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THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Kerala has, of late, been witnessing a highly disturbing trend: mass retrenchment of workers without prior notice.

A decade ago, a Bollywood star dreaded a bad Friday at the box office. Today, many fear something far less predictable—a social media storm that can erupt before the opening credits roll. The latest target has been Ranveer Singh. Fresh from the commercial triumph of Dhurandhar and the buzz surrounding its sequel, the actor has found himself battling an avalanche of criticism online. Instead of celebrating success, social media feeds are filled with memes questioning everything from his acting to his public persona.

Fake news is flooding across India’s nearly half-a-billion account on social media and messaging platforms, threatening trust, relationships, and democratic processes. The country, boasting almost a billion internet subscriptions, is facing a growing crisis of misinformation with digital content spreading faster than truth across the online community. To add to the concern are Artificial Intelligence (AI) generated images accelerating the spread of digital misinformation by creating highly realistic but completely fabricated visuals that strengthen fake headlines. With AI tools producing these synthetic images cheaply and at scale, fact-checkers struggle to keep up, particularly during emotionally charged breaking news cycles and global conflicts, making audiences more likely to believe and share unverified claims. Seemingly realistic and "probative" images—those that provide strong visual evidence to false headlines—significantly boost a reader's belief in the misinformation.

With the Uttar Pradesh. elections drawing closer, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is rolling out a comprehensive, strategic plan aimed not only at retaining its power in the state but also at solidifying its influence across India.

Three Temple-Mosque disputes in Uttar Pradesh will keep the communal politics alive in the months to come before May 2027, when the state will be going to polls. These are Kashi Vishwanath-Gyanvapi Mosque in Varanasi, Sri Krishna Janmaboomi-ShahiIdgah Mosque in Mathura, and the Sambhal Mosque disputes, in which both the Hindu and Muslim litigants have rejected the Supreme Court’s proposed mediated settlement.

Weaponisation of the governance and criminalisation of the cultural ethos are fast taking a diabolical character in Bengal in the last two months of BJP rule in the state.. The actions of the state government and the daily policy announcements of the Chief Minister Suvendu Adhikari suggest that the BJP government is out to eliminate any amount of dissent and neutralize any opposition to the state government.

If aliens landed in India tomorrow, they would conclude they had arrived in two countries occupying the same piece of real estate. In one India, a vegetable vendor accepts payment through a QR code, a farmer checks monsoon forecasts on his smartphone, a surgeon in Chennai remotely advises a patient in Arunachal Pradesh, and a software engineer writes artificial intelligence code for California before breakfast.

Hema Malini is in her late 70s and looks like she is just 45 years old. She has not lost a bit of her stunning beauty or stature or looks. She is still the dream girl of Bollywood and over the weekend she celebrated 60 years in a brutually fierce and competitive film industry dominated by the Kapoors and other film flam families for over 4 decades since she took a bow in the late 60s with her maiden venture Sapno ka Saudagar.

Women have been at the forefront of Indian politics since the freedom struggle. Yet, their participation in governance and representation in legislatures and other decision-making institutions remains disproportionately low. Women currently hold only about 14 per cent of the 543 Lok Sabha seats, while their average representation in state legislatures is around 9 per cent. Women remain underrepresented because access to electoral candidature is unequal and largely controlled by political party committees with limited representation of women. This persistent democratic deficit has led women’s groups and prominent women politicians to advocate consistently for reservations for women in legislatures as a means of expanding their political representation. For the past five decades, this demand has remained as the central focus of their political mobilisation and advocacy, yet it has not been implemented.

Union government in the Ministry of Information Technology & Electronics has taken up an exercise to ban social media access to children below 16 years, encouraged by Australia’s and some other countries’ experiment to this effect. If this proposal is introduced in India, there will be built-in algorithm (age assurance technology), which will prevent any cheating of age by the user children in line with the Australian operation system. The proposal aims to protect under 16-year age youth mental health, reduce exposure to harmful content, and ease parental pressure. Detailed insights are being worked out in keeping with the provisions of the Information Technology Act, 2000 as amended to date and other laws and regulatory measures.