Editorial

The collapse of a building in Delhi’s Satya Niketan, which killed at least seven people, had all the markings of a tragedy foretold – a familiar detail being that the building, functioning as a paying-guest facility, was an unauthorised construction with poor safety systems. It has been reported that the building was originally sanctioned as a ground-plus-one structure but was expanded with additional floors without the necessary permissions. This collapse extends a series of incidents involving unsafe and unauthorised buildings, illegal alterations and extensions, commercial misuse of residential properties, and abject failure of regulatory supervision. Four years ago, Satya Niketan witnessed a three-storey building collapse while under renovation, killing two people. Sunday’s tragedy also exposes a culture of exploitation in areas near universities and educational institutions, where students are forced to live in unsafe conditions. Delhi, one of India’s major educational centres, has consistently failed to provide safe and affordable accommodation for the thousands of students who land in the city every year to pursue opportunity and a better life. Similar incidents and fire tragedies have occurred in other areas of the city, including Vivek Vihar and Malviya Nagar, each exposing abysmal enforcement and entrenched corruption. The costs are irreversible. The Delhi High Court said that apart from the owner of the paying-guest facility, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), which erred as an enforcement agency, and the Delhi University (DU), which failed to provide adequate housing facilities to its outstation students, were responsible for the tragedy. The High Court has directed the MCD to conduct an executive-level inquiry. A case has been registered, officials suspended, and the owner of the building arrested.  However, legal proceedings typically drag on for years, and the suspended officials, if history is any indication, are likely to rejoin service. Real, systemic accountability is rarely fixed. N This causes preventable incidents to recur. Even with a ‘triple-engine sarkar’ at the helm, Delhi has suffered because of poor administrative oversight. It has struggled under the weight of its expansion, facilitated by rampant violation of building rules. However, this pattern of negligence is not limited to the national capital. India’s cities are increasingly witnessing the rise of illegal constructions and unsafe paying-guest facilities. Building collapses are one fallout of unchecked urban sprawl. Given this backdrop, the Supreme Court’s proposal for pan-India safety audits of all paying-guest and student accommodations is a crucial and necessary intervention. It should lead to clearer, universal compliance mechanisms and certain punishment for corrupt officials. (Source: DH)

With its third and final orbit-raising manoeuvre complete, the EOS-05 is set for observations from about 36,000 km above the Earth’s surface. This is India’s first imaging satellite from a geosynchronous orbit. Its position and pace, locked to the Earth’s rotation, enable continuous observation – a marked improvement on the outcomes achieved through Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites. With the success of this mission, the second in the Gisat programme, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is set to significantly enhance capabilities in monitoring weather events such as floods, cyclones, and forest fires through advanced imaging across visible, infrared, multispectral, and hyperspectral bands.  With quicker revisits, the EOS-05 facilitates greater frequency in imaging compared to the LEO satellites. The 2,367-kg satellite is designed to track landforms and water bodies in close detail. With the space agency mentioning the strategic significance of the satellite, its utility basket likely includes national security. Configured for real-time observation, the EOS-05 can provide key input in disaster warning and damage assessment, and augment capabilities in agricultural management. These are important tools to possess at a time marked by heightened climate risks and frequent extreme weather events across the world. In the long term, learnings from a series of earth observations can help India sharpen its emergency response systems. The advantage of continuous imaging can extend beyond climate resilience and prove crucial in stepping up strategic surveillance along sensitive landscapes in the region. The EOS-05 mission comes after a recent run of failures for India’s space agency. In May 2025, the PSLV-C61/EOS-09 suffered a third-stage failure. The satellite was designed to deliver continuous remote-sensing data for applications across sectors. In January this year, the PSLV-C62/EOS-N1 mission failed, too, following an anomaly in the PS3 stage.  The commercial mission was intended to launch the Earth observation satellite EOS-N1, along with 15 co-passenger satellites from domestic and international customers.  The setbacks had caused concerns for ISRO, after a series of successful launches and big-ticket missions such as Chandrayaan-3. These reverses occurred at a time when ISRO’s capabilities for cost-effective, impactful missions were gaining credence. The two failures also left the agency facing questions regarding its workhorse launcher, the PSLV. With the GSLV-F17 placing the EOS-05 on its intended orbit, ISRO will now hope to carry the momentum into its mission line-up. Topping the list is India’s first human spaceflight programme, Gaganyaan, which has achieved the validation of human-rating systems. The mission is scheduled to have its first uncrewed flight in late 2026. (Source: DH)  

In the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)’s latest report on climate change, there is another escalation of an increasingly familiar threat. The report, titled Limiting Overshoot and released last week, says global temperature rise can no longer be contained within the threshold of 1.5° Celsius above pre-industrial levels, laid down by the Paris Agreement. Even the most favourable projections see the warming to reach 1.8° C in the coming years.  Other climate models have projected worse scenarios. The Paris red line has been breached multiple times in the past five years. Even if all nations implement their stated climate policies, the 1.8°C mark will be touched. If they continue with their current policies, warming could peak at 2.6°C above pre-industrial levels by 2100. UN Secretary-General António Guterres has asked the world to make the overshoot above 1.5° C “as small and short as possible”. The report notes that climate adaptation has limits, and lost climate conditions cannot be recaptured. Every additional fraction of a degree and the time spent above the threshold make it increasingly difficult to fight an increase in the temperature.  The report says offsetting the heating effect of even a tenth of a degree is much more difficult than preventing that rise. This reiterates the urgency of implementing mitigation strategies with greater focus. No climate plan adopted, promised or envisaged until now can clear the accumulated carbon in the atmosphere in the foreseeable future. Limiting Overshoot also calls for efforts that address threats beyond carbon dioxide. The UN has identified cutting methane emissions as a quick and cost-effective measure to slow warming in the near term and called for targeted priority actions. While the Global Methane Pledge has provided a head start, its implementation has yet to gather the required pace. India is not a member of the programme. Climate change is manifesting in diverse forms in different parts of the world. Unprecedented heat waves are sweeping through Europe and America, the polar ice is melting, and the seas are rising. Floods, cyclones, and other disasters are frequent in Asia. A flash flood in the Bhotekoshi River in Nepal, reportedly caused by a glacial collapse in the higher Himalayas, killed more than a thousand people. Many more are missing. The UNEP report is the latest warning that the time for action is slipping away. It is about events inexorably moving to a tragedy, predicted and chronicled. (Source: DH)

The decision of a special bench of the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), headed by its president Justice (Retd) Anupinder Singh Grewal, to stay an order approving a Rs 6.25 crore payout plan against claims of over Rs 22,006.57 crore against Essel group founder Subhash Chandra has only exposed the tribunal’s poor functioning. Public outrage forced the special bench to put the plan in abeyance, and the bench itself was constituted only after the controversy erupted. But for this afterthought, a huge financial claim would have been settled with a repayment of just 0.03% — that’s a haircut of 99.97%. It was rightly described as a mundan. The creditors included some big names from the banking and finance sector. Some of them have appealed the NCLT’s decision. An FIR has also been filed against Subhash Chandra for fraud and breach of trust. Subhash Chandra has argued that he did not personally borrow money and was only a guarantor for the loans raised by three group companies. Isn’t a guarantor liable for the actions of those companies? The case must be seen against the backdrop of bans harassing thousands of ordinary borrowers and guarantors, many of whom have faced property confiscation or even been driven to suicide under repayment pressure. The NCLT arrived at Rs 6.5 crore by deducting Rs 25 crore — the reported worth of Subhash Chandra’s house — from his declared assets of Rs 31.79 crore. He had to have a roof over his head, no? Yet questions persist about his net worth, which has at different times been declared as Rs 45,888 crore, Rs 40,562 crore, Rs 39.8 crore, and Rs 31.79 crore. The repayment plan was approved by a voting support of 80.81%, but 61.78% of that share came from associates or parties related to Subhash Chandra. The NCLT has now said the procedure was wrong. India has seen predatory practices where billions have been siphoned off through haircuts, write-offs, and waivers favouring the wealthiest and most resourceful persons and corporates. Subhash Chandra’s case may still become one such case, because the last word is yet to be said. Vijay Mallya had reason to congratulate Subhash Chandra. He said Rs 14,100 crore was recovered from him against a judgment debt of Rs 6,203 crore. He must be wondering why someone who paid Rs 6.5 crore against a debt of Rs 22,000 crore thrives in India while he is in exile in England. (Source: DH)

Every September 5, India honours Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan – philosopher, Oxford scholar, and the Republic’s first Vice-President and second President. When students proposed celebrating his birthday after he became President in 1962, he asked instead that the date be observed as Teachers’ Day, insisting teachers deserved to rank among the nation’s finest minds. It is a fitting origin story for a country that has long seen itself as a wellspring of learning for the world. That reverence is not sentimental excess. Teachers do more than deliver a syllabus; they build the cognitive and moral scaffolding on which every other profession stands. The doctor who saves a life, the engineer who builds a bridge, the officer who frames policy – all once sat before a teacher who taught them to reason, question and persist. In a country of 1.4 billion, no institution shapes the future more directly than the classroom, nor any individual more than the teacher standing in it. India’s claim to Vishwa Guru status – teacher to the world – rests on genuine civilisational memory. Nalanda and Takshashila once drew scholars from Persia to China; the guru-shishya tradition treated teaching as a sacred trust, not a fallback career. Reviving that stature is now stated national ambition, invoked from foreign-policy platforms to soft-power strategy. Ground reality is more sobering. A Parliamentary Standing Committee last year counted close to ten lakh vacant teaching posts under the Centre’s Samagra Shiksha scheme – over seven lakh of them at the primary and elementary level. Vacancies for secondary and senior-secondary teachers, precisely where subject expertise matters most, nearly doubled within a single year. Regulators have simultaneously derecognised scores of teacher-training colleges that had reduced the B.Ed degree to a paper formality. Even the good news carries a warning: the most recent ASER survey, in 2024, found barely a quarter of Class 3 government-school children could read a Class 2-level text – a real improvement on 2022, but still a low bar for an aspiring Vishwa Guru. Add chronically underpaid contract teachers, overcrowded classrooms and patchy in-service training, and the gap between rhetoric and classroom is hard to ignore. Vishwa Guru cannot be built on borrowed civilisational glory alone. It has to be built teacher by teacher – through fair pay, rigorous training, manageable classrooms, and recruitment drives that fill vacancies before ministries announce new schemes. Teachers’ Day should not be a 24-hour ritual that gives way, on September 6, to indifference about who is actually at the blackboard. The country would do well to remember that the surest way to teach the world is to first take proper care of those who teach it at home. (Source: The Pioneer)  

The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO)’s two-day summit in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, was notable for the united positions it projected in spite of the diverse political, economic, and security interests of the constituent members. The Bishkek Declaration reflected shared interests arising from a sense of territorial contiguity and an awareness of common challenges and possibilities. Its condemnation of the United States-Israel war on Iran is significant, not only for the support it extends to Iran, a member of the group, but also for its strong messaging against the Donald Trump administration. India joining the other members in this position is an important development. Members strongly criticised Western sanctions that violated the United Nations Charter. The Declaration also underlined the rights of all countries to pursue peaceful nuclear programmes. At the summit, members chose a broadly accommodative approach on some of the polarising issues. The Declaration expressed the grouping’s commitment to fight terrorism, including cross-border transgressions. This reflected Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call to dismantle terror infrastructure and end double standards in handling the issue. His words were aimed at Pakistan, which signed the declaration after Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif noted that his country, too, was a victim of terrorism. The summit underlined the role of China as the leader of the Global South and an evolving multipolar world. President Xi Jinping called upon the member states to support multilateralism and contribute towards reforming global governance. Xi’s words and China’s positions are seen as providing direction to a world order that has a diminished role for the US. These developments align with China’s continuing efforts to shape a yuan-based international system and Russia’s moves to de-dollarise trade. Since its origins as a security-oriented organisation, the SCO has widened its scope, now covering economic cooperation, trade, and infrastructure. The Bishkek Declaration has called for industrial cooperation and the development of transport corridors, multimodal connectivity, digital commerce, and national currency settlements. The idea of a transport corridor connecting South Asia to Europe through Central Asia has immense potential. India’s continuing focus on the Central Asian region draws on economic and security objectives. Before attending the summit, Modi visited Uzbekistan, where an agreement was firmed up for the long-term supply of uranium and critical minerals to India. The two countries have upgraded their ties to a strategic partnership and expanded their trade and economic relations. India’s increasing engagement with the SCO members marks an important turn in the shifting geopolitical environment. (Source: DH)    

The FSSAI (Food Safety and Standards Authority of India)’s proposal to mandate a prominent display of content labels on food packets can help improve consumer awareness regarding unhealthy packaged food. The regulator has told the Supreme Court of India that warning labels, in a red hexagonal format, would notify consumers about high sugar, high salt, high fat, etc., and use descriptions such as “highly sweetened beverage”. Though packaged food items currently carry information about their contents, it is typically lost in small print at the back of the packets. Most consumers do not read this information, and many who do are not fully aware of the outcomes of consuming food high in sugar or salt. A prominent label with a clear indication would help consumers decide whether they should buy the product or not. The Front of Pack Nutrition Labelling (FOPNL) exercise, proposed for stage-wise implementation, will commence with warnings when the product in question exceeds the prescribed limits for two or more components: added saturated fat, added sugar, etc. However, experts have flagged concerns over the approach, pointing out that it could allow many products to escape scrutiny. They have demanded clear and separate markers for every specified nutrient of concern. These warnings should be prominently labelled, ensuring that the intended message gets adequate consumer visibility. The FSSAI should follow this statement of intent with targeted, time-bound implementation of the process. It is to be noted that the regulator made these proposals after raps from the apex court over its failure in issuing the warning labels. Earlier this year, the Court had told the FSSAI that it should not be concerned about the interests of multinational companies, but about the citizens’ right to health. Calls for front-of-pack warnings have been repeatedly met with inaction of the authority. Its record invites credible apprehensions about the implementation of FOPNL. The packaged food industry has long opposed any form of warnings, but public health must be prioritised above industry interests. India is the global diabetes capital, and faces rising threats from hypertension, obesity, and high cholesterol – all ailments linked to unhealthy diets. Implementing a clear front-of-pack warning scheme has become increasingly crucial in addressing this crisis. The onus is on the government to complement the labelling exercise with awareness programmes, educating the public on the indicators and ways to interpret them. Global evidence of such warnings encouraging consumers to adopt healthier eating habits should form the pivot for the larger campaign. (Source: DH)

The 26th Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit closed in Bishkek on September 1, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the other heads of state signing the Bishkek Declaration, marking the bloc’s 25th anniversary. Hosted by Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov, the two-day summit brought together ten member states, fifteen partner countries and two observer nations. Prime Minister Modi’s agenda rested on three pillars — security, connectivity and opportunity. On security, he pressed for dismantling the entire terror ecosystem: its financing, recruitment, radicalisation and the safe havens that sustain it, insisting there could be no double standards and that terrorism must never be treated as anyone’s strategic asset. On connectivity, he backed regional trade and market integration, but only where it respects sovereignty and territorial integrity — a familiar Indian caveat aimed at projects such as China’s Belt and Road corridor running through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. What gave the moment its weight was where it happened: Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif sat at the same table, invoking his own country’s sacrifices against terrorism. Yet the Declaration still carried the substance India has sought for years — a strong, collective condemnation of terrorism in every form, rejection of double standards, and a call to combat the cross-border movement of terrorists. That every member, Pakistan included, signed on to that language is the real story, even without naming any specific attack. Beyond the rhetoric, the summit delivered India concrete institutional gains: approval of a new Universal Centre for Countering Security Threats, an updated protocol on cross-border crime cooperation that aids the fight against narco-terrorism, adoption of English as an official SCO language, and hosting rights for the SCO Civilization Dialogue Forum this autumn — thirteen outcomes in all, by the Ministry of External Affairs’ own count. The summit’s ambit reached well beyond South Asia. The Declaration condemned the US-Israeli strikes on Iran as violations of international law and favoured a more multipolar order over unilateral sanctions — an SCO positioning itself against Western-led institutions. That sits awkwardly alongside India’s own recalibration: a February trade deal cutting US tariffs from 50 per cent to 18 per cent came bundled with a commitment to wind down Russian oil purchases, even as Modi sat with Putin in Bishkek, reviewing the full spread of India-Russia ties, energy included. With Xi Jinping there was no scheduled bilateral, just a warm handshake — modest, but consistent with the thaw since Tianjin. The real test begins now. Later this month, Modi, Xi and Putin reconvene in New Delhi for the BRICS summit, a sterner test of whether Bishkek’s cordiality survives contact with unresolved friction on the border and in trade. Declaratory unity against terrorism has been signed before, Pakistan included, without reliably converting into extradition, financial action or intelligence-sharing India can point to. Bishkek gave India better language. What New Delhi does with it will decide whether this was a turning point or one more ritual repeated on schedule. (Source: The Pioneer)

When Narendra Modi and Vladimir Putin embraced on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Bishkek on August 31, it was the image both governments wanted the world to see: warm and familiar, unbothered by the past year’s turbulence. Their bilateral meeting — the first face-to-face encounter since Putin’s visit to New Delhi last December — was brief by diplomatic standards, but its symbolism travelled further than its substance. Modi’s message was carefully calibrated. “We must move away from endless war towards an end to the war,” he told Putin, adding that “every day spent in war sets humanity back.” It was a restatement, four years on, of the line he delivered at Samarkand in 2022: “today’s era is not an era of war.” Putin, for his part, reached for language both sides have used since 2010, calling the relationship a “special and privileged strategic partnership,” and thanked Modi for his “personal attention” to it. Modi used the occasion to invite Putin to New Delhi in September for the BRICS summit, keeping the calendar of contact dense even as the war in Ukraine grinds on. The meeting is being called significant less for what was announced than for what it confirmed: that Washington’s year-long campaign to prise India away from Moscow has not worked as intended. Donald Trump’s decision last August to push tariffs on Indian goods to 50 percent, explicitly citing its Russian crude purchases, was the most direct pressure an American president has applied to India’s Russia policy in decades. Tariffs came down again in February after signals that Indian refiners would scale back, and imports did fall for much of the last fiscal year. But the rebound has been telling: Russian crude buys climbed again this spring, pushing bilateral trade up more than 50 percent for the quarter, oil doing almost all the work while Indian exports stay barely visible on Russia’s books. That imbalance is the honest picture of where the relationship stands today. Two decades after Moscow was India’s default partner on everything from fighter jets to nuclear plants, the tie is now narrower and more transactional: discounted crude and fertiliser, spares and maintenance for a legacy defence inventory built around the S-400 and Soviet-era platforms, safer rupee-rouble payment channels to dodge sanctions, and a $100-billion trade target both sides keep restating without a credible path there. Where this heads will be decided as much in Washington and Beijing as in Moscow or Delhi. India’s simultaneous thaw with Xi Jinping at the same summit — itself partly a by-product of Trump’s tariffs — gives New Delhi more room to treat Russia as one hedge among several, not a pillar. Moscow, meanwhile, has grown steadily more dependent on Beijing, leaving it less able to reciprocate India’s balancing act than before. The Bishkek embrace was genuine enough. But it described a friendship being managed in a crowded field, not one being restored to the centre of India’s foreign policy. (Source: DH)

Justice Sandeep Mehta of the Supreme Court of India has made serious allegations against Rajasthan’s Acting Chief Justice (ACJ) Sanjeev Prakash Sharma, accusing him of corruption, nepotism, favouritism, and misuse of roster powers. He has demanded Justice Sharma’s transfer through letters addressed to the Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant. In three letters on August 2, 10, and 17, Justice Mehta informed the CJI of a “grim and disturbing scenario” in the Rajasthan High Court. It is unusual for a judge at the country’s highest court to make allegations of such a serious nature against another judge. Justice Mehta has urged the Supreme Court’s collegium to appoint a Chief Justice from another high court to Rajasthan “with immediate effect”, and noted that continued inaction was causing serious damage to the institution. He said saving the institution from “further carnage” was imperative. In response, the CJI said he and the collegium had taken note of the complaint, but cautioned that the allegations had to be handled through the established internal mechanism. The CJI is correct in this position, but the established procedures have often been found wanting. The question arises why Justice Mehta had to write three letters on the matter, and why his charges remain under investigation. The judge had demanded immediate action on account of the nature of the charges. Justice Sharma is set to retire on September 25, and there is doubt whether the matter can be addressed within the available time. The collegium had decided that a new chief justice should be appointed at least two months before a vacancy arises. This has not happened in the case of the Rajasthan High Court. The letters have again raised questions about the collegium’s decision-making procedures and institutional transparency. While due process is important in the investigation of complaints, there should be ways of expediting that process when it is required. Inability to make timely decisions will damage the credibility of the collegium, its foundational purpose, and the Supreme Court. The lawyers at the High Court have boycotted Justice Sharma’s court, and launched a strike against him. Following the protests, the ACJ has opted out of judicial work. The Supreme Court should undertake a speedy and transparent inquiry into the allegations and share its findings with the public. It should also disclose how it arrived at the findings. Those who dispense justice should not only be just but also be seen as just. (Source: DH)