Vandana Gopikumar and The Banyan: How Two Young Women Built a Home for People the City Walked Past
Vandana Gopikumar and Vaishnavi Jayakumar founded The Banyan in Chennai in 1993, after finding no service for a homeless woman living with mental illness. Three decades on, its centres have helped over 4,000 people, and its model has reached ten Indian states.
Bhavani Bompelly: The Telangana Teacher Who Turned a Shrinking School Into a Thriving One
Bhavani Bompelly, a government teacher in Kamareddy, Telangana, raised her school’s enrolment from 40 to 130 students through play-based learning, digital tools and pre-primary classes. Appointed in 2008, she won the State Best Teacher Award in 2025 before receiving the National Teachers Award 2026 from President.
Indian Dressage Team: How Four Riders Ended India’s 41-Year Wait for Equestrian Gold at the Asian Games
The Indian dressage team made history in Hangzhou on 26 September 2023, winning India’s first equestrian gold at the Asian Games in 41 years. Here is how four riders and their horses ended the long wait.
Manya Harsha: The Bengaluru Teenager Who Turned Her Grandmother’s Old Sarees Into a City-Wide Green Movement
Bengaluru teenager Manya Harsha is turning old sarees into cloth bags, and the numbers are adding up. Her Grandma’s Green Weave has reused 2,200 sarees and 230 bedspreads to make over 28,000 bags, diverting nearly 1.2 tonnes of textile waste from landfills.
Bittu Tabahi: The 21-Year-Old Who Took on a Polluted River in Madhya Pradesh
Surendra Singh Choudhary, known online as Bittu Tabahi, spent months cleaning the garbage-choked Ajnar River in Biaora with his own money, basic tools and little institutional support. What began as a personal effort has now brought him national recognition and an invitation from The Ocean Cleanup. On a cold morning in January, a 21-year-old student […]
India’s Nine-SIM Limit Is Fourteen Years Old. From 24 August, Shops Have to Check Your Photo
A Department of Telecommunications circular dated 17 August adds a photograph check to a cap that has been on the books since 2012. The nine SIM limit in India is not new. You have been allowed a maximum of nine mobile connections in your name since 2012. What changed on 24 August 2026 is that […]
Did the Government Call E20 Petrol an “Experiment” in the Supreme Court? Here Is What the Record Shows
The claim spread quickly at the end of June, though the Attorney General’s office denied it the next day. At the end of June 2026 a claim about E20 petrol moved fast across Indian social media. The government, it said, had told the Supreme Court that its 20 percent ethanol blending programme was an experiment. […]
He Was Told He Was Too Short to Be a Doctor. The Rule That Blocked Him Changed Seven Years Later
Ganesh Baraiya won his own case in the Supreme Court in 2018, though the rule that had kept him out was only rewritten in July 2025. In 2018 a committee looked at a young man from Gorkhi village in Bhavnagar district. It decided he could not become a doctor. Ganesh Baraiya had already cleared NEET. […]
India Has Set Aside Rs 40,000 Crore to Close Old Coal Mines. The Money Was Already There
A report released in July sets out a plan to close 147 mines scientifically, and for the first time coal mine closure rules count people as well as land. When a coal mine stops producing, it does not simply stop. Pits fill with water, ground subsides, dust stays in the air, and the settlement around […]
Most Children Take Something That Is Not Theirs. Very Few Have Kleptomania
The condition affects well under one percent of people, and kleptomania in children looks nothing like a child bringing home a classmate’s pencil. A pencil case comes home from school and it is not the one that left. The explanation is vague. A friend gave it. Most parents have had some version of this moment, […]