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✍️ Written by Saket Suman Media outlet Newslaundry has, since its founding, positioned itself as the press that covers the press, the one outlet with the institutional courage to hold the mirror up to Indian journalism. Its tagline, sabki dhulai , translates roughly as: everyone gets washed. The promise, burnished through years of subscription pitches, is seductive. You know the stories that get buried or ignored by mainstream media? With your support, we can do those stories. On June 1, 2026, Newslaundry published a piece about the Jaipur Literature Festival's Island of Ireland edition. It was titled, with characteristic efficiency, " JLF's Ireland edition wraps up. " It reads, in its entirety, like a festival brochure written by a team who enjoys the hospitality rather thoroughly. Representational Image: Why Newslaundry Covered JLF Ireland Like a Festival Brochure The dispatch opens with a graceful sentence about a festival t...

India's cryptocurrency policy is a case study in regulatory ambiguity with revenue clarity: the government has not legalised cryptocurrency trading but has not banned it either; it has imposed extremely punitive taxes (30% flat rate on all gains, with no offset for losses across assets; 1% Tax Deducted at Source on transactions above ₹50,000) while simultaneously developing its own Central Bank Digital Currency (the e-Rupee).  The Finance Act 2022 introduced the Virtual Digital Asset (VDA) taxation framework — treating crypto gains like winnings from gambling rather than investment income, with no long-term capital gains benefit and no loss offsetting.  Representational Image: How India Regulates Cryptocurrencies and Digital Assets This punitive taxation structure effectively discourages Indian crypto trading without banning it; domestic crypto exchange volumes fell approximately 90% after the 2022 tax framework; Indian traders migrated to offshore exchanges (Binance, OKX...

India has 260 million school-going children in approximately 1.5 million schools — the world's largest formal education system by enrolment. Digital education's penetration into this system has been accelerated by COVID-19 (which forced online learning at scale in 2020–21 but exposed the depth of the digital divide in education) and by a sustained government investment in public digital education infrastructure.  DIKSHA (Digital Infrastructure for Knowledge Sharing) — a national digital learning platform — hosts over 150 crore (1.5 billion) learning sessions; PM eVIDYA integrates DIKSHA with Doordarshan's 200 DTH channels for students without internet; SWAYAM (Study Webs of Active Learning for Young Aspiring Minds) provides online university courses; and the National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL) delivers engineering courses in partnership with IITs. Representational Image: How Digital Education Is Transforming Indian Schools India's private edtech s...

India has identified semiconductor manufacturing and design as a strategic national priority, motivated by the supply chain disruptions of the COVID-19 era (which exposed India's complete dependence on foreign chips for automobiles, electronics, medical devices, and telecommunications equipment) and by the growing consensus that semiconductor supply chains will be a geopolitical flashpoint in the coming decades.  The India Semiconductor Mission (ISM) — launched under the Programme for Development of Semiconductors and Display Manufacturing Ecosystem in 2021 with an initial outlay of ₹76,000 crore ($9.2 billion) — provides fiscal incentives of up to 50% of project cost for semiconductor fabrication and display manufacturing.  Representational Image: How India's Semiconductor Policy Works The scheme attracted the first concrete investments: Micron Technology (US semiconductor company) is building India's first modern semiconductor assembly, testing, marking, and packaging (...

India's digital health infrastructure has developed rapidly since COVID-19 exposed the limits of India's paper-based health records system and demonstrated the value of digital health coordination at scale. The Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission (ABDM) — the government's overarching digital health framework — aims to create a national digital health ecosystem connecting patients, providers, labs, pharmacies, and insurers through interoperable digital systems.  At its core is the ABHA (Ayushman Bharat Health Account) — a 14-digit health ID that functions as the health equivalent of Aadhaar, linking a citizen's health records across providers. By 2025, over 60 crore (600 million) ABHA IDs had been created; the CoWIN vaccination platform (developed for COVID-19 vaccination management) demonstrated India's ability to build health-specific digital infrastructure at extraordinary speed and scale. Representational Image: How India's Digital Health System Works India's...

India's agricultural sector — employing approximately 42% of India's workforce and contributing approximately 18% of GDP — is undergoing a digital transformation designed to address its persistent challenges: fragmented small landholdings (average 1.1 hectares), poor market linkage, information asymmetry, high input costs, climate vulnerability, and weak credit access.  The Digital Agriculture Mission — approved by Cabinet with ₹2,817 crore allocation — is the government's primary framework, built around two components: AgriStack (a digital infrastructure creating unique digital identities for farmers) and the Krishi Decision Support System (Krishi-DSS, an AI-powered advisory platform).  Representational Image: How India's Digital Agriculture Works The mission aims to create digital farmer IDs for 11 crore farmers within 3 years (6 crore by FY2024–25, 3 crore by FY2025–26, 2 crore by FY2026–27); by 2024, 19 states had signed MoUs for AgriStack implementation. India...

The Competition Commission of India (CCI) has emerged as one of the more active digital market competition regulators in Asia, with ongoing or concluded investigations into Amazon India, Flipkart, Meta (WhatsApp), Google (Android, Google Play), and Apple.  Established under the Competition Act, 2002 and operational since 2009, CCI has jurisdiction over anti-competitive agreements, abuse of dominant position, and merger review.  The Competition (Amendment) Act, 2023 significantly enhanced CCI's digital market powers: it introduced a deal-value threshold for merger notifications (₹2,000 crore deal value even if Indian revenue is below normal thresholds); expanded abuse of dominant position provisions to include "unfair" and "discriminatory" practices (not just "unreasonable"); introduced a "standstill" obligation for mergers above threshold; and gave CCI powers to address "killer acquisitions" of nascent competitors. Representational ...