As Delhi nears the second anniversary of the catastrophic Yamuna floods on July 13, 2023, the city remains ill-prepared for another potential disaster, with experts warning that systemic failures and unchecked development continue to threaten the river’s health. The 2023 floods saw the Yamuna inundate its floodplains and reclaim lost channels, surpassing the 1978 flood level at the Delhi railway bridge by a significant margin. 

India’s ambitious net-zero target by 2070 hinges critically on the success of its soon-to-be operational Indian Carbon Market (ICM). As per the CRISIL–Eversource Capital report, the ICM, structured under the Carbon Credit Trading Scheme (CCTS), 2023, is designed to create economic value out of emission reductions through a market-based carbon trading framework. But can a market-based solution work for India’s development context—and what are the risks?

The advocacy group Centre for Financial Accountability (CFA) has raised serious concerns over a recent World Bank brief that cites a decline in India’s consumption-based Gini coefficient — from 28.8 in 2011–12 to 25.5 in 2022–23 — portraying it as a sign of growing equality. According to CFA, the data offers a misleading picture of socio-economic reality on the ground.

Researchers from the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (IIM-A) have attributed the failure to address inhalant misuse among teenagers to "existing domestic policies." While the Juvenile Justice (JJ) Act 2015 penalizes the sale or provision of narcotics, psychotropic drugs, alcohol, and tobacco to minors (under 18), it notably omits inhalant misuse. Even the Gujarat Juvenile Justice Rules 2019, formulated for the Act's enforcement, also fail to "recognize the issue," the researchers highlight.

  The Government of India has refused to disclose any information under the Right to Information (RTI) Act related to its controversial decision to block over 8,000 social media accounts—mostly on X (formerly Twitter)—during Operation Sindoor, as well as to restrict access to several digital news platforms, including The Wire, in early May.

 "Major Hints" ("મેઝર હિન્ટ્સ"), translated into Gujarati by veteran journalist Anil Devpurkar and noted Gujarati writer Dr. Bharat Mehta, is an honest and powerful account of the author Dr. I. I. Pandya’s decades-long engagement with Maharaja Sayajirao University (MSU), Vadodara. Originally written in English, this work is more than just a personal memoir—it is a critical testimony on how public institutions function, fail, and sometimes resist.

  In a thought-provoking  column published in  Sandesh , eminent sociologist and former Vice-Chancellor Prof. Vidyut Joshi has raised urgent concerns over the erosion of intellectual autonomy and social relevance in Gujarat’s leading research and academic institutions. Building on insights from the recent paper  Secret of Creating High Performing Knowledge Institutions  by development economist Prof. Tushaar Shah, Joshi paints a stark picture of institutions that have strayed far from their foundational vision.

  As India commemorates a decade of the ambitious Digital India mission launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on July 1, 2015, a critical digital gap remains unaddressed: citizens still cannot file Right to Information (RTI) applications online with the Indian Parliament.

A few months back, I was made a member of a WhatsApp group called Polymath Academy. Frankly, I didn’t know what the word polymath meant until its administrator, veteran Gujarat-based sociologist Vidyut Joshi — with whom I have been interacting since the mid-1990s when he was with the Gandhi Labour Institute — told me it refers to a person with an exceptional academic record.