Regulators & Conflicts of Interest: India’s Blind Spot https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3y5UB6dZ4BA   May 28, 2025 
SEBI's new chairman, Tuhin Kanta Pandey, has openly acknowledged a serious lapse in transparency standards—an admission that starkly contrasts with past denials. In this powerful commentary, Sucheta Dalal breaks down the urgency of reforming SEBI’s outdated and voluntary conflict of interest code.

She argues that the High-Level Committee (HLC) must go beyond a cosmetic fix and set new benchmarks for all Indian regulators—from fixed tenures and cooling-off periods to blind trusts and broader definitions of conflicts.

With India allowing lateral entries into regulatory roles, the need for a legally binding code of ethics is more urgent than ever. Don’t miss this in-depth analysis of what went wrong—and what must happen next to restore credibility in India’s regulatory institutions.

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Lokpal gives clean chit to Madhabi Puri Buch in Hindenburg case   https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/lokpal-gives-clean-chit-to-madhabi-puri-buch-in-hindenburg-case/article69630578.ece the allegations in the complaints are more on presumptions and assumptions and not supported by any verifiable material and do not attract the ingredients of the offences in Part Ill of the (Prevention of Corruption) Act of 1988, so as to direct an investigation therefor. ..

“As noted in our order dated 20.09.2024, that report by itself cannot be made the sole basis to escalate action against the RPS [Ms. Buch],”....the analysis of the allegations by us ended with a finding that the same are untenable, unsubstantiated and bordering on frivolity,”..

https://www.moneylife.in/article/madhabi-puri-buch-gets-clean-chit-from-lokpal/77264.html "The complaint(s) under consideration were essentially founded on the Hindenburg Report dated 10.08.2024, by a known short seller trader whose focus was to expose or corner Adani Group of Companies," the Lokpal noted, highlighting concerns about the source material's credibility.
 
On the 5 crore investment by Buch and her husband in a fund linked to an Adani Enterprises director, the Bench observed that the money had been redeemed in 2018—well before SEBI began its Adani probe in 2020. 

The order concluded: "We hold that the allegation that the RPS intentionally provided heavily redacted documents to the Expert Committee of the Hon'ble Supreme Court is devoid of merit, truly a veiled attempt to reopen and question the findings of the Supreme Court."

that Buch’s husband, Dhaval Buch, received over 4.78 crore as consultancy fees from Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) Group while SEBI was handling regulatory issues related to the group, The Lokpal noting that “this allegation is speculative and borders on frivolity.” 

 Stepping back from the brink: time for reason and rapprochement between India and Pakistan https://www.bmj.com/content/389/bmj.r1102   In the  biennial International Congress of Pediatrics,  speakers highlighted the challenges that India and Pakistan face in public health, social determinants of health, climate change, environmental issues, and enormous gaps in health and development equity that need to be closed. Despite this harsh reality, both countries, irrespective of the relative size of their economies, spend a disproportionate amount on their military and nuclear arsenals. Notwithstanding the human costs of the conflict, the costs of the missiles and drones lobbed at each other and the damage in the five days after 7 May 2025 easily ran into billions of dollars. We wonder what could have been achieved had this money been used for public health in either country...We must activate formal and facilitatory platforms for scientific and cultural exchanges and focus on common tangible solutions related to climate, environment, water security, and child rights. 

 The State, the Maoists, and the war for tribal land | What’s Your Ism? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MW6pkR-sY2Y   ft. Professor Haragopal
newslaundry structural violence, broken promises, and why civil society must still try—even when peace seems impossible.

The most dangerous weapon in South Asia is not nuclear 
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2025/5/26/the-most-dangerous-weapon-in-south-asia-is-not-nuclear   Syeda Sana Batool  26 May 2025 The recent India-Pakistan confrontation made it quite clear the most dangerous weapon they have is narrative.

India portrayed Pakistan as a terror factory: duplicitous, rogue, a nuclear-armed spoiler addicted to jihad. Pakistani identity was reduced to its worst stereotype, deceptive and dangerous. Peace, in this worldview, is impossible because the Other is irrational.

Pakistan, in turn, cast India as a fascist state: led by a majoritarian regime, obsessed with humiliation, eager to erase Muslims from history. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the aggressor. India was the occupier. Their strikes were framed not as counterterrorism but as religious war.

This is the danger of media-driven identity construction. Once the Other becomes a caricature, dialogue dies. Diplomacy becomes weakness. Compromise becomes betrayal. And war becomes not just possible, but desirable.

Narendra Modi Has Ruled in the Interests of Big Capital https://jacobin.com/2025/05/narendra-modi-bjp-inc-neoliberalism ..The story of the BJP’s rise and the INC’s roughly proportionate decline is a complex one with many threads. The historical development of different factions of capital in India and the shifting dynamics of conflict between them is a key part of the picture...

Though big capital is unquestionably the dominant faction in India’s ruling coalition, two factors constrain the capacity of the state to act in its interests. First of all, the adoption of political democracy based on universal adult franchise in 1947 empowered classes that might have been dispossessed by an industrial transformation — small manufacturing and agrarian capital, small and marginal peasants, and a large mass of people surviving through petty commodity production, trade, and services — to influence state policy.

Although the neoliberal policy consensus is shared by forces across the political spectrum in India, including by communist, socialist, and social democratic parties, the present BJP government has pushed it further than any regime since the 1990s... A bid to further deregulate agricultural output markets and weaken MSP guarantees was defeated by a movement led by left-wing farm unions that represent middle, small, and marginal farmers — the only time in the last two decades that the BJP has had to conceded defeat on a major policy move

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHeq3wuAtQQ   ANI Slammed For 'Extortion' By YouTube Creators Over Copyright Strikes | Mohak Mangal vs ANI
HW News English

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A US federal trade court based in Manhattan, New York, has blocked President Donald Trump from imposing sweeping tariffs on imports under an emergency powers law.

https://thewire.in/trade/trump-tariffs-blocked-by-federal-trade-court-white-house-to-appeal 

Trump announced across-the-board tariffs on April 2, setting off waves of global trade uncertainty.

Shortly after the court’s decision, the White House responded that it was “not for unelected judges to decide how to properly address a national emergency.”

As expected, the government also filed a notice of appeal to the ruling from the New York-based US Court of International Trade.

29/05/2025

https://thewire.in/education/eroding-scientific-rationality-is-undermining-knowledge-production-in-india 

In India, the assault is ideological and motivated by religious zealotry. Since the current political regime assumed power, India’s ranking on the Academic Freedom Index, developed by the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Institute, has sharply declined. In its 2024 update, the report categorises India among countries where academic freedom is deemed ‘completely restricted’. The report suggested that ‘it is primarily anti-pluralist parties in the government that contribute to the decline in academic freedom’.

While the incumbent regime primarily targets social sciences and humanities to reduce them to inconsequential subjects, research in the sciences and medicine could not escape State scrutiny. They have been particularly effective in peddling pseudoscience and bringing its status on par with evidence-based modern science. They have also been successful in branding Hindu scriptural epistemology as ‘Indian Knowledge System’, and making it a part of the educational syllabus, legitimising Hindu metaphysics and mythology as science and history. At the same time, criticism from educators regarding the National Council of Educational Research and Training’s (NCERT) decision to remove Charles Darwin’s theory of biological evolution from the 10th-grade science textbook was dismissed, with the move being justified as part of a ‘curriculum rationalisation exercise.’

Why would the government advance bovine dung and urine as a panacea for ailments, including cancer? Why would ministries broadcast the misguided views of self-styled experts as scientific fact and confuse the public? The Ministry of AYUSH has been vigorously campaigning for research on cow products, which it believes have medicinal properties. Aside from some antiquated beliefs, these claims had nothing else by way of support, especially no peer-reviewed research or clinical tests. Researchers from major institutes recently gathered at a temple in Madhya Pradesh with their equipment to determine the efficacy of fire rituals in bringing rain. This tells a lot about the abandonment of scientific rationality in contemporary India to suit the whims of the establishment. Such instances reflect the diminishing quality of scientific research in India and draw our attention to how the state instrumentalises knowledge to serve political ends.

by Swarati Sabhapandit and C.P. Rajendran