Table of contents for 02 March 2026 in India Today

While neighbouring Bihar still battles prohibition, Uttar Pradesh is making the most of its excise potential. On February 12, the Yogi Adityanath government rolled out its first standalone three-year excise export policy to place ‘Made in UP’ bottles on global shelves. Duties, export pass fees, franchise charges and special levies have been slashed for export-designated tipples. Brand registration and label approvals have been eased, and fees on foreign liquor, beer and wine waived. The aim is clear: turn India’s top excise revenue-earner into a liquor export hub. UP’s current share of national exports is about 11 per cent, but riding on the India-EU trade agreement, the state hopes to plant ‘Brand UP’ firmly in Europe. The only question: will the world acquire a taste for UP’s brew? FACTION WARS IN…

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION Illegal crossings were an issue even before Bangladesh was born, but the Centre’s current concern is Myanmar’s Rohingya refugees adding to the problem. Waves of migration down the decades have led to demographic changes in parts of Assam, Tripura and West Bengal, triggering ethnic tensions. Across the border, anti-India sentiment is fuelled by the BSF’s strong-arm measures and the resultant human casualties. Since May 2025, India has also deported over 2,000 Bengali-speaking ‘migrants’, sparking a legal and political backlash. INSURGENCY What India will want most is assurances that the BNP regime will not repeat the follies of the past and extend support to Northeast separatist outfits such as the ULFA (Assam) and the NSCN (Nagaland) again. The Awami League government crackdown since 2009 had put a stop to…

For years, Vinay Rawat, a 37-year-old schoolteacher in Dehradun, has been planning his visits to Delhi like a small military operation. Seven hours on a good day. Longer if traffic near Meerut is clogged up or roadwork has turned the highway into a bottlenecked trench. His parents in Delhi are getting older. Time, he says, is never enough and it is the only thing that stops him from visiting them often. By mid-2026, that grim arithmetic of distance and delay may change forever. The Delhi-Dehradun Expressway promises to cut the journey to roughly two and a half hours. Not merely a saving of time—it promises a fundamentally different life. Behind such changing realities lies the Bharatmala Pariyojana, the government’s flagship highway development programme started a decade ago to overhaul India’s…

Thinking of unpleasant things isn’t something any of us would opt for. But life is full of surprises, and it is in our best interest to be prepared for tough times, especially if it incurs financial losses. With healthcare costs rising by about 10-12 per cent per year, even some of our best-laid plans can be derailed by a debilitating ailment. The role of health insurance is often underestimated, but it is an essential financial tool that can protect us from unexpected health crises. Health insurance is ever-evolving, and today there are policies that cover individuals and their families, including a range of dependants. You can have your children, parents and in-laws insured under a single health insurance policy. It is widely perceived that health deteriorates or requires attention as…

The matter of ‘Hindi’ is an ideological minefield. Research in Hindi is, therefore, a high-risk operation. Tripwires abound, and one is constantly required to utter the crucial passwords—rashtrabhasha, Sanskrit-putri, etc.—to earn safe passage. Apart from the familiar physical and institutional difficulties, there is the sense that any deviation from well-trodden discursive paths will end badly. It is much safer to be boring, and many are. Tyler W. Williams’s monograph—If All the World Were Paper: A History of Writing in Hindi—relies upon an archive that is practically untapped. True to his title in its full literalness, Williams has worked on manuscript materials that have remained locked up in metal boxes for centuries on end. In addition to tapping the manuscript materials in Nagari Pracharini Sabha and in major Western libraries, Williams…

THE MADHYA PRADESH GOVERN MENT HAS taken the next step toward solving a problem it claims does not exist. Back in December, agriculture minister Aidal Singh Kansana had at a press conference denied that there was any shortage of fertiliser in the state, never mind the yearlong fighting and looting over the issue, or the recent deaths of two farmers waiting outside fertiliser dispensaries. “Show me even one farmer…” he had thundered. But while the minister may have denied any crisis in public, his department was busy rolling out pilots of an initiative called e-VIKAS (e-Vitaran Evam Krishi Urvarak Apoorti Samadhan) in three districts—Jabalpur, Vidisha and Shajapur—all of last year. An online facility, it allows farmers to log in using their Aadhar number and buy a predetermined amount of fertiliser…

A photograph posted on Facebook on February 18 captured a quiet but telling moment. Shared by an old friend of Tarique Rahman, it carried a Bengali caption that translated loosely to “peace of the eyes”. In the image, Rahman—dressed in a crisp white shirt—sat inside the office of the prime minister of Bangladesh. For many supporters, the picture symbolised arrival after a long and uncertain journey. A day earlier, Rahman had taken oath as the country’s 11th PM. At 60, he steps into office from a life shaped as much by inheritance as by disruption. Born on November 20, 1965, in Dhaka—then part of East Pakistan—he is the elder son of Ziaur Rahman, the soldierpresident assassinated in 1981, and Khaleda Zia, who later dominated national politics through two turbulent terms.…

Every year begins with hope, a clean slate and lower financial stress. This year was no different for most tax-paying families, with resolutions made and an eagerness to put the past behind them and plan for a better future. Yet, amid rising global economic uncertainty, stagnant incomes, rising cost of living and fear of AI displacing jobs, widespread anxiety has taken over our day-to-day lives. In this landscape, one’s personal finances require vigilance and proactiveness to protect what one has and build on it. Looking back, 2025 tested the patience of most investors. The Sensex posted a little over 8 per cent return for the year and has yet to reach the 85,836 high of September 26, 2024. The news that foreign institutional investors (FII) sold Indian equities worth Rs…

If you track investment news, you have likely encountered a “sureshot” theme touted as the best entry point. One year, it is gold; another, technology. At other times, small caps, PSUs, manufacturing, consumption or the latest multi-bagger sector dominate the conversation. It can seem as though there is never a moment to sit out. For new investors, such narratives can be spellbinding, fuelling visions of hitting the jackpot by backing these seemingly foolproof ideas. While some of these themes may indeed deliver strong returns, the real risk lies elsewhere: most investors do not lose money because the themes themselves are flawed, but because they select funds for the wrong reasons. The growing popularity of mutual funds underscores this trend, amplified by advertising that persistently promotes their benefits. The latest example…

It’s well-documented that printmaking dates back to the earliest eras of human history. Long before the process was upscaled and industrialised, printmaking was a way to record and disseminate cultural information in a widely accessible format. The past and present of printmaking as an artistic enterprise are the focus of Print Age, an ongoing exhibition at Delhi’s Dhoomimal Gallery. Curated by Johny M.L., Print Age brings together a total of 156 prints from 80 individuals, including globally famous artists like Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall and Anish Kapoor, as well as Indian printmakers like Jyoti Bhatt and Laxma Goud. The exhibition, open to the public until March 15, showcases several forms of printmaking, including lithographs, woodcuts, drypoints, etchings, linocuts, et al. PRINT AGE SHOWCASES SEVERAL FORMS OF PRINTMAKING—LITHOGRAPHS, WOODCUTS, DRYPOINTS, ETCHINGS,…

“Close the wind ows. The tiger is coming.” A mother’s urgent warning sets Flying Tigers in motion. When Alzheimer’s dredges up a fragment of her mother’s childhood, National Award–winning filmmaker Madhusree Dutta begins following its trail. The search led her to 1940s Assam, where the United States had established a perilous aerial supply route over the Himalayas to transport military aid to China during World War II. The vast wartime opera tion re shaped forests and tea plantations, disrupting fragile ecologies. Tigers, forced out of their habitats, started straying into human settlements. Flying Tigers, which premiered at the 76th Berlinale, marks Dutta’s return to filmmaking after 20 years. It unfolds as a layered, genre-blurring essay that moves between Assam and China alongside Kunming-born media scholar Mi You and Assamese writer…

With Nikhil Gupta’s guilty plea in a US federal court in the alleged plot to assassinate Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, the case has crossed a critical threshold: the conspiracy to carry out a murder-for-hire on American soil is no longer a mere allegation or inference from intelligence assessments, but a fact admitted in a court of law. The indictment has already named one Indian ‘government official’—Vikash Yadav—and this judicial transformation allows prosecutors to proceed against additional suspects. Published accounts of the conversations between Gupta and Yadav refer to directives from an unnamed ‘Boss’ and, given the manifest lack of communication hygiene between the two, Yadav’s conversations with others are also likely to be on FBI records. Consequently, officials higher up the chain may possibly have been compromised, and US agencies could…

RECORD HEAT SIGNALS +0.68°C Rise in India’s average temperature per 100 years since 1901 ↘ Though below 2024’s record high of 25.53°C, 2025 still averaged 25.16°C—the eighth warmest year since 1901 ↘ 2016–2025 stands as the warmest decade, 0.32°C above normal +1.36°C Average deviation in February 2025, making it the warmest on record ↘ Minimum temperatures in February 2025 averaged 15.2°C, i.e. 1.2°C above normal, signalling unusually warm nights ↘ January, September and October also ranked among the warmest EXTREME WEATHER TOLL 2,763 Fatalities linked to extreme weather events in 2025, down from 3,201 in 2024 ABOVE NORMAL RAINFALL… 1,274 mm Rainfall in 2025—110 per cent of the Long Period Average (LPA) ↘ At 126.7 mm, May recorded the highest rainfall in 125 years ↘ Monsoon (June to September) delivered 108 per cent of…

THE QUIET HOMECOMING OF ARVIND KHANNA, until recently the BJP’s Punjab vicepresident, was more than a routine political defection. Received by Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) president and childhood friend Sukhbir Singh Badal, Khanna rejoined the party where he began his political career in the 1990s. Badal has appointed him halqa (assembly segment) in-charge of Sangrur, widely seen as positioning him for the 2027 state election. Khanna’s exit highlights a deeper structural weakness within the BJP’s state unit: the absence of a leader with mass legitimacy or emotional resonance. Once an Akali youth leader, Khanna later moved to the Congress, then led by his cousin, Capt. Amarinder Singh, and won the assembly election from Sangrur in 2002, Dhuri in 2012. In 2015, he abruptly resigned from the assembly, announcing his retirement…

By the time 46-year-old schoolteacher Ritu Sharma (name changed) first walked into a Delhi oncology OPD, she had already been living with cancer for months—without knowing it. The backache began as a dull tug between her shoulder blades, then grew into a burning sensation that woke her at 3 am every night. She blamed posture, age, stress. When she first had a cough, she was given antibiotics, and then vitamins. By the time she reached a tertiary hospital, scans revealed her cancer had metastasised, meaning it had spread to other organs, with lesions in her spine and spots in her lungs. Sharma’s story is painfully familiar. India’s cancer burden is rising fast. The country ranks second in Asia and third globally in cancer cases. An analysis of 43 population-based cancer…

MEMORY | REMAINS Throughworks by Krishen Khanna and Prabhakar Kolte, the exhibition revisits Indian modernism as an evolving dialogue. Juxtaposing Khanna’s figurative reflections on everyday life shaped by Partition and migration with Kolte’s meditative abstractions, the show foregrounds memory and lived experience as continuing concerns. KHADI, A CANVAS Bringing together handwoven khadi sarees, chromolithographs, printing stones and weaving tools, the exhibition reflects on the shared cultural legacy of Raja Ravi Varma and Mahatma Gandhi. Anchored by 18 sarees reinterpreting Varma’s iconography, the show examines accessibility, self-sufficiency and circulation within India’s visual imagination. DIVINE COLOR: Hindu Prints from Modern Bengal The exhibition explores how 19th-century lithography transformed devotional imagery and popular culture. Focusing on vibrant prints produced in colonial Calcutta, it traces how mass-produced images of Hindu deities reshaped worship, aesthetics…

Anubhav Sinha’s latest social drama doesn’t waste time in establishing why he opted for the title. Assi (80) is the number of women who are sexually assaulted in India every 20 minutes; it’s also the figure that’s heard in the car which drives around the capital one night as four men rape a woman (Kani Kusruti). Sinha is in no mood to spare the audiences from the harrowing nature of the crime, prolonging the sequence to a degree that it makes viewers turn their eyes away. The drama, though, is not simply about finding the perpetrators and seeking justice. Along with his Article 15 writer Gaurav Solanki, Sinha turns his attention to a range of issues, from the survivor’s struggle to recover and readjust to society to the desperation of…