ON August 23-24, 2025, more than 500 women from across India gathered at Surjeet Bhawan in New Delhi to tell their stories of debt, despair, and defiance. The ‘National Public Hearing on Women’s Rising Indebtedness and Micro Finance Institutions (MFI) Loot’, organised by the All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA), became a platform where the silent burden of loans, harassment by MFIs, and the failure of public banks erupted into a collective cry for justice. It was not just another programme.

ON August 20, 2025, the Constitution (130th Amendment) Bill, 2025, was introduced in the Lok Sabha. Similar amendments have been proposed to the laws that govern the Union Territories of Jammu & Kashmir and Puducherry as well. Following their introduction, the bills were referred to a Joint Parliamentary Committee for scrutiny.Being constitution amendment bills, they would require a two-thirds majority in both houses of the Parliament for their passage. However, it is very clear that the BJP nor the NDA have the required numbers at present.

NARENDRA Modi’s Independence Day speech was expectedly full of blatant untruths. He talked for instance of the great strides that India had made in the manufacturing sector during the years of BJP rule, while the reality is a drastic fall over the last ten years in the share of the manufacturing sector in GDP from 17.5 per cent to 12.6 per cent, a level that had last been crossed in 1960.

THE School Teachers’ Federation of India (STFI) has decided to launch a sustained movement in defence of public education. On the occasion of the 9th All India Conference of the Federation, held in Kolkata from August 8-10, a public rally was organised on the last day attended by thousands of teachers. Newly elected president, C N Bharti and general secretary Ravi Chava reported the decisions taken during the three-day conference.As part of the programme of action, lakhs of teachers will be mobilised during a mass contact campaign from September 1 to November 25, 2025.

THE mainstream and online media, and social media in particular, have been abuzz with controversy and comments from the vehicle-owning or driving public, experts and different sectional interest groups over the government’s roll out in Delhi and other cities of mandatory supply of petrol blended with 20 per cent ethanol, that is EBP20 or E20, soon to be extended to the whole country.