Innehållsförteckning för 16 June 2025 från India Today

War, spirituality and geopolitics. Army chief Gen. Upendra Dwivedi got a taste of all three during a post-Operation Sindoor visit to the Rambhadracharya ashram in Chitrakoot, MP, in late May. The Army chief and wife Sunita had driven down from Prayagraj, where he had spent time with the crack Red Eagle Infantry division, to seek the blessings of Jagadguru Rambhadracharya. The seer compared the army chief’s mission to that of Lord Hanuman’s to Lanka, suggesting that he had received the same deeksha (initiation) through the Ram Mantra. And as a symbolic “guru dakshina”, Rambhadracharya asked that he “get back PoK” for India. 7 ROYAL EDIT QUICK REWRITE The old barbs about Rajasthan deputy CM Diya Kumari’s ancestors are seeing a seasonal revival, with special mentions going to Raja Bharmal, who…

IF YOU’VE SEEN THOSE animated ‘bar chart races’, rankings that keep shifting to capture a competition across time, it’s a perfect fit for Maharashtra’s ruling trinity. Devendra Fadnavis ahead till mid-2022, Eknath Shinde shooting up, then Ajit Pawar threatening to crash the party, and so on. Except that, after the first pocketed the CM’s post last December, Shinde’s bar has been a bit sluggish and angry. Fadnavis had once called Shinde a “natural ally”, and Ajit a mere “political ally”, implying the NCP (Nationalist Congress Party) was an unpleasant necessity. But of late, the BJP’s affections have turned. The ideological buddy, who resaff-ronised a chunk of the Shiv Sena, seems marginalised in the Mahayuti. Ajit is executing a slow demolition job on his fellow deputy CM, digging in a jack…

IT TOOK YEARS OF efforts. The Centre’s push for better infrastructure, incentives to local industry and the sedulous dissemination of a feelgood narrative, helped by a dip in terrorism—it was an entire conspiracy of virtues that revived Jammu and Kashmir as a tourism hub. The Pahalgam terror attack ripped apart that patchwork quilt woven since 2019. The urgent question now is, how to revive that revival? It’s an unenviable task. As scared tourists stay away, summer hotel bookings are mostly cancelled, and large-scale layoffs in the hospitality sector are spreading misery. Chief Minister Omar Abdullah has clearly deemed the situation grim enough to lead a full counter-charge, but he is seeking to do it with a touch of sunshine. On May 27, he chose to hold a cabinet meeting right…

SUSPENSION OF STUDENT VISA INTERVIEWS The Trump administration has halted the scheduling of new student visa (F-1) appointments at US embassies, including in India, though previously scheduled interviews are proceeding. The delays have caused uncertainty for Indians about to commence studies intheUS ENHANCED SOCIAL MEDIA VETTING There are directives for an expansion of social media scrutiny for student visa applicants, ostensibly to “enhance national security”. Anything “radical/anti-American” would reduce chances for a visa, raising concerns about privacy VISA REVOCATIONS BASED ON POLITICAL ACTIVITY The Trump administration has revoked 300+ student visas for foreign students, targeting those involved in “pro-Palestinian activism”. This has already led to deportation in some cases. Further, on June 4, Trump suspended for six months the entry of foreign students in Harvard University due to “security risks"…

In December 2022, Muzaffarnagar-based entrepreneur Neeraj Kedia, managing director of zinc sulphate manufacturing firm Chakradhar Chemicals, received an unexpected notice from the Goods and Services Tax (GST) department, raising a tax demand of around Rs 95 lakh and interest of Rs 1.15 crore for the period from July 2017 to March 2018. It stated that the Input Tax Credit (ITC), which allows businesses to get reimbursement for the taxes they paid on their purchases, should not have been claimed by Kedia, as his supplier had not filed Form GSTR-3B, the monthly return to declare GST liabilities. The notice further alleged that Kedia had failed to file the form back in 2017. He was stunned. Like many small and mid-sized business owners, such a notice triggered not only a legal alarm but…

WHEN THE SUPREME COURT, IN MARCH THIS YEAR, ordered the demolition of kitschy replicas of the ‘Seven Wonders’ built along the banks of Ajmer’s 12th-century Ana Sagar Lake—a protected wetland—it wasn’t judicial activism so much as a belated course correction for a folly committed two years ago. Around the same time, Rajasthan chief minister Bhajan Lal Sharma ordered the dismantling of Jaipur’s 16-km-long Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS), a corridor completed 15 years ago but never brought into use. Blamed for traffic chaos and fatal accidents, the BRTS had become emblematic of the state’s flawed urban planning. Elsewhere, there are efforts to salvage ailing projects. A sum of Rs 12,000 crore has been proposed for the overhaul of Jaipur’s partially functional and financially bleeding metro rail, originally launched in 2011.…

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PAHALGAM TO PATNA. As political horizons, they are over a thousand miles apart. But Prime Minister Narendra Modi had collapsed the distance on April 24, when he chose Madhubani as the unlikely stage from where to promise retribution against Pakistan. When he returned to Bihar at the end of May, the public sphere still sizzled with the acrid residues of Operation Sindoor. The right atmospherics, then, for him to talk of mission accomplished—yoking Bihar to the spinning wheels of a larger narrative. Not that it was all abstract. Modi’s 32-minute elocution at Bikramganj, Rohtas district, wove the local and national together like warp and woof, holding forth on growth, welfare, the end of Maoism et al, lobbing in barbs at the Opposition to spice things up. Something was conspicuous by…

A CHILL WIND IS BLOWING THROUGH THE HAL-LOWED HALLS OF AMERICAN ACADEMIA, a wind carrying uncertainty and dashing the hopes of aspiring international students, particularly tens of thousands from India. The Trump administration, in a series of abrupt and unsettling moves, has begun to dismantle the welcome mat for global talent. The decision to pause new student visa appointments at US embassies worldwide on May 27, including in India, has plunged countless young scholars into a state of anxious limbo. This pause, officially justified by the need to expand the scrutiny of applicants’ social media activity, is no mere procedural tweak; it signals a profound shift. For Indian students who have meticulously planned their futures around the promise of an American education, the dream now seems to teeter precariously on the…

OPTIONAL PRACTICAL TRAINING ↘ OPT has till now allowed F-1 visa students, who studied at an accredited US college or university or English at an English language institute, to work in the US for up to 12 months after graduation ↘ Those with degrees in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) fields may qualify for a 24-month extension, bringing the total work authorisation period to 36 months THE STATUS NOW ↘ The Fairness for High-Skilled Americans Act, 2025, proposes to eliminate the OPT programme ↘ It argues that the programme gives international graduates an unfair advantage over domestic students H-1B VISA ↘ The H-1B visa allows US employers to hire foreign workers in specialty occupations ↘ Many Indian students transition from OPT to H-1B status VISA CAP ↘ 85,000 visas…

It was 14 years ago that Cock won a number of prestigious awards at the Thespo National Theatre Festival 2011, including Best Actor and Best Actress. The Olivier Award-winning play written by British playwright Mike Bartlett was directed by Manish Gandhi and produced by actor Shweta Tripathi. The latter also debuted her AllMyTea Productions with this show. All these years later, the play is being revived by the duo, but with a new cast and a fresh perspective brought on with life’s experiences. The play, written in 2009, centres around John, who while on a break with his boyfriend M, falls in love with a woman W. Torn between these two loves and two identities, he struggles to make a decision. Tripathi, who first heard of the play from Gandhi…

In a time when even an offhand comment on social media or a public platform can spin wildly out of control, sometimes with life-altering consequences, the incident that kicks off Annie Zaidi’s The Comeback feels particularly uncanny. For 15 years, Jaun, who calls himself “John K” in his acting career, has been “on the fringes of Bollywood”, and when he finally lands a decent film role and acquires a shade of long-awaited fame, things don’t go quite as planned. When he reveals too much during a magazine interview, it has devastating consequences for his best friend, Asghar. Forced out of his bank job in Lucknow, Asghar returns to the town where Jaun and he grew up and fell in love with theatre as part of the college drama club. In…

₹ 1,486 CR. Estimated cost 21 YEARS Construction period 22,660 TONNES Steel used 66,000 CUBIC METRES Concrete used 1 MILLION CUBIC METRES Earthwork volume 100 KMPH Maximum train speed 120 YEARS Design life GLOBAL COMPARISON The Chenab Rail Bridge eclipses the highest arch bridges in China and the US CHINA NAJIEHE RAILWAY BRIDGE Wu River, Guizhou Height: 310 m Opened: 2016 Use: Railway USA MIKE O’CALLAGHAN-PAT TILLMAN MEMORIAL BRIDGE Colorado River, Arizona/Nevada Height: 270 m Opened: 2010 Use: Road WHY THE BRIDGE WAS NEEDED ↘ It is crucial to the 272-km Udhampur-Srinagar-Baramulla Railway Link project ↘ The two pairs of Vande Bharat Express flagged off on this stretch reduce travel time between Jammu and Srinagar to 4.40 hrs from 6 hrs by road right now. There are plans to add trains from…

ITS 3,702 SQ. KM and 1.6 million residents form just 0.1 per cent each of India’s land area and population. But Goa punches way above its weight in terms of political pot-boiler action. The latest: the acute mortification facing the Pramod Sawant government after one of its own ministers—a member of the ruling BJP at that—charged it with graft and malfeasance. What’s worse, the impugned department, tribal welfare, is held by Sawant himself. Enough to speculate that something more than probity may be at stake. A LITTLE FRIENDLY FIRE The accuser—state arts and culture minister Govind Gaude—has held on for over a week in the cabinet after a public censure of his own government. That likely owes to his background: the MLA from Priol, north Goa, is from the Hindu…

IT’S A SEWAGE DRAIN, IT’S A GARBAGE BIN, no, it’s a riverbed! The 11.5 km stretch of Sabarmati along the much-feted Riverfront in Ahmedabad has been emptied of water. How and why? The first is easily answered. The Sabarmati doesn’t exactly fit the classic prototype of a flowing river, much less a perennial one. Narmada water is diverted into it from a canal 20 km upstream from the River-front, and a barrage holds it in at the other end—so it’s functionally closer to a long lake under human control. Ergo, it can be emptied. TONNES OF MUCK ‘Why’ yields a rather more intriguing answer. In what’s possibly an exercise that’s never been seen before in the world, an emptied river is being cleaned—manually. Good samaritans and tireless squads of the…

TOTAL ENROLMENTS ↘ In 2023-24, the number of international students in the US reached a record high of 1,126,690, accounting for 5.9% of its higher education enrolments ↘ With 331,602 students, India surpassed China as the leading source for the first time in 15 years INDIA CHINA No. of students from the source nation (in ’000) Share in the total international students in the US POPULAR PROGRAMMES ↘ Indian students in the US gravitate toward Computer Science and Engineering, fields that align with the robust STEM foundation back home and strong career prospects globally ↘ MBA and Public Health programmes being offered in the US are also gaining traction Streams Indians opted for in 2023-24 ECONOMIC CONTRIBUTION ↘ In 2025, Indian students are projected to spend $17.4 billion (Rs 1.5…

Harvard University, a global symbol of academic excellence, is now ground zero of a political and cultural standoff with the US government. Students, faculty, alumni and the administration all currently seem to be dipping in and out of moods of unity, defiance, fear and hope. While they express a range of views, they converge on feeling a greater sense of community and common cause in what they see as a fight for freedom of speech, inquiry and thought. International students constitute 27 per cent of the student body across Harvard’s undergraduate college and 12 graduate schools. Nearly 800 are from India. These students and recent graduates on OPT (Optional Practical Training—a post-graduation work permit linked to the student visa) are in disarray. The legality of their presence in the country…

Indian chefs internationally have taken the global spotlight off butter chicken and naan as representative of Indian food, and have rewritten the narrative that the cuisine is only about hitting high notes on the Scoville scale. In the US, South Indian food rules. In 2014, Rasa opened in California, soon winning a Michelin star for its contemporary take on South Indian food, focused on coastal cuisines. It succumbed to the pressures of Covid-19 in 2022, but was resurrected on popular demand in 2024. Godavari, with a focus on And hra and Telangana food, opened in Boston in 2015, expanding to 22 outlets today in the US alone. Chef Vijay Kumar’s Semma opened in New York in 2021 and earned its Michelin star in 2022. Nathai Pirattal (stir-fried snails with mini…

It isn’t just the protagonist of Bhool Chuk Maaf, Bollywood as a whole seems to be trapped in a time loop. The cow-belt comedy of manners, of which Khosla Ka Ghosla is a distant progenitor and Bareilly Ki Barfi the modern instigator, simply won’t disappear. Rajkummar Rao, who headlined Bareilly…, leads Bhool Chuk Maaf as a man doomed to live out a single day on repeat until he figures out where he went wrong. Like his character Ranjan, Rao is also trapped in the consequences of his actions: being excellent in this sort of broad North Indian comedy. Seema Pahwa plays Ranjan’s mother, while Sanjay Mishra is Bhagwan, the kind of role for which Pankaj Tripathi is always the first choice, but he was possibly busy with Criminal Justice. Wamiqa…