Udbhavi

On Saturday, I conducted a one-hour presentation for students of journalism and IR at the St Joseph's University, Bengaluru, about the role the media plays in informing and influencing policymakers and the public. I had an incredible time interacting with this bright bunch!

Whenever farmers, anganwadi workers, ASHA workers, guest teachers protest for small hike for days or even months, the govt either turns a deaf ear or gives false assurances. But when MLAs demanded IPL tickets yesterday, the DCM on priority got it approved today THAT WAS QUICK

The Movement for Gender and Sexual Plurality protests against the Transgender Bill 2026 at the Freedom Park. #rejectthetransbill #rejecttransbill #rejecttransbillamendment @manoharban @MgspKarnataka @AISA_karnataka

Take out 6 minutes of your time and listen to Indian Express editor Raj Kamal Jha grilling the state of journalism in India in front of the Vice President of India and LG of Delhi. Absolute gem , must watch.

41 killed in sewer-septic tanks in just 80 days of this year! Hundreds of safai karamcharis from 10 states gather at Jantar Mantar to protest most barbaric caste-based oppression in name of occupation. Join hands and raise voice to make this government listen! #stopkillingus

Let’s not lose hope, even when it feels tough. We’ve already come so far. There was a time we couldn’t imagine someone in the Parliament say: that trans men are men and trans women are women. That matters. That stays. And we will keep fighting till the very end. ✊🏽🏳️‍⚧️

“I challenge you, not even 5 MPs here would be able to explain what LGBTQIA+ means. Why should people without this knowledge be allowed to make this Bill? This Bill must be sent to a select committee.” - Rajya Sabha MP from INC Telangana @RenukaCCongress

Supreme Court-appointed panel asks Centre to withdraw Transgender Bill that removes right to gender self-determination ✍️@al_lakshman thehindu.com/news/national/…

A sinister element in this trans bill is how it seeks to isolate a trans individual from any kind of community. By criminalizing "those who infleunce a person to be trans" it cuts transpeople off from doctors, healthcare workers, NGOs, and even individuals. Pure evil this

315 Sewer deaths in 5 years. These are not accidents. These are preventable, repeated, institutional failures. And the Govt still claims “eradication”? 7 States account for 77.5% of deaths. 1. Maharashtra - 53 deaths 2. Haryana - 43 deaths 3. Tamil Nadu - 38 deaths 4. Uttar Pradesh- 35 deaths 5. Delhi - 26 deaths 6. Gujarat - 25 deaths 7. Rajasthan - 24 deaths How many more must die before “eradication” becomes reality? And the Govt doesn’t even record caste of the victims - calling it “occupation-based.” Because acknowledging it would expose the truth. Manual scavenging and hazardous sanitation work in India are overwhelmingly carried out by marginalized communities and are rooted in historical caste-based occupation discrimination patterns. #rajysabha

If I claim, I saw @shashj sitting on a carpet woven with threads of hate, professional incompetence and hubris, while tweeting this, and @shashj cites it without verifying it independently, it is not first-hand evidence. It's hearsay. With or without a fog of war to use as a bad excuse later. This is journalism 101.

BBC confirms the US is responsible for the Minab school massacre that killed 175 people, mostly girls. The "advanced" AI targeting system used outdated coordinates to hit a base next door, ignoring satellite images showing kids playing in the courtyard. Absolute war crime.

@TheEconomist has utterly destroyed its reputation with its deeply racist and profoundly bigoted coverage of the mass-murder of the people of Gaza. For six months we have seen issue after issue of scandalously one sided-coverage which has has made it complicit in the continued enslavement of the Palestinian people, the on-going seizure of their land, the systematic abuse of their human rights and the industrial slaughter of their innocent civilians in both Gaza and the West Bank. Shame on its senior editorial staff responsible for the travesty of inhumanity and bias. @zannymb

Urgent. Please use this link to email your member of Parliament about the Trans Bill. You simply need to fill in your state and district and there rest is taken care of. There is very little time left so please email and circulate this. webionite.com/reject-trans-b…

Across India, pregnant women and nursing mothers are being denied food rations because facial recognition tech fails to match their current appearance to years-old identity photographs, a Decode investigation has found. boomlive.in/decode/ai-faci… If this doesn’t make you angry.

‘Dhurandhar: The Revenge’ is a Masterstroke in Pandering to a Nation that Wants to be Misled The film is a PR job for Narendra Modi including hailing demonetisation as a ‘masterstroke’. @LunkyFallow✍️ thewire.in/film/dhurandha…

Half of the crowd we see in cafes is because we don't have investment or maintenance of public library infrastructure in India.

#StoryAlert: When something carries India's name, we feel proud. But what if it turns out to be a disease? Well, that is an embarrassment. And the embarrassment is Trichophyton indotineae. A new fungal infection has spread from India to Germany, the United States, New Zealand, and beyond. Scientists named it Trichophyton indotineae. The “indo” in the name is not a compliment. The reason traces back to a small, cheap tube of cream, sold without a prescription at pharmacies across India. Inside: a powerful steroid, an antifungal, and an antibiotic. All in one tube. The steroid shuts down the skin’s immune response. The itch stops. The patient feels cured. The fungus stays, and starts to adapt. Over months of repeated use, it mutates. It learns to survive the very drug designed to kill it. A drug-resistant species is born. And it now carries India’s name wherever it travels. Read the full story here thesouthfirst.com/health/trichop…

Your paracetamol is 100 percent petrochemical. Phenol from the cumene process, converted to p-aminophenol, acetylated to the tablet in your bathroom cabinet. Your ibuprofen is 100 percent petrochemical. Isobutylbenzene and propionic acid derivatives. Your metformin, the most prescribed diabetes drug on Earth, is 80 to 90 percent petrochemical. Dicyandiamide from natural gas derivatives. The naphtha that makes these drugs transits the Strait of Hormuz. The strait is mined, uninsured, and unescorted. The war just reached the medicine cabinet. Nobody is covering this. Ninety-nine percent of pharmaceutical feedstocks and reagents are petrochemical-derived according to the American Gas Association. Not 50 percent. Not 70. Ninety-nine. The pills are made of oil. The same oil the same strait carries. The same naphtha that becomes polyethylene for a bread bag becomes phenol for a paracetamol tablet. When the petrochemical cracker shuts, both products vanish. The crackers are shutting. Chandra Asri declared force majeure on March 3rd. Yeochun NCC on March 4th. PCS Singapore on March 5. CNOOC-Shell Huizhou is planning shutdown of its 1.2-million-tonne facility. These are not contained within the plastics industry. They cascade into pharmaceuticals because the feedstocks are identical. India is the pressure point. Twenty percent of the world’s generic drugs. Forty percent of US generic demand. And India’s methanol supply, a key solvent in API manufacturing, has 87.7 percent exposure to the Hormuz corridor. The Indian government has prioritised household LPG over industrial petrochemical feedstock, starving downstream pharmaceutical supply chains of the naphtha derivatives they need. Indian pharma companies hold three to six months of finished product stock. The buffer exists. It is depleting at an accelerating rate as raw material pipelines empty. The Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer supplying 40 to 50 percent of global doses in key categories, runs on the same petrochemical chain. mRNA vaccines require petrochemical-derived lipid nanoparticles and solvents. Traditional vaccines use petrochemical intermediates for adjuvants and stabilisers. Every vial is plastic. Every syringe is plastic. Every cold-chain packaging film is plastic. The force majeures that shut the crackers are not just a packaging story. They are a vaccine story. The developing world’s access to affordable antibiotics, diabetes medication, cardiovascular drugs, and childhood vaccines runs through Indian manufacturing plants that run on petrochemical feedstocks that run through a 21-mile waterway currently seeded with Iranian mines. This is the fourth domino. The first was energy. The second was fertiliser. The third was packaging. The fourth is the one that converts an economic crisis into a humanitarian one, because you can find an alternative bread wrapper. You cannot find an alternative to metformin for 537 million diabetics worldwide. You cannot find an alternative to amoxicillin for a child with pneumonia. You cannot find an alternative to the vaccines that prevent diseases we spent decades eliminating. The Fed meets tomorrow to assess inflation driven by energy, fertiliser, packaging, and now pharmaceutical inputs. All repricing through the same chokepoint. Four dominoes. One strait. And the fourth, the medicine, is the one the market has not priced because it does not appear on any commodity index. It appears on a doctor’s prescription. Full analysis: open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…

OUR COLLECTIVE STATEMENT ON THE TRANS BILL 2026 Sign and share widely! Please sign the statement here - forms.gle/LyUCSx73w7qs4M… Read here (translations in multiple languages) - tinyurl.com/StatementRejec… #RejectTransBill2026 #NoGoingBack

Guys please sign the petition against the new trans bill. As if we didn't have enough going on already now they want to remove the right to self identify, penalise ppl who "influence" you to become trans (???) and what not. Just full nightmare change.org/p/oppose-the-a…