Newspapers

Financial democracy, the Jan Dhan transformation

Vinay Sahasrabuddhe

The article marks 12 years of the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) on Independence Day 2026. Its central claim is that political independence in 1947 gave Indians the right to vote, but not real economic freedom — for decades, ordinary Indians remained outside the formal banking system. It argues that PMJDY, announced on 15 August 2014 from the Red Fort, tried to close that gap by making a bank account, a RuPay card and insurance cover available to every household. The author positions PMJDY as the first layer of the JAM trinity (Jan Dhan–Aadhaar–Mobile), which later enabled Direct Benefit Transfer and India's wider Digital Public Infrastructure including UPI. The Antyodaya principle — "reach the last person first" — is the ideological anchor. The figures it gives: by July 2026, over 58 crore accounts, roughly ₹3 lakh crore in deposits, more than half held by women, and about three-fourths in rural and semi-urban areas. The sharpest line to carry out of this piece: Jan Dhan is not one leg of JAM among three — it is the base layer that made the other two useful. Without an account, Aadhaar has nothing to authenticate into and UPI has nothing to move money to.

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Solid Waste Management — the SC verdict and the SWM Rules, 2026

On August 4, 2026, the Supreme Court directed the Union government to frame comprehensive guidelines for imposing and collecting environmental compensation for violations of the Solid Waste Management (SWM) Rules, 2026. These new rules were notified on January 27 and came into force on April 1, 2026, replacing the SWM Rules of 2016. The bench of Justices P S Narasimha and Alok Aradhe observed that laws alone are not enough — India needs strong regulatory mechanisms and accountability to make them work on the ground. The article uses this verdict as an entry point to explain how India's waste actually moves from household to landfill, where the system breaks down, and why segregation and data verification must come before building more plants. It also flags the role of digital public infrastructure and AI-based decision support in fixing the sector. Segregate first, verify next, build later. That sequence is the whole argument — a processing plant fed mixed waste and unverified data fails whatever it cost.

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Why does handloom remain a key part of India's economy?

Priyambada Jayakumar

More than 35 lakh weavers and allied workers sit at India's handlooms, spread across over 31 lakh households. Nearly 70% of them are women. Between them they make about 15% of the country's cloth, almost entirely by hand. That is not a craft. That is an industry, and it is one of rural India's largest sources of work outside farming. Now here is the writer's point. Handloom is usually filed under culture — valuable, admired, economically small. She argues that reading is simply wrong, and the number that settles it is the capital. Handloom does all of the above on very little investment. Few manufacturing sectors create as many jobs for so small a sum. And India's central economic problem is exactly that — manufacturing that does not create enough jobs per rupee put in. The trouble is not with the famous weaves. Those still sell. It is the hundreds of lesser-known traditions that are dying, as returns fall, markets stay scattered, and families stop teaching the skill to their children. Her answer has two halves. Stop selling handloom because it is old and start selling it as premium — craftsmanship, sustainability, exclusivity — with limited production treated as a feature rather than a weakness. The second half is duller and probably matters more. Nobody counts this sector. There is no reliable figure for what it contributes to GDP, exports, taxes or household income. A sector that is not counted cannot be planned for, and will keep being treated as small.

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Agasthyamalai eviction orders still silence Forest Rights Act

C.R. Bijoy

Thousands of families in the Agasthyamalai hills of Tamil Nadu have been given eviction notices. The Forest Department says they are sitting on forest land illegally. The order came from the Supreme Court. Before that, a committee surveyed the whole area and reported what it found. Now here is the writer's point. He is not saying evictions are unfair. He is saying something sharper — the law already tells us who is an illegal occupier, and nobody has bothered to apply it. The Forest Rights Act says this. If you were living on forest land before 13 December 2005, you have a right there. Nobody can evict you until your claim is checked and decided. Only if your claim fails that check are you an encroacher. That check has not been done. And no government has ever published how many people fall outside the Act. So every "encroacher" number in this case is a number nobody can verify.

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The cost of unconditional cash transfers

Dipa Sinha, Vijay Ram S.

This is an opinion piece by two economists, Dipa Sinha and Vijay Ram S., built around State spending data. Their argument is that as more and more States hand women a fixed sum of money every month with no conditions attached — an unconditional cash transfer, or UCT — that spending is starting to eat into what the same governments spend on schools and hospitals. The background you need is small: Delhi launched such a scheme on 1 August, joining the States and Union Territories that already run one. The authors are careful about one thing, and it shapes the whole piece. They accept that the money is spent sensibly, because studies show it goes on food, health and education. Their worry is about arithmetic, not about how poor households behave.

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A common blueprint for India's industrial heat electrification

Vrinda Gupta, Srinivas Ethiraj

This is an opinion piece by two energy-transition researchers, Vrinda Gupta and Srinivas Ethiraj. Their argument is that India's next big step must be to electrify industrial heat — the heat factories use for dyeing, drying, boiling and distilling, which today mostly comes from burning coal, oil or gas inside the plant. They point to solar power, where tariffs fell by more than 85% over a decade, and say that happened because policy, financing, competitive vendors, mandates and private investment all moved together — so industrial heat will need the same coordinated push rather than a single scheme. They then set out six things India should do, beginning with measuring what a factory actually uses before replacing any equipment. One caution for the reader: all six are the authors' recommendations, not a programme that has been announced or funded.

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Centre says report on theatre commands under consideration

Saurabh Trivedi

This is a news report, not an opinion piece. It tells us that the final report on setting up theatre commands for the armed forces is now with the government for a decision, and that discussions are still going on. The information comes from the latest report of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Defence, which was submitted in Parliament. The committee points out that of the 34 recommendations it made, this is the only one on which a final government reply is still awaited. Nothing has been approved and nothing has been set up — the piece is about a proposal sitting at the decision stage.

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A new security triangle emerges with the Makkah Pact

Mahesh Sachdev

This is an opinion piece, not a news report. It is written by a retired Indian ambassador who spent his career on the Arab world, and he is giving his own reading of a defence agreement signed on 7 August 2026 by Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan — the Makkah Joint Defence Agreement, or MJDA. His central argument is that the excitement around this pact is overdone: it looks less like the birth of a "Muslim NATO" and more like Saudi Arabia trying several security options at once after the United States-Iran war shook the region. The one hard fact on record is a line in the joint statement — an armed attack on any one of the three will be treated as an attack on all three, which is what is called a collective defence clause, a written promise to treat each other's wars as your own. The treaty text itself has not been made public, so almost everything else in the piece is assessment, and the author says so himself.

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Combined effects of climate and geology caused 2024 Wayanad landslide: study

Sam Paul A.

This is a news report, not an opinion piece. It covers a new study published in Landslides, an international peer-reviewed journal, which means other specialists checked the method and the evidence before it appeared. The study asks why the 2024 landslide in Kerala's Wayanad district became as destructive as it did, and answers that the extraordinary rain was only half the story. The rock beneath the slope, the shape of the valley and the cracks running through the rock decided where the hillside broke and how far the debris travelled. The work was carried out jointly by researchers from the University of Kerala, IISER Mohali and Savitribai Phule Pune University.

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As U.S. Senate clears Bill, 100% tariff threat looms

T.C.A. Sharad Raghavan

The United States Senate has cleared a Bill that could impose a 100% tariff on Indian goods, triggered by India's purchase of Russian crude oil. The vote was 86-11, with support from both parties. It is not law yet: a Bill must also pass the House of Representatives, so this is a strong signal rather than a settled outcome. The stated aim is to choke the revenue funding Russia's war in Ukraine, and the Bill targets Russian political leaders, banks, the energy sector and sanctions-evasion networks. What matters for India is how it selects its targets. It names no country. It sets two tests, and meeting either one brings the tariff thirty days after the law takes effect. The first catches any nation among the five biggest buyers of Russian crude or gas in the preceding year that keeps buying past that window. India and China are the two largest buyers, and Russian oil made up more than 40% of India's crude imports in May and above half in June. The second test targets countries facilitating sanctions evasion — a charge Indian refiners reject, saying every purchase has been lawful. India's real exposure is to the first test, and the timing is difficult. The obvious substitute is Gulf crude, which sails through the Strait of Hormuz, where passage is currently constrained. Any tariff would also sit on top of the 10% the U.S. already levies on Indian goods.

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