India’s Move Toward ‘Data Nationalism’ and Post-Truth Governance
Across three major areas involving climate risk, press freedom and economic reporting, the government is steadily moving away from global benchmarks. It is discarding international assessments and building its own homegrown versions instead. These are managed or overseen by government bodies, which gives it more control over both the data and the story the data tells. The result is a system that does not just measure progress. It also quietly rewrites what progress is supposed to mean.
Why Indians Consume Low-quality Protein and How It Affects Their Health
Indians are consuming enough protein by the numbers, but much of it comes from poor-quality sources that do not meet the body’s nutritional needs, a pattern documented in recent dietary analysis by a national policy research body. This dietary imbalance is contributing to both childhood malnutrition and a growing epidemic of non-communicable diseases among adults.
How Bad is Delhi’s Air Pollution for Your Health, What Needs to Change?
People in Delhi and nearby areas are absorbing dangerous amounts of air pollution deep into their lungs every day, far beyond what Indian or global safety standards allow. A five-year study measured how much of this pollution actually settles inside the respiratory system, offering a clearer and more direct view of the damage being caused to people’s health.
Why 96% of Indians Have No Access to Palliative Care
Up to 10 million people in India need palliative care, yet fewer than 4% receive it, according to a new study. As a result, people with chronic and life-limiting illnesses such as cancer, heart disease or advanced neurological conditions are often left without the support they need to live their final days with comfort and dignity. They endure unmanaged pain and deep emotional distress.
Why the IMF Gave India a Low Score on Economic Data Quality
In its 2025 Data Adequacy Assessment, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) gave India a ‘C’ grade for the quality of its national accounts and government finance data. In plain terms, that means the data has enough problems to make economic analysis tricky and sometimes unreliable.
Bhutan’s Journalists Face Growing Information Blockades
Officials in Bhutan appear to have cultivated a habit of avoiding the media and withholding information, leaving journalists with few avenues for access. The resulting silence is straining an already fragile media landscape, pushing it closer to collapse.
Delhi Remains World’s Most Polluted City
Delhi recorded the highest air pollution levels among global cities on December 1, with an Air Quality Index of 244. Other cities across India and Asia also reported hazardous conditions, marking a continued public health risk across the region.
Heart Attack Prediction Tools Miss the Warning in Half of Cases
A new study by medical researchers in the United States has revealed a serious limitation in how doctors currently try to predict and prevent heart attacks. It shows that the tools most commonly used by physicians, namely the ASCVD risk score and the newer PREVENT calculator, are failing to identify a large number of individuals who are actually at risk.
Smoking Even a Few Cigarettes a Day Raises Death Risk: Study
A major new study has found that even light smoking dramatically increases the risk of serious heart conditions and early death, with women facing higher risk than men. The study involves decades of data from more than 320,000 (3.2 lakh) adults and offers the clearest long-term evidence to date that there is no safe level of tobacco use.
Study Finds 83% of Indian Patients Carry Drug‑Resistant ‘Superbugs’
A new international study reveals that antimicrobial resistance (AMR), which is the ability of bacteria and other microbes to resist the effects of medicines that once killed them, is now one of the most pressing threats to public health worldwide, and this new study places India at the heart of that emergency.
Supreme Court Reopens Door for Post-Facto Environmental Clearances
The Supreme Court has revived a mechanism that allows construction or industrial projects to obtain environmental clearance even after they have already started or expanded without approval. This means projects that violated environmental rules can now continue operations without facing legal action or being dismantled.
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?
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?