The unusual events leading up to death of a Dalit student Sahil Wakode by suicide in IIT Bombay on September 18, after his professor advised him against use of phone in exam led to a piquant situation. Since then the IIT Bombay has been under immense pressure to act against a much-decorated Prof Suryanarayana Doolla for the death of Wakode. The institute is under pressure to proceed against the professor under the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act presumably for doing his job.  However, in a mighty pushback, the IIT Bombay Faculty rallied behind Prof Doolla’s favour and clarified that Prof Doolla has not been suspended, and continues to be a member of the faculty of the institute in “good standing”. It noted that Prof Doolla, who had won several awards for teaching, had received at least two such awards on the recommendations of the students. At this stage it is not clear how one odd statement will help Prof Doolla as political parties like the Congress are already trying to capitalise the incident. In this backdrop with the deceased student’s parents pressing for strong action, Prof Doolla got some support from Dalit leader from Tamil Nadu, Ananthan Ayyasamy, who has vocally opposed pressing SC/ST Act against Prof Doolla. He feels such a step would be counter-productive. Explaining how he himself belongs to the Devendra Kula Vellalar community, classified as SC, he says slapping the “harsh” SC/ST Act could drive away our IIT teaching faculty abroad. He says his community has been wanting to get out of the reserved category.  A qualified engineer from NIT, Trichy, who has had a stint at Intel in India and the U.S., he says his community is opposed to using the SC/ST Act per se.  “We are about 9% in Tamil Nadu. We should not do anything to harm our nation.” 

Lalbaugcha Raja was never only an idol. It was a promise: stand long enough, and Bappa will see you. This year that promise looks thinner than the barricade tape. Videos from the Parel queue are doing what official statements will not. People are telling friends to skip Raja. Not out of lost faith. Out of fear of the arrangement. Jaydeep Meghraj Nemade, 25, a Pune engineer with an MBA, came with friends for darshan on September 17. Around 11.40 pm, still in the line, he felt uneasy and could not breathe. He was rushed to Global Hospital. He died there. Police booked an accidental death and spoke of a suspected heart attack. The post-mortem will settle the medical line. It will not settle the other one: a young devotee collapsed in the most photographed queue in Mumbai, and the first public instinct was not surprising. It was recognition. That line has looked unsafe for years. What the videos show is not devotion. It is sorting. The common public is packed, shoved, held, and moved like volume. A few metres away, the paid and the connected walk a cleaner path. Pay more, wait less. The same mandal that sells “Raja of the poor” runs two religions under one shamiana: one for those who can buy speed, one for those who can only buy patience. Promotion gets louder every year. The callousness of the ground gets cheaper. Security looks like crowd control, not care. When regular visitors start saying it is better to avoid Raja, then it’s time organisers must sit up and take notice. 

Sydney Sweeney’s “Just Sports” ad for Novig has made the argument unavoidable. The actor appears almost nude, covering herself with footballs, basketballs and hockey sticks while repeating the line “just sports.” India has lived with a quieter version of the same trade. IPL still packages cheerleaders as part of the night’s entertainment. Condom and lubricant spots have run through India–South Africa and India–Pakistan broadcasts, turning family living rooms into an interval of innuendo. On Instagram, a squat filmed from behind still travels farther than a clean cover drive. The contradiction is sharpest around the women who actually win. Smriti Mandhana, Harmanpreet Kaur, Jemimah Rodrigues, Shafali Verma and Deepti Sharma now sell brands that once belonged only to Virat Kohli and Rohit Sharma. P V Sindhu and Saina Nehwal did the same in badminton; Mary Kom, Nikhat Zareen and Lovlina Borgohain in boxing; Vinesh Phogat and Sakshi Malik in wrestling; Mirabai Chanu in weightlifting; Rani Rampal and Savita Punia in hockey. The better work: Nike’s “Da Da Ding,” Gatorade’s sweat-and-gold films with Sindhu, shows the grimace after a long rally, not a pose. The weaker work still frames the same athletes as lifestyle accessories: glowing, smiling, rarely exhausted. Sex sells faster than a late cut or a smash. Brands chasing young male viewers treat sport as a ready-made stage and the athlete as set dressing. Young girls watching Mandhana bat or Sindhu jump see two messages at once: you can win, and you will still be looked at first. Indian sport is growing fast enough to demand better. Sell Harmanpreet’s six, Sindhu’s defence, Mary Kom’s footwork. The contest is enough. The rest is just advertising.

Chennai’s Pattinapakkam loop road was buzzing and teeming with fresh fish sale on this Saturday (Sept 19) evening. This writer travelled from the Lighthouse Point, all along the beach loop road to Santhome exit.  Every rickety wooden shelf stacked with the best sea catch, the vendors beaming, expecting not just the Saturday evening bumper sale but something more …relief that their livelihood was not about to be struck down by the Tamil Nadu government’s New Secretariat building plan. Saturday evenings are eagerly awaited by the vendors and buyers. Most families plan for the Sunday special lunch with fish entrees in the starring role.  As we drive down, on the right, eateries (tin and bamboo sheds) that are lit up, invite the foodie with the overpowering smell of fried fish and “meen kuzhambu” (fish curry) to go with mounds of hot rice. But wait, what is this brand new structure that draws attention? It is the almost completed snazzily designed fish market, built to enable sale and display, water vents to quickly drain…a clean, comfortable and well organised bazaar.  Pattinapakkam and its nine villages never had it so good for fishing and sale. All is well that ends well …even as the CM announced that the planned Secretariat project was shelved here, a huge sigh of relief pacify the fisherfolk. Even as you turn right at Santhome, the Neo-Gothic Basilica and Cathedral of St Thomas, an apostle of Jesus Christ, rises up to the sky. Knock and the door shall be opened!

Jadavpur University is emerging as a battleground in West Bengal, underscoring the BJP’s difficulty in making inroads into a campus associated with the Left. The BJP won the Jadavpur Assembly constituency in the 2026 election, yet the university remains outside the political influence of the BJP or Trinamool Congress. Demands for “neutral” campuses have raised concerns over attempts to suppress critical discourse. For decades, student politics at JU has been dominated by Left formations, including SFI, AISA and FETSU. The TMC has failed to establish a comparable foothold. That equation came under strain in August after clashes involving ABVP and Left-leaning groups, with allegations of outsider entry and vandalism. The confrontation centred on a FETSU meeting at Aurobindo Bhavan. The BJP has accused students and faculty of encouraging anti-national politics, citing graffiti and slogans concerning Palestine and Kashmir, invoking Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s phrase “Dimagi Naxal”. Following its electoral success, the RSS has intensified efforts to reshape academic institutions. The campaign intensified on September 9, when chief minister Suvendu Adhikari led a saffron procession involving BJP workers and Naga sadhus towards JU. He warned that those raising “azadi” slogans would be “uprooted”. The government passed the West Bengal Universities and Colleges (Administration and Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2026, allowing inter-university transfers. It says the measure can deploy experienced faculty to institutions including Jhargram and Cooch Behar. Teachers’ groups, including JUTA, have opposed it, arguing that it threatens university autonomy and could enable punitive transfers. Meanwhile, BJP MLA Sarbori Mukherjee has sought to rename JU after Sri Aurobindo. CPI(M) state secretary and JU alumnus Mohammad Salim criticised the proposal, alleging that the BJP’s objective is to extend RSS ideology across Bengal. He argued that, after JNU, Jamia Millia Islamia and Hyderabad...

Union Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari’s lament that he feels ashamed for incompletion of the crucial Mumbai-Konkan-Goa highway even after 17 years has assumed another dark hue since it has come to light that the expenditure for the strategic link has almost doubled over the years. RTI activist Jitendra Ghadge has been informed by the ministry headed by Gadkari that the projected expenditure for four-laning of the highway will be around Rs 16909 crore. Earlier, it was tagged at Rs 11409 crore. Thus, the rise amounts to 48%. So far, Rs 11577 crore has been spent on the project. This amount exceeds the original estimate. Despite the delay and so much expenditure, many large tracts of the highway NH-66 are still incomplete. The result is harassment for the road users, especially during festival occasions. While it was announced in the past that the distance of 460 km between Mumbai and the Maharashtra-Goa border would be crossed within seven to eight hours due to the expansion of the highway, the common experience is that it is impossible to guess how long it can take to drive down to the destination. This is owing to the pitiable condition of the road. This delay is compared with the 700-km Nagpur-Mumbai Samruddhi Expressway, which was completed within seven years from the day the work started. Exasperated, Gadkari has announced that he will not remain present for the inauguration of the link as he felt ashamed for the inability to complete the project.

On PM Narendra Modi’s birthday on September 17, Tamil Nadu CM C Joseph Vijay was among the many leaders and CMs who posted their birthday greetings on X.  What however caught the political eye was that the TVK supremo’s “heartfelt birthday wishes” to “Modi avargal” was his acknowledgement that PM Modi “leads with dedication towards building a strong India”. He significantly wished for PM Modi’s “a long life filled with good health”. These were significant, considering it was made in the backdrop of a dogfight within the Congress in Tamil Nadu as to who will be the PM face for 2029 Lok Sabha polls. In fact, a public spat  erupted within the party over its alliance with TVK and the recent campaign projecting Vijay as a potential prime ministerial face, with two senior party leaders — former Tamil Nadu Congress Committee (TNCC) chief Selvaperunthagai and former MP Praveen Chakravarty — trading sharp remarks. The dispute began after Selvaperunthagai said any alliance involving the Congress should accept Rahul Gandhi as its prime ministerial candidate. “If Rahul Gandhi is the PM, alliance partners should accept that. If not, what is the point of being in this alliance? It is only honest to have an alliance with those who openly and sincerely accept Rahul as the prime minister,” Selvaperunthagai said. Chakravarty, however, dismissed the former state Congress chief’s intervention, saying there was no confusion within the alliance and that TVK had not officially taken a position against Rahul Gandhi.  

Maharashtra Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Tukaram Mundhe has admonished three top Bollywood actors over their appearance in a surrogate advertisement for a Pan Masala brand. Actors Shah Rukh Khan, Ajay Devgn and Tiger Shroff are thus violators of the law in the eyes of the FDA, Munde has thundered in a TV channel interview.  The controversial advertisement is of Vimal Elaichi mouth freshner. In the frank questions-answer session, Mundhe has made it abundantly clear that for law, no celebrity status matters neither does it accord protection from legal proceedings. Hence, the three actors are treated as advertisers in this legal context. The FSSA of India Act requires endorsers to observe due diligence regarding the products they promote. Accordingly, Shah Rukh Khan, Ajay Devgn and Tiger Shroff received official show-cause notices from the Maharashtra FDA. The notices said the Vimal Elaichi campaign acts as a surrogate promotion for Vimal Pan Masala, which is banned in Maharashtra. The FDA directed the actors to stop the campaign and delete promotional content from social media. Munde revealed that while two actors have responded to the notice, one is yet to do so. He pleaded inability to name the individuals concerned, saying that the file for the case was with one of his subordinates. Munde has been hitting the headlines ever since he took over as FDA chief. Significantly, the state government has desisted from making any comment about his campaign, which has rubbed many in high places the wrong way.

For ages, Chennai’s Marina, the world’s second longest beach has remained the envy of many a coastal city. It has also hosted significant public protests for causes, strong or illusory. The imposing colonial, brilliant white IG’s office has presided over this imposing wide beach road. A recent decision to build a sprawling new Secretariat on 25 acres of Pattinapakkam’s loop road has raised a tsunami of protests from the nine fishing villages as they may lose their livelihood, if forced to migrate. But why is this site chosen from a clutch of other less vulnerable locations? The talk by the well and ill-versed is buzzing with anger, apprehension and alarm. Fishers’ boats have turned symbols of serious protest, with black flags on every boat.  Former Education Minister of the DMK Anbil Mahesh said there are so many schools in the narrow roads of Santhome nearly 20,000 students may face hardships of traffic diversion. A monument built on 25 acres of coastal land maybe inundated over the years …remember the tsunami of 2004 and how waves battered the road boundaries? Why this particular location? Also the earlier “New Secretariat” built on the Omandurar Estate by the DMK government was converted into multi-specialty hospital when J Jayalalithaa-led AIADMK came to power. The TVK government’s Rs 1,200 crore Secretariat will affect livelihood of fishermen …a single boat supports 10 fisher families. There is the buzz about why Pattinappakkam? A ritzy high-rise here is the home of the CM and other celebrities. A well-known builder designed it. If the plan to build a spanking new secretariat goes through the value of this beach front will rise higher. The CM has already announced the project under rule 110.

Are the regional constituents of the INDIA Bloc beginning to work among themselves, without the Congress playing the role of “big brother”? While the Gandhis have maintained a cordial relationship with Mamata Banerjee, recent developments surrounding two bypolls in West Bengal have raised questions over the equation. On the day the Election Commission froze the Trinamool Congress’s party name and symbol, DMK leader Kanimozhi met Banerjee at her residence. The Congress, meanwhile, moved quickly to attack the poll panel’s decision, with general secretary (organisation) K C Venugopal calling it “the Election Commission’s gift” to Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his birthday. His remarks came as Kanimozhi’s meeting with Banerjee fuelled speculation about regional parties exploring a political platform that could operate independently of the Congress. The timing has acquired significance because the TMC and Congress are contesting the Nandigram and Rejinagar bypolls separately. Unconfirmed reports suggest Banerjee was willing to accommodate the Congress in one of the seats and had approached Venugopal. There has, however, been no response from the Congress to the reported outreach. Kanimozhi’s engagements have extended beyond Bengal. She met Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray in the presence of MPs Anil Desai and Milind Narvekar. The discussions reportedly covered the delimitation Bill, the Congress’s approach towards the BJP and the future of the INDIA Bloc. She also met NCP (SP) chief Sharad Pawar and Supriya Sule amid reports of differences between the Congress and NCP (SP) in Maharashtra. The developments come against the backdrop of an inactive INDIA Bloc coordination mechanism. Its 14-member committee met only once, on September 13, 2023. A proposal for regular meetings also faltered after a planned Hyderabad meeting in August 2026 failed to take place.