Ajay Tiwari  I have always wondered why certain elite sections are so fascinated by Sanskrit, to the extent of even practicing speaking a language that, for all practical purposes, isn’t alive. During my Times of India stint in Gandhinagar, the Gujarat state capital, I personally witnessed an IAS bureaucrat, Bhagyesh Jha, trying to converse with a friend in Sanskrit.

As the Mahakumbh drew to a close, during my daily walk, I met a veteran BJP supporter—a neighbor with whom we would often share dinner in a group. An amicable person, the first thing he asked me, as he was about to take the lift to his flat, was, "How many people do you think must have participated in the holy dip?" He then stopped by to talk—which we did for a full half-hour, cutting into my walk time.

I felt a little uneasy when I received an invitation from well-known Gujarati writer Urvish Kothari, issued in the name of Navajeevan News and Prashant Dayal—a distinguished name among Gujarat’s crime reporters. The invitation was for the initiation of the Shiva Journalism Award in memory of Shivani Dayal, Prashant’s wife, who had passed away a few weeks earlier. The invitation suggested that the award, instituted in Shivani’s name, was established against the backdrop of the "challenges and risks" journalists face. It emphasized that journalists would not acquire their "distinct identity" without the support of those standing by their side—"mother, spouse, sister, or daughter."

I was pleasantly surprised—or should I say flattered, even at the risk of being called presumptuous—to find my former Times of India editor, Kingshuk Nag, refer to me as a "prominent journalist from Gujarat"! Nag had called me to ask whether, following the BJP’s electoral victory in Delhi, the party would want Gujarat’s identity to take root in the National Capital.

In an email alert, I recently received an explanation regarding a major reason said to have led to the defeat of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in Delhi—the alleged failure of its government, which ruled the state for three terms, to clean up the heavily polluted Yamuna.

I was talking to a close acquaintance in Delhi about the recent, allegedly crushing, defeat of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). This person, once a great supporter of the India Against Corruption movement that led to AAP’s formation, said the main reason for the party’s defeat was that it "didn't do anything for the general public." According to him, this went against the party, which had ruled the state for three terms.

A few days ago, I received a phone call from former BJP Chief Minister Suresh Mehta, who resigned from the party in 2007 following differences with the then Chief Minister Narendra Modi. Now 88, though still active, he told me he had prepared an alternative budget proposal ahead of the Gujarat government's budget session.

I was a little surprised to read a story in Business Today, a publication that should have nothing to do with religion or spirituality, let alone superstition. Carried as one of the choices by Google News, whose algorithm decides which stories to feature, the story attempts to describe a natural phenomenon using terms such as "mysterious," "mystical," "marvel of nature," and "intriguing."

How should one interpret a major problem that may be bogging down a private consultant while preparing an industry-friendly report on a situation that adversely impacts society—especially when the consultant sees little possibility of progress in the supposed desired direction?

When I heard from a couple of NRI professionals—currently on work visas and engaged in research projects at American universities—that one of President Donald Trump's major policy thrusts was to cut federal funding to the country's top educational institutions, I was instantly reminded of what Prof. Kaushik Basu had said while delivering a lecture in Ahmedabad.

Whatever reasons may be offered for the Aam Aadmi Party's defeat in Delhi—whether it was the BJP's promises of more freebies than AAP, the shedding of ultra-nationalist slogans, or the successful demolition of Arvind Kejriwal's "Mr. Clean" image—my recent interaction with a group of middle-class individuals highlighted a notable trend. Those who had just begun to sit on the fence were now once again returning to the BJP fold.

This is a continuation of my blog on how, while the start-up-developed AI app DeepSeek is being criticized for consistently rejecting content related to China or Maoism, there appears to be no mention in Western media about why another app, developed by the powerful Google, Gemini, remains silent on Indian political issues.  

I didn't know that there could ever be a thing as World Hijab Day until I received an email alert from Maryam Namazie of the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain (CEMB), stating that several ex-Muslim women's groups had observed the same day—February 1—as No Hijab Day! According to Namazie, the day "was created on February 1 as a direct response to World Hijab Day" to "illuminate the coercive and oppressive realities of the hijab as a pillar of sex apartheid and a war on women."

In a significant Facebook post, Rana Singh, former associate professor of English at Patna University, has revealed something that few seem to know. Titled "The Shudras in Manusmriti", Singh says,  because Manusmriti is discussed so often, he thought of reading it himself. “This book likely dates back to the 2nd or 3rd century BCE, and the presence of contradictory statements suggests that it is not the work of a single author,” he says in his Facebook post in Hindi, written in 2022 and recently reshared.

A recent paper, referring to the Household Consumption Expenditure Survey (HCES) 2022-23 of the Government of India (GoI), has debunked the official claim that poverty has substantially declined. Titled "Poverty in India: The Rangarajan Method and the 2022–23 Household Consumption Expenditure Survey", the paper —authored by scholars CA Sethu, LT Abhinav Surya, and CA Ruthu—states that "more than a quarter of India’s population falls below the poverty line."

Rajdeep Sardesai, Anand Yagnik This is a continuation of my earlier blog on well-known journalist Rajdeep Sardesai's lecture in memory of the late Achyut Yagnik at the Ahmedabad Management Association (AMA). I was a little surprised when I received the intimation about the venue for the lecture.

When I received an intimation that well-known journalist Rajdeep Sardesai was to speak at the Ahmedabad Management Association (AMA) on February 2, my instant reaction was: I know what he is going to say—his views are quite well known; he wouldn’t be saying anything new. Yet, I decided to go and listen to him to catch his mood at a time when the media, as he (and I) knew it, is changing fast due to the availability of new technological tools that were not accessible even a decade ago.

The powerful Chinese AI app DeepSeek, which has taken the Silicon Valley by surprise, as it has capacities matching Google’s Gemini and Open AI's ChatGPT, is being criticised for restricting free speech, and rightly so. It is being said that those signing up for the chatbot and its open-source technology "are being confronted with the Chinese Communist Party’s brand of censorship and information control."