Innholdsfortegnelse for 8 December 2025 i India Today

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Bihar CM Nitish Kumar may have lampooned dynastic politics in the poll campaign, but it seems to have made a quiet entry in the new Bihar cabinet. Leading the charge is the unelected Deepak Prakash, son of RLM chief Upendra Kushwaha who was, as the Opposition RJD mocked, till yesterday “the counting agent of an independent candidate who had forfeited his deposit”, and is now panchayati raj minister. Giving him illustrious company is the BJP’s deputy CM Samrat Choudhary (son of veteran leader Shakuni Choudhary) and Shreyasi Singh (daughter of the late BJP Union minister Digvijay Singh), HAM(S)’s Santosh Kumar Suman (son of ex-CM Jitan Ram Manjhi), and the JD(U)’s Vijay K. Chaudhary (son of veteran Congressman Jagdish Chaudhary). Add the JD(U)’s Ashok Choudhary, Sunil…

LADAKH’S WINTER HAS SET IN, BUT COMPETING ideas about the Union territory’s future are generating enough thermal energy. Some of it—involving talks with the Centre—feels almost balmy, considering it was only in late September that the province saw its first spasms of violence in four decades, with four killed, nearly 100 injured, and feted climate activist Sonam Wangchuk booked under the National Security Act thereafter. But some of the internal argumentation is sharp as well, with the local BJP unit offering a counterpoint to the maximalist position of the protesters. On November 20, that position was formally stated, as the two indigenous groups behind Ladakh’s flare-up, the Leh Apex Body (LAB) and the Kargil Democra tic Alliance (KDA), submitted a 29-page proposal to the Union ministry of home affairs (MHA).…

MONTHS OF QUIET REOR-GANISATION CULMINATED on November 22 with the Congress naming Vinay Kumar, 47, as its Himachal Pradesh unit chief. The threeterm MLA’s appointment, which followed his resignation as deputy speaker the same morning, signals a clear shift in the party’s internal balance—away from the once-dominant camp of the late Virbhadra Singh, the former royal and chief minister whose imprint shaped the state Congress for nearly four decades, and towards Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu midway through his term. A day later, the All India Congress Committee (AICC) appointed 36 observers—three in each district—to oversee the selection of 12 district presidents. The sequencing was unlike in Haryana, where the party first appointed district presidents and then chose the state chief. Last year, the entire state body was dissolved, retaining…

The Mute Eloquence of the Taj, an exhibition curated by the historian and writer Rana Safvi at DAG, New Delhi, and up for public viewing until December 6, showcases over 200 works depicting various aspects of the Taj Mahal—mostly paintings, but also photographs and postcards—created between the late-18th century and the mid-20th century. The accompanying exhibition book includes essays by Safvi herself, alongside Ursula Weekes, Amita Baig, Ira Mukhoty, et al. “When I was a teenager, my father was posted in Agra, so I was living there,” says Safvi. “We lived close to the Taj Mahal and we would visit often. In the past few decades, when I studied Islamic architecture and Sufism, a lot of things about the monument fell into place for me. I realised that the entire…

WHEN A TERSE LINE ANNOUNCING A LEGISLATIVE PROPOSAL “to amend the Constitution to bring Chandigarh under Article 240” appeared in the Lok Sabha bulletin on November 21, it triggered immediate alarm in Punjab. The Constitution (131st Amendment) Bill, 2025, was proposed for the upcoming winter session. If passed, it would have allowed the President to appoint a separate Lieutenant Governor for the Union Territory (UT) and issue regulations with the force of law. For many in Punjab, it signified central control getting reinforced over an iconic city entwined with the state’s post-Independence identity. The reaction was swift. Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann accused the Centre of conspiring to snatch Punjab’s capital. The Shiromani Akali Dal called it a “direct assault on Punjab’s rights”, while the Congress demanded the withdrawal of what…

IT’S NO OPTICAL ILLUSION THAT THE RULING MAHAYUTI government is a triangle of discontent, with one hypotenuse or the other always sulking at its central axis, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The latest visual proof came when all ministers of the Eknath Shinde faction of the Shiv Sena boycotted a state cabinet meeting chaired by chief minister Devendra Fadnavis on November 18. In an unprecedented mode of protest, only deputy chief minister Shinde came. There were many straws in the wind. But the last straw, as it were, came when the BJP began poaching leaders and former corporators from Shinde’s Sena in his strongholds like Thane and Palghar ahead of Maharashtra’s crucial local body elections. Both districts are due for polling on December 2 in the first phase. That’s besides…

TO THE UNTRAINED EYE, IT WOULD appear like a mundane bureaucratic event—a central department returning the Detailed Project Reports (DPRs) for a couple of Metro projects. Maybe to seek a technical correction of some sort? Well, no. When you’re talking Tamil Nadu and New Delhi, every act of rejection is freighted and fraught. Consider that a Metro Rail is a showpiece of modern urbanity that’s functionally vital for cities clocking robust growth. In this case, there are two: Coimbatore and Madurai. So what the Union ministry of housing and urban affairs (Mo-HUA) marked ‘return to sender’ on are high-prestige proposals. That too for a southern state that’s already aggrieved on several fronts. The right platform, then, for a whole train of rage to arrive. A NEW ELECTION ISSUE Sure enough,…

As he approached 50, and thoughts of mortality began to surface for Pune-based IT professional Siddhesh Bhobe, one worry kept nagging at him, something others might find unusual. “What if the three of us—my wife, daughter and I—die in an accident? What will happen to our cats?” A devoted ailurophile, Bhobe is a proud parent to 18 felines. Unable to shake the anxiety, he eventually drafted a will—a legal document that specifies how a person’s assets and properties must be distributed after their death—to ensure his cats would be cared for if something happened to the family. As social relationships become more complex, with rising numbers of single people, DINK (double income, no kids) households, live-in and same sex couples, adopted children and children born outside of marriage, many individuals…

Not the history of comics, but the mechanics of how they are made is the focus of The Craft of Comics exhibition in Kolkata, on till December 7. The who’s who of Indian comics is exhibiting originals, prints, installations, drafts and sketches at the Birla Academy of Art and Culture. The star cast: Amruta Patil, Appupen, Argha Manna, Chitra Ganesh, Ikroop Sandhu, Ita Mehrotra, Joshy Benedict, Orijit Sen, Priya Kuriyan, Sankha Banerjee, Sarbajit Sen, Sarnath Banerjee and Vishwajyoti Ghosh. The mammoth project was curated by designer-illustrator Pinaki De and Birla Academy’s Sujaan Mukherjee. “It would be uninteresting to pluck comic book panels and present them as they are,” explains De. “It’s more fun to look at panels in multiple ways: magnified, as part of a story, as video installation, or…

Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva had framed COP30 as a “COP of truth”. After the conference last week, it was evident that it was able to inject a sense of realism into the climate process and re-centre the conversation on implementation. Despite disagreements on finance, unilateral trade measures by certain countries and phasing out fossil fuels, Belém navigated the choppy waters of climate negotiations adroitly. Multilateralism will move forward. For India, the results were a vindication of its long-standing position that certain nations must be held historically accountable and only fair responsibilities will be taken on. The COP reflected many priorities held by developing countries. Adopting the Global Goal on Adaptation (with a list of 59 non-prescriptive points) is a good step in those directions, which will hopefully…

NO ONE SAW IT COMING, BUT THEN BIHAR HAS A HABIT of throwing curve balls at everyone in the business of forecasting. As tenth-time chief minister Nitish Kumar allocated portfolios on November 21, the one decision that grabbed attention was the home portfolio going to deputy CM Samrat Choudhary. The surprise quotient was high owing to two separate political reasons. One, after Nitish skilfully commandeered a mammoth mandate along with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), everyone made a few default assumptions on the shape of the coming government. Since Nitish’s continuation as CM had been sealed, closing off what was a grey area not too long ago, it was thought he was back in full measure. Among other things, that evoked the line in the sand he had drawn long…

NEARLY 10 YEARS HAVE PASSED since 50-year-old Mohammad Akhlaq was allegedly beaten to death in Bisada, a village in Dadri—barely 50 kilometres from Delhi—after rumours spread that he had slaughtered a cow and kept its meat at home. The case is back in the spotlight for a reason—it asks questions of law as well as justice, perhaps in an inverse relation. Raking up a controversy, the Uttar Pradesh government has asked a local court for permission to withdraw charges against all 19 men named in the case chargesheet. In its application, the state has pointed to three grounds. The first is that Akhlaq’s family members gave differing accounts while naming those involved in the alleged lynching. Two, investigators did not recover any firearm or sharp weapon from the accused—only sticks,…

“Modiji, I want to go back home.” The cry cut through the crowd that had gathered in Churachandpur on September 13 to see Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He was visiting Manipur 28 months after the state was wracked by ethnic violence in May 2023, which left 258 dead, 62,000 displaced and 4,786 houses burned. The voice belonged to 40-year-old Hoitimneng Haokip, mother of two school-going children and a Kuki from Loibol Khunou village in Kangpokpi, standing outside the Sangai relief camp in Churachandpur. But it was a question R.K. Bilasana, 48, a Meitei from the border town of Moreh, had for the prime minister as well. Bilasana’s life is now in limbo, as a refugee at the Thonju Kendra relief camp in Imphal. PM Modi’s long-awaited visit lasted barely half…