History reminds us that the British East India Company made its fateful inroads through the soil of Bengal, and it was here that the first seeds of the Indian freedom struggle were sown—from the spark of the Sepoy Mutiny at Barrackpore to the organized revolutionary movements of the early twentieth century. It was this intellectual and radical ferocity that led Bal Gangadhar Tilak to famously remark, "What Bengal thinks today, India will think tomorrow." If Tilak’s axiom holds any residual truth, then the current tremors in the Bengali identity are not merely a regional concern; they are a bellwether for pan-Indian consequences.

I just had a 1,400-kilometre journey along the banks of the Narmada, from its primordial source at Amarkantak to its churning estuary at the Gulf of Khambhat. It is more than a geographic traversal; for a Bengali rooted in West Bengal, it is a clinical audit of the soul. As we drove through the heart of Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Gujarat, our car—adorned with a bilingual banner in Bengali and Hindi—served as a mobile lightning rod for questions of identity. I am neither a devout pilgrim nor a hardened atheist, yet as a physicist accustomed to observing the anomalies that break established models, the experience was a revelation of a systemic collapse.

I was met with perplexing, often uncomfortable interrogations about the state of West Bengal, and tellingly, nearly all of them came from Bengalis—ascetics who had renounced the world in the forests of Central India and expatriates who had built thriving lives far from the Ganga-Padma delta. When I attempted to lean on the "classical" crutches of our political discourse—the perceived step-motherly behaviour of the Centre or the rise of external communal polarisations—the arguments failed to cut much ice. My interlocutors, many living in states where local governments are perennially at odds with New Delhi, pointed out the obvious: these are the constants of Indian federalism. They asked, with a bluntness that only distance affords, why the Bengali alone seems to use these as perennially convenient excuses for a perceptible cultural and intellectual retreat.

This sense of a culture in defensive withdrawal was recently punctuated by the ultimate straw on the camel’s back: a prominent political leader in West Bengal demanding a "loyalty test" for Bengalis. It was a crude, provincial echo of the infamous "Cricket Test" proposed by the British Conservative politician Norman Tebbit in 1990, who suggested that South Asian immigrants were not truly British unless they cheered for England. When a culture begins demanding loyalty tests from its own people, it has transitioned from an expansive, confident civilization into a terrified, gated enclave. It is the ultimate admission of insecurity. We are no longer a culture that attracts; we are a community that suspects its own residents. This provincialism is the absolute antithesis of the universalism of Rabindranath Tagore, Swami Vivekananda, or Kazi Nazrul Islam, yet it is being peddled as a desperate defence of identity. As a physicist, this suggests to me that the "classical model" of Bengali identity has reached its ultraviolet catastrophe—the point where old equations no longer describe the subatomic reality of our crisis.

To understand this collapse, we must look at the "anomalies" that our intellectual class prefers to ignore, specifically the systematic academic sanitisation of our revolutionary history. For decades, an intellectual elite—often comfortably entrenched in Western universities—has popularized the term "Gentleman Terrorists" to describe the Bengali revolutionaries of the early twentieth century. This is a masterstroke of domesticating the radical. By appending "gentleman" to the revolutionary, they strip the fire from the fuse, recasting the bomb-maker as a frustrated Bhadralok or a sociological case study in middle-class angst. They turn the roar of the movement into a polite, localized grievance. This displacement of truth is devastating. While these intellectuals "deconstruct" the Bengali spirit for global consumption, they conveniently omit the sheer, brutal scale of the sacrifice. Look at the records of the Andaman Cellular Jail, the dreaded Kala Pani. Of the political prisoners held in those soul-crushing cells, subjected to the oil mill and the whip, more than 450 were Bengalis. These were not "gentlemen" engaging in a hobby of dissent between cups of tea; they were the steel backbone of a pan-Indian uprising. The British Empire feared them not for their "gentlemanly" conduct, but for their terrifying ability to organize across linguistic and provincial lines. Yet, in our modern curriculum, these 450+ names have been reduced to a footnote, or worse, lumped into a "terrorist" category that modern Bengal is now taught to view with a sterilized, academic distance.

Consider the first random anomaly: Rajendra Nath Lahiri. In the hallowed halls of elite Indian universities, the names Ram Prasad Bismil, Ashfaqullah Khan, and Thakur Roshan Singh are household icons, the "poster boys" of the Hindustan Republican Association (HRA). Yet, how many modern Bengalis—those currently obsessed with loyalty tests—even know that the mastermind behind the Dakshineswar bombing and the Kakori Rail Dacoity was a Bengali named Rajen Lahiri? The British Empire was so terrified of Lahiri’s intellect and radicalism that they hanged him in Gonda Jail on December 17, 1927—two full days before his three comrades were sent to the gallows. They feared a rescue attempt; they feared the "Bengali spark" igniting the North. Today, Lahiri is a ghost in his own land. We have traded our revolutionary fire for a manageable, "intellectualized" version of history. We claim the revolution in our poetry, but we bury the men who actually built the bombs.

The second random anomaly is Dhirendranath Datta. Every February 21st, we swell with pride as the United Nations observes International Mother Language Day, a global tribute to the Bengali Language Movement. But we rarely discuss the man who first moved the resolution in the Pakistan Constituent Assembly in February 1948 to make Bengali a state language. Datta was a "Bengali Gentleman" in the truest sense—principled, bilingual, and fiercely rooted. Yet, his trajectory—ignored by the power centres of West Bengal and eventually tortured and murdered by the Pakistan Army in 1971—points to a culture that prefers symbols over substance. We celebrate the event because it feeds our vanity, but we have discarded the man because his brand of gritty, constitutional defiance is too demanding for our current era of performative politics. By ignoring men like Lahiri and Datta, we have hollowed out our identity, leaving a vacuum filled by narrow provincialism and "Tebbit-style" loyalty tests.

Like Lord Kelvin at the zenith of the nineteenth century, our political and intellectual class declares that our identity is secure, that these "anomalies" of forgotten heroes and diaspora insecurity are minor "clouds" in an otherwise clear sky. They are wrong. These are not small clouds; they are the signals of a total paradigm collapse. The "classical" Bengali identity, built on nineteenth-century Renaissance nostalgia and mid-twentieth-century rhetoric, can no longer explain or sustain our twenty-first-century reality. It is a model that has failed to account for the kinetic energy of a world that no longer rewards nostalgia.

I call upon the Gen-Z of India in general, and Bengalis in particular, to be the Max Plancks, the Einsteins, and the Heisenbergs of our social fabric. Just as those young physicists did not try to "patch up" Newtonian physics but instead realized it was fundamentally incapable of explaining the subatomic world, the younger generation must realize that the current provincialism of our leaders is a dead end. The old world of "gentlemanly" sanitization and exclusionary tests is collapsing under its own weight. Like the scientific revolution of the early twentieth century, which led to the total collapse of the objective materialist world through the work of Dirac, Schrödinger, and Bohr, we need a paradigm shift in how we perceive ourselves. The anomalies are shouting at us from the banks of the Narmada to the cells of the Andamans. Gen-Z must stop looking at the horizon of the past and start thinking hard about the quantum leap required to remain relevant. The "objective materialist" version of Bengal—defined by borders, loyalty tests, and sanitized history—is over. A new, radical, and universal identity must be born, or we will remain forever haunted by the ghosts of the men we chose to forget.

The war in the Middle East demonstrates the sheer failure of the US in terms of clear strategic planning based on effective cost-benefit analysis before going into it. Hence, it failed in anticipating the likely outcomes. The Trump administration moved by simplistic and sweeping understanding judged the military operation would be a short-lived and surgical one that would push Iran to the precipice of regime change. However, this thinking proved wrong and Iran refused to be Venezuela 2.0.

Led by this overly simplistic assumption, both the US and Israel started the game with a gamble to assassinate Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, hoping for the collapse of the regime. However, this did not force Iran to capitulate. They assassinated the commanders and leaders representing Iran’s political and military strength and tried to destroy the country’s nuclear and military strength as much as they could; still, Iran prevailed. The US and Israel were largely successful in scoring these tactical gains vis-à-vis Iran. But judged by overall strategy, they failed and the US paid a heavy price in each step towards knocking out Iran’s missile and drone launching capabilities as the war drained the US stockpile of updated missiles, arms and ammunition along with financial resources. Meanwhile, the US President Donald Trump was forced to recognise the rising costs of the war and recalibrate the strategy by declaring a pause in strikes and looking for off-ramps.

Iran’s Asymmetric Strategies

Iran was aware of the fact that it could not have a conventional victory against a joint military campaign of the US and Israel, two of the world’s most advanced militaries. Hence, it had been training itself since the Iran-Iraq war 1980-88 in the art of surviving the military offensives and imposing high costs on the adversaries. Its preparation and training stem from the awareness that it faced an existential threat from both the US and Israel since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, quickly followed by the protracted Iran-Iraq war of eight years,  where Iran alone fought against a colossus collective adversary, just like the current war, when Iran is confronting the US, Israel and Gulf states. Then, Iraq was backed by the US and the Soviet Union, which were providing key assistance at the military, intelligence and diplomatic levels and the Gulf states were assisting with financial inflows. While confronting the two superpowers, Iran was cut off from the international military and economic supply chains. As a result, it was necessary to learn the art of cultivating various non-state actors and fostering a shadow economy not only to survive against the adversaries but to impose prohibitive costs on them as well. Against this backdrop, Iran developed a strategy of mine warfare and fought by recruiting irregular fighters as regular channels of moving men and materiel were blocked. The asymmetric war strategies that developed out of expediency were further fine-tuned and became an integral part of Tehran’s regular strategy to maintain forward defence to help it project power in the region while avoiding direct confrontation with great powers. The deaths and destruction that Iran had to put up with during the Iran-Iraq war propelled it to adopt a forward defence strategy. Using various proxy groups simultaneously allowed Iran the leeway to adopt a course of deniability to avoid exposure to any kind of direct war.

Iran’s shadow economy was maintained through “shadow fleet” or “dark fleet” referring to a covert network of hundreds of older, often uninsured tankers that use deceptive tactics to export oil in violation of international sanctions. Under the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp’s (IRGC) institutional control, an expansive military-industrial complex was placed.

The IRGC assiduously built Hezbollah as a massive military force in Lebanon. The American military invasion of Iraq in 2003 helped Iran cultivate Shiite militias who adopted new techniques of asymmetric warfare, including roadside bombing networks, intelligence-driven targeting of US diplomats, commanders other personnel. They also used partner militias to maintain deniability. Civil war in Syria provided a rich theatre of experience for the Iranian-backed proxies since 2011 where they confronted local Islamic radical groups as well as foreign forces. Iran, over the years, developed decentralized logistics network to move fighters and materiel through Iraq and Syria, which is being used in this war as well. The IRGC trained the military personnel as well as proxies in the doctrine of absorbing strikes, dispersing and reconstituting, which has been instrumental not in winning wars but in making the war too costly for the adversaries to reinvigorate.

The Economic and Political Dimensions of Asymmetric War

Iran, over decades, has been cut off from the international financial market and trading system, whereas its assets remain frozen and it is deprived of generating oil revenues through legitimate channels. It has been kept out of the petrodollar system. Hence, it did not see any costs to itself when it sought to hold the global trading and financial system to hostage by blocking the Strait of Hormuz and striking missiles at ports and firms across the Middle East, as it saw little stake in safeguarding the same.

Iran witnessed how the US military bases that were built around the Middle East temporarily to provide security to the Gulf countries in the turbulent region during and following the Gulf War of 1990 were made permanent. The Gulf countries were made to tolerate the military alliance between the US and Israel in return for the American security partnership with them. The US also floated the plan of the Arab-Israeli peace process to alienate Iran. Hence, Iran harboured the desire to demonstrate to the Gulf countries that the US pivot to the region is tethered to and closely aligned with Israel’s interests rather than those of the Gulf countries. In this war, Iran demonstrated how, by initiating the war along with Israel, the US placed the Gulf economy and security in jeopardy. Iran, by attacking the bases, diplomatic and financial centres, with reasonable success in the Gulf region, demonstrated that the US military bases have been built only to provide security to Israel rather than the Gulf countries. Iran sought to raise the political cost of American military operations by generating such a trust deficit in the Gulf.

Iran developed alternative strategies and political willpower to persist and fight back even after the assassination of the top leaders of all branches of military and intelligence wings, along with the decapitation of the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic, which Tehran had predicted and was prepared for the eventuality. The adversaries expected that it would steer the country towards regime change. However, the attainment of these tactical gains failed to even deter Iran, let alone the collapse of the regime. The US and Israel eventually prolonged the war driven by sunk cost fallacy. Iran, on the other hand, based on its years of experience and awareness of the massive military threat from the US and Israel to its existence, had trained itself in decentralized warfare tactics by empowering military personnel at each level of decision-making and carrying out military operations.

The removal of older generation leaders paved the way for the assumption of leadership by younger generations who are more battle-hardened and ambitious. Iran knows that success for it is just to survive the military onslaught and impose enough costs to prove that it can uphold its sovereignty by dampening the willingness of external powers to fight an expensive and uncertain war.

In the long and complex history of the Indian National Congress, few leaders embody organisational loyalty and grassroots credibility as profoundly as Mallikarjun Kharge. His election as Congress President in October 2022 marked a historic departure from nearly a quarter century of Gandhi family stewardship, making him the first non-Gandhi party chief in 24 years. At a time when the party was confronting electoral setbacks and internal introspection, his elevation signalled both continuity and institutional renewal. Rather than emerging through charisma-driven mobilisation, Kharge rose through decades of disciplined organisational work, reinforcing the Congress tradition of leadership shaped by structure and ideological commitment rather than spectacle.

Born on July 21, 1942, in Warwatti village in present-day Bidar district of Karnataka, Kharge’s early life was marked by social and economic hardship. Educated in Gulbarga (now Kalaburagi), where he completed his graduation and law degree, he first displayed leadership as General Secretary of the Student Union at Government College. As a practicing lawyer, he became closely associated with labour unions, defending workers in industrial disputes and earning the enduring nickname “Solillada Sardar” — the leader who never lost an election. His formal entry into the Congress in 1969 coincided with a transformative phase in Indian politics. In 1972, he was elected to the Karnataka Legislative Assembly from Gurmitkal, beginning a rare record of nine consecutive Assembly victories spanning nearly four decades. Handling key portfolios such as Revenue, Rural Development, Industries, Transport, and Water Resources across successive state governments, Kharge established a reputation for administrative rigour, land reform initiatives, and strengthening Panchayati Raj institutions.

Kharge’s shift to national politics in 2009, after winning the Lok Sabha election from Gulbarga, marked a new phase in his public life. As Union Minister for Labour and Employment, he focused on expanding social security for unorganised workers, strengthening Employees’ State Insurance coverage, and broadening provident fund access. In 2013, as Minister of Railways, he emphasised safety and institutional stability during a challenging period for the ministry. Following the Congress defeat in the 2014 general elections, Kharge was appointed Leader of the Congress Party in the Lok Sabha, becoming one of the principal opposition voices despite limited parliamentary numbers. Later elected to the Rajya Sabha in 2020, he assumed the role of Leader of the Opposition in 2021, where he consistently raised concerns on federalism, institutional autonomy, agrarian distress, and legislative scrutiny, earning cross-party respect for his measured and constitutionally grounded interventions.

Kharge’s election as Congress President in 2022 represented both symbolic and structural significance: a senior Dalit leader ascending to the party’s highest office through an internal electoral process. As president, he has prioritised booth-level restructuring, revival of frontal organisations, opposition coordination, and internal dialogue, while maintaining organisational continuity. His leadership style rests on consensus-building rather than populism, administrative discipline rather than rhetorical flourish. A consistent advocate of social justice, reservation safeguards, and constitutional protections, he has carefully balanced identity representation with institutional responsibility. From the Assembly corridors of Karnataka to the national Parliament and party presidency, Kharge’s five-decade career reflects endurance, discipline, and principled politics. In an era often defined by immediacy and spectacle, his journey stands as a testament to steady organisational work and democratic resilience.

The author is a Congress Grassroots Leader based in Bengaluru

When the last firework fades and the city’s festive glow softens into a gentler light, something else begins, sort of a private ritual of looking inward. As we read this today, the calendar has turned, greetings have been exchanged, and the world appears eager to move forward. Yet for many of us, it is precisely in this pause that reflection finds its place, not as an act of performance or resolution, but as an honest reckoning with what has been lived and what remains to be understood, to be acted upon. Socrates’ reminder that the unexamined life is not worth living may sound severe only until one recognises its profound intent. It is less a judgement than an invitation. An invitation to resist living on the momenta and tides of time. It asks us to pause and notice what shapes and shades our days have taken.

A “year” is less a feature of reality than a measuring convention. It is our way of carving continuous change into a unit that the mind can hold. In astronomy, it is simply an orbital interval that tells about the Earth’s return to a comparable position in its path around the Sun, closely tied to the cycle of seasons. In physics, time itself is not an absolute backdrop; in relativity, it is interwoven with space and depends on the observer’s motion, so even the notion of “the same amount of time” is frame-dependent. What gives time its felt direction, meanwhile, is not the calendar but irreversibility in the physical world, a statistical tendency for entropy to increase, which provides the “arrow of time.” So when we say a year has “ended,” nothing in nature pauses to acknowledge it; the only real shift is informational: we take a long, continuous stream of experience, compress it, compare it, and through that act of analysis, we draw a perspective.

For everyone, I believe, in hindsight, 2025 feels full. Not loud. Not triumphant. Full in the way a river is full - steady, patient, sometimes turbulent, always moving with grace and never seeking validation. There were moments of clarity and moments of confusion, days that moved effortlessly and days that resisted every intention. But what remains is not the inventory of events; it is the manner in which the year was lived, being largely present, less scattered, more engaged than afraid. That itself feels like a wholesome achievement.

We often assume that life’s difficulty lies in what happens to us. Readers of philosophy have long known that it is quite the other way around. Much of our unease arises from our absence—from living too far ahead in anticipation or too far behind in rumination. When a year is lived without drifting ahead of it or falling behind it, when moments are met as they unfold rather than translated into worry or regret, something quieter but more essential becomes visible: the underlying goodness of life itself, often unnoticed because it is ordinary and unannounced. That goodness, I have learned, is rarely an act of the self. It does not arise from discipline alone, nor from any solitary resolve. It arrives through others. Through patience extended by them without sighs, forgiveness that does not demand confession, and the acceptance without trials of our imperfect versions. There were those who absorbed rough edges without turning them into accusations, who stayed present when absence would have been easier. Love of this kind does not declare itself as virtue; it works invisibly, creating the conditions in which one is allowed to grow.

Looking back, humility comes naturally. Not because everything went according to plan we would have authored, but because very little did. The year did not unfold like a design carefully created by us; but it revealed itself more like a script discovered scene by scene. At times, life felt uncannily arranged, as if an unseen intelligence was placing circumstances and people exactly where they needed to be. Sometimes this meant rest. Sometimes comfort. Sometimes it was a stumbling into learning and growing. Different traditions have named this order in different ways. The Stoics spoke of logos, a rational coherence beneath apparent chaos. Indian thought describes ?ta, a sustaining rhythm that holds the world, whether or not we understand it. What matters less than the name is the recognition that meaning does not always require control. There is a quiet relief in accepting that not every outcome must be authored to be worthwhile.

This is not to romanticise the year. It was not fair in all its distributions. Life or its years rarely are. Ease and difficulty do not arrive in equal measure, nor do they obey effort. Pretending otherwise is denial. Yet noticing this imbalance is not cynicism; it is awareness. The Buddha’s insight was not that life is suffering, but that suffering begins when we refuse to see life as it is. Acceptance, in this sense, does not become resignation; rather, it brings clarity without complaint.

Some moments invite revision. Revisiting the words spoken too sharply, silences held too long, reactions that could have been gentler. But time, in its benevolence, does not seem to demand perfection. It asks for honesty of presence. Even the much-invoked law of averages feels less mechanical when viewed this way. It appears not as cold arithmetic, but as life’s inherent tendency toward attaining balance. But this would make sense to someone who wishes to see it this way, for it can be easily missed, just as daylight can be mistaken for darkness by someone who refuses to lift their hand over their eyes.

As the calendar turns again, the language of reinvention becomes irresistibly seductive. New year, new self. Yet psychology tells us that radical reinvention is rarely how human change actually works. The self is not replaced overnight; it is carried forward. Our identities are built as narratives, not resets. They are shaped by continuity more than rupture. What we call a “new beginning” is usually another chapter written by the same hand, with the same habits, values, and emotional grooves still faintly visible beneath the fresh ink. Change, when it lasts, is almost always incremental. Research on habit formation and behaviour change shows that progress comes not from dramatic overhauls but from small, repeated adjustments that respect existing patterns rather than deny them. When we try to become someone entirely new each year, like someone appealing to the moment, we often lose our bearings, severing continuity in the very name of growth. The old patterns then return, not as failures, but as reminders of who we already are.

What can change is texture. Patterns can be softened, refined, redirected. Beliefs can be questioned. Responses can become less reactive, more deliberate. But erasure is rare and perhaps unnecessary. Psychological maturity lies not in abandoning the self, but in integrating it more wisely. The Greeks grasped this intuitively in their ethic of meden agan, which means nothing in excess. Not ambition, which overreaches. Not restraint, which withholds life. Not even reflection, which can harden into rumination. Balance, they understood, is not achieved by reinvention but by proportion, which is the steady calibration of what already exists. However, such a balance cannot be coerced into existence through urgency or control. It emerges slowly, through proportion, repetition, and the discipline of small actions performed without spectacle. Perhaps moving forward does not mean becoming someone else, but becoming more aligned with who one already is. Cleaner choices. Fewer unnecessary engagements. Less noise. More truth, especially with oneself. And while doing this, we must bear in mind that each of us walks a path that appears comparable to that of others, but only from a distance. Measuring our progress against someone else’s milestones is like using another person’s map to navigate an unfamiliar terrain. We will advance in some places and falter in others. This, too, belongs to the rhythm.

If there is one understanding worth carrying into the year ahead, it is this: heaviness is not always a burden. Often, it is the weight of something meaningful. And lightness, when it comes, is not earned by escape, but by endurance. The task, then, is simple, though never easy, to keep showing up. To return to the work after falling short. To bow quietly after doing well. And above all, to live in a way that feels true from the inside, because in the end, that is the only measure that does not fluctuate.

India’s Constitution bears the imprint of many hands, but few contributed as quietly and profoundly as Sir B. N. Rau — remembered today, 72 years on.

30 November marks the 72nd death anniversary of Sir Benegal Narsing Rau (1887–1953), the constitutional thinker whose scholarship shaped the foundations of India’s Republic. His contributions remain among the most significant yet least recognised in our constitutional history. Remembering him today restores a vital part of our national memory.

Born in Mangalore in 1887, Rau was the second son of Dr. R. R. Rau, a respected physician and educationist. His family produced several distinguished public servants, including a dean of Banaras Hindu University, an RBI Governor, and B. Shiva Rao, the parliamentarian-journalist who authored The Framing of India’s Constitution, the definitive chronicle of India’s founding. Rau’s own brilliance was evident early. Graduating from Presidency College, Madras with a rare triple first class, he proceeded to Trinity College, Cambridge, where even a young Jawaharlal Nehru described him in a letter home as “frightfully clever.”

Rau entered the Indian Civil Service in 1910 and developed a deep understanding of legislation and governance. Between 1935 and 1937, he undertook one of the largest legal reform exercises in modern Indian history: revising the entire statutory code after the Government of India Act, 1935. This enormous task — completed in less than two years — earned him a knighthood in 1938.

From 1939 to 1944, Rau served as a judge of the Bengal High Court at Calcutta. His ruling in GP Stewart v. B. K. Roy Chaudhury (1939) became a foundational precedent on legislative repugnancy, later affirmed by the Supreme Court in Tika Ramji (1956). He then briefly served as Prime Minister of Jammu & Kashmir (1944–45), gaining frontline experience in federal complexities.

His defining contribution began in 1947. On 29 August, the Constituent Assembly appointed Rau as its Constitutional Adviser. In just eight weeks, he produced the first complete Draft Constitution, a 240-article, 13-schedule document that offered India not merely a structure but a coherent constitutional philosophy. This draft became the base text that the Drafting Committee later refined.

The strength of Rau’s draft lay in his method. He did not imitate foreign models; he studied them with rigour. Travelling to the United States, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Canada, he met judges, scholars and policymakers. He discussed judicial review with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, examined Irish parliamentary democracy, studied Canadian federalism, and absorbed lessons from European constitutional traditions. His aim was always adaptation, not imitation — to harmonise global constitutional wisdom with India’s unique social and political realities.

Among Rau’s most enduring contributions was the architecture of fundamental rights. He insisted that rights must be enforceable. Accordingly, he proposed a two-tier design: any law inconsistent with fundamental rights would be void, and the right to move the Supreme Court for enforcement would itself be a fundamental right. This concept later crystallised into Article 32 — the guarantee that constitutional promises would be matched by constitutional remedies.

Equally significant was Rau’s insistence on precision. Having examined the consequences of vague guarantees in other jurisdictions — particularly the American due process doctrine — he warned against broad language that could enable judicial overreach or legislative evasion. His Notes on Fundamental Rights reveal a careful balance between liberty and constitutional discipline, an equilibrium that continues to influence Indian constitutional interpretation.

After the Constitution’s adoption in 1949, Rau became India’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations. His diplomatic clarity earned him wide respect. In 1952, he was elected a judge of the Permanent Court of International Justice at The Hague. Before his election, he was even regarded as a potential candidate for Secretary-General of the United Nations — an extraordinary recognition of his stature in international law.

Yet Rau remains little known outside specialist circles. Partly this is due to his temperament: he disliked public attention, preferred scholarship to rhetoric, and believed constitutional work should speak for itself. History often remembers those who occupy the podium, not those who labour quietly behind the scenes. But overlooking Rau diminishes our understanding of how the Constitution came to embody clarity, balance and intellectual depth.

On this 72nd anniversary of his passing, it is fitting to honour the scholar who helped give the Republic its constitutional soul. Sir Benegal Narsing Rau reminds us that democracies are built not only by leaders and legislators but by those who think deeply, draft meticulously and serve quietly. He remains one of modern India’s most remarkable, if least celebrated, architects — and remembering him today is an act of both justice and gratitude.

Dr. Charu Mathur, Advocate-on-Record, Supreme Court of India. Views expressed are personal.

When good intentions masquerade as grand success, the truth about deprivation becomes the first casualty.

The Kerala government’s claim to have eradicated extreme poverty deserves applause for its moral ambition — but also scrutiny for its methodological confusion and semantic sleight of hand. What is being celebrated as the world’s second instance, after China, of the complete elimination of extreme poverty, is in fact a rebranding of a welfare rehabilitation drive. The Extreme Poverty Eradication Programme (EPEP) may have changed lives, but to call it an “eradication of extreme poverty” is a categorical overstatement that weakens the credibility of Kerala’s otherwise impressive social development legacy.

A Statistical Mirage

The first red flag lies in the very arithmetic of the claim. The government asserts that 64,006 “families” — comprising 1,03,099 individuals — have been brought out of extreme poverty. That translates to an average family size of 1.6 — a demographic impossibility in a state whose average household size is 4.5. What the government calls “families” are evidently households, and that error is not just linguistic but analytical.

The mistake is compounded when the project’s architects try to align this number with NITI Aayog’s estimate that 0.73% of Kerala’s population lives in extreme poverty. Even by their own figures, the project covers barely 0.28% of the population — less than half the officially recognised proportion. In effect, Kerala has not eradicated extreme poverty; it has redefined it to fit a politically convenient narrative.

A Redefinition of the Poor

The EPEP’s conceptual problem runs deeper. The programme’s eligibility criteria exclude the poorest households already covered under existing schemes, such as the Antyodaya Anna Yojana — 5.9 lakh ration cardholders deemed “poorest of the poor.” If the policy logic was to “reach those left out of welfare,” this was not extreme poverty eradication but gap-filling in welfare coverage.

In economic terms, EPEP targeted a residual group — the destitute, marginalised, and unregistered poor — rather than the extremely poor in the multidimensional sense defined by the World Bank or NITI Aayog’s MPI framework. What Kerala has effectively achieved is rehabilitation of destitution, not eradication of extreme poverty. A more accurate name for the initiative would be the Rehabilitation Project for the Destitute.

The Global Definition: What Is ‘Extreme Poverty’?

The World Bank’s updated (2022) global threshold for extreme poverty stands at US$2.15 per person per day (2017 PPP), a benchmark intended to capture the bare minimum required for subsistence — access to food, shelter, and basic health. Those living between US$3.65 and US$6.85 are classified as “moderate poor” or “lower-middle-income poor,” depending on regional cost structures. Importantly, the World Bank conceptualises poverty not as a static income threshold but as a multi-dimensional state of deprivation — encompassing education, healthcare, living standards, and social participation.

By this definition, poverty eradication demands longitudinal income data, not administrative enumeration. Kerala’s EPEP, however, measures success through the completion of rehabilitation microplans, not through household income or consumption surveys. The absence of periodic income tracking, asset evaluation, or cross-verification with NSSO consumption data renders the “eradication” claim statistically indefensible.

NITI Aayog’s Multidimensional Poverty Index: A Contrast in Rigor

India’s Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), launched by NITI Aayog in 2021, is based on the Global MPI methodology developed by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). It uses 12 indicators across three dimensions — health, education, and standard of living — each weighted to compute a composite deprivation score.

Households deprived in one-third or more of these indicators are considered multidimensionally poor. In Kerala, only 0.55% of people fall under this category — the lowest in India — reflecting decades of investment in human development.

Yet, the EPEP’s identification method stands in sharp contrast. Instead of using a multidimensional deprivation matrix, it relied on local body nominations and participatory enumeration. Individuals were identified through community meetings, Kudumbashree inputs, and field-level verification — useful for targeting humanitarian relief, but insufficient for measuring poverty in a statistically rigorous way. The EPEP microplans focused on immediate provisioning — housing, ration cards, pensions, and health coverage — without establishing baseline or endline multidimensional indicators. Thus, its success is administrative, not empirical.

In short, NITI Aayog measures poverty through structured deprivation indices; Kerala measures it through the completion of welfare checklists.

The Economics of Confusion

From a development economics standpoint, poverty eradication cannot be verified through administrative enumeration alone. It requires a poverty dynamics analysis — measuring not only who has been lifted above the poverty line, but who stays there sustainably. Kerala’s EPEP lacks such a longitudinal design. Its identification was based on local body surveys and community nomination rather than on household consumption or multidimensional deprivation indices. The programme rightly provided homes, documents, and basic entitlements — but these are inputs, not outcomes. Without income diversification, asset accumulation, or employment stability, beneficiaries remain vulnerable to relapse.

Moreover, the programme’s microplans —immediate, intermediate, and long-term — while laudable in concept, depend heavily on interdepartmental coordination and local capacity. Without institutionalised monitoring, this coordination often decays after the initial political momentum fades. Poverty eradication is not an event; it is a continuous process.

A Political Economy of Virtue

To dismiss EPEP as a mere electoral gimmick would be unfair. The programme’s moral core — extending care to society’s “wasted lives”, as sociologist Zygmunt Bauman termed them — deserves recognition. For thousands of mentally ill, homeless, or abandoned citizens, EPEP has brought a measure of dignity.

But Kerala’s political culture is steeped in the virtue economy of communism — where compassion often doubles as ideology. The narrative of “being the first state to eliminate extreme poverty” serves both a moral and political purpose: reaffirming the Left’s developmental exceptionalism. In this performative frame, criticism becomes heresy, and questioning data becomes “anti-communist propaganda.”

The Missing Poor

One of the gravest shortcomings of EPEP is its tribal blindness. Despite high deprivation among Scheduled Tribes — notably the Paniya, Adiya, and Kattunaikkar communities of Wayanad and Attappady — they constitute only about 5% of the identified beneficiaries. This is not just a data flaw; it is a justice failure.

Kerala’s celebrated decentralisation does not automatically translate to inclusion. When the structures of identification are community-driven but socially embedded, marginal groups often remain invisible within participatory processes dominated by local elites.

The Broader Policy Lesson

Kerala’s experience offers a paradox worth noting. Its claim of zero extreme poverty coincides with the persistence of severe unemployment (particularly among youth and graduates) and growing informalisation of labour. In such a context, declaring the end of extreme poverty without addressing the structural roots of deprivation — employment, asset inequality, and social mobility — amounts to policy triumphalism rather than transformation.

The global community, too, must be cautious in celebrating this model. If every welfare convergence initiative can be christened a “poverty eradication” programme, the moral currency of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 1: No Poverty) will be quickly devalued.

Conclusion: Beyond Semantics

Kerala’s Extreme Poverty Eradication Project is both a triumph and a cautionary tale. It reflects the best of decentralised, humane governance — yet it exposes the perils of overclaiming success. To dignify destitution is noble; to disguise it as eradication is deceptive. True poverty eradication demands empirical humility: rigorous data, independent audits, and a willingness to accept that progress is never total. In development economics, as in life, false victories can be more dangerous than honest failures.

Kerala has taken a commendable step toward a society of care. But to call it an end to extreme poverty is, at best, a moral exaggeration — and, at worst, a policy hoax dressed in the garb of compassion.

The column has been authored by Ms. Hemangi Sinha, Project Head, World Intellectual Foundation, and Pravin Kumar Singh, Senior Project Associate, World Intellectual Foundation.

On 3 November 2025 in Boston, Massachusetts, the Boston Global Forum (BGF) together with its initiative the AI World Society (AIWS) presented the 2025 World Leader for Peace and Security Award to Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, recognising his lifetime of extraordinary contributions to global peace-building, reconciliation, and humanitarian leadership.

The award marks the tenth anniversary of this honour (2015–2025), which celebrates individuals who embody moral courage, visionary governance, and compassion in advancing global peace and ethical progress. Since its inception, past laureates have included the likes of Shinz? Abe (Japan) and Angela Merkel (Germany) in 2015; former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki?moon in 2016; Sauli Niinistö (Finland) in 2018; Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the people of Ukraine in 2022; and Emmanuel Macron (France) in 2024.

For India, this moment is especially significant — Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s recognition places the country’s spiritual and humanitarian leadership firmly alongside the world’s most respected statesmen and visionaries. It underscores India’s role as a “Vishwa Guru” on the global stage, affirming how ancient wisdom continues to inform contemporary ethics and governance.

BGF honoured him for his global leadership in peace and reconciliation, his humanitarian impact across 180 + countries, and his moral guidance in the age of artificial intelligence and digital transformation. The Forum described him as a “bridge-builder free from agenda or bias.” His interventions in conflict regions — from Colombia (where his involvement is credited with helping end a 52-year armed conflict between the FARC and the government) to Iraq, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Venezuela, and Kashmir — exemplify his hands-on, compassionate approach.

In his acceptance remarks, Gurudev emphasised the need for embedding spirituality and peace education into global governance:

“Peace cannot come by words; it has to translate into action. We often say ‘peace and security’ in one breath. A lot is done for security, but very little attention is given to peace. Peace-building is essential. A moral and spiritual force is essential to quell the distrust and distress our societies face today. Let us dream of a stress-free, violence-free world — a society where peace, compassion, and creativity flourish.”

Through the Art of Living Foundation, founded in 1981, Gurudev has pioneered practical programmes such as the SKY Breath Meditation (Sudarshan Kriya) that heal trauma, reduce stress, and cultivate emotional resilience — the very foundations for sustainable peace. The Foundation’s work includes mediating peace processes in conflict zones, rehabilitating over 800,000 prisoners through meditation programmes, reviving more than 70 rivers and thousands of water-bodies via environmental projects, and providing free education and nutrition to more than 100,000 under-privileged children across 1,300 schools in India.

In praising him, Governors and co-founders of the BGF, such as Michael Dukakis and Nguyen Anh Tuan noted how his leadership transforms compassion into concrete action, and how his message of mindfulness and responsibility provides the ethical foundation for peace in a digital age.

To mark the tenth year of the Award, the Forum will launch new initiatives, including the “World Leader Spirit Symposium” and the “World Leader Spirit Concert,” with Gurudev serving as a guiding moral voice for interfaith dialogue and ethical leadership in the age of AI. During his recent North America tour, he was honoured by cities such as Vancouver, Seattle and Portland, with official proclamations declaring “Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar Day” and large gatherings of community leaders, students and families for shared meditation and reflection.

This award stands as yet another milestone in Gurudev’s remarkable journey — a testament to how inner peace, compassionate action and inter-faith dialogue can bridge divides, even as the world races forward with artificial intelligence and technological transformation.

Today, India and the world will be celebrating the 150th birth anniversary of Bharat Ratna Sardar Vallabhbhai Jhaverbhai Patel, the first Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister of independent India.  Patel, the monumental lawyer, philosopher, scholar, statesman and political leader, universally known as the “Iron Man of India” or “Bismarck of India”, was born on 31 October 1875 in Nadiad, Gujarat, famous for the iconic Shri Swaminarayan Temple built in 1824.

He passed his Matriculation examination from the Nadiad High School in 1897 at the age of 22. As Patel had neither the money nor the time to spend on a proper legal education in a law college, he opted for a shortcut route to become a District Pleader. Patel stayed away from his family, studying tirelessly on his own with books borrowed from his lawyer friends and attending privately conducted Gokhale law classes.

He passed the District Pleader’s Examination within two years with flying colours. He joined the Bar in 1900 at Godhra and proudly displayed a nameplate reading “Vallabhbhai J Patel, District Pleader, Godhra”. Within an incredibly short time, Patel earned an enviable reputation as a firebrand and skilled lawyer who sent cold shivers down the spines of the police prosecution.

In 1902, Patel shifted to Borsad. When he found a British Sub-Judge holding court without wearing his gown, he declared fearlessly, “As the Hon’ble Judge is not properly dressed, this seems to be no court!” The judge instantly apologised. In another historic case, Patel proved that the liquor inside bottles seized from his bootlegger client had turned into “water”.

Ravji Patel, a freedom fighter and contemporary of Patel, chronicled the rare legal skills of Patel in his Gujarati book Hind na Sardar or India’s Chief. When Patel had saved money to go to England, the envelope containing his passport arrived in the name of “VJ Patel” at his brother Vithalbhai’s residence. As a devout Hindu, Patel bowed down to his brother’s wishes and let him go instead, even financing his brother’s education. Towards the fag end of 1908, Patel’s wife, Jhaverba, was admitted to the Cama Hospital in Mumbai for a major operation. Despite the doctors’ best efforts, she passed away on January 11, 1909.

At the moment of her death, Patel was cross-examining a key witness in court. On being handed the telegram announcing her demise, Patel quietly read it, folded it, put it in his pocket and continued his cross-examination until the witness broke down and Patel won the case.

Such was his unshakeable sense of commitment to his clients and his dedication to the legal process. In July 1910, at the age of 36, Patel sailed for England. Two months after his arrival, he enrolled at the Middle Temple Inn in London, where Mahatma Gandhi had also studied. It was a coincidence that Nehru, younger than Patel by 14 years, joined the Inner Temple Inn in the same year, though they never met.

Patel studied relentlessly for 11 hours every day and passed his Bar-at-Law examinations on June 7, 1912, obtaining a First Class First that earned him the coveted prize of £50. On January 27, 1913, he was called to the Bar in the majestic Middle Temple Hall. Returning to India on February 13, 1913, Patel settled in Ahmedabad and rose to become one of the city’s most sought-after barristers.

According to his biographer, Narhari D Parikh, he exhibited “a thorough mastery of facts, proper and correct estimate of the opponent’s points and line of attack, and a carefully planned defence and attack.”

During 1913-1917, Patel earned a phenomenal monthly income of INR 40,000. In 1915, Patel came into contact with Gandhi at the Gujarat Political Conference in Godhra and became Secretary of the Gujarat Sabha. Patel fought against the draconian veth or “unpaid service” and led relief operations during a plague in famine-struck Kheda. When Gandhi called for a leader for the Kheda Movement, Patel volunteered without hesitation, throwing his lucrative legal career to the wind. Patel threw all his weight behind Gandhi’s Non-Cooperation Movement, recruiting more than 300,000 volunteers and raising over `1.5 million. He publicly burned his English clothes, adopted khadi, and fought against alcoholism, untouchability, and casteism.

Upon the failure of the Round Table Conference in London, Gandhi and Patel were arrested in January 1932 and imprisoned in the Yeravda Central Jail. During their incarceration, Patel and Gandhi grew extremely close, developing an indestructible bond of affection, respect, trust and frankness akin to that between Ramakrishna Paramahansa and Swami Vivekananda.

Patel’s Herculean contribution to the freedom struggle and the unification of India remains unparalleled. In his last Independence Day message, Patel confessed with immense humility, “Looking back at the broad sweep of events since we became free, my predominant feeling is one of thankfulness and relief.”

On December 15, 1950, at 9.37 am, Patel breathed his last after a massive cardiac arrest within the Birla House in Mumbai. Within an hour, Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru paid a moving tribute in Parliament: “He will be remembered as a great captain of our forces in the struggle for freedom and as one who gave us sound advice in times of trouble as well as in moments of victory, as a friend and colleague on whom one could invariably rely, as a tower of strength which revived wavering hearts.”

Patel’s cremation was held at Sonapur (now Marine Lines), where his wife and brother had been cremated earlier. Over one million mourners, including President Dr Rajendra Prasad, Nehru and Governor-General C Rajagopalachari, attended. On December 16, 1950, more than 1,500 officers of India’s civil and police services gathered at Patel’s residence at 1, Aurangzeb Road (now Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Road) in Delhi to pay their last respects to their “Patron Saint” and pledged “complete loyalty and unremitting zeal” to the service of India.

When Patel passed away, he left behind only INR 300 in his bank, four sets of clothes, two pairs of slippers, one spectacle case with a broken handle tied with a string, one charkha, one steel trunk, two tiffin boxes and an aluminium lota. Those were his only worldly possessions. Patel is no more in our midst, but like those long-extinguished stars whose fires still give us light, his fragrant memory will remain long and solid in our hearts, minds and souls, and will continue to inspire generations of Indians to come.

The writer is an internationally reputed senior lawyer practising in the Supreme Court of India

In a milestone development for India’s entrepreneurial landscape, IIT Kanpur’s Foundation for Innovation & Research in Science & Technology (FIRST) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Council For Start-up India (CSI). This collaboration marks a significant step toward accelerating innovation, nurturing start-ups, and strengthening India’s position as a global hub for technology-driven enterprises.

The Council for Start-up India, chaired by Hon’ble Former Chief Justice of India Justice K. G. Balakrishnan, with Padma Vibhushan Dr. R. A. Mashelkar as Co-Chairperson, brings together an exceptional blend of legal wisdom, policy vision, and scientific expertise. This high-level leadership is expected to guide and inspire the framework for fostering a robust start-up ecosystem that can tackle India’s most pressing challenges while creating jobs and driving economic growth.

Through this partnership, FIRST at IIT Kanpur—already renowned for its pioneering work in technology incubation and entrepreneurship—will collaborate closely with CSI to create impactful platforms for innovation. The alliance will focus on nurturing early-stage ventures, facilitating access to mentorship, funding, and cutting-edge research, and promoting policy interventions that benefit start-ups nationwide.

Both institutions share a vision of positioning Indian entrepreneurs at the forefront of global innovation. By leveraging IIT Kanpur’s academic and technological strengths alongside CSI’s leadership and advocacy, the MoU is expected to generate far-reaching outcomes—encouraging bold ideas, accelerating commercialisation of research, and enhancing India’s competitiveness in critical sectors such as deep tech, healthcare, sustainability, and digital transformation.

This landmark partnership reflects India’s collective resolve to empower its start-up community and unlock new opportunities for inclusive growth and national development.

Mumbai, 15 August 2025: MVIRDC World Trade Center (WTC) Mumbai celebrated India's 79th Independence Day with a grand flag-hoisting ceremony hosted by WTC Chairman Dr. Vijay Kalantri.

In his welcoming address, Dr. Vijay Kalantri underscored the significance of Independence Day. He spoke about Viksit Bharat, an empowered, self-reliant, and globally engaged India. “Our growth story is defined not just by self-sufficiency but by our contribution to the global economy,” Dr. Kalantri noted, urging the nation to continue striving toward higher goals.

The ceremony was graced by distinguished chief guests Shri Vishwas Nangare Patil, IPS, Additional Director General of Police, Anti-Corruption Bureau, Maharashtra State, Mumbai, and Adv. Rahul Narwekar, Hon’ble Speaker, Maharashtra Legislative Assembly.

In his address, Shri Vishwas Nangare Patil emphasized India's unique identity as a sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic republic. He called on citizens to honour not only their fundamental rights but also their fundamental duties highlighting the importance of the day. “Viksit Bharat is possible when each individual upholds the spirit of our Constitution and actively contributes to national progress,” he remarked.

Adv. Rahul Narwekar reflected on the significance of India's youth, noting that with an average age of 27, the country is the world’s youngest democratic republic. He praised the nation’s transformation from facing basic manufacturing challenges 79 years ago to today’s thriving, export-driven economy.It is noteworthy that India has emerged as the world's fourth-largest economy under the visionary leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He also lauded Maharashtra's march toward a trillion-dollar economy and India's role as a global provider, especially during challenging times like the COVID-19 pandemic, when India not only met domestic demands but also extended support to the international community.

The presence of senior officials from the consulates of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, and Panama underscored the importance of international friendship and cooperation fostered by WTC Mumbai. Adv. Rahul Narwekar highlighted WTC’s ongoing efforts to bring together global stakeholders and support India's role as a responsible international partner.

With the flag unfurled and patriotic fervour in the air, the event reaffirmed the commitment of MVIRDC WTC Mumbai to the nation’s spirit of unity and pride.