Times of Better Bharat

The Hindu reports that Ladakh, made a Union Territory under the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019, has since seen local groups press concerns about the preservation of Ladakh's culture and demand Sixth Schedule status, while the Centre has proposed instead to insert Article 371-K into the Constitution, providing for a directly elected legislative body ([report](https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/a-new-governance-model-for-ladakh/article71521255.ece)).

Note the shape of the argument. Both sides agree on the end: that a distinctive culture should survive the administrative rearrangement of 2019. They differ on the instrument. That is precisely the sort of dispute this column believes should be settled on mechanics rather than sentiment — and it is a heritage question before it is a political one.

The test is custody, not consultation

A body that advises is not the same as a body that decides. Sixth Schedule status, in the states where it operates, is valued because it locates decisions about land, custom and local revenue in elected district councils: decisions, not recommendations. Article 371-K as reported would create a directly elected legislature, which is a genuine advance on nomination and an answer to a real democratic deficit. The question to put to the draft is blunt. Over which subjects does this body have the final word? Land use, the language of instruction, the regulation of a tourist economy that can reshape a valley faster than any statute — if these sit elsewhere, the clause is a debating society with a budget.

Culture is carried by institutions

Heritage does not survive in clauses. It survives in the routines of people who own the decisions around it: the village that governs its grazing, the household that passes a language to its children, the institution that keeps its own manuscripts. My judgement — arguable, and I would want to see it tested against the record of devolved bodies elsewhere — is that the more local the custody, the better the survival rate. The World Bank's governance indicators put India's government effectiveness at 0.50 on a −2.5 to +2.5 scale (2025) ([source](https://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/worldwide-governance-indicators)); capacity is real and finite. The answer to finite capacity is not to hoard every decision at the centre, but to place each decision where the knowledge is densest.

Not one community's possession

One caution belongs in the drafting room. Ladakh's heritage is plural, and any model that makes one section of its people the custodian of the whole would betray the civilisation it claims to protect. A governance instrument must safeguard the culture of every Ladakhi, not the authority of some Lakadkis over others. The political realignments in Kargil ahead of the local body polls ([report](https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/ladakh/expelled-nc-leader-joins-bjp-2-prominent-faces-join-congress-in-kargil/article71649584.ece)) show that local politics is contested and alive; a good clause channels that contest rather than suppressing it.

The measure of Article 371-K will not be its passage. It will be a question asked in a high valley a generation from now: who decided? If the honest answer is "we did", Bharat will have done something rare — used a constitutional amendment as an instrument of civilisational maintenance rather than administrative convenience. Pride in the nation and respect for the people who carry its older cultures are the same loyalty, and both are best demonstrated in the fine print.

The announcement of the first BIMSTEC maritime security exercise (https://pib.gov.in/PressReleaseIframePage.aspx?PRID=2330988) invites two lazy reactions. The first is to sneer: a single exercise, a photo opportunity, another communiqué. The second is to inflate it into a maritime alliance. Both misjudge how naval capability actually accumulates. A first exercise is not a capability; it is a test of whether a region can generate one.

The signal is real, the substance is not yet

Multilateral naval exercises do three unglamorous things: they standardise procedures for search and rescue, they build habits of communication between watch officers who may one day need to talk to each other in bad weather, and they create a shared picture of who is where in the water. None of that deters anyone on its own. What deters is the demonstrated ability to repeat those things at short notice, in contested conditions, without a planning cycle of months. One exercise proves intent. A standing maritime coordination arrangement — a permanent framework, a calendar, a shared domain-awareness picture — proves capability.

Judged as an argument rather than a fact, the strategic case for a Bay of Bengal maritime framework is strong. India's principal strategic theatre is the Indian Ocean, and it is a theatre in which presence, not rhetoric, settles outcomes. That is a judgement about priorities, and reasonable analysts may weight the continental borders differently. But the continental and maritime contingencies are not rivals for the same rupee; they are rivals for attention, and attention is what the northern and western land frontiers consume most easily.

The gap that procurement has not closed

Here the record is sobering. India's military expenditure stood at 2.3% of GDP in 2025, and its arms imports at 2.86 billion SIPRI trend-indicator value (https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS ; https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.MPRT.KD). A large navy that still imports a great deal of what it sails is a navy whose endurance in a long contest is somebody else's supply-chain decision. The indigenisation case is not sentiment; on these numbers it is arithmetic. Exercising with partners is useful, but exercising with partners using sensors, communications and hulls substantially built at home is a strategic asset in a way that a borrowed interoperability is not.

A bloc-forming ocean

The same day brings a reminder that the western Indian Ocean is being reorganised into alignments India did not design. Damascus is reported to be "evaluating" entry into the Mecca defence pact, the alliance that binds Turkiye, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/31/syria-considering-entry-into-mecca-defence-pact-says-foreign-minister?traffic_source=rss). India's answer to bloc politics should not be to join a bloc but to be the partner of first resort across the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean — useful, reliable, and not someone else's subordinate. That is what strategic autonomy means in practice.

The right verdict, then, is neither applause nor dismissal. The exercise should be judged on a single question: does it become a series with a permanent secretariat, a joint threat assessment, and an indigenous equipment core? If it does, it is a small but genuine gain for deterrence. If it does not, it is a photograph.

Surinder Koli spent close to 20 years in prison before his convictions in the Nithari cases unravelled and a court acquitted him in 2025. That is the fact the report establishes ([The Hindu](https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/the-unbearable-burden-of-freedom/article71503901.ece)). Everything that follows is a judgement about what such a fact should compel.

The acquittal is the beginning of the obligation

A criminal justice system is not tested by its convictions but by what it does when it is proved to have been wrong. Koli walked out with his liberty and, by the account before us, without the ordinary scaffolding of a life: psychosocial support, housing, employment, monetary assistance. Two decades inside a prison do not merely subtract years; they dissolve the tenancies, the skills, the family ties and the reputations a person needs to stand up in the world outside.

Article 21 has never been read by our courts as a guarantee of mere animal existence. If dignity is the constitutional minimum for a person in custody, it cannot be a luxury for a person released because the custody was unlawful. A freedom that arrives without the means to exercise it is a formality dressed as a right. The wrong here is not private misfortune. It was inflicted by the state, and only the state can repair it.

The arithmetic of custody

The scale of the risk is not speculative. Pre-trial detainees make up 72.6% of India's prison population, on the World Prison Brief's reference date of 31 December 2024, drawing on National Crime Records Bureau figures ([Prison Studies](https://www.prisonstudies.org/country/india)). When nearly three in four prisoners have not been convicted of anything, the presumption of innocence is not an abstraction; it is the daily operating condition of the prison system, honoured far too often in the breach. On the World Justice Project's Rule of Law Index for 2025, India stands 86th of 143 with a score of 0.49, down seven places on 2024 ([WJP](https://worldjusticeproject.org/rule-of-law-index/downloads/WJPIndex2025.pdf)). No single indicator settles an argument, but the direction of travel is a fair question to put to those who claim the machinery is sound.

A statutory right, not discretionary mercy

Here is the case I would put. Rehabilitation after a long custody that ends in acquittal should be a statutory entitlement triggered by the fact of acquittal, not a matter of judicial mood or ministerial generosity. It should be time-bound, named and funded: psychosocial care, a housing pathway, an employment linkage, and monetary assistance calibrated to years served.

The honest objection is that an acquittal is sometimes the benefit of doubt, not a certificate of innocence. That is true, and it should shape the design — graded support, verified records, a reviewable scale. But it must not become the excuse for demanding that an acquitted person prove his innocence a second time, to an administrator, in order to be treated as a citizen.

The constitutional test

The Preamble's promise of fraternity is not sentiment; it is the guarantee that makes liberty and equality survivable for ordinary people. A republic that can take twenty years and return only a gate has kept the letter of the law and defaulted on its spirit. The remedy is unglamorous — a statute, a fund, an officer accountable for a file — and it is exactly the kind of work constitutional morality asks of us. The courts corrected the record. The legislature now owes the repair.

An ugly post, and a narrow question

The facts, as reported, are these. On Friday the Supreme Court converted two separate letters from two lawyers into a common petition and registered a suo motu contempt case over a derogatory post by the Kerala Congress against the Chief Justice, Surya Kant. The matter is tentatively listed for 6 November ([Hindustan Times](https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/supreme-court-registers-suo-motu-contempt-case-over-kerala-congress-derogatory-post-against-cji-surya-kant-101793454470951.html)).

One may hold that post in contempt and still insist on the only question that matters for public reason: is the rule about to be applied evenly? A court that acts against abuse from one quarter, and only that quarter, does not defend its dignity; it comments on its preferences.

The line is real, and it is not a lawyers' nicety

Criticising a judgment is not merely permitted; it is necessary. A bench that cannot be argued with is a bench that cannot be corrected. But traducing the person who holds the office is a different act. It invites the citizen to see adjudication as the whim of a man rather than the application of a rule, and that is precisely the ground on which every litigant — of any faith, caste or politics — stands.

The distinction is worth defending because it is the distinction that keeps free speech usable. Defend the widest latitude to attack reasoning, orders and the reasoning behind orders. Draw the line at personal vituperation aimed at making the judge, not the judgment, the issue.

Evenly, or not at all

The Kerala Congress should answer for what it published, as any citizen or newspaper would have to. That is not in doubt. What is in doubt is the record over time. My judgement — a judgement, not a finding — is that the court's standing rises or falls not on this order but on the next one: on whether the same promptness is visible when the abuse of a judge comes from a quarter closer to power.

This is the test citizens apply, and it is the correct one. The Contempt of Courts Act gives the judiciary a power to protect the administration of justice from being poisoned. It was never meant to be a shield a judge carries for his own comfort, and no court should wish to be seen carrying one.

What the numbers measure

None of the indices settle a single case, but they record how confident people are that the rules bind everyone. On V-Dem's 2025 data India's freedom-of-expression index stands at 0.46 on a 0–1 scale ([Our World in Data](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/freedom-of-expression-index)); the World Justice Project's 2025 Rule of Law Index places India 86th of 143, down seven places ([WJP](https://worldjusticeproject.org/rule-of-law-index/downloads/WJPIndex2025.pdf)); the World Bank's rule-of-law indicator is −0.13 on its −2.5 to +2.5 scale ([World Bank](https://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/worldwide-governance-indicators)). Reporters Without Borders ranks India 157th of 180, down six ([RSF](https://rsf.org/en/index)) — a figure the government has publicly disputed, and which should be read with that dispute in mind.

These are perceptions, not verdicts. But perceptions of evenness are the currency in which courts are paid.

The same yardstick, next time

The Kerala Congress owes an answer. The Supreme Court owes the country something harder: proof that its contempt jurisdiction is a rule and not a reflex — invoked as briskly when the target is a judge the powerful dislike as when the target is a Chief Justice. A citizen of any faith or none should be able to read the 6 November order and conclude only that the yardstick did not move.

The news is modest in the telling and large in what it implies. Pranos Fusion, a Bengaluru-based startup, has taken key steps towards India's first privately built tokamak, with designs potentially firmed up in 2027 ([The Hindu](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/science/indias-first-fusion-power-company-takes-key-steps/article71649266.ece)). That is a design milestone, not a working reactor, and it should be reported as such. But it marks a shift worth taking seriously: the fusion question has moved out of the laboratory and into the industrial economy.

Why this is a self-reliance story

Judgement, offered as judgement: fusion is among the most consequential tests of strategic autonomy in energy this century will set. A country that can build the machine does not spend its diplomacy negotiating for fuel. That is the case for treating a private tokamak as more than a science item — it is an industrial capability question wearing a physics costume.

And capability, in fusion, is a supply chain: magnets, vacuum vessels, cryogenics, power electronics, control and diagnostic systems, and materials that must survive heat and neutron flux. None of that arrives from a pitch deck. It is fabricated in workshops, tested in laboratories, certified by inspectors. If the machine is assembled entirely from imported sub-systems, India will have bought a demonstration, not built an industry.

The numbers that will decide it

The foundations are thinner than the ambition. Research and development spending stands at 0.6% of GDP (UNESCO via World Bank, 2020 — an old figure, but indicative), with 259.3 researchers per million people ([World Bank](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.POP.SCIE.RD.P6)). India publishes 2,28,174 scientific articles a year ([World Bank / NSF, 2023](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IP.JRN.ARTC.SC)) and recorded 63,217 resident patent applications in 2024 ([World Bank / WIPO](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IP.PAT.RESD)). On the Global Innovation Index it ranks 38th of 139, and tellingly far stronger on outputs than inputs — 32nd against 52nd ([WIPO](https://www.wipo.int/global_innovation_index/)). Read that as a compliment and a warning: Indians innovate well with little, and the little is the problem.

Private capital is evidently willing. In the same edition, EKA Mobility sets out a ₹1,000-crore R&D plan ([The Hindu](https://www.thehindu.com/business/Industry/eka-mobility-plans-1000-crore-rd-investment-targets-40000-unit-capacity-utilisation-by-2030/article71649617.ece)). The question is never whether Indian firms can announce ambition. It is whether the money stays patient for fifteen years.

Hands, not only degrees

A tokamak consumes skilled labour in extraordinary quantities: vacuum technicians, welders certified for cryogenic work, precision machinists, instrumentation and calibration staff. This is precisely where apprenticeship alongside formal education — inside district polytechnics and industrial training institutes, as a parallel track and never a substitute for universities — matters more than any single grant. Hub-and-spoke applies here too: design in Bengaluru, fabrication and testing in clusters that already carry metallurgy, fabrication and electricals.

The discipline of a long horizon

Two cautions. A design freeze in 2027 is not a reactor, and no honest engineer will promise a date for commercial power. And a fusion programme financed by valuation rounds rather than order books will fail in the Indian manner — spectacularly, and at the expense of the suppliers. The better architecture is unglamorous: milestone-based public procurement, shared test facilities, published engineering standards, and public funding for the university laboratories that train the people a private firm will eventually hire.

Fusion is not a shortcut to anything. It is what a serious country does with a long horizon — the same logic that should govern irrigation, seeds and cold chains. The measure of this venture will not be its valuation, but whether a decade hence a district workshop in India can say, without exaggeration, that it built part of the machine.

Every road is a sentence written on the land. Whether the land — and the water moving across it — gets to read the sentence first is the whole question.

The row over the Puthukkad flyover in Keralam has narrowed into a contest of designs. The National Highways Authority of India has rejected a pillar-based design, and a people's collective has challenged that stand, warning — and this is the collective's warning, not an established finding — that an embankment could worsen flooding, disrupt more than 4,000 businesses and isolate public institutions ([The Hindu](https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/kerala/row-over-puthukkad-flyover-in-keralam-intensifies-as-nhai-rejects-pillar-based-design/article71649869.ece)).

Two different kinds of claim are folded into that row, and it is worth prising them apart. One is an engineering claim: which design is safe, durable and buildable. The other is a claim about hydrology and livelihood: where the monsoon's excess will go once a raised bank of earth occupies the room it used to have. The first is settled by calculation. So is the second. Neither is settled by volume.

A wall in a floodplain is a decision

An embankment and a row of pillars are not two versions of the same thing. One displaces water; the other lets it through. In a land of monsoon rivers that difference is not aesthetic. It is the difference between a road that carries traffic and a road that quietly relocates a flood.

My judgement, offered as judgement and not as finding: where a design can let water pass at comparable cost and comparable safety, the case for doing so is not sentiment. It is insurance paid upfront rather than maintenance deferred.

Which is why the responsible demand in Puthukkad is not that one side shout louder. It is that the drainage and flood-level modelling be placed in the public record, where engineers who disagree can test it and citizens who live there can read it. A collective that documents its objection and an authority that publishes its arithmetic are both doing the same civic work.

The wider ledger

Zoom out, and the flyover becomes a small instance of a large habit. India's forest cover stands at 24.4% of land area ([World Bank / FAO, 2024](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/AG.LND.FRST.ZS)). We withdraw 66.5% of available freshwater ([FAO via World Bank, 2022](https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ER.H2O.FWST.ZS)). We lose 1,25,678 hectares of tree cover in a year ([Global Forest Watch via Our World in Data, 2024](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/tree-cover-loss)). On the Environmental Performance Index we sit 176th of 177 with a score of 22.46 — a figure marked contested, and contested by our own government ([Yale, 2026](https://epi.yale.edu/)). On the Climate Change Performance Index we fell thirteen places to 23rd of 67 ([Germanwatch, 2026](https://ccpi.org/country/ind/)).

A contested index is still an index that must be answered with better measurement of our own, not with silence. That, too, is a form of accounting.

The inward turn

Well-being is not a mood. It is a habit of keeping accounts honestly — of holding two true things at once without needing one of them to be false. The objection that refuses to hear engineering is one failure of that habit. The authority that hears every objection as obstruction is the same failure wearing a lanyard.

Dharmic balance, stripped of ornament, is arithmetic: moderation in the use of a floodplain is not weakness, it is the survival sum done in advance. The citizen's share of this is small and unglamorous. Ask for the level. Ask before the first truck of earth arrives.

The water keeps its own accounts. It does not read the file. It reads the level.