Supreme Court Warns Against Physical Hearings as Delhi Air Turns Toxic
During a hearing unrelated to pollution in Delhi, a Supreme Court judge urged lawyers to avoid attending court in person, warning that the air was so toxic that “even masks are not enough.” The observation came as air quality in Delhi-NCR entered the “severe” category yet again, and at a time when the government is already under scrutiny in a separate case concerning its failure to control pollution.
India’s Richest 1% Increased Their Wealth Share by 62% in the Last 25 Years
Over the past two decades, a small group of people, including in India, have taken a much larger share of global wealth, while most of the world has seen little gain, according to a new report that links this concentration of wealth not only to personal effort but also to government policies that boosted financial markets at the expense of public resources.
Population Does Not Cause Poverty, Bad Economics Does
The idea that India’s large population is the reason for its poverty is still taught in economics classes, but it falls apart under basic scrutiny, says Sauvik Chakraverti, a libertarian thinker and economist, in “Free Your Mind: A Beginner’s Guide to Political Economy.” If wealth is created by humans working, producing and exchanging with each other, how can more humans cause poverty?
ECI’s SIR: Can You Lose Your Vote While Filling the Form?
The Election Commission of India’s (ECI) Special Intensive Revision (SIR) form sounds like something designed to make democracy feel interactive, but for many voters it is more like a riddle printed on government stationery. While the ECI calls it an exercise to clean up and verify the electoral rolls, it has millions of people staring at a piece of paper and wondering whether their democracy runs on acronyms.
Manipur: Centre Refuses UT Demand Ignoring Kuki-Zo’s De Facto Separation
The Union home ministry reportedly held talks with two armed Kuki-Zo groups on November 6 and 7. The groups said they could no longer live under the Manipur government. The Centre said it understood their pain but would not create a new Union territory. That policy now stands at odds with the reality of Manipur.
India Faces Alarming Rise in Chronic Kidney Disease
Chronic kidney disease, or CKD, has become one of the fastest growing health threats in India, with over 138 million adults now affected, according to a major new study published in The Lancet. India ranks second only to China in the number of people living with CKD, making it one of the worst-affected countries in a global crisis that has seen total cases more than double since 1990.
Supreme Court: Police Must Give Written Arrest Reasons in Understood Language
The Supreme Court has ruled that any person who is arrested must be given the reasons in writing, and in a language they understand. The rule now applies in all cases, across all laws, no matter how serious the crime is.
What Is Bihar’s Assembly Election About?
The 2025 assembly election in Bihar is being widely portrayed in the media as a face-off between the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and the Mahagathbandhan (MGB), with little mention of the state’s long-standing governance failures.
Rahul Gandhi Accuses Election Commission of Enabling Voter Fraud in Haryana
The Leader of the Opposition, Rahul Gandhi, has accused the Election Commission of India (ECI) of facilitating mass voter fraud to benefit the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the 2024 Haryana assembly election. Speaking at a press conference in New Delhi on November 5, Gandhi alleged that there were 2.5 million fake entries in the state’s voter rolls, saying the figure is significantly larger than the combined margin of BJP’s victories in key constituencies.
Tamil Nadu Party Challenges SIR in Supreme Court, Citing Risk to Electoral Rights
The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) party in Tamil Nadu has filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court challenging the Election Commission of India’s (ECI) expansion of a voter list verification drive known as the Special Intensive Revision (SIR). The petition claims that the SIR exercise, now extended to 12 states and Union Territories, threatens the right of citizens to participate in elections and imposes burdens that resemble a citizenship test without legal authority.
Govt Forensic Lab Claims ‘Manipur Tapes’ Tampered With
The Indian government’s forensic laboratory has told the Supreme Court that audio tapes allegedly implicating Biren N. Singh, former chief minister of Manipur, in ethnic violence were tampered with and cannot be used for voice comparison.
India’s Services Sector Drives Growth but Fails to Create Secure Jobs
A new report from the government’s think tank NITI Aayog shows that even though services account for more than half of India’s total economic output, they employ less than a third of the country’s workforce. The imbalance signals a deeper structural fault in India’s development model, where growth is accelerating without offering meaningful or secure work to most people.
Kerala Set to Declare End of Extreme Poverty, Experts Question the Basis
As Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan prepares to formally declare the state the first in India to be entirely free from extreme poverty on November 1, a group of economists, statisticians and public intellectuals have posed a basic and unavoidable question: how was this conclusion reached?
Youth Collective’s Site Set on Fire After Assault, Charges Over Books on Ideology
Unidentified individuals set fire to a rural campus run by the youth collective HOWL (How Ought We Live), which works with tribal communities, destroying property worth lakhs. The suspected arson came after months of rising hostility, including physical assaults, allegedly by local right-wing groups, and the arrest of the group’s founder on charges of offending religious sentiments.
India Accounts for 70% of Global Air Pollution Deaths: Report
India accounts for nearly 70% of all global deaths caused by air pollution, according to a new international report by a global research collaboration, the Lancet Countdown. The report estimates that PM2.5 pollution in India is now responsible for around 1.72 million deaths each year, marking a sharp 38% rise since 2010.
Ground is Sinking Under Millions of Homes in Indian Cities: Study
A new study offers a serious warning for India’s rapidly expanding urban areas, presenting evidence that large parts of five megacities, including Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata and Bengaluru, are sinking due to the over-extraction of groundwater. This subsidence is causing uneven ground deformation, which in turn is putting thousands of buildings at growing risk of long-term structural damage.
India’s Free Healthcare Scheme Failing Patients as Hospitals Go Unpaid, Says Report
A report by The Guardian warns that delayed payments to hospitals are threatening the functioning of the Ayushman Bharat health insurance scheme. Paired with the lack of basic healthcare infrastructure in many parts of the country, especially in rural and neglected areas, the crisis becomes even more pressing.
Can Long-Haul Flights Be Safe With Fewer Pilots and Longer Shifts?
The aviation regulator’s decision to extend duty hours for pilots flying the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, a wide-body aircraft used for long international flights, has direct safety implications for passengers. The decision ignores key fatigue-related risks that global regulators and airlines are actively trying to reduce, and it does so at a time when the aircraft in question already has limitations affecting pilot rest during flight.
LIC Denies Government Role in $3.9 Billion Adani Investments
The Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) has rejected allegations made by The Washington Post that its investment decisions, specifically a $3.9 billion infusion into companies owned by industrialist Gautam Adani, as reported by the newspaper, were directed by the Indian government. What remains unanswered is whether LIC considered the legal and financial risks associated with Adani Group at the time, and how it justified increasing its exposure despite market volatility and public criticism.
Government Routed LIC Investments to Adani, The Washington Post Alleges
An investigative report by The Washington Post alleges that the Indian government directed $3.9 billion in public funds from the state-owned Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) into industrialist Gautam Adani’s companies at a time when global lenders were retreating due to fraud and bribery charges filed against him in the United States. The report presents this as an example of the convergence of crony capitalism, state-enabled financial support and elite consolidation within India’s current political economy.