By Vikas Gupta  Yuvraj Mehta—an ideal middle-class, upwardly mobile young man—died at the age of 27 in Noida, an archetypal North Indian town, in an equally upwardly mobile neighbourhood. He died in a deeply disturbing way—disturbing, that is, for the government and its constituents who control the system—causing immense agony and embarrassment to local authorities, the state government, the police, the fire department, and disaster relief forces.

By Sudhansu R. Das  The world’s true wealth isn’t buried deep in mines. It is all around us—in the glittering expanse of oceans, the life-giving flow of rivers, the richness of forests, the majesty of hills, and the irreplaceable tapestry of biodiversity. This is the planet’s “surface gold.” Its value—measured in sustenance, livelihoods, and life itself—infinitely outweighs the extracted treasures of precious metals and minerals.  Yet, tragically, too many leaders overlook this foundational capital, ignoring the permanent prosperity it can generate for a world fixated on the transient.

By Biljana Vankovska   Anyone from the former Yugoslavia will immediately understand the title. Mujo is a legendary (though fictional) Bosnian character, the protagonist (together with his inseparable friend Haso) of countless jokes that generations of Yugoslavs grew up with. Wars took many lives, erased towns, and destroyed futures, yet Mujo survived even the darkest days of the Bosnian conflict. One particular joke has stayed with me for more than three decades, because it captures, better than most analyses, the arrogance of superficial Western “expertise.”

By Raïs Neza Boneza  There are moments in global politics when the mask slips—not because power suddenly discovers morality, but because maintaining the performance becomes too expensive. Recently in Davos, the Canadian Prime minister Mark Carney did something unusual. He admitted—almost casually—that the so-called rules-based international order has never quite been what it claimed to be. That the rules were unevenly applied. That the strongest routinely exempted themselves. That integration, once sold as mutual benefit, has increasingly become a tool of coercion.

By Mikaela Nhondo Erskog   Khaled Abu Jarrar, a 58-year-old Palestinian from Beit Hanoon, now shelters in Gaza City’s former Legislative Council building—one of thousands of structures repurposed as displacement camps after Israel’s genocidal assault reduced entire neighborhoods to rubble. His wife was recently diagnosed with liver cancer. She needs urgent treatment abroad, but the Rafah crossing remains sealed. As international powers announce frameworks and phases, Abu Jarrar watches the gap  between diplomatic language and ground reality: “In the media, they talk about withdrawals and reconstruction, but on the ground, the bombing continues from the north and the south, and things seem even more complicated… On the ground, the shelling never stops.”

By Bharat Dogra   We were sitting at a central place in Salaiya Maaf village, located in Mahoba district of Uttar Pradesh, for a group discussion when an elderly woman said in an emotional voice, “It is so good that you people came. Land on which nothing grew can now produce good crops.”

By Harsh Thakor   The booklet Path of Indian Revolution – Present Context , published by the Former Revolutionary Students Forum, presents an argument in favour of the strategy of protracted people’s war as the principal path for revolutionary transformation in India. It situates this position within the framework that characterises Indian society as semi-feudal and semi-colonial, and attributes exploitation to feudal, comprador bourgeois, and imperialist forces. The publication seeks to intervene politically and ideologically in debates within the revolutionary Left, particularly in the context of internal crises following surrenders and shifts in strategy by sections of leadership.

By Jag Jivan  The advocacy group Centre for Financial Accountability (CFA) has sharply criticised the Union Budget 2026–27 , calling it a “budget sans kartavya” that weakens public welfare while favouring private corporations, even as inequality, climate risks and social distress deepen across the country.

By A Representative   The Union Budget 2026–27 presents a mixed picture for welfare spending, with higher allocations for several social sectors but continuing concerns over reduced actual expenditure and weak implementation, according to an analysis by the Pathey Budget Center.