In India, which wants to be counted among developed nations, there is a rush among communities to be counted as backwards, because of caste-based reservation benefits. A post on X after the IIT Bombay suicide sent me researching about Devendrakula Vellalar, an SC community in Tamil Nadu that is demanding it be removed from the Scheduled Caste list. Here's what I found out about the unique demand of the DKV.
Bangladesh, the biggest producer and exporter of hilsa, is importing hundreds of tonnes of the prized fish from India. While Padmar Ilish is sought after in India, Bangladesh is importing hilsa from Gujarat, especially Bharuch. Here's how taste, supply, prices and processing are feeding the two-way trade.
Dharampal Singh had never stepped inside a courtroom. Then, in 2012, a raid on his modest Delhi University shop put him at the centre of a four-year legal battle with three of the world's biggest academic publishers. He feared he could go to jail, he worried about feeding his family and paying his workers, but he refused to give in — because, to him, the case wasn't just about photocopies.
The FSSAI has said in the Bombay High Court that Old Monk can't be sold as rum. The food regulator's action has revealed how most rums sold in India aren't rum. Most mass-market IMFL whiskies aren't whisky either. Nor are they rum. Here's addressing the elephant in the tavern.
Indian consumers are discovering that global food, drink and personal care brands often sell different formulations here. Fanta tastes sweeter and the formula of Head & Shoulders is different. Here's why products by the same brands taste, smell and feel different in India and abroad.
They were counting on a few minutes on Samay Raina's India's Got Latent to boost their following and earnings. The episode got recorded but was never aired after the Ranveer Allahbadia controversy last year. We spoke to two such participants whose episodes never aired, and who, like a dozen participants with them, remained latent.
IAS officer Tukaram Mudhe has shaken up the system as the Maharashtra FDA Commissioner. If bureaucrats win so much praise and adulation for just doing their job, why don't all of them serve honestly? Serving and retired officers shared what makes babus give in, and why integrity carries a personal cost.
A small loan with just a few taps on a phone, and what seems like an easy EMI can quickly become a debt trap. Millions of Indians are borrowing over and over again to repay loans, facilitated by instant loan apps. Hundreds of recovery calls daily, pressure on families and sleepless nights follow.
From booking Tatkal train tickets and filing RTIs to accessing EPF claims and court records, millions in India rely on government websites every day. Yet many users say these portals remain slow, glitchy and difficult to navigate. We tested some of these websites and spoke to users and experts to understand why.
Before they challenged the government at New Delhi's Jantar Mantar over the NEET paper leaks and irregularities in the education system, many young protesters first challenged the politics inside their own homes. Some arrived with bandaged hands. Others hid behind masks. Many carried unanswered calls from their BJP-supporting parents.
India's gated townships are like mini-republics. They are not replacing cities, but they are filling the gaps left by failing civic infrastructure. The question they pose is not why people are buying into them, but why so many feel they have to.
For many civilians, military wives are synonymous with officers' mess parties and Ladies' Nights. Their lives, however, revolve just as much around repeated relocations, rebuilding careers, raising families, welfare work and creating support systems wherever the next posting takes them.
For decades, India's brightest minds left home to shape the world's universities, laboratories and boardrooms. Today, many are returning, not out of nostalgia, but because India's biggest ideas can now be built at home. The country's quiet academic ghar wapsi may well be its most consequential Swadeshi movement yet.
Mumbai's Congress House, the pre-Independence-era landmark, is not a brothel, but men driven by lust and desire often fail to make the distinction. The former Congress office's proximity to a mujra house and the red-light district of Kamathipura make it carry a stigma. However, it is not really untouched by the sex trade.
They are not IITs, nor do they claim to be one. Yet the coaching institutes of Rajasthan's Kota and Sikar, which prepare lakhs of engineering and medical aspirants, have grown into mini-cities whose scale, influence, and infrastructure are comparable to some IITs.
What if we told you one of Mumbai's most enduring food cultures was born because Vastushastra once deemed their locations inauspicious? The story of the Irani cafes is not just about chai and brun-maska and old Bombay's charm, but about Irani migrants who turned Bombay's unwanted corner plots into some of its most unforgettable cultural spaces.
For generations, Indians hugged, groomed and cared for cows without giving it a name. Now, tiny cows, curated sessions and wellness packages worth thousands of rupees, are powering a cow-cuddling boom in India. Cow farms to luxury retreats to spiritual centres like ISKCON, where it's free, cow cuddling is everywhere.
The CBSE Class 12 marksheet may no longer decide a student's entire future, but it remains powerful enough to trigger panic when trust in the process breaks down. As a mother of a 16-year-old headed for the 2027 boards, I have to ask, why does an exam we claim matters less still hold such a chokehold on us?
A falling rupee is forcing Indian students abroad to cut meals, chase about-to-expire discounted food, and take up extra jobs. Their families are facing higher costs to sustain them in the UK or the US, even as the education loans keep ballooning.
The NEET-UG 2026 paper leak has pushed lakhs of aspirants back into uncertainty, anxiety and another cycle of mental marathon, which they thought had ended on May 3. This story is about the human cost that question paper leaks, NEET and beyond, extracts from aspirants and their families.
