India is producing more graduates than ever, but a new NITI Aayog paper points to a major gap between degrees and jobs. The report says only 8.25% of graduates are employed in roles aligned with their qualifications, highlighting a deeper mismatch between education, skills and industry needs.

NITI Aayog flags a widening gap between education, skills & job

The Greater Malé Connectivity Project (GMCP) has reached a major milestone with the final bridge segment linking Malé and Villingili officially installed. The India-backed mega infrastructure project is now more than 75% complete.

The 6.74-kilometre Thilamalé Bridge network will connect Malé with Villingili, Gulhifalhu and Thilafushi, improving inter-island connectivity and easing congestion in the densely populated Maldivian capital.

India is supporting the project with $500 million in funding, including a $100 million grant and a $400 million line of credit. Indian company Afcons Infrastructure is executing the project.

Maldives: Greater Male Connectivity Project is more than 75% complete

India’s manufacturing sector is growing rapidly, but that growth is creating an unexpected problem: the country is importing even more goods needed to make products at home.


India’s manufacturing boom widens trade gap 

Sugar prices are at record highs across India, and the sharp rise is now forcing the government to take emergency measures. Over two months, domestic sugar prices have risen by nearly 40 percent. The government says ethanol diversion is not responsible for the spike. Instead, the center points to lower production, weather damage, festive demand, and speculation.

 Sugar prices surge nearly 40% in two months

The Jharkhand High Court issued an interim stay on the Hemant Soren government's notification that cancelled appointments made through the JSSC-CGL (Jharkhand Staff Selection Commission-Combined Graduate Level) and CDPO (Child Development Project Officer) examinations.

Jharkhand student protest: HC grants interim stay on JSSC-CGL, CDPO appointment cancellation 

India’s merchandise exports jumped 19.63% year-on-year to $44.24 billion in July, led by strong growth in petroleum products, electronics, engineering and marine goods. However, higher imports pushed the trade deficit to a six-month high of $31.98 billion, highlighting India’s rising manufacturing strength alongside continued dependence on imported energy and industrial inputs.

Decoded: why India's imports are surging despite exports boom

India's new 'smart' cancer drug could transform cancer treatment 

More than 100,000 drivers in Maharashtra have reportedly learned Marathi, highlighting the growing focus on language proficiency among the state’s driving workforce.

However, not all of those who have learned the language have been tested or formally certified, creating a gap between language training and official certification.

The development comes amid Maharashtra’s wider efforts to promote Marathi-language proficiency among drivers and improve communication with passengers and commuters.

The numbers raise questions about how many drivers have completed the required testing process, how certification is being implemented and what the next steps will be for those who remain uncertified.

Maharashtra: Passengers question need for Marathi mandate in multilingual city 

A remarkable piece of Mahatma Gandhi's personal history has set a new auction record, with his handwritten words selling for Rs 16.2 crore. The collection contains 688 handwritten reflections that Mahatma Gandhi sent to his close associate and freedom fighter Anand T. Hingorani.

Mahatma Gandhi's handwritten notes sell for record ₹16.2 crore

Indian scientists have developed RK-251, a promising “smart” cancer drug designed to activate mainly inside cancer cells while limiting damage to healthy tissue. Developed by researchers from IASST and IIT-Guwahati, the drug showed strong activity against aggressive triple-negative breast cancer cells in preclinical studies. The breakthrough could offer a more targeted alternative to conventional chemotherapy, but human clinical trials are still needed before its safety and effectiveness can be established.


Health authorities are closely monitoring a rise in H1N1, commonly known as swine flu, in several parts of India. Doctors say most patients are reporting symptoms such as fever, runny nose, sore throat, cough, headaches and body aches. While the majority of cases remain mild, health experts are urging people to stay alert, practice good hygiene and seek medical advice if symptoms worsen. Vulnerable groups, including young children, the elderly and those with underlying health conditions, are being advised to take extra precautions as seasonal infections increase.


Swine flu scare in India: Parts of India witness sharp rise in H1N1 cases

India's new 'smart' cancer drug could replace Chemotherapy forever

India’s auto sector is witnessing strong growth, driven by rising consumer demand, new vehicle launches, and expanding electric mobility. However, intense competition, changing regulations, input costs, and evolving consumer preferences are creating fresh pressure on automakers.


India's auto sector: Indian EVs find a new home in Europe 

For many mutual fund investors in India, double-digit returns may have started to feel normal after several years of strong market performance. But the latest data from the Securities and Exchange Board of India offers a clear reality check.


Indian Mutual Funds get a reality check

Swine Flu scare in India: What you need to know about H1N1 symptoms 

The Jharkhand High Court has granted major relief to hundreds of candidates by temporarily staying the state government's controversial decision to cancel the 11th to 13th Jharkhand Public Service Commission (JPSC) civil services examinations and related recruitment processes.

Jharkhand protest: Jharkhand HC stays government order cancelling JPSC exams

High drama unfolded in the national capital as Lok Sabha Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi staged a sit-in (dharna) outside the DCP office at the Parliament Street Police Station. Gandhi was accompanied by 19-year-old Sahil Lochab, a student who alleged he suffered severe pellet gun injuries during a protest march toward Parliament.


Rahul Gandhi sits outside police station with pellet victim

Pirates Hijack Vessels Off Yemen and Somalia: Maritime security forces are responding to a disturbing resurgence of piracy in the Horn of Africa after armed groups seized two commercial vessels in separate attacks. According to reports, a total of 22 Indian nationals are among the captive crew members. The first incident involved the Eritrea-flagged oil products tanker M.T. Sibu 1 (also known as the Seamull), which was boarded by six armed pirates in the Gulf of Aden roughly 30 nautical miles off the Yemeni coast.


Breaking | Reports: Pirates hijack 2 ships with 22 Indians off Yemen & Somalia

Former Indian Army Chief General MM Naravane has emphasized the importance of managing long-term differences with Beijing through structured diplomatic channels and dialogue. Speaking at a recent book launch event in New Delhi, Naravane characterized China as India's primary multi-domain competitor, spanning politics, economics, and military spheres.


Naravane urges diplomatic talks to manage differences with China

In a tragic road accident outside Inorbit Mall in Madhapur, 26-year-old Bharati Mukhi was fatally struck by a speeding luxury car while crossing the road. The incident has brought 21-year-old Lingamaneni Sanjush—the son of Andhra Pradesh Rajya Sabha MP and Jana Sena Party leader Lingamaneni Ramesh—into sharp focus after police registered a case against him.


Hyderabad car crash: MP Lingamaneni Ramesh's son Sanjush booked in fatal crash

Bilibili relaunched its international app this week, and disclosed plans for an English-language website and a global creator push. The Chinese platform, long described as China's answer to YouTube, has 376 million monthly active users.&nbsp;It is hiring community managers in Los Angeles, London, Mexico City, Sao Paulo, Istanbul and Tokyo.&nbsp;There is no Indian city on that list, and that absence is the most informative thing about the launch.&nbsp;What Has Actually Launched&nbsp;The revamped international app is live on Google Play, with an iOS version expected to follow and an English-language website described as coming soon.&nbsp;The most consequential change is not the app itself but the sign-up. The international version has dropped identity verification. Overseas users previously had to supply passport or identity documents to register on the main Chinese platform, a requirement that made casual international use effectively impossible.&nbsp;Removing it converts Bilibili from a walled Chinese service that foreigners could visit into a platform anyone can join in under a minute. That is the difference between a curiosity and a competitor.&nbsp;The company is also building AI-powered content moderation, according to a Singapore-based job listing — a necessary step for a platform about to operate across jurisdictions with incompatible rules on speech. Bilibili declined to comment on its plans.&nbsp;Why This Is Not Another TikTok, Exactly&nbsp;The comparison is natural but imprecise, and the imprecision matters.&nbsp;TikTok's international product was built separately from Douyin, its Chinese sibling, specifically for foreign markets. Bilibili is extending its existing platform outward rather than building a new one, which means the content library, the creator base and the culture arriving in these markets are the ones that grew up inside China.&nbsp;The format is different too. Douyin and Kuaishou are short-form. Bilibili is long-form — closer to YouTube than to TikTok in what it actually does, built around extended video, animation, gaming content and a dense community culture that includes on-screen scrolling comments.&nbsp;That makes it a more direct threat to YouTube than TikTok ever was, and a harder product to regulate by analogy. The concerns raised about TikTok concerned recommendation algorithms shaping a short-form feed. A long-form platform raises the older and less settled questions about hosted content, moderation standards and which jurisdiction's rules apply.&nbsp;The Market That Is Missing&nbsp;India is the largest video-consuming market on earth by users, and the largest one where YouTube's position has never been seriously contested.&nbsp;It is also the market that has already answered this question.&nbsp;On June 29, 2020, India banned TikTok and 58 other Chinese-owned applications, days after a clash on the Himalayan border in which twenty Indian soldiers and four Chinese soldiers were killed. The stated ground was data security. More than 500 Chinese apps have been blocked since.&nbsp;The ban has not softened on the app that mattered. The government has confirmed that the 2020 orders were neither interim nor time-bound, that they remain in force, and that no unblocking order has been issued for TikTok. A handful of other applications, including Xender, TanTan and Shein, have returned. TikTok has not.&nbsp;Bilibili's hiring list reads as an acknowledgement of that. A company assembling regional operations across six continents' worth of cities, which omits the second-largest internet population in the world, has not overlooked it.&nbsp;What India Gave Up And Got Back&nbsp;The Indian ban is often discussed as a loss for Indian creators, and in the short term it was. Roughly 200 million users lost a platform overnight, and the creators among them lost their audiences with it.&nbsp;What followed is the part worth remembering as Bilibili arrives. The vacuum was filled almost immediately by Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts, both of which built their short-form products around the gap India's ban created. Domestic attempts largely failed. The beneficiaries were American.&nbsp;That is the trade India made: a Chinese platform removed on security grounds, replaced by American platforms operating under the same commercial logic and subject to their own foreign jurisdiction. It is a real choice with real costs, not a straightforward win, and the Meta trial currently running in a California federal court is a reminder that the replacement platforms carry their own unresolved questions about what they do to young users.&nbsp;The Question Bilibili Raises&nbsp;For every other market on that hiring list, the calculation is live rather than settled.&nbsp;Britain, Japan, Turkey, Mexico, Brazil and the United States are about to host a Chinese long-form video platform with 376 million users, no identity verification at sign-up, moderation being built by AI, and a content culture formed under Chinese rules. The questions that consumed four years of argument about TikTok — where data sits, who can compel access to it, whose speech rules govern moderation — arrive again, with a different product and no established answer.&nbsp;India will watch that argument from outside, having pre-empted it in 2020.&nbsp;Whether that looks like foresight or like an overcorrection depends on what the rest of the world concludes over the next few years. What is not in dispute is that Bilibili has drawn its own map, and India is not on it.

Bilibili, with 376 million monthly users, relaunched its international app and is hiring in Los Angeles, London, Mexico City, Sao Paulo, Istanbul and Tokyo. India, the biggest video market left, is absent — and the reason dates to 2020.

Bilibili relaunched its international app this week, and disclosed plans for an English-language website and a global creator push. The Chinese platform, long described as China's answer to YouTube, has 376 million monthly active users. It is hiring community managers in Los Angeles, London, Mexico City, Sao Paulo, Istanbul and Tokyo. There is no Indian city on that list, and that absence is the most informative thing about the launch. What Has Actually Launched The revamped international app is live on Google Play, with an iOS version expected to follow and an English-language website described as coming soon. The most consequential change is not the app itself but the sign-up. The international version has dropped identity verification. Overseas users previously had to supply passport or identity documents to register on the main Chinese platform, a requirement that made casual international use effectively impossible. Removing it converts Bilibili from a walled Chinese service that foreigners could visit into a platform anyone can join in under a minute. That is the difference between a curiosity and a competitor. The company is also building AI-powered content moderation, according to a Singapore-based job listing — a necessary step for a platform about to operate across jurisdictions with incompatible rules on speech. Bilibili declined to comment on its plans. Why This Is Not Another TikTok, Exactly The comparison is natural but imprecise, and the imprecision matters. TikTok's international product was built separately from Douyin, its Chinese sibling, specifically for foreign markets. Bilibili is extending its existing platform outward rather than building a new one, which means the content library, the creator base and the culture arriving in these markets are the ones that grew up inside China. The format is different too. Douyin and Kuaishou are short-form. Bilibili is long-form — closer to YouTube than to TikTok in what it actually does, built around extended video, animation, gaming content and a dense community culture that includes on-screen scrolling comments. That makes it a more direct threat to YouTube than TikTok ever was, and a harder product to regulate by analogy. The concerns raised about TikTok concerned recommendation algorithms shaping a short-form feed. A long-form platform raises the older and less settled questions about hosted content, moderation standards and which jurisdiction's rules apply. The Market That Is Missing India is the largest video-consuming market on earth by users, and the largest one where YouTube's position has never been seriously contested. It is also the market that has already answered this question. On June 29, 2020, India banned TikTok and 58 other Chinese-owned applications, days after a clash on the Himalayan border in which twenty Indian soldiers and four Chinese soldiers were killed. The stated ground was data security. More than 500 Chinese apps have been blocked since. The ban has not softened on the app that mattered. The government has confirmed that the 2020 orders were neither interim nor time-bound, that they remain in force, and that no unblocking order has been issued for TikTok. A handful of other applications, including Xender, TanTan and Shein, have returned. TikTok has not. Bilibili's hiring list reads as an acknowledgement of that. A company assembling regional operations across six continents' worth of cities, which omits the second-largest internet population in the world, has not overlooked it. What India Gave Up And Got Back The Indian ban is often discussed as a loss for Indian creators, and in the short term it was. Roughly 200 million users lost a platform overnight, and the creators among them lost their audiences with it. What followed is the part worth remembering as Bilibili arrives. The vacuum was filled almost immediately by Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts, both of which built their short-form products around the gap India's ban created. Domestic attempts largely failed. The beneficiaries were American. That is the trade India made: a Chinese platform removed on security grounds, replaced by American platforms operating under the same commercial logic and subject to their own foreign jurisdiction. It is a real choice with real costs, not a straightforward win, and the Meta trial currently running in a California federal court is a reminder that the replacement platforms carry their own unresolved questions about what they do to young users. The Question Bilibili Raises For every other market on that hiring list, the calculation is live rather than settled. Britain, Japan, Turkey, Mexico, Brazil and the United States are about to host a Chinese long-form video platform with 376 million users, no identity verification at sign-up, moderation being built by AI, and a content culture formed under Chinese rules. The questions that consumed four years of argument about TikTok — where data sits, who can compel access to it, whose speech rules govern moderation — arrive again, with a different product and no established answer. India will watch that argument from outside, having pre-empted it in 2020. Whether that looks like foresight or like an overcorrection depends on what the rest of the world concludes over the next few years. What is not in dispute is that Bilibili has drawn its own map, and India is not on it.

Bilibili, the Chinese platform with 376 million monthly users often called China's YouTube, relaunched its international app this week and is building an English-language site. It is recruiting community managers in Los Angeles, London, Mexico City, Sao Paulo, Istanbul and Tokyo. India, the largest video market left on earth, is not on the list — and the reason is six years old.

'Another TikTok?': China's answer to YouTube goes global

The case against Meta that opened in Oakland this week rests, in its federal part, on a law written in 1998 that protects children under the age of 13.&nbsp;India's equivalent protects everyone under 18, requires a parent's verified consent before a company may process their data at all, and prohibits tracking, behavioural monitoring and targeted advertising directed at them.&nbsp;By the letter of the statute, India has already outlawed most of what twenty-nine American states are spending five weeks in court trying to establish.&nbsp;The Gap Between The Two Laws&nbsp;The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act sets its threshold at 13. Above that age, its protections stop. A 14-year-old in the United States is, for the purposes of that statute, an adult.&nbsp;That is why the states' complaint has two halves. The COPPA claim covers under-13s who were allowed onto Facebook and Instagram without parental consent. Everything concerning teenagers — the design features, the addictive mechanics, the mental health allegations — has to be brought under state consumer protection law instead, as unfair or deceptive practice.&nbsp;India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act does not have that gap. It defines a child as a person under 18. Processing their data requires verifiable parental consent, with the parent's identity and age validated against government-issued proof. And it bans, in terms, tracking, behavioural monitoring and targeted advertising aimed at children.&nbsp;The threshold is stricter than the European Union's, which sits between 13 and 16 depending on the member state, and considerably stricter than the American one.&nbsp;What That Would Mean If It Were Running&nbsp;Consider the features the American states are asking a court to order removed: engagement-optimised recommendation, ephemeral content, infinite scroll, autoplay, beauty filters.&nbsp;The mechanism underneath most of them is behavioural: the system observes what a user responds to and adjusts what it serves in order to extend attention. Applied to an Indian user under 18, that is behavioural monitoring of a child, which the DPDP Act prohibits without needing a court to find it addictive or harmful.&nbsp;The states in Oakland must prove that Meta's design was unfair or deceptive, that the company knew, and that harm followed. Under the Indian statute the question is narrower and far easier to answer: was the user a child, and was their behaviour monitored or used for targeting.&nbsp;That is the difference between a consumer protection theory and a bright-line rule.&nbsp;Why It Has Not Bitten&nbsp;The reason no Indian regulator is doing what four American attorneys general are doing is that the machinery has not been switched on.&nbsp;The Act passed in 2023. The rules that give it operational effect have moved slowly, and the hardest provision to implement is precisely the one that matters here: verifiable parental consent. Requiring a company to confirm that a consenting adult is genuinely the parent of a specific child, at national scale, without building a surveillance apparatus in the process, is a genuinely difficult problem, and it has not been solved anywhere in the world.&nbsp;In early 2026 the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology held at least three private consultations with social media companies on whether age-based access controls are technically feasible. That is the state of play: a statute with real teeth, and a live conversation about whether the teeth can be fitted.&nbsp;There is a second constraint. Enforcement under the DPDP framework runs through a Data Protection Board rather than through litigation brought by state governments. India has no equivalent of an attorney general who can take a company to trial on behalf of a state and seek an order redesigning its product. The remedy structure is administrative, and administrative penalties are capped in ways that a court's equitable powers are not.&nbsp;The Pattern This Fits&nbsp;This is a recognisable shape in Indian technology regulation, and it appeared again only recently.&nbsp;The AI Governance Guidelines released by MeitY chose voluntary compliance, self-certification and regulatory sandboxes over binding mandates, and nine months later only one of the three institutions they proposed exists. The rules are drafted ambitiously and implemented cautiously.&nbsp;There are defensible reasons for that caution. Rules that cannot be complied with produce either mass technical non-compliance or an enforcement regime that lands arbitrarily. A government that legislates first and works out feasibility afterwards can find itself unable to act at all.&nbsp;But the cost is visible in exactly this comparison. The country with the weaker statute is the one currently extracting internal documents, putting Mark Zuckerberg on a witness stand, and asking a federal judge to order features deleted from an app worldwide. The country with the stronger statute is holding consultations.&nbsp;What Indian Readers Should Take From The Trial&nbsp;The Oakland proceedings will produce something India's framework has not yet generated: a public evidentiary record.&nbsp;Discovery in the American case has already forced out internal research Meta sought to withhold, after a federal court ruled the company could not use attorney-client privilege to keep documents about teen harm out of the states' hands. Zuckerberg and Instagram head Adam Mosseri are expected to testify under oath.&nbsp;Whatever the judgment, that record becomes available to every regulator on earth, including India's. It is the raw material a Data Protection Board would need, and it is being produced at American expense under an American statute that protects fewer children than the Indian one does.&nbsp;If India's rules are eventually enforced, the evidence for the first case is being generated right now, in a courtroom in California.

The federal case against Meta runs on COPPA, which protects under-13s. India's DPDP Act covers under-18s and bans tracking, behavioural monitoring and targeted ads aimed at children outright — but the enforcement machinery is not running.

The case against Meta that opened in Oakland this week rests, in its federal part, on a law written in 1998 that protects children under the age of 13. India's equivalent protects everyone under 18, requires a parent's verified consent before a company may process their data at all, and prohibits tracking, behavioural monitoring and targeted advertising directed at them. By the letter of the statute, India has already outlawed most of what twenty-nine American states are spending five weeks in court trying to establish. The Gap Between The Two Laws The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act sets its threshold at 13. Above that age, its protections stop. A 14-year-old in the United States is, for the purposes of that statute, an adult. That is why the states' complaint has two halves. The COPPA claim covers under-13s who were allowed onto Facebook and Instagram without parental consent. Everything concerning teenagers — the design features, the addictive mechanics, the mental health allegations — has to be brought under state consumer protection law instead, as unfair or deceptive practice. India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act does not have that gap. It defines a child as a person under 18. Processing their data requires verifiable parental consent, with the parent's identity and age validated against government-issued proof. And it bans, in terms, tracking, behavioural monitoring and targeted advertising aimed at children. The threshold is stricter than the European Union's, which sits between 13 and 16 depending on the member state, and considerably stricter than the American one. What That Would Mean If It Were Running Consider the features the American states are asking a court to order removed: engagement-optimised recommendation, ephemeral content, infinite scroll, autoplay, beauty filters. The mechanism underneath most of them is behavioural: the system observes what a user responds to and adjusts what it serves in order to extend attention. Applied to an Indian user under 18, that is behavioural monitoring of a child, which the DPDP Act prohibits without needing a court to find it addictive or harmful. The states in Oakland must prove that Meta's design was unfair or deceptive, that the company knew, and that harm followed. Under the Indian statute the question is narrower and far easier to answer: was the user a child, and was their behaviour monitored or used for targeting. That is the difference between a consumer protection theory and a bright-line rule. Why It Has Not Bitten The reason no Indian regulator is doing what four American attorneys general are doing is that the machinery has not been switched on. The Act passed in 2023. The rules that give it operational effect have moved slowly, and the hardest provision to implement is precisely the one that matters here: verifiable parental consent. Requiring a company to confirm that a consenting adult is genuinely the parent of a specific child, at national scale, without building a surveillance apparatus in the process, is a genuinely difficult problem, and it has not been solved anywhere in the world. In early 2026 the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology held at least three private consultations with social media companies on whether age-based access controls are technically feasible. That is the state of play: a statute with real teeth, and a live conversation about whether the teeth can be fitted. There is a second constraint. Enforcement under the DPDP framework runs through a Data Protection Board rather than through litigation brought by state governments. India has no equivalent of an attorney general who can take a company to trial on behalf of a state and seek an order redesigning its product. The remedy structure is administrative, and administrative penalties are capped in ways that a court's equitable powers are not. The Pattern This Fits This is a recognisable shape in Indian technology regulation, and it appeared again only recently. The AI Governance Guidelines released by MeitY chose voluntary compliance, self-certification and regulatory sandboxes over binding mandates, and nine months later only one of the three institutions they proposed exists. The rules are drafted ambitiously and implemented cautiously. There are defensible reasons for that caution. Rules that cannot be complied with produce either mass technical non-compliance or an enforcement regime that lands arbitrarily. A government that legislates first and works out feasibility afterwards can find itself unable to act at all. But the cost is visible in exactly this comparison. The country with the weaker statute is the one currently extracting internal documents, putting Mark Zuckerberg on a witness stand, and asking a federal judge to order features deleted from an app worldwide. The country with the stronger statute is holding consultations. What Indian Readers Should Take From The Trial The Oakland proceedings will produce something India's framework has not yet generated: a public evidentiary record. Discovery in the American case has already forced out internal research Meta sought to withhold, after a federal court ruled the company could not use attorney-client privilege to keep documents about teen harm out of the states' hands. Zuckerberg and Instagram head Adam Mosseri are expected to testify under oath. Whatever the judgment, that record becomes available to every regulator on earth, including India's. It is the raw material a Data Protection Board would need, and it is being produced at American expense under an American statute that protects fewer children than the Indian one does. If India's rules are eventually enforced, the evidence for the first case is being generated right now, in a courtroom in California.

The federal claim against Meta in Oakland runs on COPPA, which protects children under 13. India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act defines a child as anyone under 18, requires verifiable parental consent, and bans tracking, behavioural monitoring and targeted advertising aimed at them outright. On paper India is years ahead. In enforcement it is not.

India already banned what Meta is on trial for in America! It just isn't enforced yet

India and Japan have signed key agreements to deepen defence and maritime security cooperation. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and Japanese Defence Minister Shinjiro Koizumi signed MoAs aimed at strengthening bilateral defence ties, while both sides are also exploring joint development of naval ships. The agreements come as New Delhi and Tokyo seek closer strategic cooperation amid growing security challenges across the Indo-Pacific.


India-Japan ties: Rajnath Singh, Shinjiro Koizumi sign MoAs to boost defence ties 

Andhra Pradesh IT Minister Nara Lokesh has hit back at growing opposition to Visakhapatnam's upcoming data centres, calling it a "misinformation campaign" built on "false propaganda." Addressing concerns in the Assembly, Lokesh said building these data centres is key to India's digital sovereignty, especially as the country races to build its own AI infrastructure.

Visakhapatnam data centre row: Nara Lokesh calls it a 'misinformation campaign' 

A major political debate is unfolding in Canada over RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat's proposed visit. More than 100 Canadian Hindu and civil liberties organizations have written to Prime Minister Mark Carney, urging his government to allow Bhagwat's entry and reject calls for a ban. The groups argue that any decision should be based on evidence and due process, not political pressure. They also warn that blocking Bhagwat could be perceived by many as discrimination against Canada's Hindu community. The controversy comes as some MPs and advocacy groups demand that Bhagwat be declared inadmissible, citing concerns over the RSS. Bhagwat is expected to visit Canada as part of a wider overseas outreach tour that includes the United States and the United Kingdom.


Over 100 Canadian groups back Mohan Bhagwat, warn ban could be seen as Anti-Hindu

India-Japan deepen defence ties with maritime security and shipbuilding pact 

India-Pakistan tensions are once again in focus after authorities in New Delhi cleared unauthorized structures and encroachments outside the Pakistan High Commission.

The action comes days after Pakistani authorities removed security barricades and parking poles outside the Indian High Commission in Islamabad, making the latest move another apparent tit-for-tat development amid strained bilateral relations.

According to the report, the structures near the visa section of the Pakistan mission were found beyond the compound’s approved perimeter. Authorities subsequently removed the unauthorized structures and encroachments.

Visuals show rubble, metal railings, gates, roofing sheets, bricks and concrete debris outside the mission. Parts of the outer structures, including corrugated roofing and metal fencing, were pulled down, while the main entrance remained intact.

Indian authorities remove unauthorised structures outside Pakistan High Commission 

At least four people were killed after flash floods triggered by heavy rainfall struck Rajouri district in Jammu & Kashmir. Rescue teams have been deployed as authorities assess the damage and search for those affected. Torrential rains have caused widespread disruption across parts of the region.


Jammu-Kashmir Floods: Four dead in Rajouri flash floods

Despite president Donald Trump’s tariffs, the United States continues to account for about 20 percent of India’s exports.


US-India trade pact: India and US export share remains resilient despite Tariff pressures 

The Indian government is rolling out a major nationwide outreach initiative targeted at Gen Z, titled 'One Day, One University'. Under this proposed program, a Union Minister will visit a designated university campus every single day to engage in direct dialogue with students, listen to their perspectives on national issues, and share details regarding youth-centric government welfare and employment schemes.


Govt plans 'one day, one university' drive; one minister to visit one university daily

India made a deliberate choice about how to govern artificial intelligence, and it is worth being precise about what the choice was.&nbsp;The India AI Governance Guidelines, released by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology on November 5, 2025, did not impose obligations on anyone. They set out principles, proposed institutions, and expressed a preference for voluntary compliance, self-certification and regulatory sandboxes over prescriptive mandates.&nbsp;That was not an oversight. It was the stated approach, and one of the seven principles says so outright: innovation over restraint.&nbsp;What The Guidelines Actually Do&nbsp;The framework rests on seven principles — trust as the foundation, people first, innovation over restraint, fairness and equity, accountability, understandable by design, and safety, resilience and sustainability.&nbsp;It proposed three bodies to carry them: an AI Governance Group, a Technology and Policy Expert Committee, and an AI Safety Institute.&nbsp;Nine months on, the AI Safety Institute has been established under the IndiaAI Mission. The other two remain proposals.&nbsp;This is described as a techno-legal approach — the idea that technical standards and institutional capacity should mature before binding rules are written, so that regulation does not freeze a field still changing shape. It is a defensible position, and several jurisdictions have arrived at versions of it after watching the European Union legislate early and then spend years amending.&nbsp;What It Does Not Mean&nbsp;Voluntary AI guidelines are not the same as an unregulated environment, and the distinction matters.&nbsp;The Digital Personal Data Protection Act binds anyone processing personal data, whatever technology they use. Sectoral regulators impose their own requirements — SEBI on securities markets, the Reserve Bank on financial services. An AI system that mishandles personal data or misprices a financial product is already exposed under existing law.&nbsp;What is absent is AI-specific obligation: no registration, no pre-deployment assessment, no mandatory disclosure of training data or model capability, no independent audit requirement.&nbsp;The Rules Being Written Anyway&nbsp;The picture is complicated by what has been happening since.&nbsp;A six-member government committee has been working on more prescriptive rules, reported in May. Separately, there is active discussion within MeitY about whether high-capacity GPU clusters above a certain threshold should be required to register or disclose end use.&nbsp;Neither has been formally notified. The GPU question is expected to surface in consultations on the Digital India Act.&nbsp;So the operative position is a published voluntary framework, a committee drafting something firmer, and a compute-registration proposal that exists in discussion but not in law. For a company deciding what to build in India this year, that is a difficult set of facts to plan against — not because the rules are strict, but because the ones that count have not been written down.&nbsp;The Constraint Nobody Voted On&nbsp;There is a harder limit on Indian AI than anything MeitY has drafted, and it is not Indian.&nbsp;The IndiaAI Mission's compute programme is built on subsidised GPUs — 34,000 by the government's own count, though aggregators cite higher figures — and that hardware is overwhelmingly Nvidia. So is almost everyone else's.&nbsp;Nvidia is an American company, and its most advanced chips are subject to US export control. That is the same statutory authority Washington used to cut China off in 2022, and it is currently being extended. A bill before the Senate, the Remote Access Security Act, would treat renting compute as an export event in itself — closing the gap that let Chinese laboratories reach restricted hardware through data centres in third countries.&nbsp;The bill is aimed at China. The instrument is not country-specific. Any regime that treats access to American chips as a licensable export gives Washington a decision over who may use them, anywhere, regardless of where the machines physically sit.&nbsp;India has open-sourced models across 22 languages, built genuine domestic capability, and has a data advantage no other democracy can match. All of it runs on silicon licensed under another government's authority.&nbsp;The Question Worth Asking&nbsp;Sovereignty in AI has usually been discussed in India as a question of models and data — whether the systems serving Indians are built here, trained on Indian languages, governed by Indian law.&nbsp;Those are real questions and the answers have been reasonably good. But they sit downstream of a question that has attracted less attention: who decides whether the compute keeps running.&nbsp;A voluntary domestic framework and a foreign licensing regime are not symmetrical instruments. One asks. The other does not have to.

MeitY's AI Governance Guidelines chose voluntary compliance and self-certification over mandates. Nine months on, one of three proposed institutions exists and GPU registration is still only under discussion — while the compute sits under US export authority.

India made a deliberate choice about how to govern artificial intelligence, and it is worth being precise about what the choice was. The India AI Governance Guidelines, released by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology on November 5, 2025, did not impose obligations on anyone. They set out principles, proposed institutions, and expressed a preference for voluntary compliance, self-certification and regulatory sandboxes over prescriptive mandates. That was not an oversight. It was the stated approach, and one of the seven principles says so outright: innovation over restraint. What The Guidelines Actually Do The framework rests on seven principles — trust as the foundation, people first, innovation over restraint, fairness and equity, accountability, understandable by design, and safety, resilience and sustainability. It proposed three bodies to carry them: an AI Governance Group, a Technology and Policy Expert Committee, and an AI Safety Institute. Nine months on, the AI Safety Institute has been established under the IndiaAI Mission. The other two remain proposals. This is described as a techno-legal approach — the idea that technical standards and institutional capacity should mature before binding rules are written, so that regulation does not freeze a field still changing shape. It is a defensible position, and several jurisdictions have arrived at versions of it after watching the European Union legislate early and then spend years amending. What It Does Not Mean Voluntary AI guidelines are not the same as an unregulated environment, and the distinction matters. The Digital Personal Data Protection Act binds anyone processing personal data, whatever technology they use. Sectoral regulators impose their own requirements — SEBI on securities markets, the Reserve Bank on financial services. An AI system that mishandles personal data or misprices a financial product is already exposed under existing law. What is absent is AI-specific obligation: no registration, no pre-deployment assessment, no mandatory disclosure of training data or model capability, no independent audit requirement. The Rules Being Written Anyway The picture is complicated by what has been happening since. A six-member government committee has been working on more prescriptive rules, reported in May. Separately, there is active discussion within MeitY about whether high-capacity GPU clusters above a certain threshold should be required to register or disclose end use. Neither has been formally notified. The GPU question is expected to surface in consultations on the Digital India Act. So the operative position is a published voluntary framework, a committee drafting something firmer, and a compute-registration proposal that exists in discussion but not in law. For a company deciding what to build in India this year, that is a difficult set of facts to plan against — not because the rules are strict, but because the ones that count have not been written down. The Constraint Nobody Voted On There is a harder limit on Indian AI than anything MeitY has drafted, and it is not Indian. The IndiaAI Mission's compute programme is built on subsidised GPUs — 34,000 by the government's own count, though aggregators cite higher figures — and that hardware is overwhelmingly Nvidia. So is almost everyone else's. Nvidia is an American company, and its most advanced chips are subject to US export control. That is the same statutory authority Washington used to cut China off in 2022, and it is currently being extended. A bill before the Senate, the Remote Access Security Act, would treat renting compute as an export event in itself — closing the gap that let Chinese laboratories reach restricted hardware through data centres in third countries. The bill is aimed at China. The instrument is not country-specific. Any regime that treats access to American chips as a licensable export gives Washington a decision over who may use them, anywhere, regardless of where the machines physically sit. India has open-sourced models across 22 languages, built genuine domestic capability, and has a data advantage no other democracy can match. All of it runs on silicon licensed under another government's authority. The Question Worth Asking Sovereignty in AI has usually been discussed in India as a question of models and data — whether the systems serving Indians are built here, trained on Indian languages, governed by Indian law. Those are real questions and the answers have been reasonably good. But they sit downstream of a question that has attracted less attention: who decides whether the compute keeps running. A voluntary domestic framework and a foreign licensing regime are not symmetrical instruments. One asks. The other does not have to.

MeitY's India AI Governance Guidelines chose voluntary compliance, self-certification and regulatory sandboxes over binding mandates. Nine months later, one of the three proposed institutions exists, a separate committee is drafting more prescriptive rules, and GPU cluster registration remains under discussion without being notified. Meanwhile the compute the whole programme depends on sits under US export authority.

India's AI rulebook is voluntary! The chips it runs on are not

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