A SUPREME Court directive on August 11, 2025 to remove stray dogs from the streets of Delhi-NCR has brought an issue that causes immense suffering to people across India to the spotlight. The stray dog menace causes millions of dog bites in India every year, resulting in injuries, disabilities, trauma, and death to untold numbers of people. Although a larger bench of the Supreme Court has subsequently modified the August 11th directive, the judicial intervention has created an environment where effective solutions to the stray dog menace can be discussed widely.

THE decade-long rule of the BJP-RSS has extensively damaged the lives of lakhs of families, with women precariously clinging on to any mirage of help just to keep alive. Women in India are trying to figure out how to even provide the basic needs for the family. They have to borrow money to buy food or medicines, or for education of their children. Anybody lending money in such times becomes a ‘saviour’. The micro finance institutions – non-banking financial companies enter the scene wearing the garb of such ‘saviours’ – like vultures waiting to pounce on their prey!

ON the 79th Independence Day, after hoisting India’s national flag at the ramparts of the Red Fort, Narendra Modi delivered the prime minister’s ceremonial address to the nation. Curiously, he used the solemn occasion to extol the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Modi said, “The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s 100 years of service to the nation is a truly glorious and golden chapter.”A moment that truly epitomised the RSS’s service to the nation was the eve of India’s independence.

THE recent Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls in Bihar can rightly be described as an exercise in disenfranchisement. Strikingly, there are many similarities between this exercise conducted by the Election Commission of India and similar actions that have occurred – and continue to occur – in the United States. A comparison of the two clearly reveals that far-right forces across the world operate in similar ways and with similar agendas.THE US CASEVoter suppression has long been a staple tactic of right-wing forces in the US.

WHEN our delegation* met the nuns, Sisters Preeti Mary and Vandana Francis in the Durg central jail, the utter injustice of the BJP government in Chhattisgarh was further brought home to us by the courage and dignity displayed by both the sisters. They were more concerned about the well-being of the adivasi youth Sukhman Mandavi who had been arrested along with them. The nuns have provided selfless service for decades in some of the most deprived and remote areas of Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, where there are no facilities.