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✍️ Written by Saket Suman When a youth delegation from Darjeeling met Vice President C. P. Radhakrishnan at Uprashtrapati Bhavan on February 24, 2026, the exchange was framed in the language of aspiration and identity. Welcoming what he described as “vibrant young minds from a region known for its natural beauty, rich culture and significant contribution to the nation,” the Vice President said India’s demographic strength is among its “greatest assets” and that the vision of “Viksit Bharat” and “AatmaNirbhar Bharat” calls upon young citizens to contribute with “innovation, integrity and enterprise.”  Members of Darjeeling Youth Delegation at Uprashtrapati Bhavan today; Via: VP India He urged them to remain rooted in their heritage while embracing development, noting that self-reliance reflects “confidence in our abilities and pride in our heritage.” The interaction, attended by Rajya Sabha member Harsh Vardhan Shringla, touched on outmigratio...

✍️ Written by Saket Suman A democracy begins to collapse quietly when memory is treated as contraband and testimony is made conditional on permission. The most telling sites of this erosion is the uneasy space occupied by books that are written, circulated and discussed but not allowed to formally exist. Home Minister Amit Shah visiting World Book Fair in New Delhi; Via HM Across political systems, unpublished or “under review” manuscripts are often framed as incomplete, unauthorised, or unsafe for public consumption. The argument is procedural on the surface because nothing exists until it is cleared, stamped and released. But this framing misses the deeper truth.  A manuscript does not become real because a seal is affixed to it. It becomes real because it is written, because someone who witnessed events chose to place memory into language. Clearance can regulate circulation but it cannot annul authorship. Excerpts from such works enter the p...

✍️ Written by Saket Suman Greed has arrived slowly  in the bloodstream of our society and now it has come to be accepted as common sense.  It has previously been rebranded many times as ambition, as hustle or even as growth. It is rarely named but it is signalled in the towers that cast shadows over ration lines, in the malls that shimmer next to neighbourhoods without drains, in the policy documents that speak the language of targets but never of tired bodies. Greed is now a system, and those who refuse to play along are called impractical. Representational Image Source: VinayMutha1212 on X This system of  extraction and  accumulation  is the new dharma of power in India.  A nation once bound by ideals of seva  now finds itself governed by the logic of profit. The shift was not sudden and it came through smaller betrayals when a footpath was handed over to a mall, a meal scheme diluted for “efficiency” or a scho...

✍️ Written by Saket Suman Kashi is unlike most other cities of India, even the religious ones, as it rarely impresses you at the first glance. It simply receives you, like an old river receives everything without pretending those things, like flowers and ash or meditation and commerce, are exact opposites. This is why every attempt to “fix” Kashi is bound to culminate into public anxiety. People are defending a feeling, they are defending the right of an ancient place to remain unflattened by modern categories. In the last few days, short videos of heavy redevelopment work around one of the most sacred burning grounds in Kashi have travelled faster than the truth that might explain them. Bulldozers, broken stones, disturbed idols and dust rising where centuries have settled.  Manikarnika Ghat, Kashi by James Prinsep 1832. Via: Yaduvam The images are blunt and therefore effective. They first invited panic, then outrage, then politics. The stat...

✍️ Written by Saket Suman Writing and journalism are always under pressure. Pressure is their natural habitat. The tragedy now is that comfort has begun to cunningly pass off as success. The cushioned chairs, the familiar faces and the reliable applause!  A profession that cannot tolerate discomfort will eventually lose the ability to describe reality. And reality, unlike these sponsored festivals, does not curate itself. Nuremberg Rallies weren’t just big speeches.  They were mass propaganda spectacles;Via: Amber Speaks Up What we are watching unfold before our eyes is both censorship and choreography. Writing has already learned its steps. Journalism now knows when to enter and when to exit. There is a colourful, orderly, well sponsored parade underway where everyone is encouraged to carry a banner that says dissent provided they do not wander off the designated route. The music swells at the right moments when the masters of the ring ...

✍️ Written by Saket Suman There are some words that a civilisation carries for centuries and in due course of time it becomes a part of our living memory. Karuna is one such word in India.  It does not translate cleanly into “compassion” because it asks much more of us than sympathy, charity, or even kindness. Karuna is an obligation. It is the unsettling recognition that somebody else’s suffering is not separate from our own and therefore cannot be ignored without cost to the self. In the Indian philosophical imagination, Karuna holds together ethics, community, and governance in ways that are both simple and righteous. To speak of Karuna, then, is not to speak of benevolence in the abstract but of the moral mechanics by which a society chooses to function or fail. Reprsentational Image of Aloka, the peace dog! Via: Bobby Devito Across India’s spiritual traditions, compassion has never been passive, or at least that is what I found in my ...

✍️ Written by Saket Suman In a development likely to intensify global scrutiny over energy trade during wartime, a new dataset analyzed by German NGO Urgewald reveals that European Union member states funneled an estimated €7.2 billion to Russia in 2025 alone through imports from the Yamal LNG project.  The findings, backed by Kpler shipping data and released today, show that 76.1% of Yamal LNG exports, roughly one in every seven ships docking at European LNG terminals, were destined for the EU. File Photo; via FNNG Alliance This revelation carries sharp geopolitical consequences. With the EU having committed to a full ban on Russian LNG by 2027, the 2025 data illustrates a contradiction between stated policy and actual practice.  Despite a reduction in overall volumes, the EU’s proportional dependence on Yamal gas has deepened, and it casts doubts on Europe’s enforcement of sanctions amid Russia’s ongoing conflict in Ukraine. In an exc...

✍️ Written by Saket Suman The first quarter of the 21st century is ending with an inward silence that cannot be hidden despite tourists thronging major hotspots. This is a moment that is ripe for reflection, when the land of over a billion should pause, even if briefly, to glance over its shoulder before looking ahead again. Representational Image: INSV Kaundinya on her maiden voyage from Porbandar to Muscat. Via: PM NaMo In these twenty-five years, India has become compressed, elastic and restless. The republic that once imagined itself as a socialist, secular, democratic experiment is now often narrated through a different grammar of scale, speed, and spectacle. The people have changed, politics has consolidated, and the idea of governance has been rewired. India now stands at global forums with postures of pride and of paradox. The arrival of Narendra Modi in 2014 was a culmination of accumulated frustrations, deferred dreams and a desire...

✍️ Written by Saket Suman There is no neat way to say this: the Great Indian Dream is dying. And it’s not being killed in faraway conflict zones, or in newsrooms that peddle noise instead of truth. It is being murdered in back offices of publishing houses and literary circuits, where contracts are torn with a smile, where deadlines are missed with impunity, where one writer's labour of years is discarded over silence, and where reputations are butchered so that the powerful remain unbothered. The very spaces meant to champion creativity are the first to abandon those who try to speak freely, those who refuse to bend, those who dare to write with sincerity. Representational Image: The 1st stamp of independent India shows the Indian Flag, released on 21Nov1947. I have lived through this. I have worked on a book that came from lived experience, research, pain, and a rare kind of stubborn hope. And I have watched that book — like countless others...