Citizens Have 5 Economic Reasons to Oppose the Government’s E25 Petrol Plan
The central government is reportedly considering delaying its plan to increase the amount of ethanol mixed with petrol from the current 20% to 25%. The government’s rationale is that the move would reduce India’s dependence on imported crude oil, lower some vehicle emissions and create a bigger market for Indian farmers. However, these stated public policy objectives overshadow several economic principles that lie behind citizens’ opposition to the proposal.
West Bengal’s Fight Against ‘Goondas’ Comes With a Democratic Risk
The West Bengal Assembly has passed two laws that allow authorities to place people identified as “goondas” (violent criminals, gang members or habitual offenders) in preventive detention for up to 12 months and confiscate their property to compensate victims of damage caused during public disorder. The move is causing concern that these laws could be used against political opponents, activists and protesters because of the broad powers they grant the government.
Why India’s Heat Crisis Falls Hardest on Dalits and Muslims
India’s caste system has long assigned the most physically exposed forms of labour to the communities least able to refuse them. That old arrangement has taken on new urgency as summer temperatures push past the limits of human endurance. Sections of the Muslim community also bear a disproportionate burden during heatwaves because of residential exclusion.
Photo Feature: Masks, Placards and Anger at the Cockroach Janta Party Protest
Thousands of young people, including students who appeared for recent NEET and CBSE examinations, their parents, student unions, job aspirants, and civil society groups, gathered at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi on June 6 for a protest organised by the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP). Participants demanded the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan following the NEET paper leak controversy and a series of examination-related irregularities reported in recent years.
A Telegram Bot Is Selling Indians’ Personal Data for ₹2.50 Per Search
Twenty-three-year-old Maryam Siddiqui (name changed) was trying to leave her family, where she said she had been facing harassment from an extended family member. She left her home in a small town in Bihar and travelled to Patna without informing her parents. After searching for her for ten days and filing a police complaint, her family was advised by a friend to use a bot that illegally tracks a person’s exact location, provides detailed coordinates and reveals sensitive personal information.
The ‘Politics of the Unprotected Body’: Why Women From Northeast India Remain Vulnerable to Violence
Repeated racial and gender-based abuse against women from Northeast India points to a deeper structural failure of the Indian state to provide equal protection to all citizens. Law enforcement agencies, courts and policymakers often acknowledge such incidents, yet their racial dimension frequently disappears from legal and institutional responses, producing a pattern of unequal citizenship. Women from the Northeast thus occupy what may be called the “unprotected body,” formally included within the republic but repeatedly denied the full protection of its institutions.
Cockroach Janta Party’s Protest Calls for Crowd Management, Not a Law and Order Confrontation
The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), a youth-driven satirical movement that emerged online last month, is set to hold its first on-ground protest at New Delhi’s Jantar Mantar on June 6, demanding the resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan over examination failures that the group says affected more than 10 million (one crore) students. It’s difficult to predict how the government will respond. However, treating the protest as primarily a law and order issue rather than a crowd management exercise could carry significant political and administrative costs.
India’s 138 Cities Are Growing Richer and More Polluted; Is That Progress?
A study has found that 138 Indian cities belong to the category where economic expansion came with worsening air quality, the highest share of any country in the world at 35.4 percent of the global total. The finding raises a question about whose prosperity is being measured when the price of growth is paid in the air that everyone, regardless of income, has no choice but to breathe.
Public Donations Free Kerala Migrant Worker from Saudi Death Row. Where Was the State?
Abdul Rahim, a Keralite migrant worker who had been on death row in Saudi Arabia, returned home on May 28 after nearly 20 years in prison, freed only after a community fundraising campaign collected 340 million (34 crore) rupees in blood money. The case exposes how completely a migrant worker’s life can come to depend on a foreign legal system that their family cannot navigate, and how the resilience of Kerala’s diaspora networks, genuine as it is, has come to substitute for protections the state was never equipped to provide.
For India’s Informal Workers, Heatwaves Expose the Limits of the Labour Codes
Summers in much of India have always been tough, but what is happening now is far more severe. It is a public health emergency unfolding under the guise of a weather event. In recent years, temperatures have remained above 40°C for days at a stretch, leading to tens of thousands of suspected heatstroke cases across the country. And those who face the greatest risk are workers in the informal sector, who spend long hours outdoors and continue to lack strong, enforceable protections against extreme heat under India’s labour framework.
Pastors’ Killing Exposes Fragile Rule in Manipur After President’s Rule
The recent killing of three Kuki Baptist pastors in an ambush showed that Manipur’s three-year conflict has widened beyond the Meitei-Kuki divide. The attack came barely three months after President’s Rule was revoked and a new council of ministers was sworn in. What began in May 2023 as violence between the valley-based Meitei community and the Kuki-Zo tribes had already claimed hundreds of lives and displaced tens of thousands, most of them from the tribal Kuki-Zo communities.
Heatwaves in India Are Becoming More Frequent and Dangerous: Report
A new study analysed the hottest continuous 15-day stretch between April 15 and April 29 in parts of India and Pakistan to determine how much climate change influenced the event. While studying it, the researchers found that such prolonged heat events are now about three times more likely to occur and nearly 1°C hotter in today’s climate than they were before large scale industrial warming.
Bengaluru Cannot Drain an Evening’s Rain and Still Calls Itself a World City
Bengaluru is no longer the Bengaluru many of us remember, or the one we still speak of with nostalgia. This was once the city people came to for its weather, its trees and lakes, and an easier pace of life. Today, summer feels harsher, water has become uncertain, and ordinary life has become more expensive and more exhausting.
U.S.-Israel-Iran War: Will India’s Fuel Prices Rise as Crude Oil Prices Climb?
As the Strait of Hormuz remains shut for nearly two months due to the Israel-U.S.-Iran war, crude oil prices have climbed by over 80%. India’s four-year freeze on domestic fuel prices may no longer be sustainable, with the state-owned companies mandated to hold those prices down already recording losses at a scale that points to a deepening profitability crisis.
India’s Monsoon Creates Fatal Mix of Heat and Humidity; How You and Government Can Stay Prepared
A study has found that India’s summer monsoon systematically produces the conditions for dangerous moist heatwaves, with humidity playing a larger role than temperature in pushing the body past its cooling limit and raising the risk of fatal heatstroke for a population already facing a worsening trend.
India Holds Oil Reserves for Only 9.5 Days of Demand Amid Gulf Supply Risks
India’s strategic petroleum reserves can cover only about 9.5 days of national crude oil demand if the reserves are filled to their maximum capacity, according to a government response obtained through the Right to Information law. The disclosure places India at the lower end of energy preparedness at a time of heightened supply risks linked to the ongoing Iran war.
Study Finds 40% of Graduates Seeking Work Are Unemployed
A major labour study from Azim Premji University reports that about 40 percent of graduates in India’s labour force are unemployed, a level that has remained largely unchanged for four decades. The finding shows that economic growth has failed to create enough skilled jobs for the number of graduates the country now produces.
Menopause Years Are Key to Preventing Alzheimer’s in Women
A new medical review that brought together evidence from many earlier studies on why women develop Alzheimer’s disease more often than men suggests that the years around menopause may be one of the most important periods for protecting women’s brain health. The findings are widely useful because they can help women reduce that risk.
India Listed as ‘Electoral Autocracy’ in Global Democracy Report
India is experiencing a decline in democratic standards and is now classified as an “electoral autocracy,” according to the Democracy Report 2026 published by the Sweden-based V-Dem Institute. The report places India in a political category where multiparty elections still take place but core democratic conditions, including freedom of expression, freedom of association and fair political competition, are judged to be insufficient.
Interfaith Dialogue, Religious Freedom Linked to Cities’ Economic Success
Interfaith dialogue and freedom of belief can strengthen a city’s economy by making it more stable and attractive to investors and skilled professionals, according to a new international system developed to measure how cooperation between religious communities influences economic conditions in cities.