#WATCH | Nagpur, Maharashtra: At RSS' Vijayadashami celebrations, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat says, "A storm has swept in from the West to destroy all that is decent, auspicious, and rooted in cultural and human values. Even the developed nations are afflicted by this storm. See what is happening in France, Albania, Bangladesh, and Nepal. All this has been done by them. They say that a regime change will change the situation, but that has never happened; not now, not ever...India too is their target. Such attempts are being made in India as well. But due to the strong policies with which India has functioned in the last few decades under a strong leadership, and due to the new generation's sense of pride in their country and their spirit to do something for the country, their game was shut down. These demonic forces know it. So, India is on their target. They attempt to break India, Hindus and Sangh, they call it 'dismantling'. They even get help from like-minded elements; they get ambitious politicians for this. Our society is vast, and our country is still developing, so challenges persist...Protests must indeed happen, but they must be for a solution. Whether it is protesting groups, authorities enforcing law and order, or political leaders, no actions should create conflict, hatred, bitterness, or division within our united society. No matter how strong emotions run, our actions must stay within the boundaries of the Constitution, the law, and civil decorum..." (Video: RSS)

The staggering set of new results were AI benchmark detritus, & they won’t be the last. Mathematicians are weighing processes & incentives to go from such results to proofs that becomes the common repository of maths. All of academia should pay heed. quantamagazine.org/ai-proved…

Drèze admirers larp a lot about MGNREGA. That tells you everything. If a two decade intellectual legacy rests on a scheme that paid people to dig gaddha one season and refill them the next, the legacy is weaker than its fans imagine. MGNREGA was never a development programme. It was a consumption subsidy stupidly dressed as work. It created payrolls and negligible productivity. Its assets were notoriously flimsy, its leakages chronic and its own statutory promise of 100 days was never realised. Worse, it taught an entire rural generation that the state's highest aspiration for them was manual labour at subsistence wages. Contrast China. Beijing moved its rural surplus labour into township enterprises, factories, ports and export corridors. They built capability that compounded without some jholachaap economist. We spent two decades paying for activity instead of building capacity, and called it a rights revolution. Thankfully, parliament has now repealed the Act. Our poor never needed a perpetual shovel. We need to provide them more factory gates.

While Modi present the BAPS as a global representative of Indian civilisation, the organisation historically adopted a different legal position inside India when confronting state legislation against untouchability. The BAPS had disavowed Hindu identity in Indian courts to preserve caste exclusion, yet it now assumes Hindu identity in foreign capitals to claim civilisational leadership. @SushantSin writes on the spiritual cronyism of Narendra Modi and the BAPS: caravanmagazine.in/religion/…

Gangeshwar Dutt Sharma, the district secretary of the CITU in NOIDA, explained to @ZaenAlkaz that the government machinery for factory inspection has collapsed, with cuts to staff in labour departments and labour courts. For all of NOIDA, with over eleven thousand industrial units, there is only one labour court, with one judge. Cases can run on for decades. The application of labour law, which was always uneven, is increasingly the exception rather than the rule. Read The Caravan's October 2026 cover story: caravanmagazine.in/labour/wo…

Neha Bora addresses the media, and thanks journalists for covering the protests despite being detained by police, despite the threat to them and their equipment worth lakhs. Two Republic reporters then began shouting at Neha from the crowd while they read out a poem. The reporters heckled them, disrupting the press conference. Both of them have been escorted out.

At around 7.10 pm, the Krantikari Yuva Sangathan were returning from a protest at Connaught Place—they had released a balloon into the air calling for Gyanesh Kumar's resignation. Six women, including a minor, as well as a journalist were detained by the police and taken to the Mandir Marg Police Station. They described being groped, scratched and pulled with force, and their clothes torn. The women journalist said women constables broke her mic and ignored her press card, saying such cards “can be made for Rs 300.” The police said they will not be let go unless they give their names and details, but the women refused, saying they were detained illegally after dark and were not required to do so. The women journalist was let go after lawyers arrived on the spot, at around 8.45 pm. As of 9.30 pm, the detainees were not yet released as the police were insisting on collecting their personal details. The police eventually let them go only at 9.50 pm, after a senior male lawyer came to speak to the police. Videos by Surabhi Kanga (@surabhikanga)