A CHEQUE, A CROWD, A CALCULATION At 5 in the evening on June 19, 2026, Vigyan Bhawan in New Delhi filled with a crowd that doesn’t usually make front-page news. The first-time wage earners, apprentices, factory floor recruits, the kind of worker whose first salary slip is more meaningful than any headline. The Prime Minister…
June 2026. In Rajanna Sircilla district, over 30 people more than half of them children were hospitalised after eating pani puri from a street vendor in KCR Nagar colony. The vendor was arrested. Weeks before that, in Sangareddy, between 23 and 45 students at a government primary school fell violently ill after being served leftover…
FROM ASPIRATION TO ARCHITECTURE The PIB release on June 14, 2026 noted a significant political milestone: Prime Minister Narendra Modi became India’s longest-serving elected Prime Minister. World leaders sent congratulatory messages. But beyond the ceremony of milestone-marking, the release carried something more substantive: a statistical ledger of what twelve years of continuous governance had produced…
THE NUMBER THAT DIDN’T EXIST 12 YEARS AGO In 2014, India had approximately 350 to 400 startups. The concept itself was relatively unfamiliar in policy circles. When Prime Minister Narendra Modi highlighted the startup ecosystem in his Independence Day address from the Red Fort in 2015. This was formalised through the Startup India initiative in…
CROSSING THE ANTIM PAG There is a moment at the National Defence Academy that every cadet remembers for life. It is called the Antim Pag (the last step). You walk across the Khetarpal Parade Ground, past the Quarterdeck, and out of the academy as a commissioned officer. In June 2026, for the first time in…
A CITY IS NEVER FINISHED There is a particular kind of civic grief that belongs to Indian cities. It is the grief of being perpetually almost-there. Almost-planned. Almost-drained. Almost-resilient. On June 13, 2026, at Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi, the National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA) turned 50. It looked forward, with the urgency of a…
THE AIR IN THE ROOM Delhi’s air problem is not a mystery. It has been studied, modelled, mapped, and legislated over for two decades. The Commission for Air Quality Management in the National Capital Region and Adjoining Areas (CAQM) IS a statutory body established in 2021 with powers overriding all state agencies. It exists precisely…
For decades, environmental protection and poverty reduction were often seen as opposing priorities, as though supporting one meant sacrificing the other. Forests were these fragile spaces, supposedly safe only if people stayed out, while raising rural incomes was some separate struggle. But recent research tells a different story. According to the International Forestry Resources and…
A TANK COMMANDER AT THE TOP The year was 1997, the last time an officer from the Indian Army’s Armoured Corps stood at the apex of the service. General Shankar Roy Chowdhury had just retired. The world was a different place with no drones, no precision-guided munitions, no cyber warfare doctrine. 29 years later, on…
THE SOUND OF PROGRESS There is something deeply honest about wind energy. Unlike a coal plant, it needs no fuel. Unlike a dam, it does not submerge valleys. It simply spins quietly, relentlessly and converts movement into electricity. On June 15, 2026, the Global Wind Day Conference convened in Goa under the theme ‘Wind Energy:…
