By Vikas Meshram *  “Agriculture is the backbone of India” — this is what we have been hearing for generations. But there is a pain hollowing out this backbone from within: the unequal distribution of land. On one hand, news of farmer suicides, indebtedness, and rural migration keeps coming; on the other, agricultural land across the country continues to concentrate in the hands of a few wealthy individuals.

By Mohd. Ziyaullah Khan*  The widening gap between Raghav Chadha and the leadership of the Aam Aadmi Party is not an overnight development. It reflects a slow, layered process of internal churn that has been building over time. Once celebrated as one of AAP’s most articulate and promising young faces in the Rajya Sabha, Chadha symbolised the party’s attempt to project a modern, educated, and policy-driven leadership. Yet politics is as much about perception as it is about performance, and over time questions began to emerge around his alignment with the party’s core leadership. His gradual sidelining appears less like a sudden disciplinary action and more like the culmination of a strained relationship.

By Hemantkumar Shah*  At a time when tensions in West Asia repeatedly escalate into open confrontation, the Iran–Israel hostility often appears puzzling at first glance. Unlike many enduring conflicts in the region, this is not a dispute rooted in shared borders or direct territorial claims. Instead, it is shaped by ideology, geopolitics, and competing visions of regional influence. Understanding why Iran positions itself so sharply against Israel requires revisiting history, geography, and the political choices that have defined their relationship over the decades.

By Vijay Prashad   As the United States farcically walks away from the negotiations with Iran in Pakistan, it was always a matter of concern whether Israel would abide by any such agreement. This was particularly the case with Lebanon and with the Palestinian territories, where Israel seemed absolutely hell bent on creating new ‘facts on the ground,’ including evacuating more sections of Gaza, ethnically cleaning more towns in the West Bank, and eliminating almost one million people from the entire southern half of Lebanon.

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat*  The news of iconic Asha Bhosle’s ‘untimely’ demise has shocked music lovers across the country. Asha Tai was 92 years young. Normally, people celebrate a passing at this age, but Asha Bhosle—much like another legend, Dev Anand—never made us feel she was growing old. She was perhaps the most versatile artist in Bombay cinema. Hailing from a family devoted to music, Asha’s journey to success and fame was not easy. Her elder sister, Lata Mangeshkar, had already become the voice of women in cinema, and most contemporaries like Shamshad Begum, Suraiya, and Noor Jehan had slowly faded into oblivion. Frankly, there was no second or third to Lata Mangeshkar; she became the first—and perhaps the only—choice for music directors and all those who mattered in filmmaking. Asha started her musical journey at age 10 with a Marathi film, but her first break in Hindustani cinema came with the film "Chunariya" (1948). Though she was not the first choice of ...

By Harsh Thakor*  The passing of Asha Bhosle at the age of 92 marks not merely the loss of a legendary voice, but the end of a cultural epoch she helped shape and transform. Forever young in spirit and endlessly vibrant in expression, Asha Bhosle’s voice embodied a profound shift in post-Independence India—a transition toward a more confident, worldly, and self-aware representation of women in cinema. Her singing did not just mirror change; it propelled it.

By Jag Jivan  Over the past decade and a half, Gujarat has witnessed a remarkable resurgence of Dalit agitations that mark a decisive shift from accommodation to confrontation, according to a major new study published in the journal National Identities . The research, conducted by Mahendra Parmar of the Central University of Gujarat , draws on 18 in-depth interviews with victims and activists to document how B.R. Ambedkar ’s radical thought has become the central political resource shaping Dalit identity and mobilisation in the state.

By Ram Puniyani*  As we celebrate Babasaheb Ambedkar ’s birth anniversary on April 14, 2026, we must also ask: what is the status of his core teaching—the “ annihilation of caste ”? The caste-Varna system has been central to Hindu society, even before the term “Hindu” came into use. Our holy scriptures, from the Vedas to the Manusmriti and beyond, mandated rigid Varna-Jati rules. 

By Vikas Meshram*   Few figures in modern India embody the struggle for women’s rights as profoundly as Bharat Ratna Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar . More than a leader of the Dalits , he was a defender of every marginalized being—especially women—who had been shackled for centuries by caste and patriarchy. For Ambedkar, the progress of a society was measured by the heights its women attained. This was not rhetoric; it was a principle he lived by.