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How the ‘Zed Beats’ music movement give Zambians back their voice

Mathew Tembo, The Conversation — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 16:30:00 +0000

Zed Beats is a music movement that evolved in the late 1980s when young producers started using computers to blend western music with local languages and flavour. Today it’s an umbrella term for popular urban music in Zambia.

Musician and academic Mathew Tembo is a Zed Beats specialist. His PhD is on its history, production and musical labour from 1986 to 2024. We asked him to tell us about the music and how it shapes the country.

What is Zed Beats?

Zed Beats takes its name from the “Z” in “Zambia”. It’s a blend of indigenous musical elements with influences drawn from R&B, reggae, rap, Jamaican dancehall, hip-hop, Afrobeats, amapiano and other urban music genres trending at the time of its production.

The music, sung mostly in Zambian languages Chinyanja and Chibemba, along with some English, is produced on digital audio workstations by self-taught producers in home studios. The use of local languages makes Zed Beats resonate with young people, whose everyday conversations are carried out in these languages.

What forces created the ‘new’ music?

During the late 1980s and 1990s, Zambia’s live music scene was devastated by the HIV/Aids epidemic, which claimed the lives of a generation of top musicians working in genres like Kalindula and Zamrock. The collapse left Zambian...

Geetanjali Shree’s radical fiction, written in Hindi, is finding a global audience

Mridula Nath Chakraborty, The Conversation — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 15:00:00 +0000

In 2022, Tomb of Sand became the first work of Indian literature to win the International Booker Prize. Written in Hindi by Geetanjali Shree and translated by Daisy Rockwell, the novel is Shree’s magnum opus and the pinnacle of a distinguished literary career.

Indian writers have previously won the Booker Prize, which is restricted to works written in English: Salman Rushdie (1981), Arundhati Roy (1997), Kiran Desai (2006) and Aravind Adiga (2008). But English is spoken by about 10% of the Indian population; its rightful place as an Indian language is a result of the passionately contested legacy of 200 years of British rule on the subcontinent.

Hindustani – or Hindi, as it is commonly known – has 611 million speakers around the world. Some estimates put the figure closer to 855 million. And yet the global recognition of Hindi literature, like literature in the 22 other officially recognised languages of India, each of which has its own complex history, remains hostage to Anglophone publishing regimes.

Shree notes this conundrum in one of her earliest stories, Pilaki Mane Faye (the title is a bit of nonsensical wordplay, implying the absurdity of a situation). Its central character, who wants to make a bit of extra money through Hindi publishing, comments on the comparative profitability of the English language:

Yeah, it would...
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Mumbai’s chawl residents negotiate with ‘light mafias’ for power supply

Rhea Arora — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 14:00:01 +0000

“We pay Rs 600 every month whether we get electricity or not. We used to pay more but there are now two electricity mafias competing in this area,” says Ajuma Sheikh, a 63-year-old social worker who stays in Patra chawl in Mumbai’s Mankhurd suburb.
For the past 25 years, she has been caught between the powerful stakeholders of Mumbai’s electricity sector: the government, Adani Electricity and local unauthorised operators.
In and around the Mumbai Port Trust, reserve forest areas and on land owned by the Railways and Defence departments, thousands of people live like the residents of Patra chawl – in densely-packed, make-shift homes made of tin sheets and plastic tarp with poor ventilation and no reliable electricity.
“We sit outside all day because it’s too hot to go in,” Sheikh says, pointing to clusters of plastic chairs, cardboard sheets, cement bags, wooden planks, and ripped mattresses arranged haphazardly along the Mankhurd railway track. “We go indoors at 2 am but get bit by mosquitoes all night. We can’t put up a net or light a coil because there’s no ventilation. We’ll suffocate.”
A survey from several South Asian cities including Yavatmal and Jalna in Maharashtra found that temperatures inside tin-roofed homes often exceeded those inside concrete-roofed homes and even...
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Bangladesh says PM Tarique Rahman will not visit India until Sheikh Hasina is extradited

Scroll Staff — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 17:04:12 +0000

Bangladesh said on Sunday that Prime Minister Tarique Rahman would not visit India until New Delhi extradited former Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, AFP reported.
The neighbouring countries have had strained relations since massive student-led protests erupted in Bangladesh in July 2024 against a controversial quota scheme for government jobs and later snowballed into a broader agitation against Hasina’s government. Her government was eventually brought down, forcing her to flee to India.
Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal in November sentenced Hasina to death for crimes against humanity in connection with the deadly crackdown on protesters in 2024. In February, a court sentenced her to 10 years’ imprisonment in two corruption cases relating to alleged irregularities in the allocation of land in a government housing project in Dhaka.
Dhaka has repeatedly demanded that Hasina be extradited. It has also expressed concerns about the ousted leader being allowed by the Indian authorities to address her supporters from Delhi.
New Delhi has previously said that it was for Hasina to decide whether she wants to return to Bangladesh.
Speaking to reporters on Sunday, Bangladesh’s foreign ministry official AKM Shahidul Karim played down media speculation about a possible trip by Rahman to India next week.
“We are of the view that a propitious environment needs to be created for the visit,” AFP quoted him as saying....
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AI is flooding the online book market with poor translations: Here’s how to spot them

Terry Bradford, The Conversation — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000

If you’re buying literature in translation online, buyer beware. You may unknowingly be buying low-quality AI-assisted translations presented as the work of a professional.
Certain online retailers are being used to flood the book market with AI-assisted “translations”. Amazon is one such example, though the company seems to be aware of the problem and claims to be addressing it.
I’m a published translator of French and Belgian literature and I teach literary translation to MA students. So I know from experience how much time and effort go into translation. Like many translators, I’m wary of the impact of AI on translation quality, not least because AI is not ideologically neutral. This means AI translation is more likely to reproduce outdated racial stereotypes (rife in colonial-era literature, alas) rather than handle them with sensitivity.
I first became aware of the practice when I purchased a Jules Verne novel in English online. The book presents as the work of a human translator and styles itself as “for a modern readership”. Within three minutes of opening the book, I had got my money back. Why? Style-wise, there was nothing “modern” about the “translation” – the style was as archaic as the first translation in 1877. And the presentation of the text was woeful...
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‘Attention and Drift’: A new vantage from which to look at literature and politics simultaneously

Nikhil Govind — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000

Prasanta Chakravarty’s Attention and Drift: Santayana and Cavell in the Present is an exuberant addition to what is already a versatile and impressive oeuvre. Chakravarty’s doctoral work was on the literature of the English Civil War of the 17th century. Since then, without losing his footing in the earlier centuries, he has engaged with themes unto the very present.
What unites his books is perhaps the ability to read literature and politics always simultaneously, each informing the other, each irreducible to the other. Thus, later works, including several edited ones, engage with figures like Machiavelli (in his historical period, as well as the shadow he casts today), as well as the complex thematics of what the media calls “populism”. Beyond this, he also edits a web journal, and is the author of four volumes of poetry.
Embracing risk and danger
The latest book on attention and drift is a study of two influential philosophers who are not generally paired together – George Santayana (1863-1952) and Stanley Cavell (1926-2018). These are American figures, and it is salutary that Indian literary scholars also engage with this Anglo-American tradition, instead of the French-German one which has dominated the curriculum over many decades.
Let us pay attention then to some of the chief...
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Actors Shah Rukh Khan, Ajay Devgn, Tiger Shroff get Maharashtra FDA notice over Vimal Elaichi ad

Scroll Staff — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 11:24:36 +0000

Hindi film actors Shah Rukh Khan, Ajay Devgn and Tiger Shroff have received show-cause notices from the Maharashtra Food and Drug Administration in connection with an advertisement for Vimal Elaichi, PTI reported on Sunday.
The agency has alleged that the advertisement amounts to surrogate promotion of Vimal Pan Masala, a product prohibited in the state.
Maharashtra has prohibited gutka and pan masala containing tobacco or nicotine since 2012 under the Food Safety and Standards Act, with the ban renewed annually. The latest prohibition order was issued by the state food safety commissioner on July 13.
The action against the actors comes as the Maharashtra Food and Drug Administration has stepped up checks on food safety, including adulterated milk and food at restaurants, the sale of junk food near schools, and the manufacture and sale of banned gutka and tobacco-containing pan masala.
In the notice dated August 11, the Food and Drug Administration said that the use of the term “Vimal Elaichi” in the advertisement appeared to create an association with the Vimal Pan Masala brand and could mislead consumers while indirectly promoting the prohibited product, PTI reported.
It sought a response from the three actors, who were listed as brand endorsers, within 15 days.
The agency asked the actors to provide documentary evidence showing...
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Bar Council chairman apologises to law students amid NALSAR row

Scroll Staff — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 09:44:35 +0000

Bar Council of India Chairperson Manan Kumar Mishra on Saturday apologised to law students, days after the body withdrew its directive to state bar councils to defer the enrolment of graduates of the National Academy of Legal Studies and Research as advocates, Live Law reported.
The council had objected to a campaign by some students against the institute’s decision to invite Chief Justice Surya Kant to their convocation. It had triggered a backlash.
On Thursday, the council withdrew the directive, but said it had sought an inquiry report from the university identifying those who were “principally instrumental” in opposing Kant’s participation in the convocation. Later that night, it closed the proceedings against the students, saying it was satisfied that the 2026 batch had no role in any “disturbance or movement”.
Chief Justice Surya Kant on Friday criticised the Bar Council of India for the move, describing it as “absolutely uncalled for”.
Kant had said: “It’s a dialogue between students and me. Who are they to raise an issue?”
On Saturday, Mishra wrote in a three-page letter that “if anything connected with the present controversy, any of my words, or letter, has hurt the feelings of our law students, I sincerely regret and apologise for the same”.
The Bharatiya Janata Party MP said students at the national...
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Sunday book pick: Bhisham Sahni’s debut novel ‘Boyhood’ is a prelude to a pain-wracked adulthood

Sayari Debnath — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000

“Where does the real course of one’s life actually begin? At what turning point does one leave one’s boyhood behind and start on manhood? Who can say that, before that point, everything was clouded and unclear and without significance, but that everything ahead of it will be clear and meaningful? Isn’t manhood as hazy as childhood? And doesn’t that haziness go on right to the end of one’s life?”
Before his Partition magnum opus, Tamas, Bhisham Sahni wrote a sensitive novel about the a young boy’s coming of age in colonial India. First published in Hindi as Jharokhe (1967), it has been aptly translated into English as Boyhood (2016) by Anna Khanna. Like a jharokha balcony opening into the world, the novel opens into the endlessly confounding journey to adulthood. Sahni, who started his literary career with Boyhood, would go on to become one of India’s most important writers ever.
Looking back
The narrative voice belongs to the protagonist’s adult self, who looks back at his childhood and narrates it as he remembers it. He assumes the role of a spectator instead of the central character, as though his childhood had simply happened, many of the events beyond his comprehension and control. Happiness is interspersed with long periods of anxiety and unknowing. The...
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Bengal: TMC leader and ex-deputy speaker Asish Banerjee found dead

Scroll Staff — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 07:59:28 +0000

West Bengal’s former deputy speaker and Trinamool Congress leader Asish Banerjee was found dead inside the party office near his home in Birbhum district on Sunday morning.
Nilanjan Das, a TMC spokesperson, posted on social media a note written in Bengali that was purportedly recovered near Asish Banerjee’s body. It said that false allegations of corruption had been made against him.
“Primarily it is a suicide case,” Birbhum Superintendent of Police Vidit Raj Bhundesh told The Indian Express. He added that the note also stated: “No one is responsible for my death.”
The body has been sent for post-mortem.
Sad. Shocking.
Dr Ashish Banerjee, 5 time AITC MLA, Ex Minister & Deputy Speaker has committed suicide.
“I had nothing to do with corruption and yet all these completely false allegations to malign me…” pic.twitter.com/gwBGpFMHOQ
— Nilanjan Das (@NilanjanDasAITC) August 16, 2026

Asish Banerjee served as the deputy speaker of the West Bengal Assembly during Mamata Banerjee’s tenure as the chief minister. A five-term MLA from Rampurhat, he was defeated by Bharatiya Janata Party’s Dhruba Saha in the 2026 Assembly elections.
A relative of Asish Banerjee told The Indian Express that the note recovered near his body stated that he “never took a single penny in exchange for any work in my entire life”.
“Although I could not accept all of the party’s wrongdoings throughout my...
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CJP alleges its Bengal volunteer’s father died after attack by BJP workers

Scroll Staff — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 13:03:08 +0000

The Cockroach Janta Party political campaign alleged on Saturday that the father of one of their volunteers in West Bengal’s Bankura district died after being critically injured by Bharatiya Janata Party workers.
The incident took place in Karisunda village of the district’s Indus block. The local police confirmed to Scroll that a person had died. However, they claimed that they were yet to receive a complaint regarding this.
On the other hand, the Cockroach Janta Party alleged that when the volunteer, Shaik Abdul Hafeez, approached the police, they refused to file a complaint.
Abdul’s father sustained serious head injuries yesterday after he was attacked by RW goons. His condition turned critical today, and I have just received the heartbreaking news that he has passed away.

Is this how @BJP4Bengal and @WBPolice are functioning? When a family is under… https://t.co/4zog7rqqyv
— Ratna Singh (@whattalawyer) August 15, 2026

In a video posted on social media on Thursday, Hafeez said he had visited a primary school in Karisunda to conduct a survey as part of the Cockroach Janta Party’s nationwide campaign to improve government schools in villages.
He alleged that BJP workers arrived at his home later that day and assaulted him and his family.
They also demanded that he record a video apologising for highlighting the school’s condition and claiming that he...
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Video cassettes and melancholy music: Drinking in Hindi films in 1980s Shillong

Amrita Dutta — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 06:00:00 +0000

Everything arrived late in my hometown – the news, wrapped up in the day-old newspaper from Calcutta. The movies came even later at rickety, smoke-filled theatres.
Not that it mattered. For most of my childhood, I don’t remember going to the cinemas.
It was one of the many things one accepted as a child in the 1980s – like the pine trees growing near our home, the mists that would curl around the hills, and the pockets of time that would open up when curfew was imposed on this sleepy outpost in the Northeast.
Years ago, when the town did not have to shut down by evening, when you could be safe on its streets after dark, our parents told us how they had traipsed down with friends to watch evening shows of Bengali films in the old Kelvin cinema in Police Bazaar.
Out at night watching movies? That was not the hometown I was growing up in. A year before I was born, riots had broken out, turning the town into ghettos of us and them.
And so, everyone had to be home – or at least in the safety of their neighbourhoods – within an hour of the blue-grey dusk drawing a curtain over the town.
But the movies...
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Arunachal Pradesh: Five Army personnel missing after flash floods, four persons killed in landslide

Scroll Staff — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 05:55:12 +0000

Five Army personnel went missing after heavy rainfall triggered flash floods in Arunachal Pradesh’s Dibang Valley district, PTI quoted officials as saying on Saturday. Additionally, four persons died after a landslide on a road construction site in Upper Subansiri district.
Both incidents took place on Friday night, the news agency quoted the State Emergency Operations Centre as saying.
In Dibang Valley district, seven Army personnel had gone missing after two shelters of the 5th Grenadier at the Pasu Pani Camp were washed away by a flash flood.
Two of them were later rescued
The missing personnel are Upendar, Kundan, Vinod, Aditya and Samunda, reported PTI.
Teams from the Army, Indo-Tibetan Police Force, the Arunachal Police, State Disaster Response Force and the General Reserve Engineer Force have been deployed to rescue them.
The landslide in Upper Subansiri district occurred at the Keojaring-Byaching road cutting site.
Those who died in the incident are Tadu Baki, Taji Rai, Markosh Basumatari and Babul Ali.
Personnel from Nacho Police Station, the fire services and the State Disaster Response Force have been deployed for the search and rescue operation.
Edited by Sneha.

...
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‘Sign of desperation’: Opposition says PM Modi’s ‘dimagi Naxals’ remark shows he is ‘rattled’

Scroll Staff — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 03:48:18 +0000

Prime Minister Narendra Modi describing his opponents as “dimagi Naxals”, or persons with “Naxal mentality”, was a “sure sign of his desperation”, said the Congress on Saturday.
“It is a separate matter that he ends up doing whatever these so-called ‘urban Naxals’ or now ‘dimaagi Naxals’ are demanding or advocating,” said party leader Jairam Ramesh.
The term “urban Naxals” was first used by Union ministers and leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party after several activists and academics were arrested in the Elgar Parishad case in 2018. Since then, the term has often been used to describe some dissidents of the Narendra Modi government.
Earlier in the day, addressing the nation from the Red Fort on the 80th Independence Day, Modi had said that “dimagi Naxals” are a threat to Indian society and called for them to be “found and isolated”.
He also claimed that persons with Maoist ideology had for years “established themselves in the corridors of power and influenced policy making, including as advisers on government committees”.
First He called his opponents ‘urban naxals.’

Now He calls them ‘dimaagi naxals.’

It is a sure sign of His desperation. It is a separate matter that He ends up doing whatever these so-called ‘urban naxals’ or now ‘dimaagi naxals’ are demanding or advocating.

It is not for…
— Jairam Ramesh (@Jairam_Ramesh) August 15, 2026

Congress leader Sachin...
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Why is the BJP scared of displays of support for Umar Khalid?

Anant Gupta — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 03:30:01 +0000

In recent weeks, the authorities in several Indian cities have taken action against protesters who have reportedly displayed support for jailed activist Umar Khalid.
On August 7, the police in Mumbai arrested Abhirup Paul, a former student of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, for allegedly chanting slogans in support of Khalid at a campus event.
Two days later, in Delhi, Jawaharlal Nehru University officials withdrew permission for a discussion on Khalid’s book, Fractured Communities: Adivasi Histories and the Politics of Power.
Last month, while youth protesters were demanding the resignation of the education minister, a first information report was filed against a demonstrator in Bengaluru for carrying a poster that said “Umar Khalid zindabad”. Long live Umar Khalid.
Around the same time, Instagram complied with a demand made by the Modi government and restricted access to a profile named “Free Umar Khalid” in India.
Shortly after, two protesters in Goa were detained for expressing their support for Khalid at an event to celebrate the education minister’s resignation.
Legally, there is no basis for these actions, asserted Arvind Narrain, a Bengaluru-based lawyer, academic and president of the Karnataka unit of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties. “At worst, he [Khalid] is an accused,” he explained. “Article 19 of the Constitution includes the right to advocate for the release of those accused under any law, including the...
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‘Souls of Someone’: Photobook on trans women at the Koovagam festival is sensitive and full of life

Saurabh Sharma — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 03:00:00 +0000

The complexity of South Asian gender and queer expressions can’t be contained by the Anglophone queer theorisation. First, because any such exercise makes one engage with South Asia’s rich and textured myth-historical past. Second, it’s this inheritance that renders the contemporary, contextual meaning to modern-day queerness, making the latter always in conversation with its past, enabling imagination of collective queer futures.
It’s not that South Asian queerness refuses to offer a comprehensible template. It just doesn’t offer an easy one, which is why artists must invent ways to engage creatively to effectively and authentically portray queer expressions. One such work is Shino Cherian’s debut photobook Souls of Someone: Myth, Magic and Mourning in Koovagam.
“Art is born out of an ill-designed world” reads a part of the epigraph that quotes Andrei Tarkovsky in the book. Activist Grace Banu in her Foreword to the book expands on the idea, and Cherian’s desire to explore and document the Koovagam festival.
Banu writes, “The brilliance of this work lies in Shino’s willingness to ‘unbecome’ the person he thought he was. He admits to his early hesitations, the knot in his chest and the queasiness of overthinking.”
This overthinking aspect stems from the fact that the “authenticity” of the one looking at...
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Eco India: Can Delhi save its forests without destroying what makes them valuable?

Scroll Staff — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 02:55:00 +0000

...
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What the saga of Monsieur Mounissamy tells us about Franco-Indian identity

Ari Gautier — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 02:45:00 +0000

If Gregor Samsa had been born in Pondicherry, he wouldn’t have awakened as a cockroach but as a chameleon. He would have been named accordingly, such as Jean-Grégoire Samoussapoullé, Grégoire Samikkannu, Grégorius Samassamy-Mudaliar, or, with a touch of aristocratic eccentricity, Grégoire-Marie Samassamy de Oulgaret.
Because of a colonial absurdity dating back to 1962, thousands of people find themselves in this Kafkaesque limbo, caught between two nations, two cultures, two identities, and two flags. They wake to the opening bars of La Marseillaise and go to sleep humming Jana Gana Mana. Their identity eludes both France and India, while the truly schizophrenic Franco-Pondicherrians sing neither anthem correctly. As the sun sets, they forsake both anthems for Marie, le pêcheur, an old Creole tune that drunkards sing off-key in the city’s countless bars. This timeless melody, appropriate for no nation, belongs to everyone and nowhere at once.
“My father moved with ease between the language of Molière and that of Thiruvalluvar, while my uncle knew only Tamil. The former was French, the latter Indian. This anomaly stemmed from an absurdity inherited from colonial power in 1962.”
I wrote that sentence long before I ever encountered Mounissamy, the subject of Pankaj Rishi Kumar’s documentary To Die a Frenchman.
When Le Thinnai was released, I was taken aback to find...
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India’s cockroaches are offering a reality check about the country’s development model

Debasish Roy Chowdhury — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 02:30:00 +0000

Gen Z has already passed the baton in India. After spotlighting the country’s broken public examinations through an unprecedented popular movement, it is Gen Alpha’s turn to lay bare even deeper layers of dysfunction of India’s education system. There’s a message for the world in all this, and it better listen, because India’s education crisis is a global problem.
School students have picked up where the “cockroach movement” left off last month when nationwide youth protests that began with a satirical campaign triggered by question paper leaks and unemployment forced the Narendra Modi government to let go of its education minister whose resignation the cockroach activists had demanded.
This month, frustrated school-goers in many states have decided it is their turn to push back.
They are not asking for much, just the basics that the Indian state still fails to provide nearly 80 years after Independence.
So, in Uttar Pradesh, they are marching with national flags demanding the construction of a long-overdue road leading to their school. The principal of a government school for hearing and speech-impaired students in Rajasthan was suspended after the students staged a protest against the lack of decent toilets and proper classrooms.
In Madhya Pradesh, schoolgirls are protesting a bus fare hike they say has made their daily commute a burden on their...
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‘Many times, ideas from a novel leave an imprint on poems under construction’: Jeet Thayil

Sukant Deepak — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 02:00:00 +0000

Strange shadows fall on poet-novelist Jeet Thayil’s face as his photos are clicked. Stranger images appear. In one, his face looks too dark, almost invisible. He likes it the best. After all, he has negotiated many shadowy labyrinths in his life, in his work. Thayil whispers that he always feels grateful whenever poetry comes to him – considering one never knows when a verse will arrive, or if it ever will.
The conversation was to start with his latest book, The Elsewhereans: A Documentary Novel, where family history, geography, memory, and imagination come together, resisting any categorisation – and beneath it all, a peculiar longing. However, it refused to be linear, just like his works. Excerpts from a conversation with many pauses, several beginnings, and no conclusion:
Considering The Elsewhereans is based on your parents’ lives and archival material, did writing it change your perception of your own family – especially after the writing process was over?
What changed things was the fact of my parents’ passing in the last year of writing the book. I saw my parents for who they were – small-town Indians finding a way in the world, fearless in many ways, making the most of their street smarts and native skills, trying to do...
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After Tejpal: A letter to progressive men from a feminist

Arundhati Ghosh — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 01:30:00 +0000

To Progressive Men,
I cannot begin a letter with “dear”. For decades we have been comrades in many battles where we have fought shoulder to shoulder. We have been daughters and fathers, brothers and sisters, spouses, lovers and most importantly friends who have valued each other’s convictions and stood in each other’s corners. And still.
On August 6, the Bombay High Court reversed the 2021 acquittal by the Additional Sessions Court Mapusa, of Tarun Tejpal, the former editor of Tehelka, and sentenced him to ten years in jail for sexually assaulting a junior colleague in an elevator.
The first remarks by Tejpal to hit the press included the fact that he was 62 years old, had a wife, and was being politically victimised like the incarcerated activists Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam – who, unlike Tejpal, are languishing in jail for over six years without even the hint of a trial. And immediately some of you, our friends, turned rape apologists.
From expert opinions on the survivor’s failure to look like a person who has just been sexually assaulted to contemplations on the Rashomon nature of the judgements of the two courts with “amusing facts” making for good cinema – social media is abuzz.
You did not look up the...
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Upper Assam’s flood catastrophe is a direct result of river and mountain grabbing

Mitul Baruah — Sun, 16 Aug 2026 01:00:00 +0000

Since July 19, an artificial flood has wreaked havoc in four Upper Assam districts. So catastrophic has this flood been that nearly 800 villages and an area of around 1,19,000 hectares of cropland have been submerged, sheets of mud have been deposited in fields and inside people’s homes and large areas in the countryside have been turned into lakes.
More than 100 people have died and roughly seven lakh have been affected. Countless cattle have died.
The worst part of this disaster is that these are places not on the map of Assam’s annual flooding. But now, they seem to be doomed, as if a malignant wound has been created that will only spread and not heal.
For a land that is shaped and reshaped by the Brahmaputra river system and its unique fluvial dynamics, floods are not new in Assam – nor unwanted. Every monsoon, floodwaters bring alive all that was parched and dormant, replenishing the wetlands and the paddy fields, and reassuring fecundity in all living beings.
Assamese society has been traditionally a flood-dependent society, not a flood-fearing or flood-resisting one.
To make sense of the current catastrophe in Upper Assam, a historical understanding of how a natural phenomenon has become disastrous in the Brahmaputra Valley is necessary.
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UK drought highlights precarious food system

Sven Batke, The Conversation — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 16:30:00 +0000

Much of England is now officially in drought. Reservoir levels are being closely monitored by water companies, while farmers are reporting dry soils and poor crop conditions. Further restrictions such as grazing rules could soon come into effect.
Water is recognised as critical national infrastructure. However, drought does not only threaten our water supply. It also tests the resilience of the food system that depends on it.
For most of us, that reality becomes visible in the supermarket: standing in front of a shelf with no cucumbers, more expensive tomatoes or fewer fresh vegetables to choose from. These episodes have become increasingly familiar in recent years. We notice the empty shelves, accept the higher prices and move on.
But I keep wondering: why does this surprise so many people?
The UK carefully monitors many of the systems that underpin everyday life. We publish inflation figures every month, NHS waiting lists every week and regularly report on water reservoir levels because these indicators tell us whether essential systems are becoming stronger or weaker. They provide an early indication that intervention may be needed before problems escalate. Food, however, is different. We tend to judge the resilience of our food system only after something has gone wrong.
That seems odd for something so fundamental. Food is every bit as essential as healthcare, energy or water,...
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‘Sophie, Standing There’: After ‘Sorrow and Bliss’, Meg Mason’s new novel asks if books can save us

Amber Gwynne, The Conversation — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 15:00:00 +0000

I sometimes say that My Family and Other Animals – Gerald Durrell’s autobiographical novel from 1956 – saved my life. My mother pressed her dog-eared copy into my hands during a year I was hospitalised repeatedly for major depression.
The sun-soaked Greek island of Corfu – as well as the Durrell family’s foibles and adventures – felt a world away from my hometown’s bleak winter and all those blister packets and doctors’ waiting rooms. I became fascinated by Durrell’s colourful childhood and his longstanding career as both an author and a naturalist. I could easily recall the story’s funniest moments and parrot the most memorable lines.
On even the hardest days, it somehow seemed to help.
This may seem like a roundabout way of introducing Sophie, Standing There, the new novel by New Zealand–born, Sydney-based Meg Mason, which centres on a soon-to-be-divorced festival worker and her fixation on an author whose work begins to speak to her. But this story, too, is about what books and authors can mean to us at particular times, and how they might save us – sometimes not only in their what but also in their when.
Mason is known, and adored by many, for Sorrow and Bliss, her second novel. It achieved breakout success in 2020...
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Rare Eurasian lynx recorded on camera traps in Sikkim

Manish Chandra Mishra — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 14:00:01 +0000

A Eurasian lynx has been recorded in a camera-trap image from the Tso Lhamo plateau in Sikkim. This encounter marks the first confirmed photographic evidence of the species in the state. It is also the second such record from the Eastern Himalayas. The image, captured in January 2026 at an altitude of 5,250 metres in Mangan district, shows the animal moving across a rocky, sparsely vegetated high-altitude slope.
The sighting comes from a long-term snow leopard and rangeland monitoring programme led by the Sikkim forest department and WWF-India. The initiative tracks snow leopards and associated wildlife while studying the ecological condition of the trans-Himalayan rangelands.
The Sikkim record follows a 2025 photographic documentation of a Eurasian lynx in Arunachal Pradesh during a joint survey by WWF-India and the Arunachal Pradesh forest department.
“It highlights the ecological significance of our high-altitude rangelands and reinforces our commitment to protecting these fragile ecosystems. The cooperation of the Lachen Dzumsa (traditional local self-governance body) in facilitating access to these remote areas has been important to this work,” Sikkim’s Chief Conservator of Forests (Wildlife), Udai Gurung, said in a press note.
A meeting point of two biological worlds
For researchers, the record adds to the limited scientific understanding of Tso Lhamo, a high-altitude...
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Indonesia: At least 38 dead as 7.7-magnitude earthquake strikes eastern coast

Scroll Staff — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 13:43:46 +0000

A 7.7 magnitude earthquake struck eastern Indonesia early on Saturday, killing at least 38 and injuring over a dozen residents, AP reported.
The earthquake hit Indonesia’s Flores region at a depth of 10 kilometres at 5.58 am local time, the news agency quoted the United States Geological Survey as saying. The epicentre of the quake was located 68 kilometres northwest of the city of Ende.
After the earthquake, tsunami waves of less than 3 feet were recorded in several parts of Indonesia, Reuters reported. The tsunami warning was lifted three hours after the quake.
“As of 15:00 [0800 GMT], the recorded figures are 38 fatalities, two people seriously injured, 11 with minor injuries,” Suharyanto, head of the National Disaster Management Agency, was quoted by Reuters as having said at a press conference. About 2,000 people had fled to safer ground, he said.
Sixteen bodies were pulled out from the site of a landslide in the village of Reok in the Manggarai region.
Strong tremors were also felt in the regions of East Nusa Tenggara, West Nusa Tenggara and parts of ⁠South Sulawesi. In many places, residents reported shaking that lasted about a minute, Reuters reported.
“Most of the people felt the shock and scattered out of their homes,” the news agency quoted the disaster management authority...
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Centre cuts windfall tax on petrol, diesel and aviation fuel

Scroll Staff — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 15:12:39 +0000

The Union Finance Ministry has cut the windfall tax on exports of petrol, diesel and aviation turbine fuel from Saturday, according to a gazette notification.
India first imposed the windfall tax in July 2022 to capture extraordinary gains made by oil companies as crude prices surged. The tax was scrapped two years later and reintroduced in March after oil prices rose amid the crisis in West Asia.
The special additional excise duty, through which the windfall tax is levied, has been cut on diesel exports to Rs 24 per litre from Rs 25.5.
The duty on aviation turbine fuel exports has been reduced to Rs 19.5 per litre from Rs 22, while the levy on petrol exports has been cut to zero from Rs 3.5 per litre.
The revised rates took effect on Saturday. There was no change in the existing duty rates on petrol and diesel sold for domestic consumption.
The government imposed the export duty on diesel and aviation turbine fuel on March 27 and has revised the rates every fortnight. The levy was extended to petrol exports from May 16.
The windfall tax is intended to ensure domestic availability of petroleum products and discourage exporters from benefiting excessively from differences between domestic and international prices.
The export levies are revised every fortnight based on international prices...
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August global fiction: Six new novels for a new month of reading

Scroll Staff — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 12:00:02 +0000

All information sourced from publishers.
Triage, Claudia Rankine
Two friends meet in an art gallery after decades of silence. The idealism that once bound them together fissured and fractured under the weight of collective and personal griefs. Through their memories of youthful certainty, the antagonism of their conversation and the embers of their enduring kinship, they navigate the wreckage of our world today – the hope, the anger and the exhaustion.
Sunrise, Téa Obreht
In 2024, Nina’s small aircraft crashes into a lake in the Wyoming mountains. Lost, freezing and alone, she stumbles upon Sunrise – an abandoned frontier town that is strangely well-maintained.
In 2003, Sunrise’s golden boy Coll is about to start rehearsals for the town's annual historical reenactment when he is linked with a scandalous incident at a local bar. When an author comes to him with questions about one of Sunrise's most beloved figures, Coll is forced to reassess everything he thought he knew about the city – and himself.
In 1902, town founder, gunslinger and adventure-novel hero Anton Vargas returns to Sunrise and helps with the search for a missing boy. But who really is Vargas? What does he know about the boy’s disappearance? And why has he returned after so many years away?
These three are strangers,...
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Eco India, Episode 330: How tree loss fuels urban heatwaves

Scroll Staff — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 10:48:00 +0000

...
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NLSIU students condemn Bar Council’s now-revoked action against NALSAR graduating batch

Scroll Staff — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 10:39:04 +0000

Students from the graduating batch of the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru, on Saturday condemned the Bar Council of India’s now-withdrawn action against the outgoing National Academy of Legal Studies and Research batch and demanded an unconditional apology from the regulatory body, Live Law reported.
The statement expressed solidarity with NALSAR students and faculty over two letters issued by the council on Thursday.
On Thursday, the council had directed state bar councils to defer the enrolment of NALSAR’s graduating batch as advocates, objecting to a campaign by some students against the institute inviting Chief Justice Surya Kant to their convocation.
It withdrew the decision a few hours later, but said it had sought an inquiry report from the university identifying those who were “principally instrumental” in opposing Kant’s participation in the convocation.
Later in the night, the council closed all proceedings against the students, saying it was satisfied that the 2026 batch had no role in any “disturbance or movement”.
Graduating students of National Law School of India University condemn BCI Chairman’s actions against NALSAR 2026 batch.

They demand unconditional apology from the Bar Council of India, and explanation of the protocol for the use of BCI letterhead by Manan Kumar Mishra.… pic.twitter.com/qjNjh9hGJc
— Live Law (@LiveLawIndia) August 15, 2026

The Bengaluru law school students said the withdrawal did not “alter...
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‘Appetite’: Life in Goa comes alive in this wryly humorous yet eerily chilling anthology

Saloni Sharma — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 08:00:00 +0000

It is difficult to not romanticise Goa. Not the hyper-curated, exaggeratedly aestheticised party destination that lives in perpetual revelry on Instagram, or the casino capital that flashy billboards at the Dabolim airport promise, but the real deal. Small villages that awaken at daybreak. Old Portuguese houses with their red benches, often under the strict surveillance of a resident dog or two. The sound of the poder and the satisfaction of biting into the still-warm crust of a fresh poi. The energy of Mapusa market. The seven hundred and sixty-five distinct shades of green that form the landscape of monsoon months. The roiling July sea that humbles the most intrepid of tourists and adventurers. The inviting plates of ambotik and xacuti, and the sticky sweetness of dodol.
All this, if you are an outsider looking in. More, if you claim kinship with the land, the history, the culture. It is this liminality between longing and belonging that Shivranjana Rathore and Tino De Sa’s anthology of new writing from Goa captures.
Appetite: New Writing from Goa, appropriately titled, brings together short stories, poems, essays, memoir pieces, and one graphic narrative that collectively explore the complex terrain of desire, nostalgia, embodiment, historicity, anguish, horror, and uncensored, ungovernable...
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PM Modi calls for ‘dimagi Naxals’ to be ‘found and isolated’ in his Independence Day speech

Scroll Staff — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 07:22:29 +0000

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday said that “dimagi Naxals”, or persons with “Naxal mentality”, are a threat to Indian society and called for them to be “found and isolated”.
Addressing the nation from the Red Fort on the 80th Independence Day, Modi alleged that persons with Maoist ideology had for years “established themselves in the corridors of power and influenced policy making, including as advisers on government committees”.
“In our jungles, we have been successful in weeding out Naxals with weapons,” he said. “But those with Naxal mentality are still around. They are threatening our society. We have to find and isolate these dimagi Naxals.”
He added: “The dimagi Naxals are waiting for an opportunity…they are trying to revive the paths of violence and anarchy and are making various attempts to drag society in the wrong direction.”
#WATCH | Delhi: From the ramparts of the Red Fort, Prime Minister Narendra Modi says, "... It is imperative to eliminate the challenges that have persisted for decades in the 21st century. Naxalism and Maoism have devastated the futures of lakhs of youths; they snatched away… pic.twitter.com/zXGH8Hpjif
— ANI (@ANI) August 15, 2026

Modi said that the left-wing extremist violence had destroyed the future of lakhs of young persons and killed more than 3,500 police and...
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TMC MP Mahua Moitra claims Nadia administration told her to leave circuit house late at night

Scroll Staff — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 06:54:46 +0000

Trinamool Congress MP Mahua Moitra on Friday alleged that the Nadia district administration had directed her to leave the circuit house in Krishnanagar late at night, as a hostile crowd gathered outside.
Moitra, the Lok Sabha MP from Krishnanagar, said she reached the circuit house around 6.30 pm and was given the same room she usually stays in.
“Dinner was served to me in room at 9.20 pm,” she said in a social media post. “I received call at 9.47 asking me to vacate. Now at 10.52 I receive this message with this ‘order’! Outside the gates are huge crowd shouting Jai Shri Ram!”
She shared an order dated August 12 issued by the deputy collector of Nadia, stating that the circuit house would be unavailable from the evening of Friday until further orders for “annual maintenance” and cleaning. The order said reservations confirmed before Thursday would be exempt from the directive.
The Nadia district administration has not yet commented on the matter.
Huge crowd outside Krishnagar Circuit House shouting “Jai Shree Ram” while district administration calling/messaging me repeatedly to vacate room. Supreme Court asked me to face bullets so here I am … not backing down pic.twitter.com/1o0GmywXg8
— Mahua Moitra (@MahuaMoitra) August 14, 2026

In a video message, Moitra said she would not vacate the circuit...
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Post July uprising, Bangladesh has rediscovered 1947 – but forgotten those uprooted by Partition

Jannatul Naym Pieal — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 03:30:01 +0000

For years, August 15 in Bangladesh commemorated one event above all others: the assassination of the country’s founding president, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and most of his family in 1975. It was observed as a day of state mourning.
It rarely evoked the day British rule over the subcontinent ended in 1947 and Bengal was bifurcated. That older date was treated as an event belonging only to India and Pakistan (which attained independence one day earlier).
Bangladesh, after all, was a nation born only in 1971, the “east wing” of Pakistan that achieved its independence after a bloody Liberation War.
But now, two years after the July uprising that brought down Sheikh Hasina’s government and turned her father Sheikh Mujib into a taboo subject, that quiet estrangement from 1947 shows signs of ending.
However, the reasons for this deserve as much scrutiny as the shift itself.
An awkward question
Bangladesh’s reluctance to dwell on Partition was never simply a matter of forgetting. It reflected a deeper discomfort about where 1947 belonged in a national story built overwhelmingly around 1971.
To examine the creation of Pakistan honestly is to ask whether the Two-Nation Theory – the idea that the subcontinent’s Hindus and Muslims constituted separate nations – was sound in the first place.
That question sits awkwardly in a country whose independence was...
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‘A microcosm that reflects a larger reality’: Why small-town crime works for ‘Vadhandhi’

Nandini Ramnath — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 03:15:00 +0000

Before Andrew Louis wrote and directed two seasons of the Tamil series Vadhandhi, he made the movies Leelai and Kolaigaran. Vadhandhi was backed by Wallwatcher Films, whose founders Pushkar and Gayatri happen to be Louis’s classmates and old friends.
Pushkar and Gayatri serve as creative producers on Vadhandhi, whose first season, subtitled The Fable Of Velonie, came out in 2022. The gripping second season, The Mystery of Mani, was recently released on Prime Video. Both editions explore the “vadhandhi”, or rumours, which affect key characters.
The second season stars M Sasikumar as sub-inspector Moosa Raza, who doggedly pursues his belief that the young man Mani, who is awaiting sentencing for the murders of his sister and girlfriend, is innocent. Like Pushkar and Gayatri’s own acclaimed series Suzhal, but also in a different vein, Vadhandhi has rooted storytelling and characters plucked out of the soil of rural Tamil Nadu.
Louis, Pushkar and Gayatri spoke to Scroll about the response to Vadhandhi season two and their efforts to create a uniquely Tamil identity for long-form shows. Here are edited excerpts from the interview.
What made you believe that Vadhandhi qualified for a second season? And what has the response been like?
Andrew Louis: I was scared about how the second season would be received, whether the love for season one would carry over. Given the appreciation for season two, I...
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‘The Once and Future Riot’: Graphic journalism in the post-truth era that shows the truth isn’t neat

Amrita Singh — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 03:00:00 +0000

The title of Joe Sacco’s latest graphic narrative, The Once and Future Riot, is unlike Palestine, Footnotes in Gaza, or The Fixer. Not immediately referencing a place or a people, The Once and Future Riot indicates a sense of tension instead. And not just between past, present and future, but also palpably in the ability of the journalist or the graphic artist to draw their reader towards some semblance of “truth”.
Throughout his career, Sacco has been well aware of the complexity of bearing or collecting witness, including the ethical complications and subject unreliability. He knows objective facts carry less weight in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion, personal belief and pre-existing worldviews. However, Sacco finds himself on even shakier ground here, represented in the densely populated, chaotic page architecture of this narrative. His usual immersive research process of relying on the use of multiple eyewitness testimonies combined with including himself as a character in the narrative proves to be not enough.
What precipitates a riot
Sacco is compelled to start the narrative on the back foot: he realises that the riot he wishes to reconstruct cannot be done till he gives some context to communalism in the Indian subcontinent. So even before he can get to the actual “incident” that provokes the...
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Delhi school cancels JNU professor’s talk on ‘pluralism’ after VHP protests

Scroll Staff — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 11:49:17 +0000

An Independence Day event at Delhi’s Sardar Patel Vidyalaya, where Jawaharlal Nehru University professor Zoya Hasan was invited as the chief guest, was cancelled on Friday after members of the Vishva Hindu Parishad allegedly gathered outside the school to protest, The Print reported.
The Vishva Hindu Parishad is part of a group of Hindutva organisations led by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the parent organisation of the Bharatiya Janata Party.
Hasan was scheduled to speak on “Pluralism” at the event, which was to begin at 10 am. The event was not publicly announced, but the invitation was shared with parents.
Hasan, professor emerita at Jawaharlal Nehru University, confirmed to The Print that the event had been cancelled. The news outlet quoted sources as saying that the cancellation was due to “security concerns” for the professor and the school.
The school is yet to comment on the matter.
On Friday, the Delhi Police also deployed several personnel at the school after receiving a call about the law and order situation there, The Print reported.
“We were informed that, considering the threat to Professor Hasan’s well-being and safety, the school was cancelling the event,” the news outlet quoted an unidentified police officer as saying. “It was not cancelled at the behest of the Delhi Police. We only sent personnel to ensure that...
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NHRC notice to Centre over 19 reported deaths by suicide of CRPF personnel between January and May

Scroll Staff — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 02:22:13 +0000

The National Human Rights Commission on Friday said that it had issued notice to the Union government following reports that 19 Central Reserve Police Force personnel died allegedly by suicide between January and May 22, PTI reported.
The rights panel said that the reported figures raise concern about the well-being and safety of the paramilitary force personnel.
Taking suo moto cognisance of an August 11 news report, the panel noted that 59 personnel reportedly died by suicide in 2025, the highest number recorded by the force in the last five years.
The commission has issued notices to the Union Home Secretary and the force’s director general, seeking a detailed report within two weeks.
According to the media report, 281 Central Reserve Police Force personnel died by suicide in the last five years, of whom 216 were on duty. The force recorded 57 suicides in 2021, 43 in 2022, 57 in 2023 and 46 in 2024, the rights panel noted.
Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

...
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Independence Day fiction: Stories of common men who participated in Gandhi’s satyagraha for freedom

Ira Saxena — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 02:00:00 +0000

Kinjal Ben stood up on her toes to look at herself closely for the first time in weeks in the forsaken oval mirror on the wall. She dipped her middle finger in her little sindoor pot and planted a big circular bindi in the middle of her broad forehead. Suddenly, her face shone, radiated by the little circular mirrors of the embroidery around her outfit’s neckline, and her brown eyes, lined with thick kajal, sparkled. Smiling at herself, she picked up her ornate silver hairpin and secured it among her tight braids. Nobody would notice it under the odhni covering her head, but she was sure that even a glimpse of it would tickle her husband. After all, Jignesh had given her this gift on their wedding night.
Jignesh was being released after a sentence of five months in prison for marching against the government’s practice of land grabbing and inflated agricultural taxes. Her father-in-law Radhey Shyam Parekh, Sasu Ma, Radha Rani, Bade Kakaji and other menfolk from their hamlet had left before dawn for the neighbouring Bardoli to escort him home with the sound of trumpets and great fanfare.
For the last four years, Jignesh had played a leading role in organising camps...
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History remembered: When Pakistan wanted to fly its flag at London’s India House on August 15, 1947

Ananyo Chakraborty — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 15:35:28 +0000

As August 1947 drew near, MK Vellodi was faced with a peculiar problem. The seasoned civil servant from Madras had taken over as the acting High Commissioner of British India to the UK only a few months before, in April. He had been tasked with overseeing the Independence Day celebrations at the historic India House, British India’s diplomatic mission in London, on August 15.
But, as he explained in a telegram to the Ministry of External Affairs and Commonwealth Relations in New Delhi on July 22, he had still not received proper instructions from the government of India about the event. He needed them sent well in time so that he could make the necessary arrangements.
Vellodi also complained that the mission had no national flag to hoist, so he would need details of the colours and dimensions of the tricolour.
The lack of such details isn’t surprising. Lord Mountbatten, the British viceroy, had announced only on June 3 that the colonial power would leave India on August 15, instead of the earlier scheduled date of June 30, 1948. He also declared that British India would be divided into India and Pakistan.
In July, he appointed a Partition Council to decide upon the division of financial assets,...
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Saudi defence pact with Turkey and Pakistan is a verdict on American reliability

Muhammad Waqas Haider, The Conversation — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 16:30:00 +0000

Commentators predictably reacted to the news of the signing of a mutual defence pact between Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan on August 7 by reaching for the label “Islamic Nato”. The Mecca Joint Defence Agreement stipulates that an armed attack on any one of them would be treated as an attack on all. Jerusalem went a step further, describing the alliance as an anti-Israel alliance.
But the Nato comparison is the wrong framing. Three of America’s own partners have bound themselves together – and the most consequential audience for what they signed sits not in Tehran or Tel Aviv but in Washington. The agreement reads, in effect, as a verdict on American reliability.
On paper, the combination is formidable. Turkey fields Nato’s second-largest army and a drone industry that has reshaped modern battlefields. Saudi Arabia brings the Gulf’s deepest reserves of capital. Pakistan adds a large, combat-experienced military and the Muslim world’s only nuclear arsenal. Analysts point to genuinely complementary assets here: Turkish technology which is short of markets, Pakistani manpower short of financing, Saudi wealth short of manpower.
This pact did not appear from nowhere. It extends a Saudi-Pakistani agreement of September 2025, signed days after Israel’s strike on Hamas targets in Doha, Qatar, and was made more urgent by the US-Israeli war...
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‘Absolutely uncalled for’: CJI slams Bar Council’s bid to take action against NALSAR students

Scroll Staff — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 15:03:12 +0000

Chief Justice Surya Kant on Friday criticised the Bar Council of India for directing state bar councils not to enrol students from the National Academy of Legal Studies and Research graduating in 2026 as advocates, calling the now-revoked action “absolutely uncalled for”, Bar and Bench reported.
Kant said: “It’s a dialogue between students and me. Who are they to raise an issue?”
On Thursday, the council had directed state councils to defer the enrolment of the graduating batch of NALSAR students as advocates, objecting to the campaign of some students against the institute inviting Kant to their convocation.
It withdrew the decision a few hours later, but said it had sought an inquiry report from the university identifying those who were “principally instrumental” in opposing Kant’s participation in the convocation.
Later in the night, the council closed all proceedings against the students, saying it was satisfied that the 2026 batch had no role in any “disturbance or movement”.
The matter was mentioned on Friday before a bench comprising Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana after Advocate K Parameshwar challenged the council’s action.
Kant said that he had been actively involved in student activities in his student days, adding that “even if they are wrong, they have a right to protest”.
The court recorded that the circular had been withdrawn and...
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Rush Hour: Two Nagas killed in Manipur violence, SC quashes FIRs against Samay Raina & more

Scroll Staff — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 14:04:52 +0000

Two Naga persons were killed in firing by suspected militants in Manipur’s Kangpokpi district. A group of men armed with “sophisticated weapons” attacked Langka Naga village at around 8 am, an unidentified police officer said.
Residents said an armed group from the Naga village opened fire at the suspected attackers after the incident.
The Liangmai Naga Council-Manipur alleged that militants from the Kuki National Front (P) were behind the attack and announced an immediate shutdown across areas inhabited by Liangmai Nagas. Read on.

The Supreme Court quashed criminal proceedings against comedian Samay Raina and four others in connection with purportedly insensitive remarks about persons with disabilities on the comedy show India’s Got Latent. The court praised their efforts to conduct awareness programmes and raise funds for persons with disabilities.
“Once there are genuine efforts, positive results are bound to be there,” the bench said. “They are very bright youngsters. If they have started working in a positive direction, there will be positive output.”
The other respondents are comedians Vipul Goyal, Sonali Thakkar and Nishant Jagdish Tanwar, along with Balraj Paramjeet Singh Ghai, owner of the comedy venue The Habitat. Read on.

The Census 2027 will ask respondents if they belong to a Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe, and will also include an open-ended question for other...
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In Bangladesh, jute mandate can’t stop switch to plastic sacks

Kamran Reza Chowdhury — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 14:00:00 +0000

Bangladesh is the world’s second largest producer of the environmentally friendly fiber jute. However, the country has, for decades, grappled with the move to combat the escalating use of the cheaper and more popular, but harmful, plastic-based packaging and synthetic fibers.
As a safeguard measure, the government, 16 years ago, enacted a law for the mandatory use of jute sacks and bags to contain and carry 19 essential commodities, including rice, wheat and fertiliser.
The move has been largely unsuccessful, though, with plastic and synthetic fiber invasion as packaging ingredients continuing unabated. Synthetic and poly bags have caused environmental problems such as waste disposal.
Nazmul Haque, the government-appointed jute officer in the northern Sherpur district, told Mongabay that a small semi-automatic rice mill – Sakhina Rice Mill – has exclusively been using jute sacks.
Sakhina Rice Mill in Sherpur stands out from the crowd by exclusively using jute bags and sacks, debunking the narratives of fellow rice millers that jute sacks and bags reduce their profit margin.
“A 50-kilogram [110-pound] capacity synthetic/plastic bag costs 20 takas [16 cents], while a jute sack costs 80 takas [65 cents]. A synthetic/poly bag cannot be reused; it is for one-time use. On the other hand, we can use the same jute sack at least three times for carrying paddy...
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True Story: Food companies are lying to you. The regulator failed to stop them

Supriya Sharma — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 13:30:00 +0000

Companies selling packaged food products in India often claim that they are healthy, natural, pure, sugar-free – but are they actually so?
In 2024, a committee of the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India reviewed more than 160 food products that had been flagged for making misleading claims. Two years later, our investigation found a majority of those claims were still in circulation.
In this episode of True Story, Scroll’s Executive Editor Supriya Sharma speaks to Shreegireesh Jalihal who spent months investigating how the Indian government’s efforts to regulate the industry are falling short.
Also read: India’s food regulator flagged over 160 misleading claims. Years later, 120 are still around
How India’s ambitious plan to curb unhealthy food failed
...
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Manipur: Two Nagas killed in firing by militants at Kangpokpi

Scroll Staff — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 14:49:05 +0000

Two Naga persons were killed in firing by suspected militants in Manipur’s Kangpokpi district on Friday, Ukhrul Times reported.
A group of men armed with “sophisticated weapons” attacked Langka Naga village at around 8 am, an unidentified police officer told PTI.
The officer said that a man identified as W Chawang died at the scene after suffering gunshot wounds to the head, while three others were injured.
The second person who died has been identified as Kawidinang Abonmai, India Today NE reported.
Residents said that an armed group from the Naga village also opened fire at the suspected attackers following the incident, PTI reported.
The Liangmai Naga Council-Manipur condemned the attack and alleged that militants from the Kuki National Front (P) were behind it.
The council announced an immediate total shutdown of Liangmai Naga-inhabited areas of Manipur until further notice.
It said shops, officers institutions and non-essential activities would remain closed, while medical, fire and other emergency services would be exempted.
It also appealed to residents to remain calm and urged the authorities to ensure public safety and bring those responsible to justice.
The developments came amid tensions between Kukis and Nagas in Ukhrul that had erupted on February 7 after an alleged assault involving members of the Tangkhul Naga and the Kuki-Zo communities escalated into clashes. At least 25 persons from the two communities have...
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Readers’ comments: On letter from Lahore, young people give hope of overcoming borders and hate

Scroll — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 13:00:00 +0000

Such a lovely piece, beautifully explaining the shared legacy and current challenges (“A letter from Lahore for Abhijeet Dipke: We watch with wonder and longing”). The Cockroach Janata Party here in India and Gen Z across South Asia have given me hope that we can come together, despite our bitter history, for a brighter future. I wish our boundaries would not stop us from learning and sharing with love, and in legal ways. – Manish
***
I was overwhelmed by the letter written by Ehtesham Hassan. My heart fills with joy and hope when I see these young people dream of a larger space for themselves, defeating the border lines that pierced our hearts and had sown the seeds of hatred. I wish these lines too were imaginary. My good wishes to the young people. – Anshumitra Kayal
***
I was active during my student days, particularly during the Emergency when our government deprived us of our human rights. India’s Gen Z has rallied and made sure they were heard by the ruling party of the country about certain shortcomings. Several opportunists and anti-social elements have infiltrated and tried to exploit the movement. I agree with your write-up. You said what many were longing to say. May your tribe increase...
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Six officers injured after clashes erupt between protesters, police in Haryana

Scroll Staff — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 12:02:46 +0000

Clashes erupted between protesters and police personnel in Haryana’s Ambala on Thursday, leaving six officers and several demonstrators injured, The Indian Express reported.
The Sikh protesters were demanding action against Gursimran Singh Mand, national president of the International Anti-Khalistani Terrorist Front, alleging that he attempted to run over several persons with his car on August 7, the newspaper reported.
The police were trying to restore traffic on the Delhi-Amritsar National Highway, which was blocked by the protesters, The Indian Express quoted a statement by the Haryana Police as saying. A Deputy Superintendent of Police-rank officer was also injured, the statement added.
The police resorted to lathi-charge and tear gas after the protest “turned violent and led to stone pelting” on the highway, The Hindu quoted Haryana Director General of Police Ajay Singhal as saying. He, however, said that the police have accepted the protesters’ demand.
Ambala Superintendent of Police Ajit Singh Shekhawat said that a first information report will be registered against persons accused of attacking the policemen after identifying them, The Indian Express reported.
On August 7, Mand was allegedly assaulted by a mob following a confrontation with a group of youths after he attempted to drive his car through a route crowded with devotees heading towards Gurdwara Panjokhra Sahib.
Mand was said to have suffered minor injuries in the...
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Romance fiction: Online drama complicates a young couple’s relationship

Kajol Aikat — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000

Every good love story includes a Holi celebration.
But personally, I never felt the festival was romantic in any conventional sense. It’s loud, anarchic and someone always gets colour in their mouth. The thandai is spiked by someone who doesn’t announce it. The white clothes you wore, ironically, are destroyed within four minutes. Someone’s playlist is terrible. Someone’s playlist is perfect. It doesn’t matter. But maybe that’s the point.
Holi felt better that year.
The festivities happened on the college lawn, which had been transformed overnight into something between a fever dream and a Bollywood set that had run out of budget but not enthusiasm. There was colour everywhere – powder smeared on the walls, footprints of pink and green tracking across the concrete, clouds of dry gulal drifting through the air like slow, festive smoke. Some guy from the third floor had dragged a JBL speaker the size of a small refrigerator down four flights of stairs purely for this moment, and it was playing “Genda Phool” at a volume that suggested he felt the song had never been heard at its true potential before.
Buckets of water arced through the air with no warning. Someone had knocked thandai over the DJ’s laptop....
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SC quashes FIRs against comedian Samay Raina, others for jokes about persons with disability

Scroll Staff — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 12:18:44 +0000

The Supreme Court on Friday quashed criminal proceedings against comedian Samay Raina and four others in connection with allegedly insensitive remarks about persons with disabilities on the comedy show India’s Got Latent, Live Law reported.
A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana passed the order after noting that Raina and the other respondents had complied with directions to conduct awareness programmes and raise funds for persons with disabilities.
The other respondents are comedians Vipul Goyal, Sonali Thakkar and Nishant Jagdish Tanwar, along with Balraj Paramjeet Singh Ghai, owner of the comedy venue The Habitat.
The court praised their efforts to organise programmes for persons with disabilities.
“Once there are genuine efforts, positive results are bound to be there,” the Hindustan Times quoted the bench as saying. “They are very bright youngsters. If they have started working in a positive direction, there will be positive output.”
The respondents had organised a chess tournament for persons with disabilities from March 14 to 16, Live Law reported.
They had also proposed four additional fundraising shows. The court noted that logistical difficulties prevented specific arrangements to invite persons with disabilities to those events, but the respondents expressed their willingness to involve people with spinal muscular atrophy and provide financial support.
The court also noted that constructive...
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Tata Group Chairman N Chandrasekaran has resigned. How did the group start its ‘swadeshi’ business?

Mircea Raianu — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 11:00:00 +0000

Early in 1864, a young Parsi merchant from Bombay named Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata set sail for England, carrying a set of bills of exchange backed by a consignment of Indian cotton. By the time the ship docked in Liverpool, the price of cotton had fallen so quickly that the bills became worthless. Un- expectedly forced to manage the liquidation of his father’s firm, Jamsetji took time to observe the workings of the textile mills in Lancashire, the heartland of the Industrial Revolution. When he returned to India a few months later, he found Bombay in the grip of a disastrous financial crisis. The whole of the city, Jamsetji’s first biographer later recalled, “was sitting on the stool of repentance, with sackcloth and ashes; while the disconsolate creditors held Dharma at the door of their ruined debtors.” Out of this chastening experience arose India’s own Industrial Revolution, more modest and limited in scope than its British counterpart but all the more impressive for the constraints it had to overcome.
The outbreak of the Civil War in the United States in 1861 launched a speculative frenzy among Indian merchants eager to supply Britain’s cotton needs following the...
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SC stays Madras HC order quashing government jobs for kin of Karur stampede victims

Scroll Staff — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 10:23:51 +0000

The Supreme Court on Friday stayed the Madras High Court ruling striking down a Tamil Nadu government order granting government jobs on compassionate grounds to the family members of the persons who died in the Karur stampede, Live Law reported.
The stampede took place on September 27 at Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam chief Vijay’s rally in Karur district when he was addressing supporters from his campaign vehicle. Forty-one persons had died in the stampede.
Vijay went on to become the chief minister of Tamil Nadu on May 10 after his party became the single-largest party in the Assembly elections.
A bench comprising Justices JB Pardiwala and K Vinod Chandran passed the interim order on Friday while issuing notice on a petition filed by the state and others challenging the High Court’s judgement.
The lawyers appearing for the state submitted that the government was within its powers to grant compassionate appointments as a policy decision, the legal news outlet reported.
“A stampede took place. An unfortunate incident happened,” Bar and Bench quoted the court as saying. “The government has decided to compensate them. Should the government not give employment?” it added.
On July 27, the Madurai bench of the Madras High Court had held that the appointments of the family members of the victims of the stampede violated constitutional provisions pertaining to the right to equality...
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Delhi HC, airport, several other sites receive bomb threats ahead of Independence Day

Scroll Staff — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 09:55:46 +0000

Multiple locations in Delhi, including the High Court and Terminal 3 of Indira Gandhi International Airport, received bomb threats on Friday, a day ahead of Independence Day, The Hindu reported.
The Delhi High Court received a threatening email with the subject line “Bomb Blast Delhi High Court @ 2:11PM”. The email warned of a blast at the High Court premises at 2.11 pm on Saturday, followed by explosions at district courts in the national capital at 3.11pm, the newspaper reported.
Threats were also received at Jamnagar House, the Jhandewalan Flatted Factory Complex, the district magistrate’s office in Saket and the sub-divisional magistrate’s office in Delhi Cantonment, ANI quoted the Delhi Fire Services as saying.
Police, bomb disposal teams, fire department personnel, dog squads and other security agencies carried out searches at the sites, The Indian Express reported.
Officials said nothing suspicious had been found so far.
The threats come as security arrangements have been tightened across Delhi ahead of Independence Day on August 15.
Edited by Neerad Pandharipande.

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SC quashes defamation complaint against Rahul Gandhi for remarks about VD Savarkar

Scroll Staff — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 12:33:51 +0000

The Supreme Court on Friday quashed a criminal complaint against Congress leader Rahul Gandhi for remarks he allegedly made about Hindutva ideologue VD Savarkar in November 2022, reported Bar and Bench.
A bench of Justices Dipankar Datta and Sheel Nagu noted that in the Uttar Pradesh government’s affidavit, there was “no disclosure of sanction [for prosecution] having been granted”.
The complaint was filed by lawyer Nripendra Pandey, who alleged that the leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha had said during his Bharat Jodo Yatra in November 2022 that Savarkar was a British servant who received a pension from colonial authorities.
In June 2023, an additional chief judicial magistrate dismissed Pandey’s complaint, which led to him challenging the order before the sessions court. The sessions court allowed the plea and remanded it back to the Lucknow magistrate court.
The sessions court summoned Rahul Gandhi in December 2024. The Congress leader had challenged the order before the High Court, which refused to set aside the summons on April 4, 2025.
Gandhi had filed an appeal before the Supreme Court against this.
On Wednesday, the court held that without the prosecution sanction from the Uttar Pradesh government, “the complaint and orders passed by the magistrate stand quashed”, reported Live Law.
In April 2025, the Supreme Court stayed the criminal defamation proceedings against the Congress...
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‘Batwara 1947’ review: Dull storytelling and sharp messaging

Nandini Ramnath — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 08:46:51 +0000

A chunk of Sunny Deol’s career is devoted to swinging hand pumps at Pakistanis, bashing in their heads or simply bellowing at them until their eardrums burst. In Rajkumar Santoshi’s Batwara 1947, Deol is in a different zone and a different register.
The Hindi-Punjabi film is adapted from a play about compassion trumping communal hatred during the horrific time of Partition. Even Sunny Deol, then, must behave.
Deol plays Sikandar, a Muslim businessman from Meerut who flees to Lahore after being targetted by Hindu rioters. Sikandar, his wife Hamida (Preity Zinta) and daughter Tanno (Khushi Hajare) enter the mansion allotted to them, only to find an elderly Hindu woman there.
The house belongs to Durgavati (Shabana Azmi). Her own son and his family are missing. Durgavati refuses to leave until her son returns.
The domestic quandary is soon eclipsed by the antics of the fanatic politician Yaqub (Abhimanyu Singh), who wants to purge the neighbourhood of its Hindu past. Adding to Sikandar’s woes is his son Javed (Karan Deol), who has been catalysed by the carnage he witnessed back in Meerut and is on Yaqub’s side.
Batwara 1947 is based on Asghar Wajahat’s well-known play Jis Lahore Nai Vekhya, O Jamya E Nai. Can you say you have lived if you have never seen...
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Census 2027: Caste, Covid-19 vaccination status among 40 questions notified by Centre

Scroll Staff — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 03:29:06 +0000

The Census 2027 will ask respondents if they belong to a Scheduled Caste or Scheduled Tribe, and will also include an open-ended question for other communities about the caste that they belong to.
This will be the first time in independent India that caste will be enumerated across communities. Until now, Census exercises only recorded the population of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.
Among the 40 questions notified on Friday are also those seeking information on the place where respondents received their Covid-19 vaccination, the total number of bank accounts they hold and digital literacy. The form also seeks information on Aadhaar numbers, mobile numbers, passport numbers and voter IDs.
The population enumeration phase of the census will take place from September 1 to September 30 in Ladakh and snow-bound non-synchronous areas of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, according to a gazette notification issued earlier this month. The online self-enumeration window for the second phase will be open from August 17 to August 31.
It will be conducted in other parts of the country in February 2027.
Scroll had reported on July 20 that during a trial for the second phase of the census, the government tested an open column to collect caste details from respondents other than those belonging to...
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This book shows startups like TeamIndus applied the ‘simple thinking’ technique to space exploration

Mukesh Sud — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 08:00:01 +0000

Rahul Narayan is a dreamer.
As a child, he loved watching Carl Sagan’s TV series, Cosmos. Later, it was Star Trek. Finally, Star Wars, the show that was avidly followed by an entire generation of space enthusiasts.
If you have seen an episode of Star Trek, you will remember Captain James Kirk’s mission for the Starship Enterprise:
Space, the final frontier … To explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilisations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.
The cast of Star Trek had Montgomery Scott as chief engineer. Scotty, with his quaint Scottish accent, was constantly getting everyone out of trouble. Once, after out-drinking an alien intruder, he had to repair the Enterprise while drunk.
Remember Captain Kirk’s catchphrase, “Beam me up, Scotty”, when he wanted to be teleported back to the Enterprise?
Those were the 1980s.
Rahul realised that while dreaming of space and extraterrestrial life might keep him awake at night, it could not become a career. So he studied computer science. Later, after settling into a job, Rahul’s dream of adventures in outer space never really went away.
Once, while remotely sharing a desktop with a client in the US, he noticed a poster in the background. It was an announcement of the Google Lunar X Prize (GLXP) for space...
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Ex-TISS student seeks anticipatory bail in case linked to alleged slogans supporting Khalid, Imam

Scroll Staff — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 07:23:33 +0000

A former student of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences has sought anticipatory bail from the Bombay High Court in a case alleging that he shouted slogans in support of jailed activists Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam at an event in October, Bar and Bench reported on Thursday.
On August 7, a Mumbai court denied anticipatory bail to Kamakhya Das and his fellow student, Abhirup Paul, in the case. Paul was arrested by the Mumbai Police hours later.
In his petition, Das submitted that no person present at the event had shouted slogans in support of Khalid and Imam. He described the complaint as based on “untrue events and allegations” and “completely unreliable”, the legal news outlet reported.
Khalid and Imam have been in jail for more than five years under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act for their alleged role in a conspiracy behind the 2020 Delhi riots. The trial in the case has not yet begun, and their petitions for regular bail have been repeatedly rejected.
Das and Paul had also been booked for possessing downloaded books and other material that the prosecution alleged reflected Maoist ideology.
Das’s petition said that possessing such literature “is not a criminal offence” and that downloading it did not make him its author or establish that he was affiliated with...
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UP: Two arrested for death of Muslim driver who was assaulted by kanwariyas

Scroll Staff — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 07:02:12 +0000

Two persons were arrested on Thursday in connection with the death of a 24-year-old Muslim truck driver who succumbed to his injuries four days after he was allegedly assaulted by a group of kanwariyas in Hapur district in Uttar Pradesh on July 31, The Hindu reported.
The police had registered a first information report against seven persons, including four kanwariyas, after Azeem Ali died.
Five persons, identified as Lokesh, Shivam, Ankit, Farman and Manish, along with two unidentified persons, were booked under provisions of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita pertaining to murder, rioting and voluntarily causing hurt.
Lokesh and Shivam were arrested on Thursday, The Hindu quoted Hapur Police as saying.
Ali was assaulted in Garhmukhteshwar town after the truck he was driving collided with an auto rickshaw hired by the kanwariyas. The collision allegedly injured the auto rickshaw driver, Farman, who was standing near the vehicle.
A purported video of the incident has been shared widely on social media, showing Ali being assaulted by a group of men in the presence of a police officer.
Ali was initially taken to hospital in Meerut and later shifted to Delhi as his condition worsened. He reportedly went into a coma and died at a Delhi hospital on August 4.
His father, Mohd Intezar, had filed a complaint with the police alleging that...
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Green India Mission fell short by nearly 98% in increasing forest cover: CAG

Scroll Staff — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 06:42:45 +0000

The Comptroller and Auditor General has flagged that the forest cover increased by only 0.03 million hectares against a target of 1.4 million hectares in the last 10 years under the Green India Mission, reported The Times of India on Thursday. This is a shortfall of 97.5% from the target.
Launched in February 2014, the Green India Mission is an initiative under the National Action Plan on Climate Change to protect, restore, and enhance the forest cover of India.
The audit report tabled in Parliament on Wednesday said that the shortfall in implementing the mission was due to poor financial planning and non-alignment with existing state and central schemes, reported Hindustan Times.
There was also a lack of monitoring of the interventions made under the mission, according to The Times of India.
The report covered interventions made under the mission in 16 states and Union territories for which financial targets between the financial years 2015-’16 and 2024-’25 were approved by the Ministry of Environment.
It pointed out that improvement of forest cover quality was seen in only 0.1 million hectares, as compared to a target of 1.4 million hectares. This marked a shortfall of 91.8%.
Only Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh conducted assessments of carbon sequestration between 2015 and 2025, the Hindustan Times quoted the report as saying. This was due...
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Rajasthan Cabinet approves UCC bill mandating registration of live-in relationships, polygamy ban

Scroll Staff — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 04:50:36 +0000

The Rajasthan Cabinet on Thursday approved a bill on Uniform Civil Code to ban polygamy and make the registration of marriages and divorces mandatory within 60 days, The Hindu reported.
The bill, approved ahead of the imposition of the model code of conduct for the upcoming panchayat and local body elections, will be introduced in the Assembly during its monsoon session beginning on August 20
Rajasthan is the fifth Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled state to move towards implementing a common personal law framework.
The Uniform Civil Code aims to introduce a common set of laws governing marriage, divorce, succession and adoption for all citizens. Currently, such personal affairs of different religions are based on community-specific laws, largely derived from religious scripture.
The Rajasthan bill has proposed provisions to establish equal property rights for sons and daughters across religions, irrespective of their personal laws, reported The Hindu.
The bill also proposes mandatory registration or written intimation of the beginning and end of live-in relationships.
The Uniform Civil Code would not apply to Scheduled Tribes and communities whose customary rights are protected under the Constitution, the newspaper quoted minister Jogaram Patel as saying.
The bill is based on the recommendations of a high-level committee headed by former Supreme Court judge Ranjana Prakash Desai to draft the legislative framework for the Uniform Civil Code.
Desai also...
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Bar Council drops inquiry against NALSAR students who opposed invite to CJI for convocation

Scroll Staff — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 04:53:38 +0000

The Bar Council of India on Thursday night dropped all proceedings against students of the National Academy of Legal Studies and Research graduating in 2026 who had opposed the participation of Chief Justice Surya Kant in the university’s convocation.
Earlier in the day, the council had announced that students from the graduating batch would not be enrolled as advocates for the campaign against the chief justice. It withdrew the decision a few hours later.
However, the council said that it had sought an inquiry report from the university identifying those who were “principally instrumental” in opposing Kant’s participation in the convocation.
On Thursday night, Bar Council Chairman Manan Kumar Mishra said that all proceedings against the students would be closed “after considering the representations and reactions of senior advocates, learned members of the Bar, law students and public-spirited citizens, and being satisfied that the 2026 batch of NALSAR, Hyderabad, had no role in any disturbance or movement”.
The council’s earlier directives had drawn criticism from the Cockroach Janta Party political campaign, which described them as “grossly disproportionate”. It warned of protests by law students and advocates if the directives were not withdrawn.
After considering the representations and reactions of Senior Advocates, learned members of the Bar, law students and public spirited citizens, and...
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In Pakistan, Prisoner No 804 seems to be everywhere

Saba Karim Khan — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 03:30:00 +0000

It wasn’t unlike a solitary vigil.
On August 1, a social media post appeared showing a woman standing outside the Karachi Press Club, holding a painted portrait of Imran Khan, bearing the words: “Imran Khan ko riha karo”, free Imran Khan, and “Hamara leader hamen wapas dedo”, give our leader back to us.
The image of her quiet defiance elided with the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s reignited street mobilisation, marking their leader’s three-year anniversary in prison.
Together, these instances illuminate a peculiar paradox: three years of incarceration instead of diminishing the former Pakistani prime minister’s symbolic appeal seem to actually have bolstered it.
Pakistan’s political playbook has long been recycled. Something drives a wedge between a political leader and the establishment. What follows is familiar: some combination of dismissal, disqualification, imprisonment or exile, with the eventual aim of irrelevance. Once enough time has passed and the political storm settles, an accommodation is usually reached.
The case of Khan somewhat unsettled the playbook. Khan’s own ascent to power was hardly predictable. Cricketing fame was followed by philanthropy and eventually politics, despite his initial reluctance to enter the field. After struggling to be taken seriously as a politician – a single seat in Parliament, boycotting a general election and some electrifying rallies – Khan’s...
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Uttarakhand: Seven killed after water, debris enters tunnel being constructed in Chamoli

Scroll Staff — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 07:12:32 +0000

Seven workers were killed and 14 others were injured on Thursday after water and debris entered a tunnel being constructed at a hydroelectric project site in Uttarakhand’s Chamoli district, reported The Hindu.
Twenty-two workers had been trapped inside the tunnel of the Tehri Hydro Development Corporation-owned Vishnugad-Pipalkoti Hydroelectric Project. Of these, 21 have been pulled out. Information about the remaining one worker is not yet available, reported the newspaper.
The tunnel was being constructed by the Hindustan Construction Company.
The incident was reported around 7.05 pm, The Hindu quoted the State Disaster Response Force as saying. Soon after, teams from the Indian Army, Indo-Tibetan Border Police, National Disaster Response Force and SDRF started a rescue operation at the spot. The police and the Central Industrial Security Force were also involved.
Additional teams would be deployed if needed, PTI quoted Vinod Kumar Suman, secretary of the Disaster Management and Rehabilitation Department, as saying.
Chamoli has been receiving heavy rainfall over the past several days.
On Monday, a bridge in the Niti Valley was swept away amid strong river currents due to rising water levels.
Edited by Tanya Shrivastava.

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Biography: Aryan Pasha’s journey from childhood gender dysphoria to being a transgender bodybuilder

Apra Kuchhal — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 03:00:00 +0000

The year 2000, the turn of the century, proved to be a landmark in many ways. The world did not end, as it was predicted. With the arrival of the internet in the 1990s, unverified news and hoaxes were doing the rounds. One claim held that the year, nicknamed Y2K, would witness a “millennium bug” that would cause chaos globally. Planes were expected to fall from the sky, computers were to reset themselves and missiles were to fire on their own. But like many doomsday prophesies, this one fell flat as well.
Naiyla’s world, however, did crumble around her in the years that followed.
Despite the anger, altercations and questions about her gender, Naiyla had not been able to accept life as a girl. She knew she was a boy, but people around her were hell-bent on proving otherwise. She kept the reality of her body buried deep inside by wearing boys’ clothes, keeping her hair short and hanging around with boys. That was until the day her body made it impossible for her to ignore it.
At 13 years of age, when she was in Class Seven, Naiyla had begun to menstruate. “I always knew that I was a boy. But when...
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What the Bar Council’s bid to curb NALSAR students says about university autonomy

Shubham Kumar — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 02:51:15 +0000

On the eve of Indian Independence Day, the reminder issued by Justice RH Jackson in the United States feels unusually close to home. “Freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much,” he said.
Universities are supposed to be institutions where that freedom is exercised vigorously – law universities especially so. Students are trained to question power and ask institutions to justify what they do. That makes the controversy that exploded at NALSAR University of Law in Hyderabad this week especially ironic.
On Thursday, a series of events that had started with an internal representation by graduating students objecting to a proposal to invite the chief justice of India to be the chief guest at their convocation prompted an action that was completely arbitrary.
The invitation to Justice Surya Kant had been opposed because of his reported response to a petition about alleged police brutality against young protesters marching to Parliament in Delhi on July 20. On July 22, a bench headed by Kant refused to urgently hear the petition. “Don’t waste our time and don’t waste your time,” Kant reportedly said.
On Thursday, Manan Kumar Mishra, the chairperson of the Bar Council of India directed state bar councils not to enrol any NALSAR students graduating in 2026 and sought details...
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‘The End of Oak Street’ review: A crisp and efficient survival thriller

Scroll Staff — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 02:00:00 +0000

It’s 1982, the year Steven Spielberg’s E.T. The Extra Terrestrial came out, three years before the first Back to the Future movie, and 11 years before the inaugural Jurassic Park film. This is the year in which a wormhole brings dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures into the backyards of an American suburban town
The overnight arrival of the intruders adds to the drama within a boilerplate American family. Denise (Anne Hathaway) and Greg (Ewan McGregor) have a mildly strained marriage, and are keeping it together for the sake of their teenaged children Audrey (Maisy Stella) and Brian (Christian Convery). Faced with rampaging, perpetually hungry animals, the Platts muster together every available resource to escape. Only, they can’t.
David Robert Mitchell’s The End of Oak Street is an old-fashioned survival thriller that could well have been released in 1982 itself. While sketchy about the science behind the sudden appearance of creatures that are straight out of a palaeontology textbook, the film delivers on the undeniable thrill of watching people run for their lives.
The scale is never overwhelming. The visual effects are clean rather than being distracting. There are barely any extraneous characters or sub-plots.
The family dynamic is conservative, with Denise’s intrepid housewife one of the few concessions to modern sensibilities. The performances are in...
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Why disability support still evades those with blood disorders

Nolina Minj — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 01:00:03 +0000

Suryodaya Kumhar’s medical diagnosis came about through a stroke of luck. The six-year-old, who lives in Dhatkidi village in Jharkhand’s West Singhbhum district, periodically suffered from severe joint and muscle pain, and extreme fatigue. His parents had taken him to numerous doctors, but they had not been able to provide a clear diagnosis or treatment.
His eldest sister Soni, who is 16 years old, had also shown the same symptoms for years. She was often confined to her bed, and missed out on a few months of school every year. “I love to study, so I still manage to do well,” Soni said. “But will such episodes continue for the rest of my life?”
The Kumhars’ village is in the middle of a jungle, around 5 km from the town of Goilkera. Sunil Kumhar, the father, works as a mason and earns between Rs 12,000 and Rs 15,000 a month. “We are poor people but we love our children,” he said. “We have taken loans and spent lakhs on their treatment, but nothing seems to help.”
The children’s mother, Hiramani Kumharin, echoed this despair.
“We’ve taken them to multiple doctors and clinics in Goilkera, and across the state border to Rourkela in Odisha, but to no permanent avail,”...
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What is Gen Z’s dark and nonsensical humor trying to say?

Evan Clarkson, The Conversation — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 16:30:00 +0000

After Luigi Mangione was arrested in December 2024 in connection with the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, the internet did what it often does: It turned something serious into a joke.
Although Mangione has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder in New York and to federal stalking charges, viral memes at the time romanticised him as a popular – and incredibly attractive – man of the people who made corporate elites within the American health insurance industry afraid.
Some of these memes adhered to conventional forms of political satire. One, for example, quoted a speech from the movie A Bug’s Life in which a villainous grasshopper argues for the need to punish the movie’s ant protagonist to keep the other ants in line. In this meme, the political point was clear: Elites preserve power by making examples of insignificant ants who dare to challenge them.
The point was less clear with other memes, including celebrations of Mangione’s fashion-forward shackled ankles in court and mock Burger King advertisements referencing the fact that a McDonald’s employee had been the one to call law enforcement on him: “Burger King: We won’t turn you in to the Feds.” Rather than being ironic, they are unserious.
Nonetheless, memes like those received serious reactions from social commentators and political pundits who interpreted them as evidence that America’s young adults are nihilistic and morally...
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Bar Council halts NALSAR student enrolment over campaign against CJI, withdraws order hours later

Scroll Staff — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 15:36:45 +0000

The Bar Council of India on Thursday withdrew an order directing state bar councils to defer the enrolment of any student of the National Academy of Legal Studies and Research graduating in 2026 who opposed the participation of Chief Justice Surya Kant at the university’s convocation.
However, the council has said that an inquiry into those who were “principally instrumental” in a campaign against the chief justice’s participation would continue.
Political campaign Cockroach Janta Party had described the directive as “grossly disproportionate” and had warned of protests by law students and advocates if it was not taken back.
Abhijeet Dipke, founder of the Cockroach Janta Party, asked, “What if all legal cockroaches come together?”
Condemning the order, CJP Spokesperson Saurav Das said that students cannot be “collectively penalised for expressing dissent over a ceremonial invitation”.
Das had warned of a protest outside Bar Council’s office and Chairman Manan Kumar Mishra’s official residence by law students, advocates, senior lawyers, and “well-meaning young cockroaches”, if the order was not withdrawn.
NALSAR has extended an invitation to the CJI for the upcoming convocation despite students urging the university to reconsider the decision, citing Kant’s response to a petition alleging that police had used excessive force against protesters in Delhi on July 20.
In a communication addressed to state bar councils and NALSAR Vice-Chancellor Srikrishna Deva Rao, Mishra...
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Remove pre-ride tipping prompts from apps, transport ministry tells vehicle aggregators

Scroll Staff — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 14:29:14 +0000

The Union Ministry of Road Transport and Highways has asked ride-hailing platforms to remove prompts from their mobile applications that encourage customers to tip the driver at the time of booking, the Deccan Herald reported on Thursday.
The ministry said that such prompts violate the 2025 Motor Vehicle Aggregator Guidelines, which state that passengers have the option to give drivers a tip only after the trip is completed.
Several vehicle aggregator platforms prompt users to tip drivers before booking a ride. These prompts include options such as “Advance Tip” and “Choose an Add-on”, with some suggesting that tipping could help secure a ride faster or increase the chances of a driver accepting the booking.
#JustIn | Ministry of Road Transport and Highways directs ride aggregators to remove pre-ride tipping prompts

👉Tipping option to be visible only after journey completion

👉No ‘Advance Tip’ prompts or similar features before ride completion

👉Aggregators cannot suggest that… pic.twitter.com/AhsJEYJkhe
— CNBC-TV18 (@CNBCTV18Live) August 13, 2026

The platforms must not display any feature, message, payment option or other interface element before the ride ends if it could directly or indirectly suggest that paying extra may result in faster ride confirmation, greater chances of driver acceptance, quicker allocation, shorter waiting times or better service, the Deccan Herald quoted the ministry as saying.
The 2025 guidelines prohibit any tipping feature or mechanism...
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Sugarcane powers India’s rural economy but climate change is affecting yield

Sneha Mahale — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 14:00:00 +0000

Sugarcane cultivation across parts of India’s Deccan Plateau is becoming more productive. But, it is also becoming more vulnerable to climate variability, a new long-term study finds.
Sugarcane has long shaped India’s rural economy. It powers sugar mills, supports ethanol and bioenergy production, and sustains millions of farmers. But the crop is also at the centre of mounting concerns over water use, particularly in semi-arid regions facing recurrent droughts and groundwater stress.
The study analysed 22 years of sugarcane production trends across five districts in Maharashtra and Karnataka to understand how cultivation, yields and production patterns have changed under varying climatic conditions.
“We noticed that sugarcane cultivation in Maharashtra and Karnataka was increasingly being affected by climatic variability, even though it remains one of the most important economic activities across the Deccan Plateau,” says Krishna Kumar from the Department of Applied Science and Humanities at MIT-ADT University, Pune, and one of the study’s researchers.
Across climate zones
Sugarcane production trends in India have been studied extensively at national and state levels, but long-term district-level analyses incorporating weather variability remain limited.
“The main concern was to pin down how climate variability impacts agricultural production in water-limited sugarcane systems,” adds Kumar. “This kind of insight matters a lot for creating climate resilient agricultural policies and...
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Rush Hour: Sukhbir Badal attacked, UP court okays withdrawal of riot case against BJP leaders & more

Scroll Staff — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 13:26:18 +0000

Shiromani Akali Dal chief Sukhbir Singh Badal was attacked in a gurdwara in Maharashtra’s Nanded district, allegedly by a man dressed as a Nihang Sikh. The former Punjab deputy chief minister suffered injuries to his arm and shoulder, and was taken to a hospital.
The motive for the attack is not clear. The attack took place in Nanded’s Gurdwara Mata Sahib.
A spokesperson for the Shiromani Akali Dal said that Badal is “perfectly fine” and out of danger.
This is the second attack Badal has faced. On December 4, 2024, former militant Narain Singh Chaura had opened fire at the Akali Dal chief at the Golden Temple in Amritsar but missed. Read on.

An Uttar Pradesh court approved the prosecution’s request to withdraw a case related to the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots against 25 Bharatiya Janata Party leaders and persons associated with Hindutva groups. They were facing trial for allegedly violating orders prohibiting public gatherings and for inciting communal tensions.
The court on Wednesday allowed the case to be dropped against state minister Kapil Dev Agarwal, former Union Minister Sanjeev Balyan, former state minister Suresh Rana, ex-BJP MPs Bhartendu Singh and Sohanvir Singh, and Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Sadhvi Prachi, among others.
Communal violence had erupted in Muzaffarnagar in September 2013 after BJP leaders, including Suresh Rana,...
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Jharkhand protest: FIR against 300 unidentified persons for violating orders barring public assembly

Scroll Staff — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 13:28:27 +0000

The Jharkhand Police on Thursday registered a first information report against 300 unidentified persons for violating orders barring public gatherings and damaging government property during the student protesters’ march to the Jharkhand Assembly on Monday, PTI quoted an unidentified officer as saying.
The march was organised as part of an agitation against alleged irregularities in competitive examinations conducted for state government jobs.
Ranchi Superintendent of Police Paras Rana told PTI that the FIR has been registered “for disrupting the peaceful march”.
The unidentified persons have also been booked for attacking police personnel during the march.
The police are trying to identify the individuals through video footage, PTI quoted Hatia Sub-Divisional Police Officer Neeraj Kumar as saying.
The protests in Jharkhand began on July 25, inspired by the agitation across the country against alleged mismanagement of national competitive examinations. The protesters have been holding a sit-in at Ranchi’s Jaipal Singh Munda Stadium.
On Monday, thousands of students marched towards the Assembly as part of their protest. Several protesters were injured after police lathi-charged them and fired tear gas. Despite the police action, protesters breached several barricades and reached the Assembly premises. The House had already been adjourned for the day.
Youth protests
The protesters have demanded the cancellation of the 14th Jharkhand Public Service Commission Combined Preliminary Test held on April 19.
They have also sought an...
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Translated short fiction: Kallo, cast out from her home, becomes a toothpowder seller’s muse

Sameena Nazir — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000

The day Kallo the whore was driven out of her neighbourhood for sleeping with her uncle, Mushtari Bano had coincidentally decided to consume kerosene and kill herself after her hakim husband’s betrayal.
Poor Mushtari Bano, a devout woman who was regular with her prayers and fasts and who would keep a watch on Kallo from a distance, couldn’t even in her wildest dreams imagine that the urchin would hit her nerve one day!
I first spotted Kallo at the tooth powder seller’s tamasha. Every Friday evening, a bulky man would appear with a drummer and sell assorted tooth powders. Both young and old would throng his cart.
“Wood, coal… if you want some relief, you have to chew on my powder,” he would announce, and his praise would make the best of qadirs and naat-khwan pale in comparison. The vendor was more melodious and mellifluous than all of them, and Kallo was his model. With her dark, pockmarked face, her unabashed eyes, her straw-like hair, her long jumper soiled in grime and dust, her cracked heels and crooked, long and dirty nails, Kallo was a masterpiece of filth in flesh and blood. But she had a set of pearl-white teeth, and the vendor...
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Fresh clash erupts along Assam-Arunachal Pradesh border amid economic blockade

Scroll Staff — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 12:40:27 +0000

A clash erupted between protesters from Assam and Arunachal Pradesh on Thursday, during which the Arunachal Pradesh Police fired in the air to control the mob on their side, PTI reported.
The confrontation occurred in Dhemaji district of Assam, a day after a student organisation of the state’s Mising community, along with other local groups, launched an indefinite economic blockade against Arunachal Pradesh.
The blockade was imposed in response to the firing allegedly carried out by “miscreants” from Arunachal Pradesh that injured 12 persons from Assam on Monday, PTI quoted unidentified police officials as saying.
The clash on Monday had erupted after a dispute in connection with alleged land encroachment by people from Arunachal Pradesh in Assam, police had said.
“When the blockade was going on, some people from Arunachal Pradesh indulged in stone pelting on protesters from Assam”, PTI quoted an unidentified Assam government official as saying. Some persons also sustained injuries, leading to the scuffle, the official said.
The Arunachal Pradesh Police then fired three rounds in the air to control the mob, the official added.
All vehicles coming from and going to Arunachal Pradesh, except emergency and school transportation, are being stopped at entry points as part of the economic blockade launched by student organisation Takam Mising Porin Kebang and other groups, the...
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New India Foundation is accepting applications for book fellowships worth Rs 18 lakhs

Scroll Staff — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 10:30:00 +0000

New India Foundation (NIF) has announced that it’ll be accepting applications for the 2026 Book Fellowship between August 15 and November 15. Open to Indian citizens, including those currently living abroad, each Fellowship carries a grant of Rs 18 lakhs. In addition to the stipend, the Fellows will receive in-house editorial support, access to some of the country’s leading writers and thinkers, and guidance through to publication.
The NIF Fellowship is a writing fellowship and is open both to debut and authors who have already published book-length works.
All nonfiction themes and genres are eligible for consideration with a single requirement: that the work contribute to a fuller understanding of contemporary India. Fellows may choose to write reportage, an academic study, or a memoir, on subjects spanning economics, society, politics, or culture.
...
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SAD chief Sukhbir Singh Badal injured in attack in Maharashtra’s Nanded

Scroll Staff — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 13:24:47 +0000

Shiromani Akali Dal chief Sukhbir Singh Badal was on Thursday attacked inside a gurdwara in Maharashtra’s Nanded district allegedly by a Nihang Sikh man, PTI reported.
He reportedly suffered injuries to his arm and shoulder, but is in a stable condition.
A video released by the news agency showed the former Punjab deputy chief minister being taken to a hospital.
VIDEO | Maharashtra: Shiromani Akali Dal president Sukhbir Singh Badal has been taken to a hospital after he was reportedly attacked inside a Gurudwara in Nanded. More details awaited.

(Source: Third Party)

(Full video available on PTI Videos - https://t.co/d8jp61yd2p) pic.twitter.com/RvZkrc0nNv
— Press Trust of India (@PTI_News) August 13, 2026

The attack took place at Nanded’s Gurdwara Mata Sahib allegedly by a group of Nihang Sikhs, The Indian Express reported.
One person has been arrested for the attack, PTI quoted the office of Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis as saying. Fadnavis has ordered an inquiry into the motive behind the assault on Badal, the chief minister’s office said.
Shiromani Akali Dal spokesperson Arshdeep Singh Kaler said that Badal was out of danger and “perfectly fine”.
In a video statement released on social media, Kaler said, “On Thursday, Sukhbir Singh Badal paid obeisance at Takht Sri Hazur Sahib. As he was leaving the shrine, a person dressed in Nihang attire attacked him.”
He added that Badal has sustained minor injuries on...
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SC agrees to hear plea against police use of face recognition, surveillance tools at protest sites

Scroll Staff — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 09:10:34 +0000

The Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to hear a writ petition filed by Communist Party of India (Marxist) MP AA Rahim challenging the police’s use of facial recognition technology and other biometric surveillance measures at protest sites, Live Law reported.
A bench headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant tagged the petition with other pleas concerning the youth protests in Delhi.
The protests had taken place against the alleged mismanagement of several competitive examinations, including the undergraduate National Eligibility cum Entrance Test for admissions to medical courses.
The agitation, which culminated in the resignation of Bharatiya Janata Party leader Dharmendra Pradhan as the Union education minister, was led by the Cockroach Janta Party political campaign.
The protests had escalated on July 20, after the police forcibly took activist Sonam Wangchuk, who had been on a three-week hunger strike, to hospital.
The demonstrators’ march to Parliament was met with a police crackdown. Dozens were injured as the police used lathis, tear gas shells and pellet guns against the demonstrators. The police action intensified the agitation, which spread to other parts of the country.
On Thursday, advocate Menaka Guruswamy, appearing for Rahim, said that the petition was related to the Delhi Police’s use of digital tools to surveil protesters at Jantar Mantar.
She submitted that the police had used the services of two private...
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2013 Muzaffarnagar riots: Court allows case against BJP, Hindutva leaders to be withdrawn

Scroll Staff — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 08:15:54 +0000

A special MP-MLA court in Uttar Pradesh on Wednesday approved the prosecution’s request to withdraw a case related to the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots against 25 Bharatiya Janata Party leaders and persons associated with Hindutva groups, PTI reported.
Communal violence had erupted in Muzaffarnagar in September 2013 after BJP leaders, including Suresh Rana, former party MLA Sangeet Som and former MP Bharatendra Singh, allegedly made inflammatory speeches.
At least 60 persons were killed and thousands of Muslim families were displaced in the riots that followed. There were also several reports of sexual assault and abuse in Muzaffarnagar and Shamli districts.
Among the accused persons facing charges in the present case were state minister Kapil Dev Agarwal, former Union Minister Sanjeev Balyan and former state minister Suresh Rana. Others include former Uttar Pradesh minister Ashok Kataria, ex-BJP MPs Bhartendu Singh and Sohanvir Singh, former BJP MLAs Ashok Kansal and Umesh Malik, Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Sadhvi Prachi and Narsinghanand of Dasna Shiv Temple.
The Vishva Hindu Parishad is part of a group of Hindutva organisations led by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the parent organisation of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.
The accused persons were facing trial for allegedly violating prohibitory orders, obstructing public servants in the discharge of their duties and inciting communal tension through speeches at a mahapanchayat...
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Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge alleges BJP workers ‘purified’ Uttarakhand ground where he spoke

Scroll Staff — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 12:31:26 +0000

Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge on Thursday alleged in the Rajya Sabha that persons associated with the Bharatiya Janata Party had performed a ritual to “purify” the ground in Uttarakhand’s Haldwani where he addressed a rally on August 8.
Kharge, the leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, said that he had never sought any help or protection because he belonged to a Scheduled Caste community.
“But you treat me as untouchable, perform purification and insult me,” he added. “Is this what should be done in a democracy? How are you protecting the Constitution?”
He demanded that those who had performed the ritual should be arrested.
मैं इस बात को राजनीतिक मुद्दा नहीं बनाना चाहता।

मैंने कभी किसी से यह नहीं कहा कि मैं दलित हूँ, मेरी रक्षा करो और न ही किसी के सामने गिड़गिड़ाया। मुझ में लड़ने की शक्ति है और मैं लड़ता हूँ।

लेकिन हल्द्वानी में स्टेज का शुद्धिकरण कर मुझे Untouchability का एहसास कराया गया और मेरा… pic.twitter.com/dSdbjiaV0H
— Mallikarjun Kharge (@kharge) August 13, 2026

Responding to him, Union minister JP Nadda said that the BJP “does not subscribe to such activities”.
“This is sad, not just for the Congress, but for all of us,” said Nadda. “We will investigate this. I condemn this.”
The former national president of the BJP added: “It is a matter of...
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For children: Two pen pals fight against the construction of a dam that will submerge Silent Valley

Bijal Vachharajani — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 08:00:01 +0000

Dear Teesta,
Thank the gods. And everyone. I have been so worried that I couldn’t even enjoy ice cream. And then I read your letter. I cried. You’re one of the bravest people I know. And I am so relieved we’re friends still. An elephantine hug to you.
I want to be there. Hold your hand. Watch TV with you. Listen and cry with you. But I will cry from here, okay. And also smile.
Things in the Silent Valley are in what Acchan is calling a limbo. We’re waiting for the prime minister to decide. It makes every walk feel more precious, because what if it’s our last?
The pressure continues –
Poets are storming our world with their words.
Journalists on both sides are reporting the story, but I must admit our side is way more compelling and persuasive. But since we are all already persuaded, we might be biased. I think you will make an excellent journalist because you will write the searing truth with your pen. And you will never fear the forces, daunting as they might be.
Student nature clubs are springing up everywhere like wildflowers. The KSSP meetings are going strong, and every time they meet, I feel the numbers have doubled or...
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Nisha da Cunha (1934-2026): An inspirational teacher and writer of things usually left unsaid

Saumya Balsari — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 08:36:06 +0000

Some people come to us to definitively shape who we later become. Call it providence, fate, destiny, chance or sheer good luck, but Professor Nisha da Cunha, who died on August 11, was one such provocateur in my life.
My recollections of her are perhaps common to every student of English Literature at St Xavier's College of the mid- and late 1970s – the commanding air, the measured diction while reading a text aloud in the classroom, trademark poise, impatience with students who "showed off" and her passionate guidance of those she believed had potential.
It is not an exaggeration to say that we not only wanted to be as bright as she was, we actually wanted to be her, down to her short hair, piercing gaze, woven saree and large red bindi. She was simply cool. (A few years later at my first job, I mimicked an elegant "handloom" saree look. For the admiration expressed by my German bosses, the credit goes to Nisha da Cunha.)
In her lifetime, Da Cunha wore many caps, all of them distinguished and successful: scholar, teacher, writer and theatre director. Born in 1934 into a prominent, highly cultured family, she spent part of her childhood in Germany during the Second World...
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Bengal CM says police to arrest those making derogatory comments about Subhash Chandra Bose

Scroll Staff — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 07:14:55 +0000

West Bengal Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari on Wednesday directed the police to arrest those who make derogatory remarks about Subhas Chandra Bose, who is known by the honorific Netaji, reported PTI.
This came two days after Bharatiya Janata Party MP Nagendranath Roy, popularly known as Ananta Maharaj, described Bose as a “war criminal” and questioned his role in India’s freedom struggle.
On Tuesday, Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee held a rally in Kolkata against Roy’s remarks and criticised the Hindutva party for not taking action against him, reported The Times of India.
On Wednesday, Adhikari said that he has asked the police to take “stringent action against those making derogatory remarks about Netaji on social media”, PTI reported.
When asked if action would be taken against Roy, the chief minister said he would not “name anyone, but the law is equal for MLAs, MPs, leaders of any party, government officials or police officers”.
Roy had made adverse remarks about Bose in March as well, questioning whether he had the “capabilities” to create the Azad Hind Fauj, an armed force formed by Indian nationalists during World War 2.
In July, three leaders of the All India Forward Bloc filed a police complaint against Roy, alleging that the remarks not only demeaned Bose, but also undermined the legacy of India’s freedom...
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Assam reducing Kaziranga eco-sensitive zone to 1 km from 10 km in line with SC order, claims CM

Scroll Staff — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 06:13:53 +0000

Defending the Assam government’s proposal to reduce the eco-sensitive zone around Kaziranga National Park and Tiger Reserve to 1 km from 10 km, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said on Wednesday the decision was in accordance with Supreme Court guidelines.
On August 8, Sarma had said the eco-sensitive zone around the UNESCO World Heritage Site, which is home to the world’s largest population of one-horned rhinoceroses, was 10 km “by default”. The Assam government would send a proposal to the Union government within two months to reduce the limit to 1 km to allow development activities in the area, including the construction of a stadium, he had added.
In June 2022, the Supreme Court ordered that eco-sensitive zones of at least 1 km should be declared around protected forests, national parks and wildlife sanctuaries.
However, in April 2023, the court modified the order after states and the Union government argued that uniformly applying the 1-km requirement was not feasible and it had to be “protected area-specific”.
Here's the real facts regarding the Eco sensitive zone around @kaziranga_ pic.twitter.com/Gu1yxcfwaG
— Himanta Biswa Sarma (@himantabiswa) August 12, 2026

On Wednesday, Sarma said that the top court “itself had stated that the eco-sensitive zone would be of 1 km”, reported Hindustan Times.
“But till the state government doesn't notify the ESZ, the limit of...
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HC sets aside order refusing FCRA renewal of NGOs over claims of funding protests against Adani port

Scroll Staff — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 04:50:47 +0000

The Kerala High Court has set aside a Union government order refusing to renew the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act registration of two non-profits on the grounds that they had funded protests against the Adani port project in Vizhinjam, reported Bar and Bench on Wednesday.
Registration under the Act is mandatory for non-profit organisations to receive foreign funds.
Even if the organisations – Kerala Social Service Forum and Save a Family Plan India – had provided financial support to protesters, it could not be treated as the use of foreign funds for an undesirable purpose, said Justice Bechu Kurian Thomas in his order on Tuesday.
In 2022, a group of fisherfolk staged protests against the Rs 7,500-crore project led by billionaire Gautam Adani’s ports business. They alleged that the project would cause coastal erosion and damage their livelihoods.
The protest turned violent on November 26, 2022, after demonstrators prevented the Adani Group from resuming construction at the project site, where work had been suspended for four months. The construction at the port site subsequently resumed on the directions of the Kerala High Court.
Kerala Social Service Forum and Save a Family Plan India had been registered to receive foreign funds since 1985, reported Bar and Bench.
The Union government refused to renew their registrations after 2021, claiming that the organisations had diverted...
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What happened to Modi’s $5 trillion economy promise?

Shoaib Daniyal — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 03:30:00 +0000

Welcome to The India Fix by Shoaib Daniyal. A newsletter on Indian politics.
As always, if you’ve been sent this newsletter and like it, to get it in your inbox every week, sign up here (click on “follow”).
Las week, Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced in Parliament that India’s gross domestic product would hit the $5 trillion mark in 2029.
It’s a banal projection predicated on the simple maths of compounding. The Indian economy, valued at nearly $4 trillion, is growing so it will inevitably touch that mark one day. Yet, most Indians will be hit by an uncomfortable sense of deja vu when they read the phrase “$5 trillion economy”. It has functioned as a leitmotif of the Modi era, meant mostly to gaslight Indians about the true state of the economy.
Like a parent trying to stave off a child’s tantrum by promising something desirable in the future, the Modi government has repeatedly flashed the prospect of a “$5 trillion economy” to Indians with little explanation on how it would to be achieved – and no explanation when it wasn’t.
Tall claims
At the start of 2018, Modi kicked it off by promising at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland that India would...
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Will have to examine if revolt by Shiv Sena MLAs in 2022 can be treated as party split, says SC

Scroll Staff — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 03:21:26 +0000

The Supreme Court on Wednesday said it will have to examine whether the rebellion by Shiv Sena MLAs in 2022 can be viewed as the party having split, reported Live Law.
The court was hearing a petition by the Uddhav Thackeray-led Shiv Sena challenging the Election Commission’s move to recognise the Eknath Shinde faction as the official party and allot it the bow and arrow symbol.
Appearing for the Uddhav Sena, advocate Kapil Sibal told a bench headed by Chief Justice Surya Kant that the Election Commission should not have concluded that the Shiv Sena had split because of a division in its legislative party.
“Perhaps the commission’s reasoning requires review,” the bench was quoted as saying by Live Law. “But it will be very difficult to ignore the fact that a group, which is actually maybe born in the legislative polls, did not have a resonance in the [primary organisation].”
It added: “First we see whether there is a split right? The split can originate in the legislative party, but its crack can percolate in the primary organisation.”
The Shiv Sena had split in June 2022 after then-Chief Minister Eknath Shinde claimed the support of 39 out of the Shiv Sena’s 55 MLAs, in addition to 10 independent MLAs, and rebelled against Thackeray’s Maha Vikas Aghadi coalition. The...
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From the biography: How mathematician DD Kosambi envisioned higher education in science in India

Ram Ramaswamy — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 03:00:00 +0000

When DD Kosambi was appointed Professor of Mathematics at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) in June 1945, he was 38 years old. His was the second appointment at the TIFR, the first being that of Homi Bhabha, two years younger than DDK. The two men found themselves in an exciting position at the start of a newly born institute for research at the forefront of physics.
Bhabha, well-known both nationally and internationally, had a lot going for him. Coming from an upper-class and influential Parsi family that was closely related to the Tatas, he had been educated at Cambridge University and had obtained his doctorate in theoretical high-energy particle physics. He was in the running for an academic position in England, but circumstances deemed otherwise – a trip home during the summer vacations of 1939 turned into an extended stay in India, the war in Europe having started. He found himself in the Physics Department at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, where Raman, as Senior Professor at the IISc, arranged that Bhabha was appointed Reader. In the next few years, even as World War II was raging, he set up a cosmic ray group at the IISc and...
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Does ‘Vande Mataram’ need the threat of criminal law to be honoured?

Samanvi Narang — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 01:00:01 +0000

The Prevention of Insults to National Honour (Amendment) Act, 2026, which received the assent of the president on Tuesday, makes it a crime to insult or stop the singing of Vande Mataram.
It asks a much more critical question: in a democracy, should loyalty to the nation be determined by adherence to constitutional principles or should it be judged by performing actions legally deemed to be patriotic?
On Tuesday, the government announced that Vande Mataram will be sung at the Independence Day celebrations at the Red Fort on August 15.
The new law amends the Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act of 1971 by offering legal protection to Vande Mataram. The song, written in 1875, has long been an inspiration for Indians. No one has suggested that Vande Mataram does not deserve respect. But should respect for Vande Mataram be legislated?
In January 1950, the Constituent Assembly that had been appointed to frame India’s Constitution resolved to adopt Jana Gana Mana as the national anthem while recognising Vande Mataram as the National Song in view of its historic role in the freedom movement.
The Assembly consciously distinguished between the National Anthem and the National Song.
Assembly members acknowledged that while Vande Mataram is important for nationalism, parts of the song contain religious imagery that some communities could find it difficult to relate to. Rather than...
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What decolonising economics can look like

Junaid B Jahangir, The Conversation — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 16:30:00 +0000

Economics shapes many aspects of our daily lives, from the prices we pay to the policies governments adopt. Yet many of the ideas taught as universal principles of economics emerged from a narrow historical context and have rarely been examined through a decolonial lens.
A recently published book, Decolonizing Economics, argues that economics is long overdue for decolonisation. Its authors contend that the discipline has largely overlooked how colonialism, empire and unequal power shaped the development of modern economies and the economic theories used to explain them.
Decolonising economics means rethinking how we understand economic development and inequality. Rather than explaining prosperity through technology, markets and scientific progress, it examines how colonisation, resource extraction and exploited labour shaped today’s wealthy economies while contributing to underdevelopment elsewhere.
At its core, it’s about shifting away from an economy that benefits the elite to one that builds people’s capabilities.
As an economics professor, I’ve been restructuring my teaching based on my scholarship on critical microeconomics, critical macroeconomics and alternative ways to build the economy.
Questioning Eurocentric assumptions
Many foundational economic theories were developed by wealthy European men during periods of colonial expansion. Yet these ideas are often treated as universal principles rather than products of a particular historical context.
Eurocentric economic thought tends to position European economic development as the norm while presenting Indigenous and Global South economic...
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Marathi mandatory for Ola, Uber drivers as well, says minister

Scroll Staff — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 15:19:24 +0000

The Maharashtra government’s Marathi language requirement for taxi and auto drivers will also apply to those working with Ola, Uber and Rapido, The Indian Express quoted Transport Minister Pratap Sarnaik as saying on Wednesday.
On April 14, the state government made it mandatory for all licensed taxi and auto-rickshaw drivers to have a basic knowledge of Marathi from May 1. However, on April 29, it deferred the implementation of the decision until August 15.
Sarnaik had said in July that licences of taxi and auto-rickshaw drivers who fail to clear a Marathi language test will be cancelled from August 16.
His statement on Wednesday follows amendments to the 1989 Maharashtra Motor Vehicles Rules, which make working knowledge of Marathi a requirement for authorisations related to commercial passenger transport, including permits and permit renewals, reported The Indian Express.
“These amendments eliminate ambiguities in the rules and underscore the importance of practical Marathi for drivers engaged in passenger transport,” Sarnaik was quoted as saying by the newspaper.
In 2025, several attacks were reported in Maharashtra on persons for not speaking or allegedly insulting Marathi.
When the Marathi test was announced in April, officials told The Hindu that drivers would be assessed on their ability to read signboards or documents, write a simple sentence and hold a basic conversation in the language.
Edited by Sneha.

...
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Rajasthan HC says its building inaugurated in 2019 ‘at risk of collapse’, takes cognisance

Scroll Staff — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 14:23:26 +0000

The Rajasthan High Court on Monday initiated suo moto proceedings about the structural condition of its Jodhpur building, which was inaugurated in December 2019, reported Bar and Bench.
The action came after an assessment by the Indian Institute of Technology in Bombay found that the 21-metre-high central dome of the building was at risk “of imminent collapse and may fall at any moment”.
The building was constructed at a cost of Rs 316 crore, reported The Times of India. Its foundation stone was laid on April 20, 2007, the construction began in 2011 and the structural work was completed by the end of 2013.
However, structural problems had emerged “within a span of few years”, said a division bench of Justices Pushpendra Singh Bhati and Praveer Bhatnagar on Monday.
Pointing out that the dome posed a serious threat to those working in the court, the bench said that it was “gravely concerned”.
It noted that a portion of the dome had collapsed in April 2023 and further incidents of false ceiling and plaster falling in courtrooms were reported in 2024 and 2025.
There were also problems with water seepage and in the drainage system, the reinforcement steel had corroded, and there were cracks in structural elements, the bench pointed out. It added that the...
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After Operation Sindoor, India-Pakistan rivalry shifts to space

Muhammad Waqas Haider, The Conversation — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 14:00:00 +0000

India and Pakistan fought an intense four-day war in May 2025. But while the media narrative was dominated by fighter jets, drones and missiles, the most consequential contest unfolded in orbit a few hundred kilometres up.
That short war was, arguably, the first between two nuclear-armed states to be shaped decisively by the use of satellites. Few analysts acknowledged this – and the silence matters. South Asia is now sliding into a new kind of arms race with no rules to restrain it.
The opening night on May 6 carried a lesson that should unsettle far larger air forces than those of the two countries involved. Pakistan, with a smaller military, fought a tightly networked battle that fused ground radar, airborne early warning, data links and satellite navigation into a single kill chain, planning and executing attacks. Pakistan’s strategy has been developed by an air force whose leadership had drilled that doctrine for years.
Pakistani officials claimed that one of their Chinese-built J-10C fighters downed an Indian Rafale with a PL-15 missile at more than 200kms. This was a kill made from beyond visual range – something with little precedent in combat. India disputes the account, but its own chief of defence staff later conceded that the air force...
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Rush Hour: Centre sends FCRA bill to JPC, Justice Varma found guilty in unaccounted cash row & more

Scroll Staff — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 13:58:25 +0000

The Lok Sabha referred the 2026 Foreign Contribution Regulation Amendment Bill to a 31-member joint parliamentary committee for detailed examination. This followed protests by Opposition parties, which said that the bill grants “sweeping and disproportionate powers” to the executive without adequate constitutional safeguards.
A key provision of the amendment bill allows the Union government to take control of an organisation’s foreign funds and assets if its FCRA registration lapses or is cancelled.
Introduced in Parliament in March, the bill has also drawn criticism from churches and civil society groups, who said that the legislation will adversely affect religious minorities. Read on.
How India’s crackdown on NGO funds has crushed key grassroots services and ended livelihoods, reported Kunal Purohit

A Lok Sabha inquiry committee has found that “unexplained bundles of Rs 500” were recovered from the Delhi residence of former High Court judge Yashwant Varma in March 2025. In a report tabled in Parliament, the panel also said that Varma had given misleading explanations about the cash.
His responses were “evasive and unsatisfactory”, said the panel, constituted by Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla on August 12, 2025. It also said that the cash was neither secured nor preserved and later disappeared, which remains “unexplained”. Read on.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of compromising India’s...
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Lok Sabha probe panel finds Justice Yashwant Varma guilty in unaccounted cash row

Scroll Staff — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 13:33:57 +0000

An inquiry committee formed by the Lok Sabha has found that “unexplained bundles of Rs 500” were recovered from the Delhi residence of former High Court judge Yashwant Varma and that he had given misleading explanations about it, reported Live Law on Wednesday.
In its report tabled in Parliament, the three-member committee said that all the charges framed against Varma are proved.
The unaccounted cash had been recovered at Varma’s official residence in Delhi when emergency services responded to a fire there on March 14, 2025. He was a judge at the Delhi High Court at that time.
The judge said that he was in Bhopal at the time of the incident and claimed that the cash did not belong to him or his family.
The controversy prompted his transfer to the Allahabad High Court.
The panel noted in its report on Wednesday that Varma failed to provide a satisfactory explanation about the “presence, source or ownership” of the cash, reported Live Law.
The cash was neither secured nor preserved and later disappeared, the panel was quoted as saying by The Indian Express. This disappearance remains unexplained, it added.
The committee further noted that the explanations given by Varma were “evasive and unsatisfactory when tested against the evidence of independent official witnesses”.
Referring to Varma’s written reply to Delhi High Court Chief Justice DK...
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NALSAR invites CJI as chief guest at convocation despite students’ objection: Report

Scroll Staff — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 12:17:19 +0000

The National Academy of Legal Studies and Research in Hyderabad has invited Chief Justice Surya Kant to be the chief guest at the upcoming convocation, the university’s vice-chancellor told The Indian Express.
The invitation was extended despite students urging the university to reconsider the decision, citing Kant’s response to a petition alleging that police had used excessive force against protesters in Delhi on July 20.
On July 22, a bench headed by the chief justice refused to urgently hear the petition. “Don’t waste our time and don’t waste your time,” Kant had reportedly told the petitioners.
When the lawyer for the petitioners said that he could present video evidence of the police excesses, the chief justice had said the bench was “not interested” in watching them.
Referring to the remarks, the students had told the university authorities that it did not sit right to receive their degrees from a dignitary whose recent public conduct appeared dismissive of serious allegations of police brutality against protesting citizens.
On Wednesday, the university’s vice-chancellor was quoted as saying by The Indian Express that they were awaiting a response from Kant to their invite.
While the date of the convocation is yet to be decided, it is usually held in August or September, added the vice-chancellor.
The incumbent chief justice has been delivering the convocation...
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Fiction: An aspiring quantum physicist, Sumi, finds that life in Shantinagar is just as mysterious

Nidhi Arora — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 12:00:00 +0000

Word of the missing plate spread quickly and later that evening, Maya and Mrs Bansal came over for chai.
Unlike the matchbox-like, three-storeyed faculty building of Sumi’s parents’ house, houses in Shantinagar took their space. They were laid out in rows separated by narrow alleys, with their backs to each other. The Kapoor house was the first in the lane. Their next-door neighbours, at number two, were the Bansals, owners of the local grocery store. Right behind the Kapoor house was number seven which belonged to Maya. Sometimes Sumi would be staring outside the kitchen window lost in thought and find herself looking straight into Maya’s kitchen.
Mahima, Maya and Mrs Bansal were like sisters. They spoke to one another on the phone every day around noon, with such punctuality that Mr Kapoor claimed to set his watch to when the phone rang. They took turns meeting at one of their homes every week, to confabulate on any matter that may have slipped through calls.
Mrs Bansal had fair skin and every passing year deposited a layer of prosperity around her middle. Her hair was knotted in a careless bun and she smelled of soap. Not of any particular soap, but the clean...
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Bill to amend law governing foreign funding of NGOs referred to joint parliamentary committee

Scroll Staff — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 11:14:27 +0000

The Lok Sabha on Wednesday referred the 2026 Foreign Contribution Regulation Amendment Bill to a joint parliamentary committee for detailed examination.
Registration under the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act is mandatory for a non-profit organisation to receive foreign funds.
Among the key provisions under the amendment bill is one that allows the Union government to take control of an organisation’s foreign funds and assets if its FCRA registration lapses or is cancelled.
The bill was introduced in Parliament in March during the Budget Session.
The proposed legislation was sent for wider consultation in the wake of protests by Opposition parties, who said that the bill grants “sweeping and disproportionate powers” to the executive without adequate constitutional safeguards.
A collective of churches in Mizoram’s Aizawl also held a large-scale protest on Tuesday against the amendment bill, reported PTI. The protesters said that the legislation will adversely affect religious minorities, churches and non-governmental organisations, and could undermine constitutional safeguards.
On Wednesday, Union Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju said the Opposition should raise their concerns before the committee.
The motion to refer the bill was moved by Union Minister of State for Home Nityanand Rai.
Although the supplementary list of business stated that Union Home Minister Amit Shah would move the motion in Lok Sabha, he was absent from the House.
The proposed committee to examine the bill will...
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Tamil Nadu passes resolution against delimitation

Scroll Staff — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 10:29:48 +0000

The Tamil Nadu Assembly on Wednesday passed a resolution against the proposed delimitation exercise, reported ANI.
The process of fixing the boundaries of electoral constituencies is called delimitation.
Backed by the Opposition Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, the Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam-led state government also urged the Union government to permanently retain the number of Lok Sabha seats at 543.
During a three-day special session of Parliament in April, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Union government introduced the 2026 Constitution 131st Amendment Bill in the Lok Sabha to amend the 2023 Women’s Reservation Act and redraw the boundaries of electoral constituencies.
The bill, one of the three draft legislations that were introduced, required a two-thirds majority of votes in Parliament to pass. The ruling National Democratic Alliance does not have a two-thirds majority of MPs in any House. Therefore, it required the support of Opposition parties to pass the amendment.
The consideration of the bill was rejected by the Lok Sabha with 298 MPs voting in its favour and 230 against.
Before the Monsoon Session of Parliament began on July 20, Union minister Ramdas Athawale was quoted as saying by PTI that the delimitation bill would be passed in the House.
However, amid a deadlock in Parliament about the police using excessive force against youth protesters in Delhi, the bill has not been listed....
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For the last four years, Jignesh had played a leading role in organising camps...
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“We’ve taken them to multiple doctors and clinics in Goilkera, and across the state border to Rourkela in Odisha, but to no permanent avail,”...
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