed to address the persistent pollution flowing through the river itself.

As climate uncertainty intensifies and Indian cities increasingly turn to riverfront development as a model of urban renewal, the Gomti offers a crucial lesson. The challenge is not whether rivers should be integrated into city life, but whether they can be revived without sacrificing the ecological processes that keep them alive.

The Gomti Riverfront project, formally approved in March 2015 by the State Government of Uttar Pradesh at a cost of Rs 656.58 crore, represents a particular model of river development that has gained traction across India. An 8.1 km stretch was straightened, hard-armoured with reinforced diaphragm walls on both banks, and the floodplain constricted from 450 m to 240 m, reclaiming ~200 ha of land.

Inspired by the perceived success of projects like the Sabarmati Riverfront, the initiative sought to “reclaim” the river for the city. Its stated objectives included beautification, creation of promenades & open spaces, improved public access to the water’s edge, recreational use (walkways, parks), flood management, water retention, river cleaning and morphological control. Yet, as subsequent research and field observations suggest, these objectives have not been achieved evenly, and in some cases, have come into conflict with one another.

Re-engineering a river

At a technical level, the Gomti riverfront is fundamentally a river engineering project. The most significant intervention has been channelisation – a process that involves straightening the river course, narrowing its width, and reinforcing its banks with concrete embankments.

From an engineering standpoint, channelisation is often justified as a flood-control measure. By confining the river within defined boundaries, planners aim to increase flow velocity and reduce lateral spread during high-discharge events. However, this logic assumes predictable hydrological regimes – an assumption increasingly challenged under climate variability.

Hydrological modelling by researchers at Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee indicates that if the channel width reduces below a critical threshold (around 250 metres in certain stretches), the increased velocity can actually raise flood levels downstream, requiring higher embankments and creating a feedback loop of structural interventions.

This 2013 hydrological assessment commissioned by the Lucknow Development Authority had already cautioned that embankment construction could alter flood behaviour and recommended detailed modelling of cumulative impacts. Yet, such recommendations often remain under-integrated in execution.

Ecological simplification

Rivers are inherently heterogeneous systems. Their ecological health depends on a mosaic of habitats like sandbars, shallow riffles, deep pools, vegetated banks, and floodplain wetlands. These features support biodiversity, regulate flows, and enable nutrient cycling.

The Gomti riverfront, however, has simplified this complexity. A study by Venkatesh Dutta et al assesses the loss of river processes and ecosystems under changed hydraulic regimes post Gomti riverfront development project. “We observed eight types of habitat in the undisturbed segments of the Gomti River, while only two major habitat types were present in the channelised segments,” said the authors.

The paper argues that, due to heavy channel engineering led riverfront development and other related morphometric changes, there would be decline in freshwater species and water quality, lowering of groundwater tables in the city reach, resulting from diminishing base flow and flooding of the downstream areas. This is not a cosmetic change; it represents a structural simplification of the ecosystem.

Channelisation reduces ecological niches. When you replace natural banks with concrete, you eliminate spawning grounds for fish, reduce aquatic vegetation, and disrupt food chains. The core argument is that heavy channel engineering disrupts the hydraulic and ecological integrity of a river system, threatening minimum environmental flows, which is particularly dangerous for a rainfall- and groundwater-fed river with already lean summer flows.

The implications extend beyond biodiversity. Habitat diversity is closely linked to hydraulic roughness, which influences how water flows through a river. Simplified channels tend to have smoother surfaces, increasing flow velocity and reducing the river’s capacity to dissipate energy naturally.

The pollution paradox

One of the most striking contradictions of the Gomti riverfront is the disconnect between visual cleanliness and actual water quality. Despite significant investment, the river continues to receive large volumes of untreated sewage and urban runoff. Studies show that the Water Pollution Index (WPI) increased substantially at several monitoring points after the riverfront’s construction by over 170% to 270% in some cases.

This paradox is not unique to the Gomti. Across India, riverfront projects often focus on bankside improvements, paving, lighting, and landscaping, while leaving the core issue of wastewater untreated. Environmental researcher Manu Bhatnagar, writing on Mongabay-India, puts it bluntly: “You cannot clean a river by cleaning its edges. The river is polluted upstream, and unless you intercept and treat sewage, the problem simply flows through.”

In Lucknow, multiple drains continue to discharge into the Gomti. While some sewage treatment plants (STPs) exist, their capacity and operational efficiency remain uneven. “The irony is palpable: directly across from the riverfront near the Gomti Barrage sits a sewage treatment plant. The facility discharges untreated waste into the river, creating a pervasive foul odor that plagues the area,” says Virendra Singh, a resident.

It is a jarring contradiction, a premier city landmark standing in the shadow of an sewage treatment plants whose own outflow sabotages the riverfront’s purpose. This reflects a broader systemic issue: infrastructure for wastewater treatment often lags behind urban growth.

Floodplains lost

Perhaps the most significant ecological loss is the disconnection of the river from its floodplain. Floodplains are not empty land waiting to be developed; they are integral components of river systems. They store excess water during floods, recharge groundwater, and support agriculture and biodiversity.

By constructing continuous embankments, the Gomti riverfront has effectively isolated the river from these functions. The degradation of the river ecosystem carries several critical consequences, including reduced groundwater recharge in adjacent areas, increased flood peaks downstream, the loss of seasonal wetlands and their associated biodiversity, and a diminished capacity for the landscape to remain resilient against extreme rainfall events.

A case study by the Social Policy Research Foundation describes this as a form of “hydrological amputation” – cutting off the river from its natural extensions. It notes: “The cosmetic beautification of the Gomti floodplains… is another example of human insensitivity to the ecosystem.”

Urban economics: Who gains?

While ecological costs are significant, the riverfront has undeniably generated economic value. Land prices along the river corridor, particularly in Gomti Nagar, have risen sharply. Developers have marketed proximity to the riverfront as a premium feature, attracting middle- and upper-income buyers. From a municipal finance perspective, such projects can enhance the tax base and stimulate local economies. However, this raises a critical question: who benefits from publicly funded infrastructure?

Urban scholar Amita Baviskar has argued that riverfront developments often reflect “bourgeois environmentalism”, prioritising aesthetic and recreational needs of the urban middle class while marginalising traditional users. In Lucknow, informal settlements, washer communities (dhobis), and small-scale fishers have seen their access to the river curtailed. The river, once a working landscape, is being reimagined as a leisure space.

Governance complexity and institutional gaps

The Gomti riverfront also highlights the institutional fragmentation that characterises urban water governance in India. Management of the area is fragmented across multiple agencies, each with distinct mandates: the Irrigation and Water Resources Department oversees hydrology and embankment maintenance; the Lucknow Development Authority handles urban planning and construction; and the Municipal Corporation is responsible for waste management and local service delivery.

This division often leads to coordination failures. For example, while one agency builds embankments, another struggles to manage sewage inflows. The Comptroller and Auditor General of India, in its audit observations, flagged delays, cost escalations, and inadequate compliance mechanisms in the project. Such governance gaps are not merely administrative; they directly affect outcomes on the ground.

Climate stress

The future of the Gomti riverfront will be determined as much by the shifting climate as by urban policy. North India is already facing significant environmental pressures, characterised by an increased frequency of extreme rainfall events, longer dry spells, and rising temperatures that accelerate rates of evapotranspiration. In this context, rigid, concrete-based riverfronts may prove inherently maladaptive, as they lack the dynamic flexibility of natural systems required to absorb and mitigate such environmental shocks.

Catchment-level thinking

One of the most fundamental limitations of the Gomti riverfront is its spatial scope. The project focuses on a 22-km urban stretch, but the river’s health is determined by its entire catchment. Upstream agricultural runoff, deforestation, and urban wastewater all contribute to the river’s condition. Without addressing these factors, local interventions remain superficial.

Integrated River Basin Management (IRBM) – a concept widely promoted by institutions like the World Bank emphasises coordinated planning across the entire watershed. Yet, such approaches are still not fully operationalised in Indian urban contexts.

Rethinking riverfronts

The Gomti riverfront offers critical lessons for the future of urban water management. First, there must be a fundamental shift from grey to green infrastructure by incorporating bioengineering techniques – such as vegetated banks, wetlands, and riparian buffers – to balance aesthetic appeal with ecological function.

Second, authorities must prioritise comprehensive wastewater management, ensuring that decentralised sewage treatment, drain interception, and water reuse systems are fully operational before or alongside any development.

Third, it is essential to restore floodplain connectivity by creating controlled flood zones instead of relying solely on rigid, continuous embankments.

Fourth, planners should ensure social inclusion by designing spaces that integrate traditional livelihoods alongside modern recreational needs.

Finally, stakeholders must strengthen governance frameworks by clarifying institutional roles, enhancing inter-agency coordination, and establishing robust, long-term monitoring systems to ensure project sustainability.

Beyond the illusion of restoration

The Gomti riverfront is a powerful symbol of ambition, of urban aspiration, and of the desire to reconnect with water. But it also exposes a deeper tension in how we approach rivers. Are we treating them as ecosystems to be restored, or as landscapes to be redesigned? The answer, in the case of the Gomti, lies somewhere in between but tilts dangerously towards the latter.

As cities across India embark on similar projects, the stakes are high. Rivers are not just aesthetic features; they are dynamic systems that sustain life, regulate climate, and anchor communities. The challenge is not to abandon riverfront development but to rethink it, moving from spectacle to sustainability, from control to coexistence. Only then can the shimmering lights along the Gomti reflect not just urban progress but ecological resilience.

This article was first published on India Water Portal.

The Cockroach Janta Party on Friday alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party sent “goons” to assault its team that had gone to inspect a government school in Rampura Kanwarpura village of Jaipur’s Bagru Assembly constituency.

The team had arrived in the village as part of the political campaign’s nationwide drive to improve the condition of government schools. Videos shared on social media showed some persons shouting slogans, hitting the team with sticks and throwing rocks at their vehicle.

“Vehicle windows were smashed, phones were broken, a woman was assaulted, my shirt was torn, and one of our team members suffered a fractured hand,” PTI quoted Cockroach Janta Party co-convenor Ashutosh Ranka as having alleged.

All levels of disgust have been crossed today.

रामपुरा, कंवरपुरा में पिछले काफ़ी सालों से स्कूल भैंसों के तबेले में चल रहा है। लेकिन जब हम वहाँ निरीक्षण करने पहुंचे तो सरेआम मारपीट, पत्थरबाजी की गई। कारों के शीशे फोड़े गए, टीम पर पत्थर बरसाये गए। कपड़े फाड़े गए। ट्यूब में पत्थर… pic.twitter.com/H15osb1ODA

— Ashutosh Ranka (@AshutoshRanka) August 21, 2026

He said that residents of the village were not involved in violence.

“People were sent from outside to incite violence,” alleged Ranka. “It was the villagers who had requested us to come and inspect the school.”

Cockroach Janta Party founder Abhijeet Dipke alleged that the police failed to stop the violence despite being informed that the team would visit the school. He also shared an image on social media showing a vehicle with its rear window shattered.

Dipke said that he would protest outside the school if repair work at the site did not begin within 48 hours. “I request everyone, if they do not listen to us…all of you come to Jaipur, we will sit here like we did at Jantar Mantar,” he added.

Ashu has been attacked by BJP goons in Rajasthan.

Ashu and other volunteers of CJP were beaten up and have been injured.@PoliceRajasthan has allowed this to happen. pic.twitter.com/pc7c3GCAfV

— Abhijeet Dipke (@abhijeet_dipke) August 21, 2026

Inspector Dharam Singh of the Shivdaspura police station told The Indian Express that there had been a “tussle” between residents and workers of the Cockroach Janta Party. He claimed that no one had been beaten up.

“Our civil defence people is already in the area to control the situation,” Singh told the newspaper. “We have not yet received any complaints regarding anyone. We are keeping an eye on the situation of the village.”

He also claimed that residents had opposed the campaign team’s visit and said they would not allow “outsiders” to enter the village, The Indian Express reported.

The campaign has accused Rajasthan Education Minister Madan Dilawar of trying to prevent it from highlighting the condition of government schools.

Ranka claimed that the school his team was visiting on Friday had been operating in a buffalo shed for several years. The school building has reportedly been declared unsafe, PTI reported.

The incident came in the wake of the Rajasthan government barring outsiders, except government officials on duty, from entering school campuses without the principal’s permission. Photography, videography, interviews, audio recording and live streaming of students, teachers or school activities also require approval.

The Cockroach Janta Party has criticised the order and said it will continue its campaign. The campaign has been sharing videos on social media recorded by its volunteers showing government schools functioning in poor condition in several states.

Written by Sara Varghese. Edited by Sneha.

Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi staged a sit-in protest outside the Delhi deputy commissioner of police’s office demanding that a first information report be registered on a complaint by a student who was injured by pellet gun fire during the youth protest in the national capital on July 20.

The Congress said that the student, Sahil Lochav, submitted a written complaint on August 14. But the police refused to register an FIR, the party alleged. Lochav approached the police again on August 17, but his emails and calls were ignored, it alleged.

Gandhi has repeatedly alleged that the police used pellet guns against Lochav and other protesters when they were marching towards Parliament on July 20. Read on.

The Cockroach Janta Party alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party sent “goons” to assault its team that had gone to inspect a government school in Rampura Kanwarpura village near Jaipur. The team had arrived in the village as part of the political campaign’s nationwide drive to improve the condition of government schools.

Videos shared on social media showed some men hitting the team with sticks and throwing rocks at their vehicle.

The campaign’s founder Abhijeet Dipke alleged that the police failed to stop the violence despite being informed that the team would visit the school. He also shared an image on social media showing a vehicle with its rear window shattered. Read on.

The Union government denied permission for Telangana Chief Minister Revanth Reddy to travel to the United States. The Ministry of External Affairs informed the state government that “clearance from political angle is denied”, said Reddy’s office.

The Congress leader, who is in the United Kingdom, will return to Hyderabad on Sunday after the first leg of a 10-day tour. He began the tour on Thursday and was scheduled to travel to Boston after his UK visit to sign agreements with educational institutes.

The Ministry of External Affairs said that the proposed programmes “should be appropriate to the office held and the purpose of the visit”, and claimed that it was not so in this case. Read on.

Samajwadi Party workers alleged that they were assaulted by Meerut Senior Superintendent of Police Avinash Pandey on Wednesday. In a video, Digvijay Bhati alleged that Pandey assaulted and abused him at the office of the senior superintendent of police. He was later taken to the Special Operations Group office, where police personnel allegedly assaulted him and hung him upside down by his feet, he alleged.

Another Samajwadi Party worker, Mohit Jatav, who accompanied Bhati to Pandey’s office, also alleged that he was assaulted.

They had gone to meet Pandey to ask him to drop their names from a first information report relating to a violent protest in July.

After the allegations, Pandey was transferred to the state police headquarters and a probe initiated into the incident. Read on.

Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan was shifted back to prison after a brief visit to an Islamabad hospital. He had been taken there for a medical examination in compliance with an order by the country’s Supreme Court.

On Tuesday, the court had directed the authorities to take Khan to hospital within 48 hours. He was expected to remain in hospital till September 16, according to the order. However, he was shifted back to Adiala jail on Friday itself.

The directive had met a longstanding demand by Khan’s party and his family who have been raising concerns about his health and poor incarceration conditions. Read on.

If you haven’t already, sign up for our Daily Brief newsletter.

“Everything got washed away in a matter of hours,” said Mahesh Barhoi, a resident of Nepalikhuti village in Assam’s Sivasagar district, near the border with Nagaland.

When devastating floods swept through the district in July, they left a trail of destruction by killing nearly 50 people and wiping out entire villages like Nepalikhuti.

While Assam battles floods every year, the July catastrophe was different – Nepalikhuti had never seen a flood before.

What caused this unprecedented flood?

How is it connected to illegal mining?

We travelled to Assam and Nagaland to find out.

Watch our ground report.

Samajwadi Party workers have alleged that they were assaulted by Meerut Senior Superintendent of Police Avinash Pandey on Wednesday.

In a video, Digvijay Bhati alleged that Pandey assaulted and abused him at the office of the senior superintendent of police. He was later taken to the Special Operations Group office, where police personnel allegedly assaulted him and hung him upside down by his feet, he alleged.

Bhati named Civil Lines Police Station Inspector Akhilesh Gaur among those who allegedly assaulted him.

Bhati’s left eye is swollen in the video. He alleged that Pandey kicked him in the eye multiple times.

SSP kicked me in the eye multiple times, says Samajwadi party leader tortured in custody

Samajwadi party leader Digvijay Bhati claims he was brutally assaulted by Meerut SSP Avinash Pandey over Bhati's involvement in a protest over murder of a Dalit girl. Later, he was taken to… pic.twitter.com/75JspJ8P09

— Piyush Rai (@Benarasiyaa) August 21, 2026

Another Samajwadi Party worker, Mohit Jatav, who accompanied Bhati to Pandey’s office, also alleged that he was assaulted, The Times of India reported.

He alleged that his legs were swollen after the assault and he was having difficulty hearing. He also claimed that the two Samajwadi Party workers were kept in custody for 12 hours.

Following the allegations, Pandey was transferred to the state police headquarters in Lucknow on Thursday, The Times of India reported.

The Meerut Police said that it had taken cognisance of allegations of “rudeness and assault” against “visitors” at the senior superintendent of police’s office. Abhishek Singh, the deputy inspector general of police of the Saharanpur range, will investigate the incident, the police added.

Bhati, Jatav named in an FIR

The allegations came against the backdrop of police action against Dalit protesters in Meerut on July 8. The protesters had gathered outside the Meerut Collectorate over alleged lapses in the investigation into the murder of a Dalit college student. Her body was found in a field in Meerut’s Rohta area on May 15.

The demonstrators blocked the collectorate gate for nearly three hours, demanding to meet the district authorities and seeking the arrest of the main person accused in the case, The Times of India quoted the police as saying.

The protest turned violent after the police, led by Pandey, carried out a lathi charge, the newspaper reported.

The police booked 63 protesters under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, including one which pertains to attempt to murder. Thirteen persons were named in the first information report and 50 were unidentified. Bhati and Jatav were among those named.

Bhati said that he had gone to meet Pandey on Wednesday to seek that his name be removed from the FIR. He claimed that he was not present at the site of the protest.

Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav said that the Bharatiya Janata Party government in the state is “subjecting farmer leaders to third-degree torture and beatings inside police stations”.

The incident “shows just how rattled [the BJP] is out of fear of defeat”, Yadav added.

Bhati is also a leader of the Bharat Kisan Union. Assembly elections are expected to be held in early 2027.

MP Chandrashekhar Azad of the Azad Samaj Party said that the alleged brutality against Bhati and Jatav raises questions about the law and order and police accountability in the state.

“This is not policing but an open abuse of the power of the uniform and torture in custody,” he said. “No officer has the right to take the law into their own hands.”

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

The Union government has denied permission to Telangana Chief Minister Revanth Reddy to travel to the United States, The Hindu reported on Friday.

Reddy’s office said that the Ministry of External Affairs informed the state government that “clearance from political angle is denied”, The Indian Express reported.

The Congress leader, who is in the United Kingdom, will return to Hyderabad on Sunday after the first leg of a 10-day tour with the “Telangana Rising” delegation.

He began the tour on Thursday and was scheduled to travel to Boston after his UK visit to sign agreements with educational institutes.

The state government was informed that permission for the US visit had been denied after the delegation had reached the UK, The Hindu reported.

Reddy said that the objective of his US visit was to bring the world’s leading educational institutions to Telangana and Hyderabad, in line with the National Democratic Alliance government’s National Education Policy.

“I have always believed we should all think beyond politics and elections when it comes to nation building and the future of the youth,” the newspaper quoted him as saying.

On Friday, the Ministry of External Affairs said that it assesses visits of chief ministers and other dignitaries are assessed in order to accord political clearance.

“The programme proposed in such cases should be appropriate to the office held and the purpose of the visit,” spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said. “In this particular visit, it was not so in respect of the United States.”

The clearance was given for Reddy’s visit to the UK, the spokesperson said.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The Ladakh administration on Thursday said that it will withdraw cases registered against 25 persons for their alleged involvement in violence during protests in Leh on September 24, The Indian Express reported.

Four persons were killed in police firing and 50 were injured after protests demanding statehood for Ladakh and its inclusion in the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution turned violent. The protesters clashed with security personnel and threw stones at them.

Two days later, Activist Sonam Wangchuk was arrested under the National Security Act. The Union government had alleged that the activist was the “chief provocateur” of the September 24 violence and that the protests in Leh came under control after he was taken into custody.

On March 14, his detention was revoked.

On Thursday, Ladakh Chief Secretary Ashish Kundra said that 87 persons were booked for the violence, reported The Indian Express. Chargesheets were filed against nine of them, he added.

He said that the administration decided to withdraw cases against 25 persons following discussions with the lieutenant-governor.

This came a day after representatives of the Kargil Democratic Alliance and Leh Apex Body, which are leading the agitation for Ladakh’s statehood, met officials of the Ministry of Home Affairs in Leh on Wednesday.

They submitted a list of non-negotiable demands to the Union government, including financial powers for the proposed elected Ladakh Legislative Assembly, a separate Public Service Commission for recruitment to government jobs in the Union Territory and the “unconditional withdrawal” of all cases against those affected by the September 24 violence.

The meeting was also attended by Wangchuk.

Edited by Sneha.

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister C Joseph Vijay on Thursday asked the Union government to provide a legislative assurance that any state’s representation in Parliament will not reduce due to the delimitation exercise, The New Indian Express reported.

The process of fixing the boundaries of electoral constituencies is called delimitation.

Vijay said that southern states had made significant progress in controlling their population, as well as human development and economic growth. The Union government should assure the states that they would not be penalised for meeting national goals, he added.

He made the statements a week after the Tamil Nadu Assembly passed a resolution calling for the Lok Sabha’s strength to permanently remain at 543 seats.

While introducing the resolution in the Assembly, Vijay had also said that the 33% reservation for women should be implemented in the 2029 Lok Sabha elections based on the current 543 seats.

During a three-day special session of Parliament in April, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Union government introduced the 2026 Constitution 131st Amendment Bill in the Lok Sabha to amend the 2023 Women’s Reservation Act and redraw the boundaries of electoral constituencies.

The bill, one of the three draft legislations that were introduced, required a two-thirds majority of votes in Parliament to pass. The ruling National Democratic Alliance does not have a two-thirds majority of MPs in any House. Therefore, it required the support of Opposition parties to pass the amendment.

The consideration of the bill was rejected by the Lok Sabha with 298 MPs voting in its favour and 230 against.

Vijay’s remarks on Thursday drew criticism from both the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, Hindustan Times reported. The Opposition parties accused him of changing his position on the proposed exercise.

Rejecting the allegation, the Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam said Vijay’s speech presented “a broad visionary perspective…to protect the current representation of southern states”.

Meanwhile, Congress leader P Chidambaram on Friday said his party wanted the current allocation of Lok Sabha seats to be retained for another 25 years, including Tamil Nadu’s 39 seats.

“We are pleased that this stance is supported by Tamil Nadu’s ruling party and main Opposition party,” the Congress leader said.

The Congress is in alliance with the Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam in Tamil Nadu. The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam had backed the resolution against delimitation in the state Assembly.

Edited by Sneha.

The Supreme Court on Thursday said that it would have to examine whether English can be classified as a “non-indigenous” language under the Central Board of Secondary Education’s three-language policy, Bar and Bench reported.

“That perhaps requires a constitutional analysis, having regard to our historical experience and the fact that states have English as an official language,” said a bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant, and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana.

The bench was hearing a batch of petitions challenging the CBSE’s decision to make three languages compulsory for students from the 2026-’27 academic year. Among the three languages, at least two must be Indian, the board has said.

On Thursday, the petitioners’ counsel told the court that English could not be equated with foreign languages, considering its longstanding presence in India.

He also argued that students were being forced to abandon subjects they had studied for years to start learning Indian languages from scratch.

“Is it not in national integrity that Indian languages are taught?” Kant was quoted as asking by Bar and Bench. “Is it not going to be good for the nation if a North Indian student learns South Indian languages?”

The petitioners said their only objection was that the policy was being implemented in the middle of a student’s schooling. They argued that the policy would be acceptable if introduced prospectively, rather than requiring Class 9 students to give up languages they had already been studying.

Kant observed that there was no need to scrap the policy altogether, suggesting instead that changes could be made to the manner of its implementation. He asked CBSE to revisit the policy.

Bagchi also suggested that the rules should be relaxed for Class 6 students. He said that exempting students already in Class 6 and introducing the revised system for the subsequent batch will allow students to make an informed choice.

CBSE’s three-language policy

In a circular released on May 15, CBSE said that studying three languages would be mandatory for Class 9 students from July 1. It said that those who had been studying two Indian languages can either take up a foreign language or a third Indian language.

Class 9 students who had one Indian and one non-native language could choose any Indian language as the third language. Those who were studying two foreign languages had been given a “special one-time relaxation” under which they could add an Indian language as the third one.

There will be no board exams for the third language for the current batch of Class 9 students, and there will instead be an internal school-based assessment.

Class 7 and Class 8 students who have already chosen two foreign languages can continue studying them. However, the students will have to study an additional Indian language till Class 10. The CBSE said that the third language for these batches will also be assessed by the school through an internal evaluation.

The three-language policy will apply in full to the batch of students currently in Class 6, who will not be given a transitional relaxation.

Edited by Sneha.

The Bharatiya Janata Party MLA from Uttar Pradesh’s Malihabad has alleged that she was discriminated against based on her caste at a land-worship ritual before the renovation of a temple in Kakori, The Hindu reported on Friday.

Jai Devi Kaushal is a member of the Pasi community, which is recognised as a Scheduled Caste under the constitutional system of affirmative action.

The incident took place on Wednesday at the Sheetla Temple, reported The Print. The Bharatiya Janata Party government in Uttar Pradesh has sanctioned approximately Rs 78 lakh for renovating the temple.

“They did not allow me to touch even a flower or be part of the bhoomi pujan because I am from the Pasi community,” the news outlet quoted Jai Devi Kaushal as alleging.

A group named Hindu Jan Seva Samiti, which is involved in temple welfare activities in the area, denied her allegations.

Prajwal Gupta, the president of the group, told The Print that the organisers had asked Jai Devi Kaushal to break a coconut as part of the ritual and had arranged garlands to honour her, “but she declined them and left”.

Jai Devi Kaushal has urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath to take note of the incident, The Hindu reported.

“We have fought a long battle against caste discrimination,” The Print quoted her as saying. “And it still happened with me. We will address this in front of every minister.”

She said that when she arrived at the temple to lay the foundation stone on Wednesday, the priest had already started the ritual. She alleged that neither she nor her team was asked to join the ceremony.

The legislator claimed that she had approached government offices about the temple’s condition and helped secure funding for its renovation.

Her husband, Mohan Lal Kaushal, alleged that the temple had been at the centre of a caste-related controversy in 2025 as well, when a man from the Pasi community was allegedly accused of “defiling” the premises, The Print reported.

He said he and his wife had complained about the incident and a case was filed. “Now, people are taking revenge on us by preventing the MLA from participating in the bhoomi pujan and insulting her,” he added.

Edited by Sneha.

On June 6, I wrote in this newsletter that many were watching the advent of the Cockroach Janta Party with caution even as it rapidly garnered a massive social media following – mostly comprising the young. The scepticism was based on the political campaign’s amorphous positions on the key problems India faces and a concern that the youth movement could get co-opted by forces beyond its control.

I did not imagine then that the movement would, in a matter of weeks, force Prime Minister Narendra Modi to sack Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and take responsibility for the alleged irregularities in competitive examinations under his watch.

Through June, the Cockroach Janta Party had held events in cities across India to demand the resignation of Pradhan. It made few headlines. But that changed on July 18 when the police forced activist Sonam Wangchuk into hospital, three weeks into his hunger strike in support of the students’ demands.

The movement got turbocharged.

On July 20, as protesters gathered to march to Parliament, security personnel fired tear gas and lathi-charged them in central Delhi. Several were injured. The police also used dangerous pellet guns against the demonstrators. Four people were hit. One may lose an eye.

The action of the police, which reports to the Narendra Modi government, was widely condemned. Support for the protesters from the Opposition parties was ramped up.

A day later, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi lent his voice to the agitation by holding a surprise sit-in outside the prime minister’s residence, demanding that Pradhan be sacked. He and several Opposition politicians were briefly detained by the police.

Images of Gandhi being dragged away made the front pages of newspapers and got visibility on news channels that otherwise gave the Opposition little airtime.

The factors that led me and others to feel sceptical about the Cockroach Janta Party seven weeks ago remain. But they are no longer relevant.

The undercurrent of anger among India’s youth that brought the Cockroach Janta Party to life evidently transcended the movement’s leadership. The anger went from memes and reels to the street.

The demonstrations by young people across India over the past week have been less about fixing accountability for paper leaks and more about challenging what the protesters view as the Modi government’s arrogance in dealing with problems.

The youth protests channelised the broad discontent against the Modi government that has long been stifled, often brutally. The anger against the prime minister cuts across class and religious backgrounds, my colleagues Anant Gupta and Ayush Tiwari wrote this week.

No matter what happens to the Cockroach Janta Party – whether it grows or fizzles out – it has helped prepare a critical mass of youth for something bigger in the times to come. The movement is the little boy from The Emperor’s New Clothes who yelled out what his elders had feared to.

Follow Scroll’s coverage of the youth protests here.

A version of this newsletter was sent out to Scroll’s members before Pradhan resigned on Saturday afternoon.

Here is a summary of last week’s other top stories.

Assam floods. The toll in flood-related incidents this week in Assam crossed 40. More than 6.4 lakh persons in over 900 villages, spread across 11 districts, were affected by the floods. Sivasagar was the worst-affected district, with 328 villages inundated by Thursday.

Sikkim tunnel deaths. Twenty-five workers were killed following a blast in a tunnel that was being constructed in Sikkim’s Namchi district. The four-day search and recovery operation concluded on Thursday. Twenty-seven persons were trapped inside the tunnel after the blast on Monday.

BJP’s UCC push. The Madhya Pradesh Assembly passed the Uniform Civil Code Bill to ban polygamy and introduce strict conditions for live-in relationships. Adivasi communities have been exempted from the bill to safeguard their customs and traditions.

With this, Madhya Pradesh became the fourth Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled state to pass a Uniform Civil Code bill. Congress MLAs opposed the legislation and demanded that it be sent to a select committee for review.

During the discussion on the bill, Chief Minister Mohan Yadav said that the Opposition party was trying to appease the Muslim community and accused its legislators of being “anti-tribal”.

Also on Scroll last week

• Delhi hospital reports show pellet wounds on journalist covering students’ protests
• How Mumbai Police is using surveillance to stop youth from protesting
• ‘People’s sympathy is now with the youth’: BJP workers worry about crackdown on protests
• Watch: What next as youth storm Delhi
• Why tree cutting on Dehradun highway could upend the life of a community
• Gandhi to Wangchuk, what history says about the success of hunger strikes in India
• Delhi protests: Constitution demands that India’s judiciary check police excess
• India’s soaring concrete skyline is a carbon emissions blindspot
• ‘Jana Nayagan’ review: Vijay’s new film is extremely lazy and incredibly tacky
• ‘Aga Aai Aaho Aai’ review: A warm and witty look at competing mothers

Follow the Scroll channel on WhatsApp for a curated selection of the news that matters throughout the day, and a round-up of major developments in India and around the world every evening. What you won’t get: spam.

And, if you haven’t already, sign up for our Daily Brief newsletter.

The Supreme Court on Thursday held that uttering casteist slurs in private does not meet the statutory requirement of being considered an offence under the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes Prevention of Atrocities Act, reported Live Law.

With this view, a bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta set aside an Allahabad High Court order that had refused to quash proceedings under the Act against a school manager.

The complainant had said in the first information report that he had gone to meet the school manager on January 24, 2020, after his son was injured in a quarrel with other students. He alleged that the school manager, along with other staff, assaulted him with lathis and shouted casteist slurs at him, reported Live Law.

The FIR in the matter was registered on the next day on charges of rioting, causing hurt, wrongful confinement and intentional insult, along with Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes Prevention of Atrocities Act sections 3(1)(r) and 3(1)(s).

Section 3(1)(r) of the Act makes it a crime for a person who is not from a Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe to intentionally insult or humiliate a member of the communities in a place within public view.

Section 3(1)(s) makes it a punishable offence for a person who is not from a Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe to abuse a member of the communities by their caste name in any place within public view.

The school manager had challenged the proceedings before the Allahabad High Court, arguing that the alleged incident took place inside room “A” in the school. He said that the room was enclosed, had no window and was not open to the public, Live Law reported.

He also argued that the witnesses had not said they were inside the room when the alleged casteist remarks were made. Their statements only showed that a quarrel had taken place, he added.

In April 2023, the High Court refused to interfere with the case, prompting the manager to approach the Supreme Court.

On Thursday, referring to its previous judgements, the Supreme Court said a place can be considered “within public view” when members of the public can see or hear the alleged casteist remarks.

“If the alleged offence takes place within the four corners of the wall where members of the public are not present, then it cannot be said that it has taken place at a place within public view,” the court said.

The bench also noted that the FIR did not specifically attribute any caste-based slurs to the school manager.

The teachers who gave statements spoke about an “altercation and scuffle”, but none said they were present when the alleged caste-based remarks were made or that they heard them, the court noted.

“Their mere presence in the school premises, therefore, does not establish that the alleged utterance was made within public view,” the bench said.

The court quashed the proceedings against the school manager under the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes Prevention of Atrocities Act, but clarified that the case relating to the other alleged offences would continue.

Edited by Sneha.

On August 8, a packed auditorium in Pune rose to applaud Tukaram Mundhe. Some took videos of the bureaucrat walking up to the stage. Others shouted out compliments. The event itself was titled “Unstoppable Tukaram”.

Rarely has any bureaucrat appointed Maharashtra’s food and drug administration commissioner met with such public adulation.

Since Mundhe took over in May, his crackdown on unhygienic practices in the food industry in the state has won him truckloads of admirers – and inspired social media memes.

“He is going viral on social media,” said B Shami, who owns Crown Bakery in Mumbai. “And it has caused panic in our industry.”

Under the bureaucrat’s instructions, food inspectors have scaled up surprise inspections. Not just that, they are handing out immediate suspension notices for serious violations, a departure from previous practices, officials told Scroll. “He is not afraid to go after big influential players,” said Omprakash Sadhwani, a retired joint commissioner of drugs in the food and drug administration.

In the last three months, Domino’s and Pizza Hut outlets have been temporarily shut down after inspectors found cockroaches and expired products in their kitchens. Many of Mumbai’s legacy food businesses, from the K Rustom ice-cream parlour to Parsi Dairy and restaurants like Shalimar and Rehmania had their licences suspended for a few days for a range of violations – fungal growth on walls, presence of rats and cockroaches, food not covered by insect-proof meshes and failure to test drinking water for pathogens.

All four businesses had their licences restored after they met hygiene standards.

The FDA, under Mundhe, has not shied away from turning the scrutiny on dark stores of quick commerce giants like Blinkit, Zepto and Instamart. Several were suspended after lizards, cockroaches and expired products were found on their racks.

The series of crackdowns have made Mundhe a household name, so much so that actor Paresh Rawal took to social media platform X to urge Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis to ensure that the bureaucrat is not shunted out of his department.

The 2005-batch IAS officer has a reputation for being an honest bureaucrat, unafraid to ruffle feathers. He has been transferred 25 times in over two decades. In some posts, he has spent only a few months.

The Maharashtra FDA’s drive appears to have prodded similar action in neighbouring Karnataka, where inspection of five-star hotel kitchens and high-end restaurants also revealed shocking sanitary standards.

While Mundhe has found a huge fan following, the food industry is unnerved. Several business owners have approached courts asking for relief. Many say that by handing out immediate suspension notices, he is skipping standard procedures.

On August 18, the Bombay High Court said the food and drug administration was going “overboard” and directed it to pay Rs 5 lakh fine to a Pune sweet shop for not reinstating its licence despite a 98% adherence to hygiene.

But former joint commissioner for food in Maharashtra, CB Pawar, told Scroll that the slew of strict measures were “not harsh”.

Pawar added, defending Mundhe’s style of functioning, “The provisions under the Act allow FDA to suspend outlets. If a restaurant is unhygienic and not shut down, who will be responsible if people get food poisoning?”

In the Pune outlet particularly, a complaint of food poisoning had been filed with the FDA and its food samples were found unsafe.

At a press conference on Thursday, Mundhe said, “If there are observations made by the HC, we take it seriously. At the same time we make sure to follow the law. We are not exceeding our jurisdiction, we are following due process.”

From people buying breakfast on the street to those ordering groceries on quick commerce apps, consumers are cheering Mundhe.

In Sion, Vilas Singh, aged 24, first read about Mundhe on Instagram when the bureaucrat began suspending a few famous restaurants. Over the last few weeks, he has begun to see changes in local food stalls.

“I usually have breakfast outside,” Singh said. “Earlier I would get vada pav or idli in a newspaper. Sometimes the newspaper ink would stain the food if it was too hot. Now they wrap it in butter paper.”

‘No hesitation’

Mundhe began his career in 2005 as an assistant collector in Solapur, and was later posted as the collector of the district in 2014. He is remembered for initiating multiple water conservation projects in Solapur to remove the dependence of several villages on water tankers.

In 2016, Mundhe was given charge of the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation, where he cracked down on illegal construction and unauthorised hawkers. While his work was appreciated by local residents, several politicians campaigned for his transfer and a no-confidence motion was passed by corporators against him. He was eventually moved out in less than a year without being assigned another posting.

In 2020, the Uddhav Thackeray-led government posted Mundhe as Nagpur commissioner, where he cancelled several major tenders awarded by the previous commissioner. His method of working irked union minister Nitin Gadkari who complained to the Prime Minister’s Office against him.

In an interview to The Hindu, Mundhe maintained that he followed three principles before he took any action – legality, public interest and whether his decision is morally correct. “If any two conditions are met – including legality – I act. There is no hesitation, no gradual approach, no negotiation with what is wrong simply because it is powerful,” he said.

A new regime

The food industry in Maharashtra has been taken aback by the new-found aggression in the food and drug administration’s methods.

A food inspector told Scroll that before Mundhe took over, inspections were less frequent due to staff shortage. “We are working overtime now,” he said.

The official said that Mundhe has instructed them to adhere to “zero-tolerance” for unsanitary conditions.

On June 29, a food inspector conducted a surprise inspection in Pawan Bar and Restaurant in Navi Mumbai.

According to the Indian Hotel and Restaurant Association, earlier food inspectors would “usually notify a restaurant before an inspection”. Now, most inspections are conducted without intimation.

The inspection in Pawan Bar and Restaurant found hygiene-related lapses. The restaurant had a63% compliance with requirements under the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006. The next day the FDA issued a suspension notice to the restaurant.

Two weeks later, in a re-inspection the restaurant had 100% compliance with all requirements. Even then, the FDA did not revoke its suspension.

The restaurant finally approached the Bombay High Court, which revoked the suspension. The hotel’s kitchen remained shut for over 25 days. The lawyer representing the restaurant owner, Sagar Shetty, told Scroll that their main grievance was that the officials did not issue an improvement notice. Instead, they chose to immediately suspend the license.

Under the Food Safety and Standards Act, 2006, a food inspector can inspect a food outlet and issue an ‘improvement notice’. The notice points out violations and gives a period of two weeks to comply. In cases where a food operator fails to comply, the inspector can suspend their license after a showcause notice.

The Act also gives the FDA power to immediately suspend a licence “in the interest of public health”.

It is this provision that Mundhe’s team has opted for in several cases.

Across Maharashtra, the licences of at least 10 hotels have been suspended in the last three months immediately after inspection, said Vijay Shetty, president of Indian Hotel and Restaurant Association, or AHAR.

Ashwini Ranjane, assistant commissioner for food, said it was well within the rights of the food inspector to suspend licences. “A food inspector can immediately make out if a place is unsanitary by just looking at a restaurant’s kitchen,” she said.

Ranjane added that the FDA gives improvement notices in 70% to 80% cases of minor violations – if record keeping is poor, if employees’ medical records are not maintained, or if minor hygiene lapses are seen.

“Immediate suspension is issued when during our visits, we see dirt everywhere,” she said. “If there are major issues and multiple violations that the operator needs to work on and that is not possible to achieve in a few days, we have to suspend them.”

In July, food inspectors found expired flavouring agents and essence, rats and houseflies in K Rustom’s ice-cream parlour. In the century-old Parsi Dairy, fungus was found on the walls and raw materials found lying on the floor. Despite the presence of rats and flies, the food was left uncovered.

The licences of both outlets were suspended temporarily. Parsi Dairy was able to reopen after about 10 days after a re-inspection was undertaken. K Rustom decided to renovate its over 70-year-old store. An FDA officer said their licence has also been reinstated.

“If the food can directly harm the health of customers, then we can suspend the licence immediately,” a retired joint commissioner of food from Maharashtra told Scroll.

Several bakery owners protested against a blanket suspension of licence following “minor violations” during inspections. In July, the FDA issued stop-business notices to four bakeries after finding “hygiene related lapses”, expired raw materials and unsanitary cooking conditions. In videos that FDA shared, the New Maharashtra bakery in Chembur had fungus on baking trays and its walls.

An owner of a well-known brand of bread in Mumbai told Scroll that several small players use artificial flavours in khari, or do not label their loaves with an expiry date or display the nutritional content. “We welcome action in such cases,” he said, requesting anonymity.

“But the problem is pests,” he said. “It is difficult to totally prevent it.”

B Shami, who owns Crown Bakery, agreed. “Mumbai city’s hygiene levels are questionable,” he said. “We have open drains that allow rats everywhere. No baker wants to have a filthy kitchen.”

Responding to the allegation that FDA has gone overboard, Mundhe said that when FDA suspends any licence, “it is after multiple violations”.

He added, “In some cases, improvement notices and enough time was given. If these outlets have grievance they can appeal to me.”

Dark stores

Maharashtra has amongst the highest number of so-called dark stores run by quick commerce services, with Mumbai and Pune leading the list. For a city starved for time, the delivery services have become a lifeline for many users.

But Mundhe’s drive has made consumers think twice.

On August 14, the FDA released details of a month-long inspection of 86 dark stores. According to Ranjane, assistant food commissioner, they found minor to major violations in almost all stores.

The FDA issued improvement notices to 60 stores and suspended 14 others, including five operated by Blinkit, five by Zepto and two by Swiggy Instamart.

In the video shared by FDA, cockroaches could be seen moving amongst packaged items in a Bandra West store of Instamart. The same store had rodent droppings and lizard infestation. In another video, chocolate was infested by worms, and stale lettuce was stored in a Blinkit store in Ghatkopar. Both these outlets’ licences were suspended.

“On our visits, we found racks full of cockroaches,” Ranjane said, pointing out that faulty cold storage and hygiene lapses in dark stores were rampant.

‘Good practices’

Food business owners, too, admit that Mundhe has forced the industry to shape up.

“Hygiene is important, and he is bringing in good practices,” Shami added.

An employee from a Chembur-based self-help group, which sells chapatis and vegetarian dishes, said small outlets like theirs have switched from wrapping chapatis in newspapers to food-grade butter paper after the FDA began to inspect the area. “That has slightly increased our cost, but food operators are willing to comply,” the employee said. “Otherwise we will have to shut too.”

Ordinary customers are even more grateful. Ganesh Sonawale, who drives an autorickshaw, eats his lunch outside every day. “Roadside dhabas have become cleaner,” he said. “Food is now wrapped in brown paper. These two changes I am seeing everywhere.”

Sonawale said he hoped the drives would not stop in a few months. “It feels nice to eat food in a clean place now,” he added.

The Supreme Court on Thursday formed an enquiry committee to investigate the alleged police excesses during last month’s youth protests and violence against security forces.

The five-member panel will be headed by Justice R Subhash Reddy, a retired Supreme Court judge. The other members are former Punjab and Haryana High Court Chief Justice Ravi Shankar Jha, former Delhi High Court Justice Shalinder Kaur, former Central Bureau of Investigation Director Rishi Kumar Shukla and retired Meghalaya police chief LR Bishnoi.

A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana passed the order on Tuesday while hearing petitions alleging that the police used excessive force against protesters marching to Parliament in Delhi on July 20. The order was published on the court’s website on Thursday.

During the protest, several demonstrators were injured after the security personnel used lathis, fired tear gas and pellet guns to disperse the crowd.

The petitioners also pointed out instances of the police in Bihar using allegedly excessive force against protesters who were demonstrating in solidarity with the youth agitation in Delhi.

In its order, the court said that the committee will examine the suggestions made by the petitioners as well as the respondents, which includes the Union government.

The petitioners have suggested that the panel should examine the use of allegedly “excessive and disproportionate” force by the police, including the use of lathi-charge and tear gas against the protesters, use of pellet guns, electric batons and the “monitoring and surveillance” of demonstrators.

The petitioners also urged the committee to look into alleged cases of “targeted violence, harassment and molestation” of female protesters.

They further called for the panel to look into aspects such as ensuring that the police and security personnel wear proper uniforms and visible nameplates while carrying out arrests or while using force, and preventing the routine use of prohibitory orders under Section 163 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita to stop peaceful protests.

The court said that the allegations of targeted violence and sexual harassment against women protesters should be taken on priority.

Meanwhile, the respondents submitted that the committee should examine the alleged use of force and violence by protesters against the police and damage to public property allegedly caused during the demonstrations.

The respondents also said that the injuries suffered by police personnel on duty, along with the “mental and emotional trauma” faced by their families “deserved recognition and consideration” on par with the grievances raised by the petitioners.

The bench asked the committee to submit its interim findings periodically to enable the court to “take appropriate measures and issue such directions” as needed.

It also ordered that security camera recordings of the protests and body-camera footage of the police and security personnel, which had earlier been ordered to be preserved, be handed over to the committee.

The court clarified that setting up the panel would not prevent the police or the authorities from taking administrative or disciplinary action against officers found to have violated service rules.

The bench urged the committee to submit its first interim report at the earliest. The matter will be heard next on September 10.

Written by Anamika Pathak. Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

In Arunachal Pradesh, conversations in mithun-rearing communities often find their way to the animal. For outsiders, one question almost inevitably follows: “How many mithuns do you own?”

When John Pei Cander was asked the same question, the enthusiasm with which he had been talking moments earlier suddenly faded. He paused before replying quietly, almost apologetically. “Now, I have just four,” he said. “During my father’s time, our family had around 30.”

John runs a successful business, owns agricultural land, and has built a concrete two-storied house, drives an SUV. His children are studying in private schools. Yet it was not these achievements that defined his pride. It was the shrinking number of mithuns his family owned. He is not alone.

Many with government jobs, thriving farms or successful businesses hesitate before revealing a single-digit number when asked about their mithuns. Their responses carried a sense of shame. Owning fewer mithuns, several people suggested, is not merely an economic reality; it was a loss of status and inheritance.

For generations, the mithun (Bos frontalis) has occupied a unique place amongst many Indigenous societies of northeast India. Neither fully domesticated nor truly wild, the semi-free-ranging bovine represents symbols of wealth, prestige and social standing, woven deeply into customary practices and family life.

According to the 20th Livestock Census published in 2019, India is home to nearly 384,000 individuals. Arunachal Pradesh supports close to 70% of the country’s mithun population, making the state’s breeding practices central to the species’ future. The remaining animals are distributed across Nagaland, Manipur and Mizoram.

Yet remarkably little has been known about the mithun’s genetic health. While earlier genetic studies have offered insights into the species’ ancestry and diversity, they examined only small portions of the genome, leaving scientists without a comprehensive understanding of how genetically healthy today’s mithun populations are or how they have changed over time.

Identifying the Siangmi breed

India’s first population-level whole-genome analysis of the Arunachali mithun, published earlier this year in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences, attempts to fill that gap. By analysing the complete genomes, the study provides the first comprehensive assessment of its genetic diversity, inbreeding and demographic history, establishing a genomic baseline that could guide future conservation and breeding efforts.

“Our mandate is the conservation and characterisation of different mithun germplasm. Last year, we registered the world’s first recognised mithun breed, the Nagami mithun,” said Girish Patil S, Director of the ICAR–National Research Centre on Mithun and a co-author of the genome analysis study. “Simultaneously, we are characterising other mithun populations because unless a population is recognised as a breed, farmers cannot effectively avail the benefits of many Central Sector schemes, like the National Livestock Mission and the Rashtriya Gokul Mission, that are specified only for recognised breeds,” added Patil, who leads Project Siangmi.

“There are about three to four distinct mithun populations in Arunachal Pradesh. We have successfully characterised one from the Siang region, covering Siang, East Siang, Lower Siang, Upper Siang, Lepa Rada and Shi Yomi districts. We found this to be a distinct population, which we now call the Siangmi,” he explained. Based on the 20th Livestock Census, they estimate over 20,000 individuals of this breed. “Although it is yet to be formally registered, it is expected to become the world’s second recognised mithun breed,” Patil added.

Harshit Kumar, a scientist (Animal Genetics and Breeding) at NCR-Mithun and another co-author, said that the whole-genome study was undertaken on this distinct breed to establish whether it constituted a genetically homogeneous population. As the population is yet to be officially recognised as a breed, the study does not refer to it as the Siangmi. Instead, it describes the sampled animals as the “Arunachali mithun population”.

The analyses found little evidence of genetic sub-structure, indicating that the sampled animals largely belong to a single, homogeneous population. Along with distinct phenotypic characteristics, including a convex forehead and shorter, smoother horns, he said these findings strengthen the case for recognising the Siangmi as a separate breed.

Tadang Tamut, chairman of the Jomlo Mongku Mithun Farmers’ Federation, Siang, told Mongabay-India, “We, the Adi and Galo tribes of the Siang region, have been rearing mithuns for generations. Yet we never knew that these were a different breed. According to the scientists, this is probably the oldest mithun breed in the world.”

What the mithun genome reveals

“Arunachali mithuns are reared under a unique semi-free-ranging system, where animals roam within village territories mating naturally, and there is limited exchange between herds. With the absence of pedigree records and the repeated use of a few breeding bulls, these husbandry practices can gradually increase mating between related animals without it being noticed. Over time, this can erode the population’s genetic diversity,” said Kumar.

“Genetic diversity forms the foundation of a population’s long-term survival. Populations with greater diversity are generally better equipped to adapt to changing environments, resist emerging diseases and avoid the harmful effects of inbreeding. Once diversity is lost, recovering it becomes increasingly difficult,” he explained.

To build the baseline, blood samples were collected from 11 unrelated mithuns maintained under semi-intensive production systems across five villages in East Siang and Lepa Rada districts. High-throughput whole-genome sequencing generated around 30 gigabases of DNA sequence from each animal. After quality filtering, the analysis identified nearly five million high-quality single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs)- small genetic variations that collectively provide a detailed picture of diversity across the genome.

Across four independent genomic analyses, the sampled mithuns consistently showed moderate levels of genomic inbreeding.

The researchers classified ROHs into four length categories, ranging from 100 kilobases to more than one megabase. More than 93% of the 24,937 ROHs identified across the sampled mithuns measured between 100 and 250 kilobases, while none exceeded one megabase. This pattern suggests that historical demographic events, rather than recent intensive inbreeding, have largely shaped the genomes of the sampled animals.

Further estimates of nucleotide diversity and heterozygosity indicated that the sampled mithuns continue to maintain moderate levels of genetic variation. The authors, however, cautioned that genetic diversity alone does not provide a complete picture of population health. While the sampled mithuns retained moderate genetic variation, other genomic indicators, including inbreeding and effective population size, point to aspects of the population’s genetic health that require continued monitoring.

The researchers then examined whether the sampled mithuns belonged to distinct genetic groups or a largely connected population. Using two complementary genomic analyses, they found little evidence of strong genetic subdivision, suggesting that the sampled herds continue to exchange genes and largely belong to a single, connected population.

According to Kumar, the absence of strong genetic substructure suggests that the population remains genetically well connected. This gives the population considerable potential to improve further, not only in numbers, but also in traits such as body weight, fertility and overall viability.

“Although the sampled mithuns appeared genetically well connected overall, we also found that closely related animals can occur within village herds,” he added. “This highlights the importance of understanding relatedness when making future breeding decisions so that mating between close relatives can be avoided.”

A shrinking breeding population

The study reconstructed the demographic history of the sampled population and estimated its recent effective population size (Ne). Unlike the census population, effective population size is a genetic measure of the number of individuals effectively contributing genes to the next generation. In most species, this number is considerably smaller than the total population because not every individual contributes equally to breeding.

They found evidence of a long-term decline, with the recent effective breeding population estimated at around 160 individuals. “Considering the estimated Siangmi population of around 20,000 animals, this Ne size suggests the population has not yet reached a stage of irreversible genetic erosion, but it is at a point where timely interventions are needed to maintain its genetic diversity and prevent further decline,” Kumar said.

“From a conservation perspective, Ne is one of the strongest indicators of a population’s long-term evolutionary potential. As fewer animals contribute genetically over successive generations, rare genetic variants are gradually lost, reducing the population’s ability to respond to future environmental or disease-related challenges,” he added.

Though the estimate itself should be interpreted cautiously. “Effective population size is influenced by sample size, and our analysis is based on genomes from only 11 animals. While the results clearly indicate a declining trend, broader sampling across the mithun’s distribution will be necessary to refine these estimates and determine whether similar patterns occur in other populations.”

Evidence-based mithun conservation

The findings suggest that conserving mithuns must move beyond population counts and observational management towards evidence-based genetic management. Importantly, the researchers do not advocate replacing the traditional free-ranging husbandry systems.

Three major gaps have been identified in the current management of Arunachali mithuns. First, village herds lack a system of individual animal identification, making it difficult to track animals over time or across herds, with the authors proposing ear-tagging or biometric identification as a prerequisite for any structured breeding programme.

Second, as parentage verification remains largely absent, genomic tools developed from the present study could cost-effectively confirm parentage and identify closely related animals before they are bred, reducing the risk of inadvertent inbreeding.

Third, systematic performance records are lacking, with information on traits such as body weight, growth rate and disease resistance not linked to individual animals. The authors suggest combining such phenotypic records with genomic data would allow future studies to identify the genetic basis of economically important traits and support breeding programmes that improve productivity while conserving genetic diversity.

Tamut said the federation had signed a memorandum of understanding with NRC-Mithun. “Over the past two years, we have ear-tagged and vaccinated more than 16,000 Siangmis, and we are working to document every single animal.”

He added they have been conducting awareness programmes about the breed. “Our goal is to reach every farmer and ensure that the benefits reach even the remotest villages. Once the breed is officially recognised, we can also apply for a GI tag”. The mithun breeders hope that with the GI tag, they can preserve the uniqueness of the Siangmi breed and save it from crossbreeding.

This article was first published on Mongabay.

The Jharkhand High Court on Thursday stayed the state government’s decision to cancel the 11th to 13th Jharkhand Public Service Commission Combined Civil Services examinations, ANI reported.

The court also directed candidates selected through the examinations to resume their duties immediately, The New Indian Express reported. The matter will be heard next on August 25.

The Jharkhand government cancelled 44 examinations conducted since 2014 by the Jharkhand Staff Selection Commission and the Jharkhand Public Service Commission through testing firm TSR Data Processing Private Limited, following student protests alleging irregularities in government recruitment exams.

The student protests, which had been ongoing in the state since July 25, were called off after Chief Minister Hemant Soren announced the cancellation of the examinations.

Later, candidates who had cleared some of the examinations approached the Jharkhand High Court, challenging the state government’s decision.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

The Union government told the Supreme Court that it is reconsidering the regulations issued by the University Grants Commission in January to address caste-based discrimination in colleges and universities. The court had stayed the rules in January observing that their provisions were “prima facie vague and capable of misuse”.

The rules had led to protests by upper-caste students who argued that it could lead to discrimination against them. The protesters contended that the rules were biased against students from the general category as they did not provide for measures against “false complaints”. Read on.

Journalist Tarun Tejpal moved the Supreme Court challenging the Bombay High Court’s decision to convict him of raping and sexually harassing a junior colleague in 2013. His petition against his 10-year sentence is likely to be mentioned for an urgent hearing as he has been directed to surrender to the authorities in the first week of September.

The Goa government has also moved the Supreme Court seeking life imprisonment for Tejpal instead of the 10-year sentence.

On August 6, the Goa bench of the Bombay High Court overturned a 2021 sessions court verdict acquitting Tejpal. Read on.

Former Congress MP Sajjan Kumar, who was convicted in two cases related to the 1984 anti-Sikh massacre, died at a Delhi hospital. He was 80. The cause of his death was not immediately clear.

Kumar was serving life imprisonment in Tihar jail. He was convicted by the Delhi High Court in December 2018 in a case involving the murder five members of a Sikh family in Delhi Cantonment’s Raj Nagar area on November 1, 1984. The court found him guilty of murder, promoting enmity between groups, and defiling public property. Read on.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi was depicted as a Hindu deity at an event organised by a group of transgender community members at the Press Club of India in Delhi. They recited some verses, which they described as the “Modi Chalisa”, according to videos posted on social media. A chalisa is a Hindu hymn to a deity.

The group also shouted “Jai Jai Modi”, or hail Modi, and “Har Har Modi”, or victory to Modi.

The Press Club of India said that it stopped the event because the organisers violated the terms of renting the venue. The event was criticised on social media, with users saying that it hurt their religious sentiments. Read on.

A clash broke out between members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad and Left-affiliated student groups at Kolkata’s Jadavpur University during a meeting of a students’ union on Wednesday. The clash continued into the early hours of Thursday.

Several students were injured and taken to a hospital. The two sides blamed each other for the violence and accused the other of bringing people from outside the university onto the campus.

The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad is the student wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the parent organisation of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. Read on.

Pakistan has announced that it will confer its highest civilian honour posthumously on two Mumbai-based Parsi doctors for not revealing that Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the country’s first president, had a terminal illness in the years before Partition.

Jinnah’s physician Jal Ratanji Patel and radiologist Jal Daeboo will receive the Nishan-e-Imtiaz, said the Pakistan Cabinet’s official awards list. Some members of the community believe that Daeboo is a misspelling of the Parsi name Deboo.

Jinnah had been suffering from tuberculosis at the time of Partition. He died in September 1948, just over a year after Pakistan was created.

Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins have claimed in their 1975 popular history Freedom at Midnight that if British India’s last Viceroy, Louis Mountbatten, had known that Jinnah was suffering from a terminal illness, he might have delayed the transfer of power from British India to independent India and the creation of Pakistan. Read on.

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi was depicted as a Hindu deity in an event organised by a group of transgender community members at the Press Club of India in Delhi on Thursday.

They recited some verses, which they described as the “Modi Chalisa”, showed videos posted on social media. A chalisa is a Hindu hymn to a deity.

The group also shouted “Jai Jai Modi”, or hail Modi, and “Har Har Modi”, or victory to Modi.

After videos of the event were shared widely on social media, the Press Club of India clarified that it had not organised the event. The club said that it stopped the event because the organisers violated the terms under which the hall had been rented.

The venue had been rented for a press conference, it said.

The event was criticised on social media, with users saying that it hurt their religious sentiments.

Today: Modi Chalisa, Press Club, Delhi. pic.twitter.com/FkDIZRmBn0

— Shyam Meera Singh (@ShyamMeeraSingh) August 20, 2026

Written by Tanya Shrivastava. Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

The Union government on Thursday told the Supreme Court that it is reconsidering the regulations issued by the University Grants Commission in January to address caste-based discrimination in colleges and universities, Live Law reported.

The 2026 University Grants Commission Promotion of Equity in Higher Education Institutions Regulations were stayed by the Supreme Court on January 29, observing that their provisions were “prima facie vague and capable of misuse”.

The rules had led to protests by upper-caste students who argued that it could lead to discrimination against them. The protesters contended that the rules were biased against students from the general category as they did not provide for measures against “false complaints”.

The court had asked the Union government to redraft the regulations and added that until then, their operation will remain suspended.

On Thursday, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta told the bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana that the regulations were being reviewed, the legal news outlet reported. He asked the bench to defer deciding the questions to be examined in the case until the review was completed.

Advocate Indira Jaising, appearing for the petitioners, urged the court to fix a timeline for the Union government’s decision, Live Law reported.

However, the bench said that it was not hearing arguments on the matter and adjourned the case for four weeks.

The regulations by the University Grants Commission were introduced in response to a public interest litigation filed in 2019 before the Supreme Court by the mothers of Rohith Vemula and Payal Tadvi, two students from marginalised communities who died by suicide after facing caste-based harassment. The petition had sought measures to prevent and address caste-based discrimination in educational institutions.

What the rules mandated

The University Grants Commission’s equity rules required institutes to set up special committees, helplines and monitoring teams to address complaints, particularly from members of Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Other Backward Classes.

The commission had in 2012 first released equity rules for higher education institutes, which required them to set up Equal Opportunity Cells and Anti-Discrimination Officers. However, those rules did not provide for action against institutions that did not comply with them.

In contrast, the 2026 rules required the commission to set up a monitoring committee to oversee their implementation.

Institutes that do not comply with the regulations could be barred from participating in the commission’s schemes, offering degree programmes and online courses, and could be removed from the list of institutes eligible to receive central grants.

Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

The Union home ministry on Wednesday notified rules empowering district collectors in eight states and Union Territories to process pending applications under the Citizenship Amendment Act instead of empowered committees.

The order covers Gujarat, Rajasthan, Punjab, West Bengal, Assam (except tribal areas), Tripura (except tribal areas), Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh.

Earlier, empowered committees comprising central government officials, including those from the Census, Intelligence Bureau and postal departments, would process applications in the areas.

The Citizenship Amendment Act aims to provide a fast track to citizenship to refugees from six minority religious communities, except Muslims, from Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Pakistan, on the condition that they have lived in India for six years and have entered the country by December 31, 2014. The Union government notified the rules under the Act in March 2024.

The notification published on Wednesday means that all applications pending before empowered committees in the eight states and Union Territories will be transferred to collectors.

Ahead of the West Bengal elections in April, the Union government had created four empowered committees in the state to clear citizenship applications, The Hindu reported. Through this, the Union home ministry was able to bypass the role of the state government, where the Trinamool Congress was in power at the time, in processing citizenship applications.

While citizenship comes under the Union List according to the Constitution, the state government has a role to play in logistical matters such as office space and the verification of applicants by the police, the newspaper reported.

In May, the Bharatiya Janata Party came to power in West Bengal after defeating the TMC in the state polls.

As per the amended rules, the collector has to verify documents submitted by an applicant, conduct inquiries if necessary, determine eligibility and then administer the oath of allegiance.

An application can be rejected if the individual fails to appear personally before the authorities or does not take the oath of allegiance despite reasonable opportunities.

Written by Neerad Pandharipande. Edited by Nachiket Deuskar.

Former Congress MP Sajjan Kumar, who was convicted in two cases related to the 1984 anti-Sikh massacre, died at a Delhi hospital on Thursday, PTI quoted unidentified officials as saying. He was 80.

The cause of his death was not immediately clear.

Kumar was serving life imprisonment in Tihar jail. He was convicted by the Delhi High Court in December 2018 in a case involving the murder five members of a Sikh family in Delhi Cantonment’s Raj Nagar area on November 1, 1984.

The court found him guilty of murder, promoting enmity between groups, and defiling public property.

Large-scale violence had broken out in Delhi on October 31, 1984, after the assassination of Indira Gandhi, who was then the prime minister, by her Sikh bodyguards. Mobs, allegedly helped by some Congress leaders, had attacked Sikhs and torched their homes.

Nearly 3,000 Sikhs were killed in Delhi alone. To date, only 28 cases have ended in convictions out of the 587 first information reports filed in the national capital. Thirteen of these convictions have been in murder cases.

Kumar was a three-time Lok Sabha MP from the Outer Delhi seat, and was representing the constituency during the anti-Sikh massacre. He resigned from the Congress after the 2018 conviction.

He was convicted a second time in February 2025 by a Delhi court and sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of two men during the violence.

The family members of the victims had alleged that a mob led by Kumar burnt the two men alive on November 1, 1984, in the Saraswati Vihar area in the national capital.

They also alleged that Kumar, who was then the Congress MP in Outer Delhi, “instigated and abetted the unruly mob” which set their house on fire.

Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

Pakistan has announced that it will confer its highest civilian honour on two Mumbai-based Parsi doctors for not revealing that Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the country’s first president, had a terminal illness in the years before Partition.

Jal Ratanji Patel, Jinnah’s physician, and Jal Daeboo, a radiologist, will receive the Nishan-e-Imtiaz, said the Pakistan Cabinet’s official awards list. Some members of the community believe that Daeboo is a misspelling of the Parsi name Deboo.

They will be given the award posthumously.

Jinnah had been suffering from tuberculosis at the time of Partition. The disease had severely affected his lungs. He died on September 11, 1948, just over a year after Pakistan was created.

Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins have claimed in their 1975 popular history Freedom at Midnight that if British India’s last Viceroy, Louis Mountbatten, had known that Jinnah was suffering from a terminal illness, he might have delayed the transfer of power from British India to independent India and the creation of Pakistan.

“Lord Mountbatten later acknowledged that, had he known how seriously ill Jinnah was, he might have delayed Partition – potentially altering the course of history and perhaps even jeopardising the creation of Pakistan,” wrote Pakistan Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal in a social media post.

He added: “By maintaining absolute professional confidentiality at such a critical moment, these doctors performed a quiet but extraordinary service. Their fidelity to their professional oath inadvertently became a significant contribution to the circumstances that made the creation of Pakistan possible.”

In 1946, Patel diagnosed Jinnah with chronic tuberculosis, Lapierre and Collins write. They do not mention Deboo. He is thought to have examined Jinnah’s X-rays.

Patel told Jinnah that unless he “severely reduced his work load, rested much more frequently, gave up cigarettes and alcohol, and eased the pressures on his system, he did not have more than one or two years to live”, Lapierre and Collins write.

They add that Jinnah told Patel that there was no question of him doing that. “Fortified every two weeks by injections given him in secret by Dr Patel, Jinnah returned to work. He made no effort whatsoever to follow his doctor’s advice,” they write.

Partition had triggered one of history’s largest mass migrations. Lakhs of Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs crossed the newly created borders between India and Pakistan. The communal violence that accompanied this killed between two lakh and 10 lakh persons.

Written by Tanya Shrivastava. Edited by Sneha.