"The Maratha Military Landscapes of India have been inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List as India's 44th World Heritage property." 🔴 BREAKING! New inscription on the @UNESCO #WorldHeritage List: Maratha Military Landscapes of India, #India 🇮🇳. ➡️ https://t.co/seTyyVu3sT #47WHC pic.twitter.com/mEpa6RWLRx — UNESCO 🏛️ #Education #Sciences #Culture 🇺🇳 (@UNESCO) July 11, 2025 That simple announcement from UNESCO filled me with immense pride. It is not every day that the world pauses to recognize a part of our collective history, and this recognition is long overdue. As someone who now lives in Mumbai, and proudly traces his roots to Maharashtra, these forts are not just monuments on a map. They are familiar silhouettes on the Sahyadri skyline, stories narrated by grandparents, and enduring symbols of courage and resilience. They have shaped the identity of this region for centuries. Yet, alongside that pride, I feel a sense of disappointment. Within hours o...

India’s Heaviest Communication Satellite # CMS03 successfully launched by LVM3-M4 from SDSC-SHAR, Sriharikota . https://x.com/ISRO/status/1985027440645972189 — ISRO (@isro) October 31, 2025 India launched its yet heaviest satellite weighing close to 4.5 tons today - a monumental achievement in itself. But this achievement is more significant when seen in context of India’s aspiration to launch a Space Station within the next decade. Demonstrating the maturing strength of ISRO’s heavy-lift infrastructure, beyond symbolism, this capability directly relates to the next great frontier: deploying the homegrown space station. Artist’s illustration of India’s Bharatiya Antariksh Station . Credit: ISRO ISRO has already announced its intent to place a “Bharatiya Antariksh Station” in low-Earth orbit by the early 2030s . To do this, India will need to routinely lift large, pressurized modules, crew capsules, and cargo vehicles into orbit - much like what the ...

The government recently came up with a proposal to allocate ₹2,000 crore - nearly a fifth of the outlay of ₹10,000 crore from the PM eDrive initiative - to setting up 72,000 EV chargers nationwide. The Union Government has asked states to secure land and install infrastructure (such as transformers and sub-stations) to avail the subsidy, enabling rapid deployment of 72 k chargers across the country. Since the government has not announced a detailed structure for setting up the chargers, it is likely that this fund may get utilized more in urban areas where more EVs are being sold. I would argue however that we should be doing just the opposite. This may sound counter-intuitive, but one of the largest hindrances in rapid adoption of EVs is the range anxiety people feel when—even if only occasionally—they embark on a longer drive, typically on highways. Many potential buyers think: “I drive locally 80 % of the time—but what if that one out-of-town trip leaves me stranded?” In Indi...

In 2016, amid global calls to revive domestic manufacturing, I had argued that government pushes  - from Make in India to Make America Great Again -  would not spark an employment-led industrial revolution, but rather catalyze automation-led manufacturing transformations. Nine years later, India’s own manufacturing trajectory confirms this prediction with surgical clarity. Despite record-breaking capital inflows, thriving exports, and the China+1 strategy playing to India’s advantage, job creation in manufacturing has been lackluster. The gap between factory output and factory employment is no longer just a trend - it is now a defining feature of India’s industrial rise. The False Promise of Mass Job Creation At the core of India’s manufacturing push lies the Production-Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme, launched with grand ambitions of creating 6 million direct jobs and adding US$500 billion in output by FY27. Yet, by June 2024, only 584,000 direct jobs had materialized—jus...

When I read this recent Livemint piece on how China has methodically diluted the power foreign oil suppliers once held over it, I couldn’t help but tumble down a rabbit hole: How is India doing on the same front? What I found is worth sharing — so here’s a snapshot of how India is working, on multiple fronts, to make sure its oil bill — and the geopolitical pressure that comes with it — keeps shrinking. India’s energy playbook over the past 15 years reads like a multi-track sprint: put millions of EVs on the road, carpet the countryside with solar panels and wind turbines, squeeze more ethanol into every litre of petrol, revive an ambitious nuclear program, and coax crude from deep-sea rocks that once looked unreachable. The goal is bluntly strategic—trim a crude-import bill that still meets 85% of oil demand and deny potential suppliers the pressure point that New Delhi has worried about since the 1970s oil shocks. A Quiet EV Boom Accelerates Annual electric vehicle (EV) sales in...