Articles written by
K Raveendran

By K Raveendran The Bharatiya Janata Party’s increasingly aggressive response to the agitation against Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar reveals a political anxiety that its leaders are struggling to conceal. Behind the familiar display of confidence, accusations of opposition conspiracies and warnings about attempts to destabilise the government lies an uncomfortable reality: a movement that […]

The article BJP’s Bravado Betrays Its Fear Of Uprising Against Voter Disenfranchisement appeared first on Latest India news, analysis and reports on Newspack by India Press Agency).

By K Raveendran India is confronting an extraordinary constitutional crisis in which the very institution entrusted with safeguarding democracy stands accused of compromising its independence. The controversy surrounding Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar has moved beyond questions of administrative competence or electoral procedure. It now raises a fundamental issue about the meaning of constitutional protection: […]

The article Constitutional Immunity Cannot Shield An Election Chief’s Surrender To Executive appeared first on Latest India news, analysis and reports on Newspack by India Press Agency).

By K Raveendran India’s electoral democracy has reached a critical juncture where judicial intervention can no longer remain confined to procedural scrutiny and expressions of concern. The mounting controversy surrounding Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, the unprecedented scale of voter deletions under the Special Intensive Revision (SIR), and the government’s increasingly coercive response to public […]

The article Supreme Court Must Act Decisively To Restore Electoral Democracy appeared first on Latest India news, analysis and reports on Newspack by India Press Agency).

By K Raveendran India’s escalating confrontation over the Election Commission is no longer merely a dispute about electoral rolls or the conduct of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. It has become an institutional crisis touching the credibility of elections themselves. As opposition parties, activists and youth groups demand Kumar’s resignation over allegations of voter-list manipulation, […]

The article Supreme Court’s Indecision Has A Big Role In Today’s Constitutional Crisis appeared first on Latest India news, analysis and reports on Newspack by India Press Agency).

By K Raveendran India’s electoral system has entered a territory where the argument is no longer merely about errors in voters’ lists. The deeper question is whether citizens can continue to repose confidence in the constitutional institution entrusted with deciding who gets on those lists, how names are removed and whether the rules governing that […]

The article India’s Electoral Crisis Now Tests How Far Supreme Court Is Willing To Go appeared first on Latest India news, analysis and reports on Newspack by India Press Agency).

By K Raveendran The controversy surrounding Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar has moved beyond another confrontation between the government and the Opposition. What is now at stake is whether the Election Commission of India can continue to command the presumption of institutional neutrality on which the credibility of elections ultimately rests. The latest developments have […]

The article Election Commission Scandal Is Now India’s Biggest Democratic Crisis appeared first on Latest India news, analysis and reports on Newspack by India Press Agency).

By K Raveendran The meeting between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping carried all the ceremony expected when the leaders of the world’s two most powerful countries sit across the table. On artificial intelligence, however, the encounter produced little that matched either the scale of the technology’s advance or the urgency surrounding its risks. The two […]

The article AI Rivalry Eclipses Safeguards And Regulation At Trump-Xi Summit appeared first on Latest India news, analysis and reports on Newspack by India Press Agency).

By K Raveendran The Supreme Court’s hearing on Vande Mataram has exposed the question at the centre of the Modi government’s new law: when does honouring a national symbol become an obligation to voice beliefs a citizen does not hold? The court has given no final answer. Its decision to examine the consequences of refusing […]

The article Supreme Court Tests The Limits Of Mandatory Patriotism appeared first on Latest India news, analysis and reports on Newspack by India Press Agency).

By K Raveendran Donald Trump now possesses one of the most formidable economic weapons available to an American president against countries sustaining Russia’s energy revenues. Yet, the decision on how aggressively to wield it is complicated by a contradiction that Washington cannot easily escape: squeezing Russian oil out of the international market could also push […]

The article Sanctions Against Russian Oil Collide With Economics Of Affordable Oil appeared first on Latest India news, analysis and reports on Newspack by India Press Agency).

By K Raveendran India has spent the past four years demonstrating that energy security can sometimes be protected by refusing to choose sides. Russian crude offered discounts when Western sanctions rearranged the global oil market, Gulf producers remained indispensable despite the new relationship with Moscow, and purchases from the United States and other distant suppliers […]

The article India’s oil cushion faces two-front squeeze amidst Trump’s tariff threat appeared first on Latest India news, analysis and reports on Newspack by India Press Agency).

By K Raveendran Spontaneous student protests across Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Madhya Pradesh are exposing a vulnerability conventional politics has been slow to recognise. Their importance lies not merely in the numbers gathering on streets or outside examination centres and government offices, but in the absence of the organisational structure that usually accompanies political mobilisation. […]

The article Leaderless Student Protests Pose New Challenge To National Politics appeared first on Latest India news, analysis and reports on Newspack by India Press Agency).

By K Raveendran Another session of Parliament has closed with an uncomfortable sense of déjà vu. Repeated adjournments, slogan-shouting, demonstrations inside and outside the chambers and legislation moving through amid uproar have again raised the question of whether Parliament is performing the function for which representative democracy created it. The problem is no longer simply […]

The article Parliament Is Losing The Argument To The Smartphone appeared first on Latest India news, analysis and reports on Newspack by India Press Agency).

By K Raveendran Mohan Bhagwat’s attempt to open a conversation with India’s younger generation carries significance precisely because such an intervention would hardly have been necessary if the political establishment were confident that the youth remained comfortably within its fold. The RSS chief’s argument that young people are neither misguided nor directionless, and that they […]

The article When Demographic Dividend Turns Into Powerful Political Dissent appeared first on Latest India news, analysis and reports on Newspack by India Press Agency).

By K Raveendran Bankipur may eventually be remembered not as the constituency that discovered Prashant Kishor, but as the first place where the anger dramatised by the Cockroach Janta Party acquired an electoral address. The distinction is crucial. Kishor’s victory does not amount to popular acceptance of a coherent alternative to Narendra Modi, the Bharatiya […]

The article Bankipur Reveals The Politics Of Refusal And Rejection appeared first on Latest India news, analysis and reports on Newspack by India Press Agency).

By K Raveendran India’s political conversation appears to be acquiring a new address. It is no longer confined to Parliament House, party headquarters, election rallies or television studios. Increasingly, it begins with a mobile phone placed at a flattering angle, a carefully chosen background and the familiar instruction to look into the camera and speak […]

The article When Parliament Goes Silent, Politics Switches On The Camera appeared first on Latest India news, analysis and reports on Newspack by India Press Agency).

By K Raveendran Education minister Dharmendra Pradhan has finally resigned, owning responsibility for the NEET fiasco. There could not have been another honourable exit for the minister and the Modi government from the current situation. There is no persuasive basis for portraying the demand for Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation as a campaign driven by personal hostility. […]

The article Pradhan Has Become The Face Of A System Without Credibility appeared first on Latest India news, analysis and reports on Newspack by India Press Agency).

By K Raveendran The spectacle in central Delhi this week carried a significance far beyond the barricades, detentions and blows captured on mobile-phone cameras. The first confrontation unfolded during the Cockroach Janta Party’s march from Jantar Mantar towards Parliament, while Tuesday brought another coercive police response when Rahul Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra and other Congress […]

The article By Brutalising A Youth Protest, BJP May Have Handed Congress Its Anna Moment appeared first on Latest India news, analysis and reports on Newspack by India Press Agency).

By K Raveendran Nitin Gadkari has invested considerable political capital in presenting ethanol-blended petrol as a national solution to several problems at once. It is meant to cut India’s crude oil import bill, reduce emissions, support farmers, create a market for agricultural produce and strengthen energy security. Each of these objectives has merit. Yet the […]

The article Gadkari’s Ethanol Defence Is Losing The Public Argument appeared first on Latest India news, analysis and reports on Newspack by India Press Agency).

By K Raveendran The Supreme Court vacation bench’s observation that the “heavens are not going to fall” if petitions seeking an independent investigation into the alleged misappropriation of donations to the Ayodhya Ram Temple waited for the regular judicial process was an unfortunate choice of words. The bench may have been procedurally justified in declining […]

The article When Faith Is Betrayed, The Heavens Have Already Fallen appeared first on Latest India news, analysis and reports on Newspack by India Press Agency).

By K Raveendran The Narendra Modi government’s position on fuel prices now looks less like prudent caution and more like an overly defensive reading of a market that has already absorbed much of the Iran-US risk. The more calibrated question, therefore, is not whether New Delhi is right to watch the West Asian security situation, […]

The article Modi Govt’s Overcautious Oil Market Reading Hurting Retail Fuel Customers appeared first on Latest India news, analysis and reports on Newspack by India Press Agency).

By K Raveendran The alleged theft of donations from the Ayodhya Ram Temple has pushed a long-simmering question into the national foreground: who should guard the wealth of religious institutions when faith, money and power converge without adequate public accountability? The issue is not confined to Ayodhya, nor to Hindu institutions. Across denominations, religious endowments, […]

The article Faith Assets Need Secular Oversight As Temple Fraud Exposes Governance Vacuum appeared first on Latest India news, analysis and reports on Newspack by India Press Agency).

By K Raveendran The arithmetic of India’s fuel market has long been sold as market-driven, but the latest price movements expose a more selective discipline. When crude oil rises, the pass-through to consumers and businesses is quick, stern and explained as unavoidable. When the same crude oil retreats, the adjustment becomes cautious, partial and wrapped […]

The article Retail Petroleum Prices Fall Only On Paper As Consumers Wait In Anticipation appeared first on Latest India news, analysis and reports on Newspack by India Press Agency).

By K Raveendran India’s decision to initiate an anti-dumping investigation into cheap steel imports marks more than another defensive trade action. It is a reminder that globalisation, which New Delhi has often invoked when Indian exports face barriers abroad, becomes far more complicated when the pressure arrives at home. The steel case has exposed the […]

The article Steel Exposes Hard Limits Of Much-Vaunted Free Trade Piety appeared first on Latest India news, analysis and reports on Newspack by India Press Agency).