The Maharashtra government’s plans to set up hyperscale data centres are facing stiff resistance from activists concerned about their environmental impact and the diversion of essential resources such as water and electricity.

Academic freedom, evidence-based policymaking, social inclusion, and transparent governance are the foundations of a scientific nation. India has neglected each of them.

They should be audited and safety-tested in advance, judged by their worst possible failure rather than average accuracy, and not investigated only after a notice like the one the government just sent Meta.

Europe has relaxed its gene-editing rules after years of debate but kept strict checks on herbicide-tolerant crops. India eased its rules too but dropped an early warning about the trait, even as illegal seeds spread across cotton-growing States.

An AI-led semiconductor boom has transformed South Korea’s economy, but speculative finance, soaring valuations, and currency pressures trigger memories of past crises.

The US-Iran war has shown again how a weaker actor with cheaper weapons can neutralise a stronger enemy with an expensive weapons platform. India must learn from this now, when it still has the time.

If the ethics crisis in AI is to be more than just a chorus of concerns, the move to address the issue must be structural, with governments setting enforceable limits on surveillance, bias, and data extraction.

The novelist, critic, and teacher on the uncertain future of students today, and the ethics, sustainability, and politics that will endure.

For the first time, the human species is confronted with a technology that can produce output resembling thought. AI is no longer an augmenter of human creativity; it can become a substitute for it.

India is unlikely to lead in frontier AI like the US or China, but it can be a trailblazer in applied AI in a way that lets it preserve agency, build capability, and create broad-based value.

AI has moved from the margins of military experimentation into the operational stack of modern war. This makes it paramount for defence forces to know when to trust it, when to question it, and when to slow down.

The AI authorship debate is not just a legal one; it signals at the larger transitions taking place in our understanding of consciousness, humanity, and machine intelligence.

AI possibly represents the summit of human ingenuity. But it is also an evil genie that, if left unchecked, could push humanity off a cliff.

The true threat of AI is not that it will eliminate human labour but that it will take us to the top of a ladder we will no longer remember how to climb.

When a machine lulls a person into a comfortable space of disruption-free “infinite” companionship, real life will seem jarring.

When citizens are flooded with AI-generated fakery, there is no room to imagine the other. How then to build a democracy founded on empathy and associated living?

India has a growing complexity science community with tools to make sense of the interacting networks we now live within.

Through forgotten archives and overlooked clues, the pioneer of microhistory recovered the thoughts and experiences of ordinary people whom history had pushed to the margins, and historians read beyond official narratives.

What began as the theft of my Twitter account became a lesson in how powerless users are when the gates to their digital lives suddenly close.

Persecuted inside Pakistan, the Ahmadis continue to see the Nobel-winning physicist’s life as evidence that scientific excellence and spiritual conviction can coexist.