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Andhra Pradesh mulls Rs 25,000 incentive for families with third child

Scroll Staff — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 09:33:16 +0000

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu on Thursday unveiled a draft population management policy aimed at raising the state’s Total Fertility Rate by giving a financial incentive of Rs 25,000 for couples who have a third child.

“With fertility declining sharply, we must act now to secure our demographic future,” Naidu said.

The policy also promises free education for the third child up to 18 years of age in public or residential schools.

Naidu said the policy aims to improve the state’s fertility rate from the current 1.5 to 2.1, which is ideal to maintain demographic balance.

Speaking in the Legislative Assembly, Naidu highlighted that the state faces a declining birth rate and an ageing population and warned that by 2047 nearly 23% of residents could be elderly if fertility rates are not stabilised.

“Currently, about 58% of families have only one child, around 2.17 lakh families have two children, and nearly 62 lakh families have three or more children,” The Indian Express quoted Naidu as telling the Assembly. “Around three lakh families have only one child instead of two, while another three lakh families have more than two children.”

The policy document will be placed in the public domain for one month for consultations, after which it will be finalised and...

Delhi: Seven held after man dies following Holi clash, property linked to one accused demolished

Scroll Staff — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 08:30:30 +0000

Six persons were arrested and a minor detained in connection with the death of a 26-year-old man after a clash that broke out during a Holi celebration in Delhi’s Uttam Nagar area, The Indian Express reported on Sunday.

The man who died was identified as Tarun Kumar. He sustained severe injuries in the clash and died while undergoing treatment on Thursday.

The incident occurred on Wednesday in the JJ Colony area of Hasthsal village. A water balloon accidentally thrown by an 11-year-old girl from the third floor of a building fell on a Muslim woman standing below, triggering an argument between two neighbouring families from different religious communities, the newspaper reported.

The dispute soon escalated into a physical clash, The New Indian Express quoted the police as saying.

Dwarka Deputy Commissioner of Police Kushal Pal Singh said family members from “both sides gathered on the street and exchanged blows”, the newspaper reported.

“Three people from one side and five from the other sustained injuries,” The New Indian Express quoted Singh as saying. “Except one, all the injured were discharged the same day.”

The six persons arrested in the case were identified as: Umardeen, Jummadeen, Kamruddin, Mustaque, Muzzafar and Tahir.

On Sunday, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi demolished a property linked to one of the accused in the case, ANI reported.

There are no provisions in Indian law that allow for...

‘The Sky Husband’: Easterine Kire’s book of short stories shows the enduring charm of the mundane

Priyanka Chatterjee — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000

In her latest book, The Sky Husband, Easterine Kire explores the life of the Naga community through stories that meander through myth, history, and modern life, often silting its banks with the tension of what was, what remains, and what ends. This tension is the soil where identity germinates, often countering the “mainstream” gaze that turns the “periphery” into a seedless husk, lacking nuance.

Reflecting on everyday life, this collection of eight short stories ponders on the most ordinary affair of life – love – while exploring the varied issues that make and unmake the community.

At first glance, a book named “The Sky Husband”, dedicated to “girl readers”, feels like a stereotype. This dedicatory note, reminding of such practice among colonial Indian women writers aiming to awaken the “new woman”, is intended for that group of women who, standing at the threshold of childhood and womanhood, often feel confused about their lives. Kire, visualising love through community myth, history, social and cultural motifs, wants girls to think of love as a possibility, not as vulnerability, as they jostle with expectations from life and the world, both of which can be tremendously harsh.

The many forms of love

In an unnamed, timeless village live three women – Hami, Mimi and...

The guava’s whisper: Recovering stories for a post-Western world

Zakir Kibria — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 06:00:02 +0000

Prologue: The seed in the silt

The story of the modern world is not found in the dry ledgers of empires, but in the living archive of the land itself. To understand how the world was remade, one must learn to read the landscape – to see the ghost maps of vanished kingdoms in a clump of trees or hear the echo of a forgotten language in the name of a fruit. This is a story about one such whisper from the past, carried on the sweet, musky flesh of the guava.

Its journey from the New World to the riverbanks of Bengal is a micro-history of everything: of collision and synthesis, of violence and creation, of how invaders become ancestors and foreign seeds become national treasures.

To recover these stories, to tell them in all their sensory, tangled truth, is to begin building a post-Western understanding of our world – one rooted not in conquest, but in connection.

The guava (Psidium guajava) arrived in Bengal not with a proclamation, but with a splash. It came as a biographic stowaway, tucked in the damp, dark holds of Portuguese naus in the 16th century. These ships, part of the sprawling Estado da Índia, were the engines of the first globalisation, carrying more than just men and...

Top updates: Israel strikes Iranian oil depots near Tehran

Scroll Staff — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 06:32:18 +0000

The Israeli military struck several Iranian fuel storage sites late on Saturday, triggering large explosions and fires in Tehran and the neighbouring city of Karaj, Al Jazeera reported.

Iran’s Ministry of Oil said that multiple oil depots in Tehran and Alborz provinces had been targeted, New York Times reported. The Israeli military confirmed the strikes, saying it had attacked several fuel storage and energy facilities in Tehran that were allegedly being used by Iran’s armed forces, the newspaper reported.

On Saturday, Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi also accused the United States of attacking adesalination plant on Qeshm Island, a water treatment facility that removes salt from seawater to produce fresh drinking water.

In a post on X, Araghchi said the strike had impacted water supply in 30 villages.

“Attacking Iran’s infrastructure is a dangerous move with grave consequences,” Araghchi said. “The US set this precedent, not Iran.”

Footage shows a massive fire raging at the Shahran oil depot on the outskirts of northern Tehran after an Israeli attack late Saturday. The Israeli military says it struck fuel storage and related sites it alleges are linked to the Iranian armed forces. pic.twitter.com/VvlWiUjGTT
— Al Jazeera Breaking News (@AJENews) March 7, 2026

Here are more top updates from the conflict in West Asia:

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps later said it had struck the US’ Naval Support...
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Why ‘shooting down’ fighter jets has become central to narrative setting

Nachiket Deuskar — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 03:30:02 +0000

When Israel and the United States attacked Iran on February 28, another skirmish was underway between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

That morning, Afghan spokespersons claimed that a Pakistani fighter jet had been shot down in Jalalabad and the pilot captured.

The claim was quickly picked up by Afghan and global media, and social media engagement accounts. Videos online showed what appeared to be a red parachute and a crowd gathered on the roadside. There was no real wreckage, no pilot in a flight suit.

When the claim was disproved, news organisations removed their posts or added Pakistan’s denial. The viral videos had been unrelated to the fighting along the Durand Line.

This was not the first false claim shared on social media about the Afghan Taliban shooting down Pakistani fighter jets.

Such assertions about downed jets are now an unmistakable global pattern. While the number of jets a country loses may not be a measure of who comes out of the conflict with the upper hand, the claims, even if they are disproved later, have become an important weapon in a country’s online narrative battle.

That is why such claims are often grossly exaggerated or outright false.

This pattern of claims and counter-claims keeps on being repeated.

The most prominent recent example of this pattern is the four-day conflict in May between India and Pakistan.

When India struck sites it claimed were terrorist...

Eco India: Can decentralised efforts be the answer to Bengaluru's waste problems?

Scroll Staff — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 03:25:00 +0000

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Sunday book pick: In ‘Love in Chakiwara and Other Misadventures’, an author laughs at himself

Sayari Debnath — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 03:00:01 +0000

Pakistani writer Muhammad Khalid Akhtar’s famous novel of the Karachi neighbourhood of Chakiwara, along with other short stories also set in the same place, have been collected through English translations in Love in Chakiwara and Other Misadventures. The book can inspire great envy for any writer – Akhtar’s rip-roaring humour, and translator Bilal Tanweer’s formidable skills in recreating it in a new language stand out.

A truly autonomous state

Chakiwara, a forgettable corner in Karachi’s Lyari – yes, the same Lyari which has shot to infamy after Aditya Dhar’s Dhurandhar – is bustling with bumbling fools, odd beauties, and fearsome djinns. From this mix, one can pluck out starving novelists, dubious doctors, cheating out-of-work actors, and a Buddhist Chinese dentist who has washed up on the locality’s unenviable shores. Karachi might be Pakistan’s financial capita; but Chakiwara is untouched by its glamour or economic prosperity.

The decrepit state of the neighbourhood makes one thing clear – the good folks of Chakiwara are desperately poor and live substandard lives. The resident doctor, Ghareeb Muhammad, started off as a land registrar and has been responsible for sending more patients to the grave than restoring them to health. The blockbuster novelist Qurban Ali Kattar has written scores of detective novels but has...

Kerala: Two ‘Republic TV’ journalists held for filming Iranian ship in Kochi port’s restricted zone

Scroll Staff — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 03:06:10 +0000

A reporter and a cameraperson from the news channel Republic TV, and a boat driver were arrested on Saturday for allegedly entering a restricted high-security zone near the port in Kochi to film an Iranian naval vessel, Onmanorama reported.

The arrests came days after the Iranian ship IRIS Lavan docked in Kochi on Wednesday. The vessel had arrived at the port a day after the United States sank the Iranian warship IRIS Dena off the coast of Sri Lanka, amid the escalating conflict in West Asia.

Police said that the three persons had used a rented boat to trespass into the Southern Coal Berth where they took photos and videos of the Iran-owned ship and attempted to share them in a manner that could threaten national security, Onmanorama reported.

Security personnel from the Central Industrial Security Force noticed the boat in the restricted zone and detained the three, Mathrubhumi reported.

The three persons identified as Republic TV reporter Shankar, cameraperson Mani and the boat driver, Radhakrishnan, were later handed over to the Harbour Police in Kochi, the news outlet reported.

The cameras used by the journalists were also seized.

The first information report uploaded by the Harbour Police on Pol-App, the official Kerala Police application, said that the three persons were booked under provisions of the Official Secrets Act related to spying in...

‘I describe myself as a smuggler, border-crosser across languages’: Translator J Devika

Saurabh Sharma — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 02:00:03 +0000

Academic and feminist J Devika’s politics is central to the job of translation, and she is never apologetic about it. Her recent translation of Manoj Kuroor’s novel The Day the Earth Bloomed won the Crossword Book Award for Translation, and the inaugural Kerala Literature Festival Book of the Year (Fiction) in 2025. In a conversation with Scroll, J Devika discussed the book and other aspects of her translation. Excerpts from the interview:

What made you gravitate towards Manoj Kuroor’s novel, and what helped you translate the sensibilities of the Sangam era literature into English?
The answer to the first is also the answer to the second. Kuroor’s novel was remarkable for many reasons. First, I’ve always loved Sangam poetry, and I’ve read both Akananuru and Purananuru. Not in Malayalam, though there are several good translations in Malayalam by many poets. But when I read these poetry collections in my teenage years, the poets who had translated these works used Sanskritic idioms, which is why these translations didn’t sound – or read – like Tamil at all. So, I could see that something was amiss, because Sanskrit has a different emotional register. I quite enjoyed and loved reading AK Ramanujan’s translations because there’s a remarkable avoidance of excessive...

C Rajagopalachari is not the Hindutva icon the BJP imagines him to be

Niveditha K Prasad — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 01:00:03 +0000

With the bust of statesman C Rajagopalachari replacing that of English architect Edwin Lutyens in the Rashtrapati Bhavan, an old icon is being recast in a new political form. Rajagopalachari, one of Mohandas Gandhi’s closest confidantes, was independent India’s first governor-general and chief minister of the Madras State. In his twilight years, he challenged the Congress by forming the Swatantra Party – at one point it was the single-largest opposition party in the Lok Sabha.

By appropriating Rajagopalachari, a prominent leader in the Independence struggle and early years of the Republic, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party is once again attempting to force-fit a historical figure into its own ideological mould.

President Draupudi Murmi, in her speech at the installation of the bust, said that the event was a sign of “mental decolonisation”. But BJP’s vision of decolonisation has long been clear: it aims to delegitimise the freedom struggle led by the Congress while positioning Hindutva politics as “true decolonisation”.

Freedom fighter, thinker, intellectual, statesman…these are some descriptions that come to the mind when one recalls Shri C. Rajagopalachari. Tributes to him on his birth anniversary. He remains one of the sharpest minds of the 20th century, who believed in creating value and… pic.twitter.com/VcE4jt5MD9
— Narendra Modi (@narendramodi)...
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Oil price rise shows how global supply chains are vulnerable to geo-politics

Maryam Lotfi, The Conversation — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 16:30:00 +0000

The escalating conflict between Iran, the US and Israel has taken a critical turn. The strait of Hormuz – one of the most important shipping routes for oil and gas – is facing significant disruption. The strait is the main route connecting Persian Gulf ports in Iran and some of the region’s other oil producers to the open ocean.

The strikes on Iran are already having tangible effects: energy flows are slowing, markets are reacting and supply chains are under pressure. This is not just a regional conflict – it is a global supply chain crisis unfolding in real time.

As an expert on supply chains, I am acutely aware of how central the strait is – not only for the stability of the region but also to the functioning of the global economy.

This narrow corridor is one of the world’s most critical chokepoints – around a fifth of the world’s oil passes through the strait daily. Its sudden disruption represents a “chokepoint failure” – a breakdown at a critical node that triggers cascading effects across global systems.

Tanker traffic has dropped sharply, with vessels waiting in surrounding waters as ship owners reassess the risks. Oil prices surged in response to the strikes and the threat to shipping routes. Analysts have warned that prices...

‘Departure(s)’: Julian Barnes’s final novel is an emotionally charged farewell to readers

Rahul Singh — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 15:00:00 +0000

Julian Barnes, the 2011 Booker Prize-winning author, has said his latest novel, Departures(s), is also his final. For those who have read Barnes over the years, it is a bittersweet moment. It is a joy to have another novel from the 80-year-old writer after his last, Elizabeth Finch, but sadly, there won’t be another after the poignantly titled Departure(s).

A story within the story

Barnes is one of the most experimental writers in the English language – he has proved this in his 45-year-long writing career. His novels Metroland, The Sense of an Ending, or Before She Met Me won him love from readers, while Flaubert’s Parrot, A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters, or Talking it Over bowled critics over with their inventive styles. His final novel balances both acts – it is a hybrid novel. He seems to have set out on a brand new project – of attempting an autobiography, a love story, and then a final word before meeting death. On the ninth page of this novel, he states:

There will be a story – or a story within the story…
This will be my last book.

So the reader is prepared to experience Barnes’s clever wit once again, even if for the last time. Departure(s) will take the reader on a journey into the phases and ideas...

Bengal: President criticises Trinamool government for allotting smaller event venue

Scroll Staff — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 04:13:38 +0000

President Droupadi Murmu on Saturday criticised the Trinamool Congress government in West Bengal for allocating a smaller venue for an event she addressed in Darjeeling district.

She also expressed displeasure about Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and state ministers not following the conventions of a presidential visit.

Murmu was in the state to participate in the ninth International Santal Conference, the venue of which was changed, The Telegraph reported.

The organisers of the event had preferred a field in Bidhannagar in the district, the newspaper reported. However, the administration allegedly denied permission and the event was held at Gosainpur near Bagdogra in Siliguri.

Addressing the conference, Murmu said: “I was watching many Santals are outside. I feel somebody is stopping them from entering. While on the way I couldn’t help wondering, is this an international conference? Some do not want the Santal to stand united, stand strong.”

After the event, Murmu travelled to Bidhannagar and spoke with residents without using a dais. She said that the venue in Bidhannagar would have been better suited for the conference.

“I don’t know what happened to the administration,” Murmu said. “We came here quite easily. They had told us this place is congested. I feel five lakh people could have gathered here. I don’t know why they took us there. Not many of...

Andhra Pradesh plans to ban social media use for children under 13

Scroll Staff — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 13:12:01 +0000

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu on Friday said that the state government is planning to introduce measures to restrict the use of social media for children under the age of 13 to protect them from its potential negative impact, The Hindu reported.

This came after Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah announced earlier in the day that the Congress government in the state will ban the use of social media for children under the age of 16.

Speaking in the Andhra Pradesh Assembly, Naidu said that the proposal made by state Information Technology and Education Minister Nara Lokesh is being considered.

The measure is likely to be rolled out within the next 90 days, Naidu added.

The Telugu Desam Party government is also examining possible regulations for children in the 13-16 age group, the chief minister said, adding that a final decision will be taken after wider consultations.

The state government is committed to safeguarding children from the harmful effects of excessive social media usage and ensuring their overall well-being, he said.

In Karnataka, Siddaramaiah announced the ban on the use of social media for children under the age of 16 while presenting the state Budget for the financial year 2026-’27. The Congress leader said the decision had been taken “to protect children from the harmful effects of excessive mobile and social...

March global nonfiction: Six newly released books that decode humanity’s relationship with the world

Scroll Staff — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 12:00:03 +0000

All information sourced from publishers.

Animate: How Animals Shape the Human Mind, Michael Bond

In Animate, science writer Michael Bond explores how animals have profoundly influenced our minds and cultures. Drawing on cutting-edge insights from psychology, anthropology, literature and neuroscience, Bond traces the varied ways their lives have affected ours, from our hunter-gatherer ancestors whose brains were rewired by the prey they hunted and the predators they feared, to the medieval and Enlightenment thinkers who used animals to promote notions of human supremacy.

Scientists today are challenging the assumption that we are separate from and superior to animals, showing that they too possess intelligence, empathy, creativity and even the ability to use tools. If everything that supposedly makes us human is shared with other creatures, where does that leave us? And if we are not as exceptional as we thought, how should we be treating the animals we live alongside?

A fascinating exploration of what it means to be both human and animal, Animate shows that to better understand ourselves, we must pay more attention to the other beings with whom we share our world.

Red Dawn Over China: How Communism Conquered a Quarter of Humanity, Frank Dikötter

The history of modern China has long been portrayed as a tale of Communists fighting...

India being a ‘net security provider’ does not override realities of Indian Ocean: S Jaishankar

Scroll Staff — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 11:52:00 +0000

India is a net security provider in the Indian Ocean but that “does not override the realities” of the region, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said on Saturday.

“It is a region where other countries are present in a maritime capacity,” he added.

The external affairs minister’s comment during a panel discussion at the 2026 Raisina Dialogue event in Delhi was in response to the moderator’s question about the United States military sinking an Iranian warship off the Sri Lankan coast.

On Wednesday, a US Navy submarine sunk Iranian frigate IRIS Dena. The ship was attacked using a torpedo, US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said.

While more than 80 personnel were killed, 61 were missing and 32 had been rescued by the Sri Lankan Navy. The incident occurred on the fifth day of Israel-US’ war on Iran.

From February 16 to February 25, the warship had attended an International Fleet Review in Vishakhapatnam, along with ships from several other countries.

Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi declared on Thursday that the US would “bitterly regret” the action. He added that the ship was “a guest of India’s Navy” and had been struck without warning.

Retired Indian admirals, former diplomats and geopolitical analysts had described the incident in India’s backyard as a “strategic embarrassment” to the Indian government and a “blow to...

Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh acquitted in 2002 journalist murder case

Scroll Staff — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 10:57:00 +0000

The Punjab and Haryana High Court on Saturday acquitted Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh in the 2002 murder case of a journalist, Live Law reported.

A bench of Chief Justice Sheel Nagu and Justice Vikram Aggarwal issued the verdict on appeals filed against the conviction.

In 2019, a Central Bureau of Investigation court in Haryana’s Panchkula had sentenced Ram Rahim and three others – Kuldeep Singh, Nirmal Singh and Krishan Lal – to life imprisonment in connection with the murder of Ram Chander Chhatrapati, a Sirsa-based journalist.

The journalist was shot dead in October 2002 after his newspaper Poora Sach published an anonymous letter narrating how Ram Rahim allegedly sexually harassed women at the Dera headquarters. A case was registered in 2003 and it was handed over to the CBI in 2006.

Ram Rahim was listed as the main conspirator in the case.

On Saturday, the High Court upheld the convictions and life sentences of Kuldeep Singh, Nirmal Singh and Lal, according to Live Law.

Ram Rahim is currently serving a 20-year sentence given to him in 2017 for raping two of his women disciples at the Dera headquarters.

In 2021, he and four others were also convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment in the murder case of a former manager of his sect. However, the High Court acquitted him in...

Eco India, Episode 316: How citizen initiatives are solving environmental challenges world over

Scroll Staff — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 09:55:00 +0000

...

Nepal: Rastriya Swatantra Party on track to sweep polls

Scroll Staff — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 13:17:24 +0000

The newly-formed Rastriya Swatantra Party was on its way to sweep the parliamentary elections in Nepal as votes continued to be counted on Saturday.

As of 6.45 pm, the three-year-old party was leading in 60 seats and had won 62 seats, according to The Kathmandu Times.

Polling to elect 275 members of Parliament in the country took place on Thursday. A voter turnout of 58% was recorded.

Of the total, 165 seats are being decided through direct voting. The remaining will be allocated under the proportional representation system, with political parties nominating lawmakers based on the share of votes the parties get.

The Nepali Congress was ahead in 10 seats and had won 10 others.

Rapper-turned-politician Balendra Shah, who has been positioned as the Rastriya Swatantra Party’s prime ministerial candidate, defeated ousted Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli by more than 49,600 votes in the Jhapa-5 constituency.

Shah, 35, is the former mayor of Kathmandu.

Oli’s Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) was leading in seven seats and had won three.

Nepali Communist Party leader and former Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, widely known as Prachanda, won the Rukum East-1 seat, The Kathmandu Times reported. His party was leading in six seats and had won two.

Election Commission officials had said that declaring the final result could take a week, as ⁠counting of proportional representation votes would take some...

SNDT University cancels lecture by feminist historian Uma Chakravarti

Scroll Staff — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 09:35:18 +0000

The Shreemati Nathibai Damodar Thackersey Women’s University in Mumbai has cancelled its 16th Neera Desai Memorial Lecture that was scheduled to be delivered by feminist historian and activist Uma Chakravarti on March 14, The Indian Express reported on Saturday.

While the university’s Vice Chancellor Ujwala Chakradeo told The Indian Express that she was not aware of the event, Putul Sathe, a professor at the institute, told the Hindustan Times that the lecture had been cancelled because of “technical reasons”.

Scroll has requested comments from Chakradeo. This story will be updated if comments are received.

The lecture was organised by SNDT University’s Research Centre for Women in collaboration with the feminist collective Maharashtra Stree Mukti Parishad, The Indian Express reported. The event was announced on Wednesday.

Chakravarti, recognised for her work on gender, caste and social history, was scheduled to deliver a lecture titled “A Feminist Looks Back: Four Decades of a Long March”, the newspaper reported.

A film directed by Chakravarti, Voh Subah Hami Se Aayegi, was also scheduled to be screened at the event.

The university had drawn criticism on social media for inviting Chakravarti.

Commenting on the development, Chakravarti told The Indian Express that she received a call on Friday informing her that the event had been cancelled.

“I am amused that a women’s university which has historically been a place for women to get educated and speak up, should feel anxious about...

Unhomed in the world: The work and world of the recently rediscovered writer, Rajlakshmi N Rao

Sharmistha Mohanty — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 08:00:01 +0000

Contemporary Indian literature, in the last two centuries, has mainly kept to the realist tradition, where the exploration has been of our social contexts and realities. The recently rediscovered writer, Rajlakshmi Rao, stands apart from this tradition. Perhaps one of the very few women writing here in the 1950s, she stands at a tangent to the serious mainstream, in the way of the 20th-century novelists, the Brazilian Clarice Lispector, and the Chilean María Luisa Bombal, whose magic reality was a precursor to later writers far more well known.

Rao is a significant and necessary rediscovery. We must be grateful to scholar and writer Chandan Gowda for retrieving her stories from various places, collecting them, as well as translating them. In his newly edited book, Sangama-Pastorale, Gowda offers us a selection of Rao’s Kannada and English stories. It is a rare writer who has the ability to write both in English and in their mother tongue.

The void at the centre

Rao’s English stories are built around the relationships between men and women, within marriage or outside it. Yet they are not centred on these things. Through the dialogues and small events that happen, there is a certain drawing out of the space between a man and an...

Top updates: Iran president says neighbours will not be targeted, Emirates resumes Dubai flights

Scroll Staff — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 13:29:55 +0000

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Saturday apologised for attacking neighbouring countries, saying that Tehran will no longer target them “unless attacked from there” amid the conflict in West Asia.

“The interim leadership council agreed yesterday that no more attacks will be made on neighbouring countries and no missiles will be fired unless an attack on Iran originates from those countries,” NDTV quoted Pezeshkian as saying in a televised address.

The conflict broke out on February 28 after Israel and the US had launched a joint operation to “degrade the capabilities” of the Iranian government. Tehran retaliated by striking Israel and US military bases in the region, and targeting major cities in other Gulf countries and some ships.

Here are more top updates from the conflict in West Asia:

Emirates on Saturday said that it had resumed its flights to and from the Dubai airport. This came an hour after the airline announced that it was suspending all its operations in the city until further notice.
The Dubai airport operator said on Saturday that it had partially resumed operations with some flights out of the Dubai International Airport and the Al Maktoum International Airport on the outskirts of the city. The update came less than an hour after it said that operations at the Dubai International Airport had been temporarily suspended, citing safety risks.
Iran has destroyed a $300 million...
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Remembering the journalist expelled from India for taking on the East India Company

Anu Kumar — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 06:00:01 +0000

In June 1818, when James Silk Buckingham arrived in Calcutta as captain of the Humayun Shah, he did not anticipate that his seafaring career was about to end. The ship’s owner, the Imam of Muscat, ordered him to transport enslaved people from the East to Zanzibar. Buckingham, a committed opponent of slavery, refused outright.

The refusal left him stranded in Calcutta without employment. Rather than return to England, he decided to remain in India. The city’s European mercantile community, particularly those independent of the East India Company, were frustrated with Company corruption and administrative high-handedness. Buckingham, already politically inclined, found in journalism both a livelihood and a platform.

In September 1818, with financial backing from several merchants led by John Palmer, Buckingham founded the Calcutta Journal and began editing it. Initially an eight-page biweekly, the newspaper soon became a weekly due to its popularity.

The Journal distinguished itself by publishing sharp criticism of the East India Company. Letter writers using pseudonyms would reveal uncomfortable truths. A soldier complained of poor pay and lack of recognition. Another article described chaplains making long visits to the hinterland, leaving Calcutta without clergy for weeks. One report even disclosed troop movements that were ostensibly a government secret.

The Lives of the Illustrious, a periodical devoted to biographical sketches,...

Watch: ‘Dhurandhar: The Revenge’ trailer is out

Scroll Staff — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 05:50:04 +0000

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‘Unwarranted sensationalism’: Centre suspends TRP ratings for news channels amid West Asia conflict

Scroll Staff — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 05:48:06 +0000

The Union government on Friday directed the Broadcast Audience Research Council to suspend the publication of Television Rating Points for news channels for four weeks or until further notice, amid the conflict in West Asia, reported ANI.

The BARC is the official body that measures and releases weekly Television Rating Points for news channels.

The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting said it had issued the order after it observed that “certain News TV Channels are displaying unwarranted sensationalism and speculative content”.

Such content could “potentially create panic among the general public, especially those having friends and family in the affected areas or residing in the affected areas”, the ministry added.

Israel and the United States had launched a joint operation to “degrade the capabilities” of the Iranian government on February 28.

The attacks came amid tensions between the three countries over Tehran’s nuclear programme. Washington acts as a guarantor of Israel’s security. Israel has been claiming that Iran is close to obtaining a nuclear weapon, while Tehran has maintained that its nuclear programme is for civilian purposes.

Iran retaliated by striking Israel and US military bases in the region, and targeting major cities in other Gulf countries and some ships.

After the attacks on February 28, Scroll reported that Indian workers and professionals living in the region were on edge as Iran carried out air...

Iranian ship Lavan docked in India a day after US sunk IRIS Dena: News reports

Scroll Staff — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 04:51:41 +0000

An Iranian ship, IRIS Lavan, docked in Kerala’s Kochi on Wednesday – a day after the United States sank warship IRIS Dena off the coast of Sri Lanka, reported The Print, quoting unidentified government officials.

Iran had requested approval from the Indian government to dock the IRIS Lavan on February 28 due to technical problems, according to ANI.

The approval was given on March 1 and the ship docked in Kochi on Wednesday.

The ship’s 183 crew members have been accommodated at naval facilities in Kochi, reported AFP.

Like the warship attacked by the US, IRIS Lavan had also taken part in the International Fleet Review held from February 15 to February 25 in Vishakhapatnam, where it had been docked alongside ships from several other countries.

Israel and the United States had launched a joint operation to “degrade the capabilities” of the Iranian government on February 28.

Israel has been claiming that Iran is close to obtaining a nuclear weapon, while Tehran has maintained that its nuclear programme is for civilian purposes.

Iran retaliated by striking Israel and US military bases in the region, and targeting major cities in other Gulf countries and some ships.

On Tuesday, warship IRIS Dena, with a capacity of 180 crew members, was torpedoed by a US submarine in international waters. At least 87 persons died in the incident and 61 were missing. The Sri Lankan Navy had...

Domestic LPG cylinder prices hiked by Rs 60 amid West Asia conflict

Scroll Staff — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 03:41:23 +0000

The price of liquified petroleum gas, or LPG, have been hiked by Rs 60 per cylinder amid global energy cost fluctuations as the war in West Asia entered its eighth day.

With this, the cost of non-subsidised LPG cylinders will now cost Rs 913 per 14.2 kg cylinder in Delhi, according to prices displayed on the Indian Oil Corporation website. In Kolkata, the cylinder costs Rs 939, in Mumbai, the price is Rs 912.5 and in Chennai it is Rs 928.5.

The updated price came into effect on Saturday.

The Indian Oil Corporation, the Bharat Petroleum Corporation and the Hindustan Petroleum Corporation regulate the price of cooking gas in India.

Earlier this month, the price of commercial LPG used by establishments such as hotels and restaurants was increased by Rs 114.5 per 19 kg cylinder. It costs Rs 1,883 in Delhi.

With the latest revision, the 14.2 kg LPG cylinder is now the costliest it has been since August 2023.

The price of crude oil in international markets influences domestic LPG costs by affecting fuel costs and shaping supply decisions across energy markets.

The benchmark Brent crude price reached $87 per barrel by Saturday, marking a 20.8% increase from February 27, when it was at $72.87. The jump came after Israel and the US, on February 28,...

How ‘saving Muslim women’ helps justify the self-serving wars of Western democracies

Divya Aslesha — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 03:30:01 +0000

The assassination of Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the possible end of the Islamic regime is being perceived and discussed as particularly beneficial for Iranian women. In joint strikes on February 28, the US and Israel attacked Iran, killing Khamenei and other senior leaders in the country, setting off a broader confrontation in West Asia.

On social media and in the news, videos and posts claim to show women especially, dancing and celebrating Khamenei’s death. The undertone is that the US and Israel are now the saviours of Iran and especially Iranian women – even as the strikes bombed a primary school in Iran, killing at least 165 people, most of them girls between the ages of seven to 12. As of March 5, Iran’s death toll had crossed 1,000, according to a local news agency.

Such gendered narratives have a long history.

For instance, a series of widely circulated images compare “women in Iran in the 1970s”, dressed stylishly in short skirts and dresses, their hair free, with images of women after the 1979 Iranian Revolution, in black chadors or headscarves. Among the most popular of these images is one showing women sitting in a public space, their legs bare and hair open.

But this is disingenuous. It ignores the reality that the regime under pro-American Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah...

‘The Great Indian Brainrot’: These vivid portraits of internet culture bypass analytical frameworks

Ankush Pal — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 03:00:01 +0000

There is a particular kind of book that arrives not from the academy or the newsroom but from the feed itself, authored by someone who has lived inside the machine they now attempt to dissect. Anurag Minus Verma’s The Great Indian Brain Rot is precisely such a work: a collection of nine essays by a content creator, podcaster, and video essayist who turned his own entanglement with digital India into a subject of cultural commentary. The result is uneven, occasionally brilliant, frequently frustrating, and, perhaps most interestingly for those of us concerned with structures of inequality, quietly revelatory about caste, class, and the digital reproduction of social hierarchies.

From the neurological to the sociological

Verma’s central question is deceptively simple: what is “brain rot”? The term, crowned by Oxford University Press as the 2024 word of the year, has become a catch-all for the cognitive fog produced by compulsive short-form content consumption. But Verma refuses to treat it as a novelty. Drawing on Marshall McLuhan and Alvin Toffler, he situates the contemporary doomscrolling epidemic within a longer media history, from the Doordarshan-era entertainment deficit through satellite television’s channel-surfing to the infinite scroll of Instagram Reels. In his telling, “brain rot” is not a disease but “a pact we...

The wondrous journey of ‘Boong’, from Manipur to the BAFTAs and beyond

Nandini Ramnath — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 02:30:00 +0000

Lakshmipriya Devi’s Manipuri film Boong is about a young boy’s mission to locate his missing father. Accompanied by his best friend Raju, Boong travels from Imphal all the way to neighbouring Myanmar to find his father, an expedition that puts the boys in considerable peril. Persistence and pluck characterise the movie’s wondrous trajectory.

The 2024 production is back in the news after winning a British Academy of Film and Television Arts award in February in London. The honour – the first for an Indian title – has led to Boong being released in cinemas for a second time across the country, including in Manipur.

At the BAFTAs, Boong was entered in the Best Children’s & Family Film category – a brainwave that Devi attributes to one of the three producers, Excel Entertainment. “We decided to go for it – we had nothing to lose,” Devi told Scroll.

Boong had previously been submitted to the committee that picks India’s official entry for the International Film Oscar, but it lost out to Neeraj Ghaywan’s Homebound. Boong was released in cinemas in September. Where else could the film try its luck?

“Vishal Ramchandani, the CEO of Excel, said, why don’t you take a look at BAFTA?” Devi said. “I found out that there was a children’s category.”

Also produced by Chalkboard...

‘A history of the emotions of living in a particular period’: Sarnath Banerjee on ‘Absolute Jafar’

Amritesh Mukherjee — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 02:00:02 +0000

We live today in a world of AI-generated book covers (and, indeed, books), a realm where quick and cheap production triumphs over everything, even if it is at the cost of sacrificing art. From that perspective, Sarnath Banerjee is an exception. His latest, Absolute Jafar, which has everything from an Indo-Pak romance to existential dilemmas, is his most personal work to date.

In an interview with Scroll, Banerjee covered everything from the present and future of the Indian comic industry, through his process of creation, to the meaning of home and the fickleness of memory. Excerpts from the conversation:

How was the process of writing Absolute Jafar different from your previous books?
In the process of writing Jafar, I dived into a past which is faintly recollected but fondly remembered. Writing the book was like a doorway through which I tried to remember how a generation felt during the ’90s and the early 2000s. It is not nostalgia but more an act of reclamation. Reclaiming a “history of emotion” of a people living through a particular time, ordinary stories of extraordinary times.

You describe Brighu’s attempts to pass down stories of jinns, eccentric cousins, and the subcontinent to his son as a “doomed enterprise,” largely because Jafar is, at his core, a Berliner....

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As Nitish Kumar quits as Bihar chief minister, what will happen to his politics of social justice?

Ashwani Kumar — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 02:55:58 +0000

Political eras often fade quietly rather than end with a dramatic rupture. Bihar now appears to be approaching such a moment. After nearly two decades at the centre of the state’s political life, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s exit from the stage seems both surprising and inevitable: surprising because of the durability and adaptability that have long defined his career, yet expected because the political architecture he built has gradually evolved beyond the personal authority that sustained it.
The question confronting Bihar, therefore, extends beyond succession. It concerns the fate of a distinctive political experiment – the attempt to reconcile the moral promise of social justice with the practical demands of development and social peace.
Few leaders in contemporary India have embodied democratic pragmatism as fully as Nitish Kumar. Emerging from the socialist ferment of the 1970s, he belongs to the generation shaped by Jayaprakash Narayan’s call for “Total Revolution”, a movement that challenged the dominance of the Congress system and sought to democratise power across Indian society.
This upheaval eventually matured into the Mandal moment of the 1990s, when politics across North India reorganised itself around the language of social justice and caste representation.
Nitish Kumar emerged from this same ideological lineage, yet his political project gradually diverged....
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Can US, Gulf air defences outlast Iran’s drones and missiles?

Andrew Gawthorpe, The Conversation — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 16:30:00 +0000

If Israel and the US hoped their attack on Iran would force the country to capitulate quickly, they were wrong. Despite the death of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and many other senior figures, Iran has managed to continue firing drones and missiles at targets across the Middle East.
This poses a challenge for the US and its allies, including Israel and the Gulf states. The challenge is that they might run out of air defences before Iran runs out of airborne projectiles.
The US and its allies use a number of weapons platforms to knock down incoming missiles and drones. The most important are Thaad interceptors, Patriot systems and SM-family naval missiles, while Israel also uses longer-range Arrow interceptors. However, the supply of these interceptors has been under severe strain in recent years.
Many have been provided to Ukraine, which faces relentless Russian aerial assault. Others have been used in the Red Sea to protect shipping against attacks by the Iran-aligned Houthis. And more still have been stationed in the Indo-Pacific to defend South Korea and Taiwan from possible North Korean and Chinese attacks.
Despite their importance to modern warfare, US stockpiles of these munitions are dangerously low. There are simply too many competing priorities, and production has only recently been...
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Maharashtra announces Rs 2 lakh farm loan waiver, Ladki Bahin scheme to continue

Scroll Staff — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 14:56:36 +0000

Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Friday announced a farm loan waiver of up to Rs 2 lakh and confirmed that the Ladki Bahin cash transfer scheme will continue, while presenting the state Budget for 2026-’27, The Indian Express reported.
Fadnavis, who also holds the finance portfolio, presented a budget of over Rs 7.6 lakh crore in the Assembly.
He said the government aims to make Maharashtra a $5 trillion economy by 2047, The Hindu reported.
Among key announcements was a loan waiver for farmers under the Punyashlok Ahilyadevi Holkar Shetkari Karjmafi Yojana. The scheme will allow for writing off crop loans of eligible farmers of up to Rs 2 lakh taken until September 30.
Fadnavis also said that farmers who have been regularly repaying their loans will receive an incentive grant of Rs 50,000.
Besides, he confirmed that the Mukhyamantri Majhi Ladki Bahin Yojana will continue.
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.
“We have made financial allocation for the coming year,” The Hindu quoted Fadnavis as saying. “A scheme will be brought out for single women, so no increase in instalment. But the scheme will continue.”
The Ladki Bahin scheme is said to have played an important role in the Bharatiya Janata...
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J&K court orders framing of charges against Farooq Abdullah in alleged financial irregularities case

Scroll Staff — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 14:19:04 +0000

A Srinagar court recently directed the framing of charges against National Conference president and former Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah and others named in an alleged Rs 112-crore Jammu and Kashmir Cricket Association financial irregularities case.
Chief Judicial Magistrate Tabasum on February 2 directed that the case be listed for formal framing of charges on March 12. This means that those named will now have to face trial.
The bench said that on a preliminary reading, the essential ingredients of the offences of criminal conspiracy and breach of trust were made out against those named in the case.
The court’s order added that once charges are framed, the statements of two accused, who have turned approvers, will be recorded as evidence.
Those named, including Abdullah, will face charges pertaining to criminal conspiracy, criminal breach of trust and criminal breach of trust by public servants.
However, the court rejected the Enforcement Directorate’s request to add certain offences to the case. The judge held that the Enforcement Directorate cannot intervene in a case that is being investigated, filed and prosecuted by the Central Bureau of Investigation.
“Therefore, the applicant has no locus standi as per the law to seek the addition of charge in the present case,” the order said while dismissing the Enforcement Directorate’s...
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H1-B visas under scrutiny, tech giants step up hiring in India

Ananya Bhattacharya, Rest of World — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 14:00:02 +0000

This article was originally published in Rest of World, which covers technology’s impact outside the West.
If tech talent can’t come to the US, American companies will go where the talent is.
Hiring by Meta, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Netflix, and Google has risen sharply in India in recent months. This trend coincides with the growing scrutiny of the H-1B visa, often used by tech companies to bring international talent to the US.
There were about 4,200 open positions at these companies in India as of February 5, Anuj Agrawal, founder and CEO of talent advisory and recruitment firm Zyoin Group, told Rest of World.
Of the current openings, just 15% are for entry-level roles that require less than three years of experience, while AI, machine learning, cloud, and cybersecurity roles comprise nearly half of the vacancies.
In 2025, these companies added around 33,000 workers in India, a roughly 18% increase from the previous year, Bengaluru-based human resources expert N Shivakumar told Rest of World.
“This probably has been the strongest growth in several years,” Shivakumar said. “There is so much abundance of mature talent available – not just talent which is doing the basic job, but they are into deep tech, deep learning, and they’re heavily into AI.”
Based on early signs, Shivakumar expects an even...
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True Story: How we investigated the illegal kidney trade stretching from Tamil Nadu to Singapore

Supriya Sharma — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 13:45:00 +0000

Organ trade is illegal in India. But it is an open secret that patients requiring a kidney transplant, if they can afford it, buy kidneys from the economically distressed.
In Tamil Nadu’s Namakkal district, the decline of the textile industry has created conditions of economic distress, and organ brokers have come to exploit them. Startlingly, as we found, the network stretches all the way to Singapore.
Scroll’s Executive Editor Supriya Sharma, in this episode of True Story, speaks to reporter Johanna Deeksha who travelled to Namakkal to investigate the trade.
...
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‘Chiraiya’ trailer: Divya Dutta headlines a series about marital rape

Scroll Staff — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 13:35:22 +0000

...
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Rush Hour: UN calls West Asia conflict humanitarian emergency, US lets India buy Russian oil & more

Scroll Staff — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 13:33:16 +0000

The United Nations’ refugee agency declared the conflict in West Asia a major humanitarian emergency, and called for all fleeing civilians to be granted safe passage. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said that the crisis has led large numbers of people to flee their homes.
“UNHCR has declared the escalating crisis in the Middle East as a major humanitarian emergency requiring an immediate response across the region,” Ayaki Ito, the director of emergency and programme support at the agency, said.
The conflict began on February 28 when Israel and the US launched a joint military operation targeting the Iranian government, triggering a retaliation by Tehran.
Israel has been claiming that Iran is close to obtaining a nuclear weapon, while Tehran has maintained that its nuclear programme is for civilian purposes. Read more.
The United States granted Indian refiners a 30-day waiver to buy Russian oil stranded at sea amid the conflict in West Asia. This was a short-term measure to keep oil supplies flowing globally amid disruptions, said US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, adding that it “will not provide significant financial benefit” to the Russian government.
The decision came amid concerns about rising crude oil prices and its supply from West Asia being disrupted. The price of benchmark Brent crude had reached $84 per barrel...
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UN refugee agency declares West Asia conflict as ‘major humanitarian emergency’

Scroll Staff — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 15:01:37 +0000

The United Nations’ refugee agency on Friday declared the conflict in West Asia as a major humanitarian emergency, and called for all fleeing civilians to be granted safe passage, AFP reported.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said that the crisis has led large numbers of people to escape their homes.
“UNHCR has declared the escalating crisis in the Middle East as a major humanitarian emergency requiring an immediate response across the region,” Ayaki Ito, the director of emergency and programme support at the agency was quoted as saying by AFP.
The official added that the recent escalation across West Asia have “triggered significant population movements”.
The figures given for the scale of displacement so far are likely an underestimate, Reuters quoted Ito as saying.
“It worries us very ⁠much, the numbers of the displaced populations and the lack of adequate water and sanitation,” the official said.
The conflict began on February 28 when Israel and the US launched a joint military operation targeting the Iranian government, triggering a retaliation by Tehran.
The attacks came amid tensions between the three countries over Tehran’s nuclear programme. Washington acts as a guarantor of Israel’s security. Israel has been claiming that Iran is close to obtaining a nuclear weapon, which could alter the regional security balance.
Tehran has long maintained that its nuclear programme...
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Fiction: Lila’s return to Kolkata brings a fraught reunion with her mother and extended family

Nayantara Roy — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 12:00:01 +0000

A secret is a terrible thing. It starts as a single inhalation, a fragment of bacteria that enters your bloodstream, multiplying immediately or over centuries, a thousand neural networks of secrets emerging from the first. As a family, we were long practiced in the art of secrets, trading one deception for the other through generations, weaving an intricate silk screen that prevented the outside world from knowing who we might turn into. But that night on the terrace, confronted by the body that we had taken life from, I wondered if there would be no hiding this time.
A secret is a terrible thing. Unless there was honour in keeping it.

In the middle of that summer, I inherited my grandfather’s house in India. There were five sprawling floors of it, home to my mother, my grandmother, and their extended family, eight thousand miles away from my apartment in Brooklyn. The first time that my mother called that day was at 7.15 am. I let the phone ring through, because we had not spoken in fourteen months, and I was steaming my skirt, and I did not know yet that my grandfather was dead. It was my birthday, and I assumed that despite...
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BJP does not see ‘Miya’ Muslims as enemies, says Himanta Biswa Sarma

Scroll Staff — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 11:35:00 +0000

Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Thursday said the Bharatiya Janata Party does not consider “Miya” Muslims, or Bengali-origin Muslims in Assam, as its enemies but only objects to some alleged practices among sections of the community, The Hindu reported.
“The Miya people are not our enemies,” the BJP leader said, adding that the party’s concerns were about what he described as “love jihad, land encroachment, child marriage and fertiliser jihad [an accusation that farmers of the community use chemicals on the food they grow for mass consumption]”.
He added that the saffron party would not view the community as antagonistic if such matters were addressed, the newspaper reported.
He was responding to a question about whether a “Miya” Muslim could receive a BJP ticket in the upcoming Assam Assembly elections, expected to be held in April, India Today NE reported.
Speaking to journalists on Thursday, Sarma said the party was comfortable with anyone who was “patriotic” and showed support for slogans such as “Bharat Mata Ki Jai” or “Vande Mataram”, India Today NE reported.
Sarma also outlined the BJP’s electoral strategy in constituencies dominated by Muslims ahead of the Assembly elections.
He said the party planned to contest in a small number of such seats and that candidates would be selected on the basis of their chances of winning rather...
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‘The Bride!’ review: Jessie Buckley and Christian Bale dominate the latest take on Frankenstein lore

Scroll Staff — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 11:26:17 +0000

Maggie Gyllenhaal’s tribute to Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein isn’t anything like Guillermo del Toro’s recent movie of that name or previous adaptations. Gyllenhaal’s The Bride! isn’t even like the classic Bride of Frankenstein. In the black-and-white film from 1935, the Bride doesn’t say a word. In Gyllenhaal’s imagination, she simply won’t stop talking.
In Chicago in 1936, good-time girl Ida (Jessie Buckley) starts behaving strangely in the middle of pretending to enjoy herself with her older, wealthy patrons. The voice of Mary Shelley is ringing in Ida’s head and spewing out through her mouth, shocking everybody and Ida too. She dies at the end of that incident, but ever so briefly.
Victor Frankenstein’s monster, also called Frankenstein (Christian Bale), is prowling through Chicago, seeking a spouse to ease his loneliness. The scientist Euphronious (Annette Bening) reanimates Ida’s corpse, but not without glitches. Like a wind-up doll that is now malfunctioning, the revivified Ida is a hot mess, with fleeting memories of her past life and a tendency to shoot off. Frankenstein is nonplussed – and smitten.
These freakish outliers are forced to go on the run, followed by cop and his assistant (Peter Sarsgaard and Penelope Cruz) and a Mafia boss’s stooge (John Magaro). Frankenstein’s love for movies, especially the ones starring the...
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Karnataka to ban social media use for children under 16

Scroll Staff — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 11:12:39 +0000

Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Friday announced that the government will ban the use of social media for children under the age of 16.
Presenting the state Budget 2026-’27, the Congress leader said the decision had been taken “to protect children from the harmful effects of excessive mobile and social media use”.
He did not mention when the ban would take effect.
Karnataka Government BANS SOCIAL MEDIA for children below the age of 16 years

CM Siddaramaiah made this announcement in his Budget Speech@CMofKarnataka @siddaramaiah #KarnatakaBudget2026 pic.twitter.com/sWxi2a2EPK
— Bar and Bench (@barandbench) March 6, 2026

Once implemented, Karnataka will become the first state in the country to impose such a ban.
In 2025, the Andhra Pradesh government said that it was considering a ban on social media for children under the age of 16.
“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,” Nara Lokesh, Andhra’s information technology minister, said after Siddaramiah’s proposal. “Sometimes good ideas travel fast. Wishing them success in taking it forward.”
Siddaramaiah’s announcement on Friday came weeks after he had sought the views of vice-chancellors at the Karnataka State Higher Education Council on a proposal to restrict mobile phones and social media access for children, The News Minute reported.
“In line with various other countries like Australia, there is a thought to ban mobile phones among students,” the chief minister had said. “We are looking at this.”
In December, Australia...
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India’s foreign policy driven by ‘exploitation of a compromised individual’: Rahul Gandhi

Scroll Staff — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 10:15:49 +0000

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday questioned the Narendra Modi government in the context of the conflict in West Asia, saying that its foreign policy today “is the result of the exploitation of a compromised individual”.
Gandhi’s statement came soon after the United States granted Indian refiners a 30-day waiver to buy Russian oil stranded at sea amid the conflict in West Asia.
Indian goods had been facing a combined US tariff rate of 50%, including a punitive levy of 25% imposed in August for purchasing Russian oil. US President Donald Trump had, on February 7, removed the additional 25% punitive levy, bringing the effective US tariff rate on Indian imports down to 18%.
The White House had said that the punitive tariff was being withdrawn as India had committed to stop “directly or indirectly importing Russian Federation oil”.
On Friday, Gandhi said that India’s foreign policy “emerges from the collective will of our people”.
“It should be rooted in our history, our geography, and our spiritual ethos based on Satya [truth] and Ahimsa [non-violence],” added the Congress leader. “What we are witnessing today is not policy.”
On February 11, 2026 while speaking in Lok Sabha LoP Shri @RahulGandhi warned about India’s energy security being compromised.

“The US will tell us who we can or cannot buy oil from...
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‘Hello Bachhon’ review: A brand-building exercise for edutech company Physics Wallah

Scroll Staff — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 08:30:00 +0000

There’s already a fictionalised, commercial-infested series about the edutech provider Physics Wallah on Amazon MX Player. Netflix has launched its own ad-free version of the company’s underdog-to-unicorn story.
Hello Bachhon is named after the signature greeting of Physics Wallah founder Alakh Pandey. The five-episode Hindi series traces the challenges faced by Alakh (Viineet Kumar Siingh) as he tries to move from a scrappy YouTube channel to an established business without sacrificing his ideals or the interests of his followers.
That’s the show’s pitch, which probably mirrors the sales pitch of the publicly listed company. For all its efforts to create a broader context for Alakh’s striving (the poor state of formal education, the rapacity of rivals, the pressure on students who take entrance exams), Hello Bachhon is a five-episode advertisement for the Physics Wallah founder’s awesomeness.
The show has been released at a time when artificial intelligence poses serious competition to non-classroom teaching. Hello Bachhon tries to emphasise the human connection, suggesting that AI cannot deliver what Physics Wallah – and Physics Wallah alone – provides.
Created by Kota Factory writer Abhishek Yadav and directed by Prathish Mehta, Hello Bachhon relies on its lead actor’s transparent sincerity to plug itself. Viineet Kumar Siingh’s Alakh is a saintly, student-first type who sacrifices and struggles to achieve his goals.
Alakh is...
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Nepal polls: Rastriya Swatantra Party ahead in 109 seats, Balendra Shah leads ousted PM Oli

Scroll Staff — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 12:46:24 +0000

The newly-formed Rastriya Swatantra Party held a significant lead over other parties in Nepal as counting of votes in the general election was underway on Friday.
The three-year-old party was leading in 109 seats, while the Nepali Congress was ahead in 12 seats.
The Rastriya Swatantra Party has registered wins in the Kathmandu-1, Kathmandu-6 and Kathmandu-8 seats.
The Nepali Congress had also secured one victory, clinching the Mustang-1 seat.
Rapper-turned-politician Balendra Shah, who has been positioned as the Rastriya Swatantra Party’s prime ministerial candidate, was leading ousted Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli, securing 11,945 votes in the Jhapa-5 seat. Oli, who heads the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) had won 2,692 votes. Shah, 35, is the former mayor of Kathmandu.
Polling to elect 275 members of Parliament in the country took place on Thursday. A voter turnout of 58% was recorded.
Of the total, 165 seats will be decided through direct voting. The remaining will be allocated under the proportional representation system, with political parties nominating lawmakers based on the share of votes the parties get.
Election Commission officials had said declaring the final result could take a week, as ⁠counting of proportional representation votes would take some time.
This was the first general election in Nepal after the widespread protests in September that toppled the Oli government.
According to the counting trends on Friday,...
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Translated children’s fiction: A tale of friendship, unity, and adventure in a forest

Bhagirath Mishra — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000

The trees of Madhuban were terrified of Paban Das. When Paban made his way through the forest with an enormous axe balanced on his shoulder, terror ran through the bodies of the trees. They turned stiff, like wood. Their leaves shivered feverishly. “Here comes the messenger of our deaths,” they whispered to each other. “Which of our lives will his axe claim today?”
Between the branches of these trees, birds had built their nests. Some had laid eggs. Some eggs had even hatched. The mother birds took one look at Paban and fluttered over their homes, frantically trying to calm their babies. Covering the helpless hatchlings with their wings, the mother birds said in small voices, “Hush now, little ones. Make no noise. Who knows what’s written in our stars today?”
Meanwhile, Paban made rounds of the forest. He did not flinch as he trampled over young shoots, vines, and crushed to death small creepers that covered the forest floor. He did not care for them. He came to the forest with a single goal: to find tall trees with wide trunks. A seasoned hunter, he knew how to select his prey: the fattest of trees that would yield a good deal...
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‘BJP’s use and throw’: Opposition leader on Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s move to Rajya Sabha

Anant Gupta — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 07:35:00 +0000

Nitish Kumar’s social media post on Thursday announcing that he would give up the chief ministership of Bihar to become a Rajya Sabha member made Dipankar Bhattacharya guffaw in disbelief.
Over the last three or so decades, Kumar and Bhattacharya have come together, parted ways, then allied again only to become sworn enemies soon after – largely because of the flip-flops that have defined Kumar’s politics.
Bhattacharya, the general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation, has in recent years emerged as one of Kumar’s most strident critics. But such an exit for the man just four months after he led the National Democratic Alliance to a handsome victory in the state elections defies logic, Bhattacharya said.
After all, the National Democratic Alliance won 202 out of Bihar’s 243 seats in November. Key members of the alliance are Kumar’s Janata Dal (United) and the Bharatiya Janata Party.
The Mahagathbandhan, of which the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation is a part, managed to win only 35 seats.
Bhattacharya went so far as to suggest that the ten-term chief minister had been “blackmailed” into submission by his longstanding ally, the BJP. More importantly, however, he argued that the development seemed to ignore the election verdict.
“Why play this game with the...
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Maharashtra Cabinet clears draft anti-conversion bill proposing 7-year jail term, Rs 5 lakh fine

Scroll Staff — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 08:17:26 +0000

The Maharashtra Cabinet on Thursday approved a draft anti-conversion bill proposing imprisonment of up to seven years and a fine of Rs 5 lakh for unlawful or forced religious conversions, reported The Indian Express.
The bill, Dharma Swatantrya Adhiniyam 2026, also makes it mandatory for persons converting to another religion to seek permission from the authorities, according to PTI.
A person who wishes to convert has to give 60 days notice to the authority, the proposed legislation states. It also mandates that a conversion has to be registered with the authorities within 25 days, failing which it will be considered null and void, PTI quoted an unidentified official as saying.
The bill requires the police to register a first information report and conduct an investigation if a relative of a person seeking to convert files a complaint about it being unlawful.
Offences under the bill will be non-bailable, according to The Indian Express.
The government is expected to table the bill in the ongoing Budget Session of the Assembly, according to the newspaper.
Speaking to reporters, Maharashtra minister and Bharatiya Janata Party leader Nitesh Rane said that a bill against “love jihad” had been approved and a government resolution in this regard would be issued soon.
“This is a law against unlawful conversion and with this bill no one will...
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Top updates: Trump says US must have role in picking Iran’s next leader

Scroll Staff — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 06:41:01 +0000

United States President Donald Trump told Reuters on Thursday that Washington must be involved in choosing the next leader of Iran.
“We’re going to have to choose that person along with Iran,” Trump told the news agency. “We’re going to have to choose that person.”
His comments came amid a rapidly expanding conflict that began on February 28 when Israel and the US launched a joint military operation targeting the Iranian government, triggering a retaliation by Tehran.
Here’s more on this and other top updates from the conflict in West Asia:
Trump told Reuters that he thinks the next leader of Iran is unlikely to be Ali Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei, who has emerged as a frontrunner to succeed his father as per reports. “We want to be involved in the process of choosing the person who is going to lead Iran into the future, so we don’t have to go back every five years and do this again and again,” the US president said. “We want somebody that's going to be great for the people, great for the country.”
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in the attacks on February 28. He was a significant figure among Shia Muslims globally, and had controlled all branches of the Iranian government and the armed...
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US will not give India same economic advantages it gave China, says Trump official

Scroll Staff — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 05:47:13 +0000

United States Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau on Thursday said that Washington will not give India the same kind of economic advantages it gave China, which he said allowed Beijing to emerge as a major competitor, Bloomberg reported.
The US wants to work with India to unlock its “limitless potential”, Landau said at the 2026 Raisina Dialogue. However, New Delhi should understand that “we are not going to make the same mistakes with India that we made with China 20 years ago”, he added.
The Raisina Dialogue is an annual conference held in New Delhi. It is organised by the think-tank Observer Research Foundation in partnership with the Ministry of External Affairs.
The US deputy secretary of state had on Monday said that he would be in India to advance US President Donald Trump’s America First policy at the Raisina Dialogue.
The “America First” policy refers to the supposed US-centric trade and foreign measures implemented by the Trump administration. The tariffs imposed by Washington in April 2025 on dozens of countries, including India, were part of these measures.
The levies were eventually reduced once bilateral trade deals had been agreed to with different countries.
With regard to India, the tariffs imposed under Trump’s America First policy were reduced after an interim bilateral trade deal was agreed to on February 2.
Under the framework, US tariffs...
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‘Jab Khuli Kitaab’ review: An open-and-shut case about divorce among seniors

Scroll Staff — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 03:45:00 +0000

Immediately after emerging from a coma, Anasuya unburdens herself of a long-held secret to her husband Gopal. The secret is shocking enough for Gopal to begin divorce proceedings against his partner of 55 years.
Anasuya (Dimple Kapadia) pleads with Gopal (Pankaj Kapur) to reconsider his decision. Despite his outrage, Gopal hasn’t thought it through, as is evident from his waffling with the divorce lawyer Negi (Aparshakti Khurana).
The couple hide the source of their tensions from their family, including sons Param (Samir Soni) and Dholu (Abuli Mamaji), Param’s wife Farnaaz (Nauheed Cyrusi), and son-in-law Jignesh (Sunil Palwal). They struggle to process the sudden spats between the previously lovey-dovey elders.
Saurabh Shukla’s Jab Khuli Kitaab is based on his play of the same name. Out on ZEE5, the Hindi film half-heartedly fulfils the revelations promised by its title.
Shukla’s screenplay sets out to examine the complicated nature of a decades-old marriage, the perils of oversharing, and the difficulties involved in separation among senior citizens. But Jab Khuli Kitaab loses its resolve early on, refusing to dig deeper into the roots of Gopal’s animosity over Anasuya or even the reasons Anasuya did what she did.
The character study that was needed to make the situation plausible is missing. Shukla rolls out several sentimental scenes between Gopal...
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‘It Was Just An Accident’ review: A raw, powerful debate on justice and revenge in Iran

Nandini Ramnath — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 03:35:00 +0000

One of Iranian cinema’s most fearless directors, Jafar Panahi has stood firm against his country’s repeated efforts to muzzle him. The greater the efforts to restrain Panahi through bans and arrests, the more vigorous his straining at the leash.
Already a keen critic of injustice, corruption and normalised tyranny in Iranian society, Panahi’s films became darker and bleaker with This Is Not a Film (2011), created while he was under house arrest for supporting the opposition during the country’s national election. The subsequent movies, made clandestinely and in between jail stints, are of a piece. They reflect with unstinting frankness and absurdist humour the psychological state of a filmmaker staring down censorship.
Panahi’s latest movie It Was Just An Accident (2025) explores the dilemma that arises when the accused become the accusers. The Oscar-nominated film is out on MUBI.
An incident on a highway brings together a man with a prosthetic leg, a mechanic, a photographer, the photographer’s ex-boyfriend and a bethrothed couple. When Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri) first meets Eghbal (Ebrahim Azizi), he is convinced that Eghbal is the man who tortured him in prison.
Vahid kidnaps Eghbal and takes him to other similarly afflicted prisoners – the photographer Shiva (Mariam Afshari), Shiva’s former partner Hamid (Mohammad Ali Elyasmehr) and Goli (Hadis Pakbaten), who...
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After Epstein controversy, how should US philosopher Noam Chomsky’s ideas be judged?

Arvind Rajagopal — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 01:11:15 +0000

It came as a shock to many to discover that the prominent US philosopher and political activist Noam Chomsky was also within convicted child-sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s slowly surfacing circle of confidantes.
Since he shot into the public eye with his trenchant opposition to the Vietnam war in the 1960s, Chomsky has been one of the most trenchant critics of US neo-imperialism and its unaccountable elite.
As a consequence, many of his admirers struggled to understand how Chomsky had also been friends for over a decade with Epstein – a relationship whose contours became clear with the recent release by US authorities of an enormous stash of emails, videos and other material detailing the sex offender’s activities and the extent of his social networks.
The so-called Epstein Files show that Chomsky had sought Epstein’s advice on financial matters. The activist, on his part, had offered Epstein counsel on handling the “putrid” allegations against him.
In light of this, some are asking how Chomsky’s ideas are to be judged. Chomsky suffered a stroke in 2023 and has been unable to address these revelations himself. Epstein was found dead in his jail cell in 2019.
However, both those who believe Chomsky’s intellectual legacy is unshaken, as well as those who now question it would...
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US says it has allowed India to buy Russian oil stranded at sea amid West Asia conflict

Scroll Staff — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 05:42:08 +0000

The United States on Thursday granted Indian refiners a 30-day waiver to buy Russian oil stranded at sea amid the conflict in West Asia.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that the decision was a short-term measure to keep oil supplies flowing globally amid disruptions because of the conflict.
The measure “will not provide significant financial benefit” to the Russian government because it only permits the trade of oil that is already stranded at sea, he added.
The decision came amid concerns about rising crude oil prices and its supply from West Asia being disrupted.
“India is an essential partner of the United States, and we fully anticipate that New Delhi will ramp up purchases of US oil,” Bessent said on social media. “This stop-gap measure will alleviate pressure caused by Iran’s attempt to take global energy hostage.”
Commenting on Bessent’s statement, Congress MP Karti Chidambaram said that the “operative word is ALLOW!” and that it was a “disgrace to our sovereignty”.
India is a net importer of oil and gas, with around 80% to 85% of its energy requirements met through imports.
The price of benchmark Brent crude had reached $84 per barrel by Friday, marking a 15.9% increase from February 27, when it was at $72.87. The jump came after Israel and the US on February 28 launched a...
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Tamil Nadu, West Bengal get new governors ahead of polls

Scroll Staff — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 05:29:17 +0000

Governor CV Ananda Bose resigned on Thursday, citing personal reasons. He was RN Ravi, who was serving as the Tamil Nadu governor.
With Ravi being sent to West Bengal, Kerala Governor Rajendra Vishwanath Arlekar was given additional charge of Tamil Nadu.
The changes came weeks ahead of the Assembly elections in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. It was also part of a wider reshuffle in nine states and Union Territories.
In a press release, the Rashtrapati Bhavan said that President Droupadi Murmu had on Thursday night appointed Lieutenant General Syed Ata Hasnain (retired) as the new governor of Bihar. He will be taking over from Arif Mohammed Khan. Khan had held the position since January 2025.
Taranjit Singh Sandhu, a retired diplomat and former ambassador to the United States, was appointed the new lieutenant governor of Delhi. After retiring from the Indian Foreign Service, Sandhu had joined the Bharatiya Janata Party ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
He will replace Vinai Kumar Saxena, who was posted to Ladakh as lieutenant governor.
Ladakh Lieutenant Governor Kavinder Gupta, a Bharatiya Janata Party leader who briefly served as the deputy chief minister of the erstwhile Jammu and Kashmir state in 2018, was appointed the new governor of Himachal Pradesh.
Gupta will replace Shiv Pratap Shukla, who will become the governor of Telangana....
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A new book uses Žižek’s and Lacan’s philosophies to examine how Indian social reality is constructed

Sebastian Vattamattam — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 03:00:00 +0000

Every society is fundamentally a linguistic community. The collective consciousness that unites its members is a product of the Symbolic and the Imaginary. The wounds inflicted by the big Other are healed by imaginary fantasies such as “heaven”. All things recognised by collective consciousness, including these fantasies, are experienced as reality by members of that society. This is social reality – the perceived and lived world.
The fact that the earth revolves around the sun is scientifically proven knowledge. However, in a society that believes in astrology, even though this knowledge may exist at the conscious level, it does not necessarily become part of its social reality. People in such a society continue to be influenced by a traditional symbolic order, which includes the myths and symbols of astrology.
As the world changes, humans acquire ever-new meanings, making their lives a series of continuous rebirths. Everything we see and touch turns into signs, which, in turn, touch and reshape us. This dynamic relationship between us and our world is what defines our humanity.
Imagination plays a crucial role in sustaining this relationship. Fantasies of the Imaginary help us overcome the prohibitions of the big Other and reclaim lost pleasures. These fantasies endow everything with meaning and...
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‘Boong’ review: An utterly charming tale of love and tolerance

Nandini Ramnath — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 02:45:00 +0000

His name is Brojendra but he’s known as Boong, little boy. It suits His Impishness better. What else to call someone who, when asked to sing at his school, bursts into Madonna’s Like a Virgin?
Madonna fandom is one of the threads in Lakshmipriya Devi’s comfort blanket of a movie. Made in 2024 and originally released in September, the Manipuri-language Boong is back in cinemas to mark its recent BAFTA award. Devi’s feature debut won the top prize in the Best Children’s & Family Film category – the first Indian production to do so.
Devi’s screenplay begins with a yearning by the ace slinger Boong (Gugun Kipgen) to meet his father Joykumar, who has seemingly abandoned him and his mother Mandakini (Bala Hijam). Mandakini isn’t one to mope or mourn, but Boong’s pleading and gossipy relatives remind the independent-spirited singleton of her absent spouse ever so often.
Boong resolves to find his father, who appears to be in Moreh, on the Manipur side of the state’s border with Myanmar. Somewhere in this steaming wok of tribes, languages and cultures, where even Tamil migrants have made a home for themselves, lies the secret behind Joykumar’s vanishing.
Accompanied by his best friend Raju (Angom Sanamatum), Boong sets out on a journey that’s child-like in...
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‘Tighee’ review: An outstanding look at mother-daughter relationships

Nandini Ramnath — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 02:05:00 +0000

A woman’s most fundamental and most complicated relationship is with her mother. Jeejivisha Kale’s Tighee explores this universal truth with maturity, honesty and tenderness.
The exquisitely made Marathi film is out with English subtitles in cinemas. Tighee (Three Women) looks at the fraught bond between Hemalata (Bharati Achrekar) and her daughters Swati (Nehha Pendse) and Sarika (Sonalee Kulkarni). Swati lives with her husband Malhar (Pushkaraj Chirputkar) in Mumbai, away from Hemalata and Sarika in Pune.
One of Sarika’s gripes is that she has put her life on hold to take care of her mother. Sarika has other complaints about Swati, which erupt when Hemalata falls seriously ill.
If Sarika feels that she is wasting away, Swati is miserable too. Swati has a predatory boss (Jaimini Pathak) who is adept at exploiting her insecurities and vulnerabilities. The often-invisible effects of sexual abuse, and the crippling fear it produces, are among the themes in Nikhil Mahajan’s excellent screenplay, with dialogue by Prajakt Deshmukh.
It’s remarkable how much ground Tighee covers in just a hundred minutes. Jeejivisha Kale, making an assured directing debut, teases out the layers in Mahajan’s screenplay not just through the performances, but also through the staging.
Unlike many other films on the subject of dysfunctional families that resemble plays or television serials, Tighee relies...
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Both pilots killed as fighter jet crashes in Assam

Scroll Staff — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 05:21:46 +0000

Two Indian Air Force pilots were killed when a Su-30MKI fighter jet crashed in Assam’s Karbi Anglong on Thursday.
The aircraft was on a training mission when it crashed about 60 km from Jorhat, from where it had taken off.
The pilots were Squadron Leader Anuj and Flight Lieutenant Purvesh Duragkar, the Air Force said.
The cause of the crash was not immediately clear. The aircraft had lost contact with the ground controller at 7.42 pm.
The Air Force has a large number of Su-30MKI fighters. The first batch of the aircraft was inducted in 2002.

...
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Why the US-Iran war will hurt India more than China

Vaishnavi Rathore — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 05:25:57 +0000

On February 28, as the conflict in West Asia escalated with missile strikes, Iran announced the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a key global shipping trade route. The strait is the only opening from the Persian Gulf to the open sea. This makes it is the easiest channel for the movement of goods from countries situated along the gulf, such as Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, to other parts of the world.
Key among these commodities are natural gas and crude oil. Between 20% and 25% of global crude oil supply passes through the strait, as does 20% of the global supply of liquified natural gas.
As a consequence of the closure, prices have escalated. Crude oil rose sharply from $65 per barrel on February 26, a day before the outbreak of the conflict, to $75.92 by March 3. The price of liquified natural gas rose from $2.8 to $3.06 per million British thermal units in the same period.
Asia is expected to be severely hurt by the crisis – 75% of the oil and 59% of the liquified natural gas through this chokepoint flows to China, India, Japan and South Korea. Of these countries, China and India are likely to be most affected – 38% of...
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The plastics recycling system is failing. Can it be changed?

Jordi Diaz Marcos, The Conversation — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 16:30:01 +0000

As good citizens, we diligently fill the recycling bins provided by our local authorities with all manner of plastic trays, boxes, bottles and bags. But as these bins fill up quicker and quicker each week, an awkward question arises: is all this effort actually doing any good?
Many of us would answer with a sceptically resigned “of course not”. The facts unfortunately support this increasingly common view. In Europe, only around 15% of plastics are recycled, while in the United States the figure drops to 9%. The remainder ends up in incinerators, landfills or, in the worst of cases, in the natural environment.
The question we must answer is therefore not whether plastic recycling has issues, but why the system we have all trusted for decades is failing so catastrophically.
Problems begin before the bin
To understand what’s going wrong, it’s worth taking a step back and looking at how we actually use plastic. Around half of all plastics are used for single-use products: containers, packaging, bags, agricultural sheeting and so on.
Between 20% and 25% are used in long-term applications – pipes, cables, building materials – and the rest is used in consumer goods with an intermediate lifespan, such as vehicles, furniture and electronic devices.
In the EU, post-consumer plastic waste already reached 24.6...
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Indian Navy says it responded to distress call from Iran warship sunk by US, supported search ops

Scroll Staff — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 15:54:21 +0000

The Indian Navy on Thursday said it promptly launched search and rescue efforts on receiving information from Sri Lanka about the sinking of the Iranian warship IRIS Dena, The Tribune reported.
The Iranian warship was struck by a United States torpedo off the coast of Sri Lanka on Tuesday.
Indian ship INS Tarangini arrived in the search area around the Iranian frigate at 4 pm on Wednesday, the Navy said. Another Indian vessel, the INS Ikshak, has sailed from Kochi to support rescue efforts, and remains in the area to search for missing personnel, it added, according to The Tribune.
The Indian Navy cited the Sri Lankan authorities as saying that a distress call was received at Maritime Rescue and Coordination Centre in Colombo in the early hours of March 4. It said that on receiving the information, the Indian Navy “promptly launched SAR [search and rescue] efforts commencing with a long-range maritime patrol aircraft” at 10 am on Wednesday to augment Sri Lanka’s efforts.
BREAKING: Indian Navy statement on the sinking of Iranian warship IRIS Dena by an American submarine yesterday pic.twitter.com/K5Wbh6ErSV
— Shiv Aroor (@ShivAroor) March 5, 2026

Another aircraft, which was equipped with air-droppable life rafts, was also placed on standby, The Tribune quoted the Navy as saying.
The INS Tarangini, which was in the vicinity, was then deployed for...
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West Bengal Governor CV Ananda Bose resigns ahead of Assembly elections

Scroll Staff — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 01:29:48 +0000

West Bengal Governor CV Ananda Bose resigned from his post on Thursday, ANI quoted his officer on special duty as saying.
Bose, who had been appointed governor in November 2022, submitted his resignation to President Droupadi Murmu, the news agency reported.
Confirming the development, Bose told PTI that he had “spent enough time at [the] Governor’s office”.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said she was “shocked and deeply concerned” by the sudden resignation and that the reasons behind it were not known to her.
Banerjee said on social media that she would not be surprised if Bose had faced pressure from Union Home Minister Amit Shah to “serve certain political interests on the eve of the forthcoming State Assembly elections”.
Banerjee also claimed that Shah informed her that RN Ravi, the current Tamil Nadu governor, would be appointed as the next governor of West Bengal.
She alleged that the decision had been taken without consulting the state government and said that “such actions undermine the spirit of the Constitution of India and strike at the very foundation of our federal structure”.
I am shocked and deeply concerned by the sudden news of the resignation of Shri C. V. Ananda Bose, the Governor of West Bengal.

The reasons behind his resignation are not known to me at this moment. However, given the prevailing...
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Bombay HC refuses to allow Muslim taxi drivers to offer namaz near airport, cites security concerns

Scroll Staff — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 14:42:08 +0000

The Bombay High Court on Thursday refused to allow Muslim taxi and auto-rickshaw drivers to offer namaz near the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport during the Islamic holy month of Ramzan, emphasising that “security is paramount”, Live Law reported.
A division bench of Justices BP Colabawalla and Firdosh Pooniwalla was hearing a petition seeking the restoration of a temporary shed near Terminal 1 that was demolished in April, or the allotment of an alternative space in the vicinity, PTI reported.
The petition was filed by the Taxi-Rickshaw Ola-Uber Men's Union. The Maharashtra government opposed the demand, citing security concerns.
The court noted that the airport authorities had surveyed seven alternative sites, all of which were deemed unsuitable due to threat perceptions, and in view of VVIPs entering and exiting the airport from a gate nearby, Live Law reported.
The counsel for one of the petitioners, Satish Talekar, told the court that there had been no security problems at the shed for the past 30 years, and that the authorities were deliberately preventing Muslim taxi drivers and passengers from offering namaz.
However, the court did not accept the contention.
“No one is stopping you from praying five times a day,” Colabawalla told the petitioner, according to Live Law. “You can just walk in some Masjid and offer Namaz there... No one is...
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Some plants in the Western Ghats are sprouting cotton coats to protect buds

Anusha Krishnan — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 14:00:01 +0000

The northern part of the Western Ghats, a Unesco-recognised biodiversity hotspot known for its remarkable diversity of seasonal herbs, has a dramatic landscape. During the monsoon months between June and September, it experiences intense rainfall.
Its open grasslands and rocky plateaus become awash in verdant green and then erupt into colour as seasonal plants leaf and flower across its terrain. But once the rains withdraw in October, the terrain turns harsh, and until May, all the plants in this area face intense heat, drying winds, and recurring surface fires.
Some plants have an unusual strategy to survive these extreme seasonal cycles, finds a recent study. They wrap their dormant buds in dry, cottony coats to help them survive the inhospitable months.
Researchers have named this adaptation “Xerocoma”, deriving it from the Greek words xero (dry) and kóma (tuft). These structures occur as dry, cottony balls that form at the rootstock – the area where the shoot and root meet, either just above or just below the soil surface.
What is Xerocoma
Just before monsoon sets in, as the plant’s buds begin to grow, the Xerocoma also elongates with the growing buds to completely envelop them during this critical period. Eventually, as young leaves emerge, the cottony mass of the Xerocoma loosens to allow...
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Rush Hour: Iran says US will regret attacking its warship, Nitish Kumar to contest RS polls & more

Scroll Staff — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 13:38:45 +0000

A day after a United States submarine sank an Iranian warship off the Sri Lankan coast, Iran’s Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi declared that the US would “bitterly regret” the action. The foreign minister said that the Iranian frigate IRIS Dena, “a guest of India’s Navy”, had been struck without warning.
From February 16 to February 25, the warship had attended an International Fleet Review in Vishakhapatnam, along with ships from several other countries.
The attack on the warship has left at least 87 dead, while 61 are missing. It took place amid a joint operation by the United States and Israel against the Iranian government.
Tel Aviv and Washington have claimed that Tehran’s actions pose an “existential threat” to Israel. While Tel Aviv has claimed that Iran is close to obtaining a nuclear weapon, Tehran has maintained that its nuclear programme is for civilian purposes. Read more.

Sri Lanka said it was trying to “safeguard lives” on another Iranian ship located in international waters near the country’s maritime border. It was unclear if the ship had been hit or had made a distress call to Sri Lankan authorities.
Minister Nalinda Jayatissa told Parliament that the vessel is in the country’s “exclusive economic zone” and that the government and defence ministry were aware of its presence.
The statement comes two days after...
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Assam: Three suspended Congress MLAs join ruling BJP ahead of assembly polls

Scroll Staff — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 13:27:00 +0000

Three MLAs who had been suspended from the Congress in recent years joined the Bharatiya Janata Party in Assam on Thursday, ahead of the Assembly elections in the state.
The legislators – Kamalakhya Dey Purkayastha, Basanta Das and Sashi Kanta Das – had been suspended by the Opposition party after declaring support for the BJP-led government in the state, The Indian Express reported. Sashi Kanta Das was suspended in 2021, while Purkayastha and Basanta Das were suspended in 2024.
The three MLAs were inducted into the BJP at the party’s state headquarters in Guwahati in the presence of state president Dilip Saikia and other leaders.
Assembly elections in Assam are expected to be held in April.
The BJP family grows stronger!

In a joining programme organised today, numerous individuals, including former MLAs Shri Basanta Das, Shri Kamalakhya Dey Purkayastha, Shri Shashikanta Das and former members of different political parties joined our party, showcasing their trust… pic.twitter.com/YuYA6azzcj
— Dilip Saikia 🇮🇳 (@DilipSaikia4Bjp) March 5, 2026

Welcoming the three MLAs into the party fold, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said they had joined the BJP “unconditionally” and not for the purpose of seeking election tickets, PTI reported.
However, he added that “there is no hurdle in seeking [tickets] and it will be given on the basis of their prospects”.
“There is nothing like new or old...
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Translated fiction: A group of gig workers in Kolkata thinks about its place in the universe

Ashoke Mukhopadhyay — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 12:00:00 +0000

Humiliation is a serpent with poisonous fangs. The toxic teeth of an unjustified humiliation sting the victim with a particularly sharp edge, leaving him writhing in a pain that takes an eternity to heal, if it heals at all. The mind bleeds amidst groans of unbearable agony and futile rage. But often the worst thing about humiliation is that the person at the receiving end has to suffer alone, unable to share the anguish with anybody else. With time, the person learns to live with the trauma.
Sriman had been subjected to one such unwarranted indignity this morning. Despite his earnest efforts to come to terms with it, he had not been able to overcome it. What did he do to deserve it? The question rankling inside him ever since the occurrence of the incident had left him stumped. So much so that he had refrained from going out for work post-lunch.
Bishan Basu was Sriman’s go-to person in all crises that indicated no potential closure. Sriman was now in Bishan-da’s room. Sriman’s account of the incident had stunned Bishan too.
A wild rage was simmering inside Bishan, ever since hearing about it. The fury was so savage that it could be satiated only...
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Sri Lanka says it is trying to ‘safeguard lives’ on another Iranian ship near maritime boundary

Scroll Staff — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 13:33:23 +0000

The Sri Lankan government said on Thursday that it was trying to “safeguard lives” on another Iranian ship that was in international waters close to the island nation’s maritime border, reported Reuters.
“The ship is not in Sri Lankan waters,” minister Nalinda ⁠Jayatissa was quoted as saying by Sri Lanka-based Newswire. “It is located in the exclusive economic zone. The government and the defence ministry are aware of the ship.”
It was unclear if the ship had been hit or had made a distress call to the Sri Lankan authorities.
The statement came two days after the United States sank an Iranian warship off the Sri Lankan coast.
The warship IRIS Dena was torpedoed by a US submarine in international waters on Tuesday. At least 87 persons died in the incident and 61 were missing. The Sri Lankan Navy had rescued 32.
This came amid a rapidly expanding conflict in West Asia that began on Saturday when Israel and the US launched a joint military operation targeting the Iranian government. Israel has been claiming that Iran is close to obtaining a nuclear weapon, while Tehran has maintained that its nuclear programme is for civilian purposes.
Tehran retaliated by striking Israel and US military bases in the region, and targeting major cities in other Gulf countries and some ships.
On Thursday, Jayatissa told the Sri Lankan Parliament...
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Military action cannot solve problems, says Modi on West Asia conflict

Scroll Staff — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 13:15:09 +0000

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday said that military conflicts cannot resolve global crises as tensions continued to escalate in West Asia following joint strikes by the United States and Israel on Iran and Tehran’s retaliation.
Modi made the remarks during a joint press meet in New Delhi with Finland’s President Alexander Stubb after a bilateral meeting.
“Military conflicts alone cannot solve every issue,” Modi said. “Be it Ukraine or West Asia, we want the end of the conflicts and establishment of peace at the earliest.”
He added that “rising global challenges demand urgent reforms in global institutions”.
The conflict in West Asia began on Saturday after Israel and the US launched a joint operation targeting the Iranian regime, alleging that its actions constituted an “existential threat to Israel”. Tel Aviv has been claiming that Iran is “closer than ever” to obtaining a nuclear weapon, which could alter the regional security balance.
Iran has long maintained that its nuclear programme is for civilian purposes.
The situation escalated further following the killing of Iran’s Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Sunday. He had controlled all branches of government and the armed forces since 1989.
Tehran retaliated by striking Israel and US military bases in the region, and by targeting major cities in other Gulf countries as well as some ships.
Modi, in social media posts earlier this...
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Kerala HC declines to entertain plea seeking renaming of film ‘The Kerala Story 2

Scroll Staff — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 13:37:53 +0000

The Kerala High Court on Thursday refused to entertain a petition seeking that the film The Kerala Story 2: Goes Beyond be renamed not to include the words “Kerala” or “Keralam”, reported Live Law.
A bench of Chief Justice Soumen Sen and Justice Syam Kumar VM also said that the petitioner was seeking to “cast an aspersion” on another bench that had lifted the stay on the film’s release, according to Bar and Bench. The film was released on February 27.
Earlier that day, a division bench of Justices SA Dharmadhikari and PV Balakrishnan set aside the order of Justice Bechu Kurian Thomas, who had stayed the release of the film.
The film The Kerala Story 2 - Goes Beyond allegedly depicts Hindu women from several states being lured into relationships with Muslim men and coerced into converting to Islam. The teaser released on February 17 includes a scene in which a Hindu woman is forced to consume beef.
On February 26, Thomas said the film could disturb communal harmony. He had said that the Central Board of Film Certification had ignored guidelines for clearing films, and asked the authority to re-examine the matter.
The order was challenged by the film’s producer, Vipul Amrutlal Shah. He argued that halting the release of a film that had already been cleared by the Central Board of Film Certification...
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Rajya Sabha polls: Congress names seven candidates from six states

Scroll Staff — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 10:20:30 +0000

The Congress on Thursday released a list of seven candidates from six states for the upcoming Rajya Sabha elections.
The party has nominated Senior Advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi and Vem Narender Reddy from Telangana, and Phulo Devi Netam from Chhattisgarh. Vem Narender Reddy is an advisor to Telangana Chief Minister Revanth Reddy, while Netam is an Adivasi leader from Chhattisgarh’s Bastar region.
It has also fielded Dalit leader Karamvir Singh Boudh from Haryana, Kangra district party chief Anurag Sharma from Himachal Pradesh and All India Congress Committee Secretary M Christopher Tilak from Tamil Nadu.
The Congress President Shri @kharge, has approved the proposal for the candidature of the following persons to contest the Rajya Sabha elections as Congress candidates from the states mentioned against their names: pic.twitter.com/5rjufZqpEX
— Congress (@INCIndia) March 5, 2026

Earlier this week, the Bharatiya Janata Party nominated 13 candidates from seven states, including its national president Nitin Nabin and Union minister Ramdas Athawale, for the Rajya Sabha polls.
The BJP has nominated Nabin and Shivesh Ram from Bihar, Athawale, Vinod Tawde, Maya Chintaman Ivnate and Ramrao Wadkute from Maharashtra, and Jogen Mohan and Terash Gowalla from Assam.
It has also fielded Rahul Sinha from West Bengal, Manmohan Samal and Sujeet Kumar from Odisha, Sanjay Bhatia from Haryana, and Laxmi Verma from Chhattisgarh.
On Thursday, Bihar Chief Minister...
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A new book shows how sensory attention to art supports emotional regulation and social connection

Krina Patel — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 08:00:00 +0000

The other day my friend Sofia came by with a box of pastries, a plant and a bunch of stories from her recent trip to Morocco where her mother and sisters live. I had a whole host of stories to share as well because I had just returned from India. Settling into an afternoon of food, laughter and conversation about our homes, art and the upcoming month of Ramadan, we only looked up when Sofia looked out of the window, and exclaimed, “It’s past Maghreb. I better get going.” I offered to walk her to the subway station to show her some public art installations in our neighbourhood. As we strolled along we came upon an arrangement of colourful twinkling lights, installed in a public plaza. “This reminds me of the decorations for Eid” or “Diwali” or “Christmas,” we went back and forth. “All someone had to do was order boxes of fairy lights from Amazon and display them.” “In a kind of pattern.” We looked at each other and asked, “Is this art?” And right there and then we were faced with age-old questions of art: when does something ordinary become art, and who decides?
One fine day sometime in...
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‘A part of our belief system’: Why Muslims in Kashmir and across India are mourning Khamenei

Safwat Zargar — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 07:28:22 +0000

In the early hours of Sunday, the Kashmir Valley was engulfed in grief.
As news of the Iranian Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei being killed on February 28 in a large-scale air attack by the United States and Israel was confirmed, residents took to the streets.
In Srinagar and other major towns of the Valley, thousands of Shia Muslim mourners came out on the roads, carrying posters of the slain leader. Many of them wept and beat their chests in mourning. The largest congregation of mourners – men, women and children – gathered around the historic Lal Chowk area in the Srinagar city centre.
Over the last six years, the Valley has rarely seen people flooding the streets in a spontaneous expression of grief. Since Jammu and Kashmir’s special status and statehood was removed in August, 2019, the space for public protests and gatherings has been severely limited.
Most Muslims in Jammu and Kashmir belong to the Sunni sect but Khamenei’s killing did not evoke emotional outbursts from Shias alone. In fact, one of the first prominent voices to condemn his killing in the Valley was Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, Kashmir’s chief cleric and a separatist leader.
Mirwaiz heads the Muttahida Majlis-e-Ulema, a conglomerate of religious bodies from various schools of...
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MEA refutes claim that US military is using Indian ports to attack Iran

Scroll Staff — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 07:25:00 +0000

India on Wednesday refuted claims made on an American news channel that the United States was using Indian ports to attack Iran, as the conflict in West Asia entered its sixth day.
“Claims being made on OAN [One America News Network], a US based channel that Indian ports are being used by the US Navy are fake and false,” the Ministry of External Affairs said on social media. “We caution you against such baseless and fabricated comments.”
In an interview on One America News Network, Douglas Macgregor, a retired US Army colonel and former adviser to the country’s secretary of defence, claimed that the American Navy was using Indian ports in the ongoing conflict with Iran.
Fake News Alert!

Claims being made on OAN, a US based channel that Indian ports are being used by the US Navy are fake and false. We caution you against such baseless and fabricated comments. pic.twitter.com/xiFWnkoXBk
— MEA FactCheck (@MEAFactCheck) March 4, 2026

Speaking to political commentator Matt Gaetz, Macgregor claimed that “all” US bases and harbour installations in West Asia had been “destroyed”.
“We are actually having to fall back on India and Indian ports,” he said. “Which is less than ideal…that is what the Navy says.”
Macgregor added: “I think Iran, much to our disappointment, is faring very, very well. The question...
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‘Embarrassment for Delhi’: Retired admirals and diplomats on US sinking Iran warship in Indian Ocean

Scroll Staff — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 10:33:24 +0000

Former Indian military officers, diplomats and analysts have described the United States’ sinking of an Iranian warship off the Sri Lankan coast on Wednesday as a “strategic embarrassment” to the Indian government and a “blow to its regional credibility”.
The warship IRIS Dena was torpedoed by a US submarine in international waters. At least 87 persons died in the incident and 61 were missing. The Sri Lankan Navy had rescued 32.
The US Department of War confirmed that it had attacked the ship. It also released footage of the torpedo hitting the frigate, resulting in an explosion.
Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi on Thursday said that the warship, “a guest of India’s Navy”, had been struck without warning. “Mark my words: The US will come to bitterly regret [the] precedent it has set,” he said on social media.
New Delhi has not yet commented on the incident.
Former Indian Navy chief Arun Prakash on Wednesday told India Today that New Delhi “should convey our deep concern and displeasure” for bringing “maritime warfare to our doorstep without taking us into confidence”.
“To my understanding, even strategic autonomy needs to have some moral moorings and anchor,” the retired admiral told the news channel.
Prakash added: “This conflict is needless, open-ended, pointless and is going to bring nothing but grief and suffering to...
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Nitish Kumar to contest Rajya Sabha polls

Scroll Staff — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 13:48:18 +0000

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Thursday said that he will contest the upcoming Rajya Sabha elections.
Kumar is expected to step down as the chief minister if he wins the polls.
This has led to speculation that his son, Nishant Kumar, could be made the deputy chief minister and that a Bharatiya Janata Party leader could take over as the chief minister.
Nishant Kumar has not been active in politics.
In a social media post on Thursday, Nitish Kumar said that it had long been his desire to serve in all four legislative roles at the state and central level – a member of the legislative assembly and legislative council, as well as of the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha.
Kumar is currently a member of the legislative council. He has previously served terms as an MLA and Lok Sabha MP.
“In keeping with this aspiration, I seek to become a member of the Rajya Sabha in the elections being held this time,” he said.
The Bihar chief minister added: “I want to assure you with complete honesty that my relationship with you will continue in the future as well, and my resolve to work together with you to build a developed Bihar will remain steadfast.”
पिछले दो दशक से भी अधिक समय से आपने अपना विश्वास...
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Thomas Waugh interview: ‘What’s going on with Heated Rivalry? Yes, it is as it should be’

R Raj Rao — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 06:00:03 +0000

Thomas Waugh is an Indophile intellectual of Canadian origin who first came to India in the 1970s, and has been coming here ever since. Not merely as a tourist, but as a teacher, author, film scholar and film buff, who has written articles on several Indian, mostly Bollywood films, and has even shared the dais with Bollywood stars at events.
Waugh, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, School of Cinema, Concordia University, is also a queer theorist and activist. He has forged deep friendships with members of India's queer community, most notably the late Saleem Kidwai, Shohini Ghosh, and R Raj Rao. Over the years, these friendships have invariably led to teaching assignments in prestigious public and private universities in India. At such gigs, Waugh, who has taught for over 40 years, was an instant hit with students who flocked to him for inspiration and insight into a variety of wide-ranging subjects, which included film studies, literature, authorship and sexuality.
Now in his late seventies, Waugh was in India once again in January. R Raj Rao caught up with Waugh in Mumbai to talk about the publication of his memoir, Writing in the Flesh, which has been described as “a brutally honest, hilarious, and super sexy celebration of...
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Tamil Nadu polls: Congress to contest in 28 constituencies, gets Rajya Sabha seat

Scroll Staff — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 05:50:35 +0000

The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and the Congress finalised a seat-sharing agreement on Wednesday for the upcoming Assembly elections in Tamil Nadu, reported The Hindu.
As part of the pact, the Congress was allotted 28 Assembly seats and a Rajya Sabha berth. This means that the party will fight in three more constituencies than it did as part of its alliance with DMK in 2021.
Tamil Nadu will head to the polls in April or May. The DMK heads the state-level Secular Progressive Alliance, which includes the Congress, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the Communist Party of India, the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi and the Desiya Murpokku Dravida Kazhagam.
The allotment of seats to the Congress came after weeks of negotiations and several rounds of back-channel talks amid its strained ties with DMK, the Deccan Herald reported. The Congress had initially demanded a larger share of seats.
On Tuesday, Congress leader P Chidambaram, who was deputed by the party high command to intervene, and Tamil Nadu Congress Committee chief Selvaperunthagai held talks with the DMK.
The agreement on Wednesday was signed by Chief Minister MK Stalin and Selvaperunthagai at the DMK headquarters.
Speaking to reporters later in the day, Selvaperunthagai said: “Right decision has been taken at the right time by the AICC [All India Congress Committee] and DMK. Based on...
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Nepal: Voting underway in first polls since ‘Gen Z’ protests toppled Oli government

Scroll Staff — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 08:13:52 +0000

Voting in Nepal’s general elections was underway on Thursday, nearly six months after widespread protests toppled the KP Sharma Oli government.
More than 1.8 crore voters are eligible to cast their ballots between 7 am and 5 pm to elect 275 members of Parliament.
Of these, 165 seats will be decided through direct voting. The remaining will be allocated under the proportional representation system, with political parties nominating lawmakers based on the share of votes the parties get.
The counting of votes will begin soon after the polling concludes.
While early trends are likely to start emerging by Friday, a complete result could take a week as ⁠counting of proportional representation votes would take time, Reuters quoted Election Commission officials as saying.
The crisis that led to the Oli government’s ouster had begun following protests sparked by Nepal’s ban on 26 social media platforms on September 4.
Although the Oli government lifted the social media ban on September 8, the agitation snowballed into a broader protest against alleged corruption and misgovernance. A day later, Oli resigned from his post.
At least 72 persons were killed in the protests.
The demonstrations were described as a protest mainly by “Gen Z”, generally referring to persons born between the late 1990s and 2010.
On September 12, Sushila Karki, a former chief justice, was appointed interim prime minister until a new government is formed.
Oli, who...
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‘Young Sherlock’ review: The iconic detective gets a hectic, action-heavy imagined origin story

Scroll Staff — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 04:27:11 +0000

Guy Ritchie isn’t done with Sherlock Holmes yet. Having made two uncanonical movies on the Victorian-era private investigator and his Boswell, Ritchie now turns his attention to Holmes’s formative years.
Ritchie is one of the executive producers and directors of Young Sherlock, based on the Young Sherlock Holmes set of novels by Andrew Lane. Developed by Ritchie and Peter Harness, and written by Harness and Matthew Parkhill, the Prime Video series is an imagined origin story of Arthur Conan Doyle’s consulting detective.
Sherlock (Hero Fiennes Tiffin) is a 19-year-old mischief-maker, prone to being expelled from school and landing up in prison for misdemeanours. As a punishment, Sherlock’s brother Mycroft (Max Irons) sends him to Oxford to be a butler for the university’s dons.
There, Sherlock meets another young man who will serve as his partner in ratiocination. Not John Watson, but James Moriarty – the show’s most compelling idea.
Like Sherlock, James (Donal Finn) is still buffering, many years away from being a nefarious supervillain. The duo gets involved in a grand conspiracy revolving around the Chinese princess Shou’an (Zine Tseng), missing scrolls, attacks on the professors, including Bucephalus Hodge (Colin Firth), a growing pile of bodies, and a dangerous invention.
The eight-episode series doubles up as a Meet the Holmes drama. There’s the...
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Indian origin writers Megha Majumdar and Sheena Kalayil make 2026 Women’s Prize for Fiction longlist

Scroll Staff — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 04:02:35 +0000

The longlist for the 2026 Women’s Prize for Fiction has been announced. This year, Indian-origin writers Megha Majumdar and Sheena Kalayil are on the list for their novels The Guardian and a Thief and The Others, respectively
The shortlist of six will be announced on April 22 and the winner, on June 11. The winner will receive £30,000, along with a statuette known as the “Bessie”, created by the late artist Grizel Niven.
This year’s Chair of Judges is Julia Gillard, former Prime Minister of Australia, and she is joined by poet, novelist and essayist Mona Arshi, author, presenter, poet and speaker Salma El-Wardany, writer, podcaster, actor and comedian Cariad Lloyd, and author, broadcaster and DJ Annie Macmanus.
Here is the complete longlist:
Gloria Don’t Speak , Lucy Apps
Paradiso 17, Hannah Lillith Assadi
Moderation, Elaine Castillo
Flashlight, Susan Choi
Dominion, Addie E Citchens
The Benefactors, Wendy Erskine
The Correspondent, Virginia Evan’s
The Mercy Step, Marcia Hutchinson
The Others, Sheena Kalayil
Kingfisher, Rozie Kelly
Heart the Lover, Lily King
Audition, Katie Kitamura
A Guardian and a Thief, Megha Majumdar
Wild Dark Shore, Charlotte McConaghy
The Best of Everything, Kit de Waal
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‘Subedaar’ review: One random provocation after another

Nandini Ramnath — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 03:31:00 +0000

Suresh Triveni’s latest movie Subedaar is set in a fictitious Wild West-type town somewhere in the badlands of North India. Kokh is a den of lawlessness in the clutches of a single criminal family.
Babli (Mona Singh) is running an illegal sand mining racket from behind bars through her factotum Softy (Faisal Malik). The gangster’s biggest obstacle is neither a boy’s death at a sand-dredging pit nor the child’s grieving mother Ranju (Snehalata Siddharth). Babli’s ease of doing business is interrupted ever so often by the shenanigans of her step-brother Prince (Aditya Rawal).
Fond of generalised debauchery that includes needless killings, Prince has terrorised Kokh. It’s a minor miracle that Babli and Softy get anything done with Prince around. And it’s a major miracle that Army officer Arjun (Anil Kapoor) chooses this hell-hole to retire in.
The screenplay by Triveni and Prajwal Chandrasekar concocts a reason for Arjun to be in Kokh – he’s there to patch up with his daughter Shyama (Radhikka Madan) and settle private matters. Arjun appears to have been unaware of the existence of Babli and her posse. But when it’s time to channelise his inner John Wick, Arjun is able and willing.
Arjun isn’t the only cowboy around. In a parallel track, the spitfire...
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‘Our fight is everyone’s fight’: A diary of Goa’s six-day protest against land-regulation changes

Saachi D'Souza — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 03:30:01 +0000

At roughly 1 pm on February 25, in Panjim’s central Azad Maidan, it is 32 degrees. Under the dome of the main pavilion, MLA Viresh Borkar and activist Tushar Gawas are on Day 5 of a hunger strike. They are members of the Revolutionary Goans Party.
Right by the giant brass urn containing the ashes of the Goan freedom fighter, Tristão de Bragança Cunha, they have set up a neat circle of mattresses, bottles of rehydrating fluid and fans. An image of Ambedkar and a copy of the Constitution of India are displayed prominently.
Members of their families and neighbours from their village of Palem-Siridao in North Goa have turned up in the state capital to support Borkar and Gawas but large signs around the pavilion discourage them from coming too close – a measure aimed at ensuring that the weakened hunger strikers do not catch any infections.
Borkar and Gawas had started their hunger strike on February 21 after police dragged Borkar out of the Town and Country Planning office in Panjim, where he and others had protested overnight against the implementation of Section 39A of the Goa Town and Country Planning Act, 1974, in their North Goa constituency of St Andre.
Section 39A, introduced through an...
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Top updates: US will ‘bitterly regret’ sinking Iranian warship, says Tehran

Scroll Staff — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 11:47:16 +0000

The United States Senate on Wednesday rejected a resolution meant to halt the country’s military strikes on Iran and ending its involvement in the conflict in West Asia, USA Today reported.
The bipartisan resolution, introduced by Democrat Tim Kaine and Republican Rand Paul, would have required the withdrawal of US forces from hostilities against Iran unless Congress authorised the campaign, AFP reported.
The resolution, however, failed on a 47-53 vote in the Upper Chamber of Congress. Apart from Paul, Republicans voted to back US President Donald Trump’s decision to attack Iran alongside Israel.
The vote came amid a rapidly expanding conflict that began on Saturday when Israel and the US launched a joint military operation targeting the Iranian government, triggering a retaliation by Tehran.
Here’s more on this and other top updates from the conflict in West Asia:
Among US lawmakers, Democrats argue that Trump unconstitutionally bypassed Congress when he ordered the strikes in Iran, adding that the administration has offered shifting justifications for the war, AFP reported. Republicans, however, have largely rallied behind the president. However, some have signalled that their support could wane if the war expands or drags on.
The toll after a US submarine sunk Iranian warship IRIS Dena in the Indian Ocean has increased to 87, AFP quoted unidentified Sri Lankan defence and police officers as saying. Sixty-one are...
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‘Harmful from the perspective of health, economics’: Why chemist PC Ray (1861-1944) abhorred tea

Prafulla Chandra Ray — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 03:00:00 +0000

A century ago, Lord Macaulay had expressed a fine desire on observing us: “We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect.” Macaulay’s farsightedness must be commended, for why else should the resolve of 1833 take the form that it has today in India, and particularly in West Bengal? It is not only in economic matters that we have been deprived of our rights, but we are also paying for our sins by depending on others to assist us and tell us what is to be done. The prowess we have demonstrated in imitating the behaviour and the attire of the ruling race can make the people of other provinces serve as our apprentices for years to come. When the first Bengali barrister at the high court began his practice, he took up residence in the Chowringhee area, which can be described as the West End of Calcutta. His drawing room was done up in the English manner, and in his customs and manners, he soon...
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Why Chhattisgarh’s midday meal workers have not given up their fight for better pay

Nolina Minj — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 10:12:31 +0000

On February 24, the Chhattisgarh state government presented its annual budget for the coming financial year. Among those who scrutinised its details closely were the state’s midday meal workers, thousands of whom had been on strike in shifts for two months, demanding an increase in their wages, from under Rs 70 a day currently to at least Rs 350.
The workers were in for a crushing disappointment – there was no mention of them at all in the budget.
The total lack of even an acknowledgement from the government left them dismayed.
The protest had extracted a tragic cost for some. Workers told Scroll that cold weather during those weeks, and unsanitary conditions at the site had led to many contracting ailments. In late January, two striking workers, Dulari Yadav and Rukmani Sinha, died after falling ill.
“We protested for two months,” Ramrajya Kashyap, the state president of the Chhattisgarh School Madhyanbhojan Rasoiya Sanyukta Sangh, told Scroll. “We spent all our money and begged others for food and money to continue protesting, and not a single official or leader came to see us.” The association represents more than 90,000 mid-day meal workers from across the state.
Kashyap added, “The least they could have done was to tell us that our demands would be ignored.”
The day...
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UK: Skin lightening creams being sold illegally have dangerous ingredients

Sara Brown, The Conversation — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 16:30:00 +0000

Creams marketed to lighten skin tone are being sold illegally on British high streets, including in butchers and specialist food shops. It is an unsettling discovery, but perhaps not a surprising one. Demand for these products is real and the profits are significant. But the ingredients that make them effective are also what make them dangerous.
Healthy human skin comes in a wide range of diverse tones. These can change over time because of illness, hormones, sunlight or ageing. Some people want to lighten their overall skin tone, and “colourism” – discrimination or prejudice that favours lighter skin tones over darker ones – may contribute to psychological distress among people of colour. Others want to fade darker patches.
Acne, eczema and other inflammatory skin conditions can leave areas darker or lighter than the surrounding skin. This is known as hyperpigmentation (darkening) or hypopigmentation (lightening). Hormonal changes can also disrupt pigment, and scars can permanently alter skin colour.
Often, the skin will gradually return to its natural tone. But this can take months or even years. The desire to speed up that process has led to the development of chemicals that reduce or block melanin – the pigment that gives skin its colour.
Some of these chemicals have a powerful effect. Because...
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Pahalgam attack probe: NIA court seeks China’s help to trace camera linked to terror case

Scroll Staff — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 14:52:27 +0000

A special National Investigation Agency court has issued a letter of request to a competent judicial authority in China seeking assistance to trace the supply chain and end-user details of a GoPro camera connected to the April terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam, The Indian Express reported on Wednesday.
The court issued a Letter Rogatory, or a request for assistance from a foreign judicial authority, to the competent judicial office in China, the newspaper reported.
The order came on an application filed by National Investigation Agency Deputy Inspector General Sandeep Choudhary under Section 112 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, which allows Indian courts to request evidence from the authorities in foreign countries.
The terror attack at Baisaran near Pahalgam town in Jammu and Kashmir on April 22 left 26 persons dead and 16 injured. The terrorists targeted tourists after asking their names to ascertain their religion, the police said. All but three of those killed were Hindu.
During the investigation, the NIA seized several electronic devices and material objects connected to the conspiracy and execution of the attack, the newspaper reported.
Among them, a GoPro Hero 12 Black camera was identified as crucial for establishing pre-attack reconnaissance, movement patterns and operational preparation of the terrorist module, PTI reported.
The investigation agency said it had issued a notice to the manufacturer,...
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Maharashtra: Government negligence caused Nagpur factory blast, alleges Congress leader

Scroll Staff — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 14:44:00 +0000

Congress leader Vijay Wadettiwar on Wednesday alleged that government negligence caused the recent blast at an explosives manufacturing unit in Nagpur, which killed 19 workers.
The blast occurred on Sunday morning at a factory owned by SBL Energy Limited in the Raulgaon village around 6.45 am. Eighteen workers died immediately while one succumbed to injuries the following day, PTI reported.
Twenty-three persons were injured in the incident.
Wadettiwar described the incident as “tragic and heart-numbing” and raised a suspension motion in the Assembly, demanding an immediate and detailed discussion on the matter
While addressing the Assembly, Wadettiwar claimed that 43 workers had died in similar incidents at explosives factories in the district over the past 18 months.
“Despite repeated requests to conduct safety audits of such companies, no concrete action has been taken by the state or the Centre,” he said.
He said the district has 11 explosives factories and questioned why recurring accidents had not prompted stricter inspections by the factories inspectorate and the labour department.
“On one hand, we speak of a ‘trillion-dollar economy’, jet off to Davos for photo ops in the snow, and on the other hand, workers in Maharashtra are risking their lives for a measly 300 rupees in daily wages,” he said.
Wadettiwar said that inspections were not carried out seriously even though the Petroleum and Explosives Safety...
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Brick kilns are evolving – but workers still get a bad deal

Tanvi Bhatia — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 14:00:03 +0000

With expanding cities, rising housing demand, and large-scale infrastructure projects, India is witnessing one of the world’s fastest construction booms.
Under the government’s urban housing scheme, over a period of 10 years, 11.8 million houses were sanctioned, 11.4 million grounded for construction, and over 8 million completed as of 2024. Meanwhile, under the rural housing scheme the government plants to construct 20 million houses by 2029. Every year, the country constructs millions of buildings, reflecting both the scale and pace of this growth.
The construction sector is a critical contributor to climate change. According to the World Green Building Council, buildings and construction together account for 39% of global energy-related carbon emissions, with materials and construction alone contributing 11%.
The growing construction demand has increased the demand for bricks and the brick industry is growing. India is the world’s second-largest producer of bricks, after China. Yet, much of the sector is unorganised, widely dispersed, and largely informal.
Traditional brick-making methods rely on coal-fired, energy-intensive kilns, resulting in higher emissions from fired clay bricks used in construction. The brick industry is one of the largest (coal) energy users and a source of GHG emissions from India. But it also employs some of the largest workforces in India, after agriculture.
Kanpur, an industrial city in Uttar Pradesh, has a...
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Rush Hour: US sinks Iranian warship off Sri Lanka, Indian markets crash amid conflict & more

Scroll Staff — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 13:57:17 +0000

The United States said that one of its submarines had sunk an Iranian warship off the coast of Sri Lanka on Tuesday. The frigate, the IRIS Dena, was sunk by a torpedo, US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said on Wednesday.
Hegseth said that this was the “first sinking of an enemy ship by a torpedo since World War II”.
Sri Lanka on Wednesday rescued 32 “critically injured” sailors from the warship, the country’s Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath said. At least 101 crew members are believed to be missing.
The IRIS Dena attended an International Fleet Review in India’s Vishakhapatnam from February 15 to February 25.
Commenting on the sinking of the warship, Congress leader Pawan Khera asked whether India had any influence left in its neighbourhood. “Or has that space also been quietly ceded to Washington and Tel Aviv?” he asked.
The US sunk the Iranian ship on the fifth day of a joint operation that it launched along with Israel against Tehran. Israel has been claiming that Iran is close to obtaining a nuclear weapon, although Tehran has maintained that its nuclear programme is for civilian purposes. Read more.

The Indian stock market continued to fall sharply amid concerns related to the conflict in West Asia, with the Sensex down by 1.4% and the Nifty registering a...
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‘Made in Korea’ trailer: A young woman from Tamil Nadu travels far for her obsession

Scroll Staff — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 12:48:38 +0000

...
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Crime fiction: Uma suspects she’s surrounded by evil when she and her husband move to a sleepy town

Roopa Unnikrishnan — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 12:00:00 +0000

Uma woke up sweating. She hadn’t slept well at all.
She lay there watching the dawn sunbeams flow along the ceiling rafters. She was reminded of the small trail of blood on the verandah floor. Her stomach churned. Her mind rebelled at the thought of another day, but she tossed the bedsheet aside resolutely.
Two days and I’m still moping around! I have to get a handle on myself ! We will have tea, and it will be on the verandah!
Yesterday, the day after the beheading, she hadn’t stayed too long on the verandah. Jayan had tried to coax her to stay, but her normally practical self had gone into hibernation.
“It’s just been a day since the…the Vasantha incident. Why are we even trying to do this?” she had asked. She’d been frustrated by her husband’s ability to move on from the horror of the past day. But his simple answer had devastated her. “You’re a policeman’s wife now, Uma. I want you to be the strong woman I know you are.”
Uma had bristled at his blasé suggestion, but decided to bite her tongue and give it a shot anyway. Easier said than done. She’d jumped every time someone walked by the gates,...
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Nitin Nabin, Ramdas Athawale, Vinod Tawde among 13 candidates announced by BJP for Rajya Sabha polls

Scroll Staff — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 11:01:46 +0000

The Bharatiya Janata Party has named its national president Nitin Nabin, Union minister Ramdas Athawale and party general secretary Vinod Tawde among its candidates for the upcoming Rajya Sabha elections, announcing nominees across seven states.
On Tuesday, the party announced nine candidates from six states, followed by four more from Maharashtra on Wednesday.
Nabin, who has been fielded from Bihar, is a five-time MLA from Bankipur and a minister in the Nitish Kumar government. The youngest national president in the BJP’s history, Nabin will have to resign from the Bihar Assembly if elected.
Alongside Nabin, the BJP has nominated Shivesh Ram, a former MLA and current Bihar BJP general secretary, as its second candidate from the state. He is the son of former BJP MP Muni Lal Ram.
There are five vacant Rajya Sabha seats in Bihar. The ruling BJP and Janata Dal (United) are positioned to win two seats each, while the fifth seat will require three additional votes from the Opposition to secure a majority, The Hindu reported.
In Maharashtra, the party has named Athawale and Tawde along with Maya Chintaman Ivnate and Ramrao Wadkute as its nominees, ANI reported.
The terms of seven Rajya Sabha MPs from Maharashtra will end in April. The BJP-led Mahayuti alliance is poised to win six of the seven seats, while the Maha Vikas Aghadi has yet to finalise its candidate for...
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Israel says Iran’s next supreme leader will be a ‘target for elimination’

Scroll Staff — Wed, 04 Mar 2026 10:43:10 +0000

Whoever is chosen to succeed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as Iran’s supreme leader will be “an unequivocal target for elimination”, said Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz on Wednesday.
In a social media post, Katz said: “Every leader appointed by the Iranian terror regime to continue and lead the plan to destroy Israel, to threaten the United States and the free world and the countries of the region, and to suppress the Iranian people…will be an unequivocal target for elimination.”
“We will continue to act with full force, together with our American partners, to crush the regime's capabilities and create the conditions for the Iranian people to overthrow it and replace it,” he added.
The statement came after Khamenei was killed in a joint military operation by Israel and the United States on Saturday. The two countries had launched the operation to “degrade the capabilities” of the Iranian government.
The attacks came amid tensions between the three countries regarding Tehran’s nuclear programme. Washington acts as a guarantor of Israel’s security. Israel has been claiming that Iran is close to obtaining a nuclear weapon, which could alter the regional security balance.
Tehran has long maintained that its nuclear programme is for civilian purposes.
Iran retaliated by striking Israel and US military bases in the region, and targeting major cities in other Gulf countries and...
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US submarine sinks Iranian warship off Sri Lanka coast, at least 80 dead

Scroll Staff — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 06:11:17 +0000

At least 80 persons were killed after a United States submarine sunk an Iranian warship in the Indian Ocean, Reuters quoted Sri Lanka’s deputy foreign minister as telling local television on Wednesday.
The US Department of War has confirmed the attack that occurred off the coast of Sri Lanka on Tuesday.
US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said on Wednesday that the ship was sunk by a torpedo.
U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said that a U.S. submarine sank the IRIS Dena off the coast of Sri Lanka with a torpedo, the first such attack by a U.S. submarine since the Second World War. pic.twitter.com/BhtG2Wc4nq
— NewsWire 🇱🇰 (@NewsWireLK) March 4, 2026

Later on Wednesday, the US Department of War also released footage of the torpedo hitting the Iranian frigate, resulting in an explosion.
This Iranian warship thought it was safe in international waters. It wasn't.

The @DeptofWar is fighting to win. 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/4bGMubuSQu
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) March 4, 2026

Sri Lanka on Wednesday rescued 32 “critically injured” sailors from the warship, AFP quoted the island country’s Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath as saying.
The Iranian frigate, IRIS Dena, had a capacity of 180 crew members. The Daily Mirror had earlier reported that 101 persons were missing after the explosion.
The warship had attended an International Fleet Review , which was held from February 15 to February 25 in Vishakhapatnam, where it had been...
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