Society
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Can green trade barriers slow climate change?
Some of you will have heard of CBAM — Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism; Europe’s green trade barrier which stops coal-based steel from entering the EU market. Ask the EU about it and it will say CBAM is meant to ensure faster decarbonisation. Ask steel-making countries, however, and they accuse EU of an unfair trade practice that Continue reading
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What India risks as its natural forests disappear
India’s largest national security question is going unasked. Going by the reports put out by Dehradun-based Forest Survey of India (FSI), the country’s adding forests. The country’s forest cover, says FSI, have grown from 642,401 square kilometres in 1987 to 715,342.61 square kilometres in 2023 — which means forest cover occupies 21.76% of the country’s Continue reading
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As COP30 rolls out a tropical forest fund, how are India’s natural forests doing?
A conflict of interest has dominated India’s forest cover estimates for a long time. While the Union Ministry for Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC) oversees the country’s forests, Dehradun-based Forest Survey of India (FSI) monitors their extent and condition. The FSI, however, is not an independent watchdog. It reports to the MoEFCC. This arrangement Continue reading
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How much Khair is India left with?
The second part of our series on the health of India’s native forests looked at the Khair trade in Uttar Pradesh (UP). The tree, whose heartwood is in great demand by the chewing tobacco industry, has vanished from most of the state. All the consequences of timber trafficking — habitat destruction; biodiversity losses; falls in government revenue Continue reading
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How India’s Pan Masala Boom is Stripping Its Forests
For India’s forests to grow despite rising human pressure and forestland diversion, said the first part of our series, the country needed to ensure two things. One, it needed to curb illegal felling and timber trafficking. And two, ensure high quality forest restoration. We know the latter is not happening. Afforestation drives have a very Continue reading
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Modi’s Mega Projects Could Destroy Great Nicobar Island
One more report of yours truly on Great Nicobar has just been published. This time around, by TIME. Here is a link. The report is different from its forerunners in Frontline and ET in two ways. It better blends ecological, social and economic costs. Also, riding on others’ reportage and my own conversations, it updates Continue reading
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What Explains the Union Government’s U-Turn on Online Money Gaming?
About two years ago, I had sought an appointment with veteran sports reporter Sharda Ugra to discuss a story idea around cricket. In that chat, after answering my questions, she also told me about online gaming apps like Dream11 and My11Circle. They were getting Indians to wager money on real world matches, promising them huge Continue reading
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Happy Independence Day (just after Trump slaps 50% tariffs on India)
I am writing this from Dehradun where rain has just squelched plans of a half-day trek along the Kipling trail — I learnt yesterday that one can see the Main Boundary Fault at the start of that walk. If not today, then another day. But the MBF has to be seen. And now for our Continue reading
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Trump’s tariffs: Can genies be pushed back into bottles?
Back in 1980, a clutch of African leaders tried to break from history. Over the past hundred years, the continent had been ravaged by colonialism. Even after independence, trade links between colonial powers and African nations had not changed. Africa continued to export raw materials and import expensive finished goods.That year, the leaders proposed a Continue reading
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On the Biodiversity Trail in Great Nicobar
One of my resolutions last year was to travel more. Not an easy thing to do given the demands of work and life but still, to sneak out for little breaks whenever I can. This objective was met last year when, while researching for the oil palm report, I paused briefly at Kaziranga. And now, Continue reading
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How The Costs Of The Adani Bribery Scandal Will Be Borne By India’s Electricity Consumers & May Increase Power Cuts
For over 20 years, as Gautam Adani first grew in Gujarat and then spread his business empire across India—from a turnover of Rs 3,300 crore in 2000 to Rs 309,000 crore in 2024 —allegations of preferential treatment by governments in New Delhi and in the states accompanied his expansion. The growth of his multibillion-dollar empire, Continue reading
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Caught in the power maze: India’s discoms battle solar’s growing costs
As the first part of this series said, India’s solar sector is settling into ebullience. Recent tenders for round-the-clock (RTC) renewable power have netted prices comparable to that of coal, suggesting that the sector has bested its old bugbear of intermittency. The country is also seeing a massive expansion in solar manufacturing — from 10 Continue reading
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Chasing the sun: Unlikely firms are betting big on solar
At first glance, Hyner looks like just another company that makes and instals solar modules. And yet, what seems commonplace might sometimes be extraordinary. In this case, the firm, set up just last year, is a part of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s Art of Living Foundation. This is not the only surprising name in the Continue reading
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Price surge or power surge? India’s solar conundrum
Where is India’s solar sector headed? One possible view of the future came in September last year. That month, REMCL (Railway Energy Management Company), a joint venture between Indian Railways and RITES, floated a tender seeking 750 MW of round the clock renewable power. The bids triggered excitement across India’s renewable sector. The lowest bidder, Continue reading
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India has never seen a national election with as many abuses of the electoral process as the 2024 polls. What does this tell us?
Even before 2024, India has seen election malfeasance.It has seen booth-capturing, as in Meham. In the past too, election officials have turned away candidates who wanted to stand against a prime minister – P.V. Narasimha Rao. Voter suppression is not entirely new either. Entire villages haven’t been allowed to vote by local elites. Here is one instance, from 2011 Continue reading
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If ‘Sabka Vikas’ Is a Myth, Who Has Gained the Most Under Modi?
Last week, The Wire reported on the Bharatiya Janata Party’s quicksilver accumulation of assets. Over the past ten years, not only has the party outspent rivals in polls and begun building new party offices in every district, state and union territory in India, it has also added to its cash reserves. In effect, even as most Indians, hit Continue reading
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The Rs 60,000 Crore Question the BJP Needs to Answer About its Financials
A paradox has gone unexamined for too long.All around us are signs of the BJP’s extraordinary wealth. The party outspends its rivals in polls and erecting party offices on prime real estate, to take just two instances. That is just visible expenditure. The party also faces charges of luring rival politicians with loads of cash Continue reading
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The costs of Reliance’s wildlife ambitions
Early last year, I saw a disturbing video. A convoy of trucks that had been stopped in Pasighat, Arunachal. It contained elephants, on the start of an uncomprehending journey from lush green Namsai to Jamnagar, Gujarat. Where were these elephants from? Why had they been gifted to a Trust in distant Gujarat? Who decided, in Continue reading
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How India’s Palm Oil Push is Changing Land Relations in the North East
India has embarked on a new push for oil palm cultivation in northeast India. Some of the attendant stakes are well known. Oil palm supporters point at India’s burgeoning edible oils import bill. With domestic oilseed production staying low, imports now meet 65-70% of India’s edible oil demand. It’s an expensive indulgence. Between October 2022 Continue reading
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Lessons from Silkiyara, lessons from Sikkim, lessons from Vizag
Over the last 12 days, India has been gripped by the ongoing struggle to extricate 41 trapped workers from the Silkiyara tunnel in Uttarakhand. As any geologist will tell you, the Main Central Thrust — the world’s biggest active geological fault, created by the collision of the Indian plate with the Eurasian plate — runs Continue reading
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Questions about India’s new nuclear push
India’s new nuclear push differs from its predecessors.This time around, the country is not solely banking on its atomic establishment to erect an array of nuclear power plants. As the first part of this series showed, that approach resulted in cost- and time-overruns, and yielded an outcome where India missed every single deadline to boost Continue reading
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On India’s Proposed Nuclear Buildup
Since April this year, I have been intermittently working on a largish report about India’s proposed nuclear buildup. The argument goes like this. We have to decarbonise but renewables are a, intermittent, and b, not enough to meet India’s entire power demand. Nuclear, ergo, is the answer. And so, not only does the BJP want Continue reading
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Adani’s Acquisitions: Why India Needs to Keep Track of the Costs
And here, part three: As the Adani group accumulated assets rapidly, its methods have raised concerns about corporate governance that have wider implications for the country. On most days, I would elaborate on these stories — as opposed to just blandly hyperlinking to them here. These stories have certainly taken a lot of work — Continue reading
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Adani’s Acquisitions: The ‘Inorganic Strategy’ Behind the Purchase of Gangavaram Port
In the weeks and months after the Hindenburg report, the Adani Group has repeatedly alluded to the robust health of its underlying assets. How it came to acquire some of them is worth a deeper look. And so, here, the first part of my deep-dive into the Adani Group’s inorganic growth. Continue reading
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Green shoots, parched roots: What the microfinance industry tells us about rural India and the grassroots economy
Once again, an old contradiction is rearing its head.Talk to MFIs — or any of their associations — and they will tell you the sector is on the path to post-Covid recovery.This February, for instance, the association reported some green shoots. While the quantum of loans remaining unserviced for over 180 days inched up marginally Continue reading
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A Journalistic History of the Adani Group
What would a brief history of India Inc look like? At the time of independence, India’s private sector was dominated by a clutch of business families. Their reign continued into the license raj years – and then was challenged by newcomers like Dhirubhai Ambani. In the 1990s, the country saw the flowering of a new Continue reading
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With Hindenburg, Adani Faces His Stiffest Challenge Yet
What does the short-seller’s report mean for Adani’s plans to grow through international bonds? I write for The Wire. Continue reading
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More Hindu Right Groups, Polarising With Impunity: How Communal Tensions Intensified in Khargone
On April 10, violence engulfed the small town of Khargone. While the town was celebrating Ram Navami, a rumour spread that the police had stopped a religious procession near the local Jama Masjid. In response, a second procession moved down the same path. More militant, it aired provocative songs and slogans, and even pulled along Continue reading
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Under BJP-RSS Rule, Madhya Pradesh’s Culture Department Stares at Moral, Artistic Decay
In April 2021, readers of local daily Swadesh found an astounding report in their newspaper. Headined ‘Ustad Alauddin Khan Sangeet Evam Kala Academy ka Kaarnama (‘A Great Feat by the Ustad Alauddin Khan Music and Art Academy’)’, the newspaper reported that the Academy – set up by the Madhya Pradesh government in 1979 – had Continue reading
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Marooned: Praful Patel’s War On Lakshadweep
ON THE PHONE, Muhammad, a shopkeeper from Minicoy, the southern-most coral atoll in the Lakshadweep islands, sounded worried. Sales at his provisions-and-stationery shop had crashed. By March 2022, his monthly income had dropped from up to Rs 60,000, to down to as low as Rs 10,000. “Buying has come down. Everyone is facing a problem in their business,” he Continue reading
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Hydel #3. Why states might bear the onus of supporting hydel projects that struggle to compete against batteries, electrolysers, and their ilk
India’s latest hydel push is facing strong headwinds. With a target of 500 GW of renewable power capacity by 2030, the country needs to add as much as 80 GW of energy storage to stabilise the grid, and meet peak power demand. Accordingly, not only is the government pushing technologies like Battery Energy Storage Systems Continue reading
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Finance Firm Buying Public Sector Central Electronics Ltd. for Cheap Has Links to BJP Leaders
The divestment saga of Central Electronics (CEL) deserves more attention than it is getting. The broad details are well known enough. The public sector undertaking (PSU), founded in 1974 to commercially exploit technologies developed by national laboratories and indigenous R&D institutions, briefly hit the headlines last November when the Narendra Modi government announced its sale Continue reading
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CAA/NRC protests. A sense of how deep they spread.
Early in January 2020, as protests against NRC/CAA began spreading across India, I began scouring twitter trying to gauge how anger was spreading across India. Which cities, towns, districts and mohallas were seeing protests? The exercise was slapdash but heady — that was, after all, a lovely moment in India’s otherwise depressing recent history. Nothing Continue reading
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The slab that fell (and the story it told)
Black of grackles glints purple as, wheeling in sun-glare, The flock splays away to pepper the blueness of distance. Soon they are lost in the tracklessness of air. I watch them go. I stand in my trance. Another year gone… Am reminded, all of a sudden, of this poem by Robert Penn Warren. 2021 is Continue reading
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Energy Transition #5. On the large costs of decarbonisation sans a pathway
Talk about the energy transition and coal comes up immediately. A number of researchers across the world are working on ‘just transition’ – to support the economies that run on fossil fuels. In India, ‘just transition’ is usually invoked in the context of coal. As its use falls, coal-producing regions will see revenues fall; sectors Continue reading
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Energy Transition #4. On PM Modi’s dramatic promises at COP 26.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has taken the COP26 climate talks in Glasgow by storm. Speaking at the summit, not only did he commit India to a net-zero target, he also made a series of aggressive commitments on behalf of the country by 2030. By the end of this decade, he said, India will meet 50% Continue reading
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Book review: Ramrao
About three years ago, Jaideep first told me about Ramrao. The book is finally out. And it was a real pleasure to write this review. Continue reading
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Why India should embrace Net Zero
In August last year, Coal India put out an eye-popping statement. Quote-tweeting India’s Union minister for coal, it said: “CIL is poised to become a “Net Zero Energy Maharatna PSU”.” The accompanying video had more details. Coal India would produce 3,000 MW of solar power by 2023-24, it said, enough to cover all of its Continue reading
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Why Did India Need a Fresh Ministry for Cooperatives?
A day before the reshuffle, Narendra Modi’s National Democratic Alliance government created a new Ministry of Cooperation.It would provide, said its statement, a separate administrative, legal and policy framework for strengthening the cooperative movement in India.A day later, it announced Union home minister Amit Shah would also head the new ministry.Singly and together, these announcements Continue reading
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Lakshadweep: Chartered Flights for Administrator Patel, Job and Welfare Cuts for Locals
On June 14, administrator Praful Patel arrived in Lakshadweep. In the background of a photo clicked shortly afterwards stood the Coast Guard plane, CG 789, he flew over in. This choice needs to be understood. The Union Territory is connected by air to Kochi. Even at short notice, a two-way flight ticket from Daman to Continue reading
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A Field Guide to Praful Patel’s Tumultuous Record as UT Administrator
My second report on Patel, and the crisis facing Lakshadweep. Continue reading
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In Lakshadweep, a political administrator courts ecological mayhem
What are Praful Patel’s plans for Lakshadweep? For a week now, the administrator of this archipelago of 35 atolls and coral reefs in the Arabian sea has been in the news. Since December 2, 2020, when he took charge of the Union Territory (UT), the one-time BJP MLA from Gujarat has issued a series of Continue reading
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23 April-8 May, 2021. The first two weeks of the second wave of Covid-19.
As I start populating this page with text, the second wave of Covid-19 has broken across India. If the first wave had been terrifying, I lack words to describe the second one. Not only are some of the new Covid variants more transmissible – some also do not seem to show up in diagnostic tests Continue reading
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A reading list for reporters
For a while now, I have been thinking about listing the journalism books that taught me the most. And so, with the blessings of a rough typology, here we go. On the moral imperative of journalism: Simple, reporters should belong to the time they live in. In other words, their work should try to create Continue reading
I am an Indian journalist with interests in energy, environment, climate and India’s ongoing slide into right-wing authoritarianism. My book, Despite the State, an examination of pervasive state failure and democratic decay in India, was published by Westland Publications, India, in January 2021. My work has won the Bala Kailasam Memorial Award; the Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Award; five Shriram Awards for Excellence in Financial Journalism; and, more recently, been a finalist at the True Story Award and GIJN’s Global Shining Light Awards. Write to me at despitethestate@protonmail.com.
Reviews
“…une plongée dans les failles béantes de la démocratie indienne, un compte rendu implacable du dysfonctionnement des Etats fédérés, minés par la corruption, le clientélisme, le culte de la personnalité des élus et le capitalisme de connivence. (…a dive into the gaping holes in Indian democracy, a relentless account of the dysfunction of the federated states, undermined by corruption, clientelism, the cult of the personality of elected officials and crony capitalism).” Le Monde
“…a critical enquiry into why representative government in India is flagging.” Biblio
“…strives for an understanding of the factors that enable governments and political parties to function in a way that is seemingly hostile to the interests of the very public they have been elected to serve, a gross anomaly in an electoral democracy.” Scroll.in
“M. Rajshekhar’s deeply researched book… holds a mirror to Indian democracy, and finds several cracks.” The Hindu
“…excels at connecting the local to the national.” Open
“…refreshingly new writing on the play between India’s dysfunctional democracy and its development challenges…” Seminar
“A patient mapping and thorough analysis of the Indian system’s horrific flaws…” Business Standard (Image here)
“33 മാസം, 6 സംസ്ഥാനങ്ങൾ, 120 റിപ്പോർട്ടുകൾ: ജനാധിപത്യം തേടി മഹത്തായ ഇന്ത്യൻ യാത്ര… (33 months, 6 states, 120 reports: Great Indian journey in search of democracy…)” Malayala Manorama
“Hindustan ki maujooda siyasi wa maaashi soorat e hal.” QindeelOnline
“What emerges is the image of a state that is extractive, dominant, casteist and clientelist.” Tribune
“…reporting at its best. The picture that emerges is of a democracy that has been hijacked by vested interests, interested only in power and pelf.” Moneycontrol.com
Book lists
“Ten best non-fiction books of the year“, The Hindu.
“Twenty-One Notable Books From 2021“, The Wire.
“What has South Asia been reading: 2021 edition“, Himal Southasian
Interviews
“Journalism is a social enterprise…,” Booksfirst.in.
“Democratic decay at state level: Journalist M Rajshekhar on book ‘Despite the State’,” The News Minute.
“Covid-19 en Inde : “des décès de masse” dont un “État obscurantiste est responsable,” Asialyst.
Allusions/Mentions
“JP to BJP: The Unanswered Questions“.
Mahtab Alam’s review of “JP to BJP: Bihar After Lalu and Nitish”.
“Urban History of Atmospheric Modernity in Colonial India“. Mohammad Sajjad’s review of “Dust and Smoke: Air Pollution and Colonial Urbanism, India, c1860-c1940”.
“Westland closure: Titles that are selling fast and a few personal recommendations,” by Chetana Divya Vasudev, Moneycontrol. (Because this happened too. In February, a year after DtS was released, Amazon decided to shutter Westland, which published the book. The announcement saw folks rushing to buy copies of Westland books before stocks run out.)
“Time to change tack on counterinsurgency” by TK Arun, The Federal.
“All Things Policy: The Challenges of Governing States” by Suman Joshi and Sarthak Pradhan, Takshashila Institute (podcast).
“The Future of Entertainment“, Kaveree Bamzai in Open.
“On What India’s Watching“, Prathyush Parasuraman on Substack.
“The puppeteers around us“, Karthik Venkatesh in Deccan Herald.
“Will TN election manifestos continue ‘populist’ welfare schemes?“, Anna Isaac for The News Minute.
“Why wages-for-housework won’t help women“, V Geetha in Indian Express.
“The poor state of the Indian state“, Arun Maira in The Hindu.
Book discussions
14 April, 2024: The costs of political corruption, Bangalore International Centre.
27 May, 2023: Safe Spaces/Why Indians live despite the state. TEDx Bangalore.
12 November, 2022: Stop Loss: Overcoming the systemic failures of the Indian State. Tata Literature Festival, Mumbai.
26 December, 2021: Rangashankara, Bangalore, a discussion with Dhanya Rajendran.
16 November: Rachna Books, Gangtok, a discussion with Pema Wangchuk.
29 August: Books In The Time of Chaos, with Ujwal Kumar.
21 May: Hyderabad Lit Fest with Kaveree Bamzai and Aniruddha Bahal.
28 March: Paalam Books, Salem, Tamil Nadu.
19 March: The News Minute, “Citizens, the State, and the idea of India“
6 March: Pen@Prithvi, with Suhit Kelkar
20 February: A discussion between scholars Usha Ramanathan, Tridip Suhrud, MS Sriram and me to formally launch Despite the State.
6 February: DogEars Bookshop, Margoa.
5 February: The Polis Project, Dispatches with Suchitra Vijayan.
30 January: Founding Fuel, “Systems Thinking, State Capacity and Grassroots Development“.
25 January: Miranda House Literary Society
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