Meera Matters

Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read -Groucho Marx // @citizenmatters @opencity_in @oorvani #AshokaFellow

[Meera Matters @meerak]

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe... https://t.co/CkqKEPU5On

[Natasha Ramarathnam (she/her) @nuts2406]

Hyderabad folks
Let’s make this man famous. He said I was welcome to take his photograph and share on social media, but he will not get off the ladies seat.

[bharatvidya.in @Bharatvidya_in]

There is history, and then there is narrative.

We stick to the history rooted in primary sources.

From Mahabharata, Archaeology to Medicine and Philosophy, we offer 28 self-paced online courses delivered by world-class experts at Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Pune.

[Dr. AK 🇮🇳 @docakx]

A 21-year-old woman took all 5 anti-rabies injections and rabies immunoglobulin after a dog bite. Still she died of rabies.

Here are the real reasons why the vaccine sometimes fails and what we must fix.

1. Stitching the bite wound

[Meera Matters @meerak]

If most food delivery orders are placed by customers at home, why should restaurants provide free cutlery/tissues? For lakhs of deliveries every day, imagine the numbers of forks, spoons, paper cups that can be avoided!!
@Swiggy @zomato
Please make this optional, even charged

[Citizen Matters @citizenmatters]

A 15-min walk became a 2-hour commute — after the 2015 floods relocated her from Kotturpuram to Perumbakkam.
70,000 families pushed to Chennai's outskirts in 30 years. Jobs stayed in the city. Homes didn't.
Can a city be inclusive if workers can't reach it? https://t.co/w5Kn1yxufv
@ircduc @chennaicorp @MtcChennai

[Citizen Matters @citizenmatters]

Karnataka voters: SIR isn't optional this time — everyone needs to re-verify by linking 2025 rolls to 2002 records.
Confused about self-mapping, progeny mapping, or which form to fill? We've got you covered 👇
https://t.co/3X3Lrs7qkd
@bicyclemayorblr @DataKindBLR @KHHSPRWA @i1sleague @HAL2S_RWA @hal3rdstagerwa @bengalurutrains @GBA_office @ECISVEEP @CMofKarnataka @meerak @gangadharanbv

[Ashwin Mahesh @ashwinmahesh]

Where there are footpaths, local bodies may try to clear them. But what about places where there no footpaths at all and vehicles are parked where the footpaths should be? For the moment, states would prefer not to answer this question. It is easier for them to say 'we are doing something' and hope that satisfies the courts. After all, that's the logic that has been in place for the 74th Amendment, Right to Education, Right to Information, police reforms, and many other things.

The courts are also tying themselves up in knots. If something is mandated in law or declared a right, there must a budgetary implication for that, a timetable for implementation, and clarity on exactly what is to be done and how to measure outcomes. None of this is in place in the case of most declared rights.

[Citizen Matters @citizenmatters]

Does your home feel like an oven? As temperatures climb, we are all looking for ways to keep our spaces cool. Some hacks work, some don't, and not all are affordable.

We're bringing together experts to answer your questions on solutions for cooling your home and your neighbourhood.

🗓 26th June
🕘 6 PM
📍 YouTube Live
🔗https://t.co/xdUTbtHwrZ

[Ashwin Mahesh @ashwinmahesh]

Here's my list ...

(a) BSWML - How to rein in the corruption in waste management, which the government itself acknowledges as a mafia?

(b) CORPORATIONS - How to improve the quality of road works carried out by the corporations, and get them to build complete streets instead of road surface alone?

(c) BSMILE - How to stop this entity from proposing projects with no basis in data or transportation science?

(d) METRO - How to improve the connections between Metro and other modes at every station, and create a proper town planning scheme for land use around stations?

(e) LAKES - How to revive the management of lakes that has been stalled ever since public participation was stopped?

(f) BUSES - How to ensure that every stop has a sign, a shelter, space to sit and information about services

[Vinay Kumar @bahudari]

Some of you might remember this effort (check below thread) from one of the most traumatic times of our recent past.

Customs has reclassified these as "imported for personal use" & issued a show cause notice + demand of 35L. Can anyone please help 🙏🏾

@Chinmayi @sanjayuvacha

[Meera Matters @meerak]

@mknid This is terrible.
But I am glad you explained how you and the team put it all together. Hope it educates people on what journalism really is! Proud to know you @rohini_mohan @dhanyarajendran @mondalsudipto

[Manish Sharma @Cheekytogeeky]

be @ni5arga

→ 19 years old, from West Bengal, studied in Delhi for a few years
→ just finished his own Class 12 exams in 2026
→ calls himself a hobbyist cybersecurity researcher
→ says he is an engineer, not a hacker
→ built an OSINT engine, a stock-tracking TUI, a pastebin in Rust
→ once found bugs in FOSS United and disclosed them quietly
→ just another CBSE student watching his own board roll out a new digital marking system

then he opened the portal

→ CBSE moves Class 12 evaluation to On-Screen Marking, 1.8 million students affected
→ Nisarga sees the portal link is fully public, gets curious
→ opens DevTools, downloads the Angular JavaScript bundle
→ first vulnerability found in 30 minutes
→ a literal master password sitting in plain text inside the frontend code
→ enter it, the OTP field auto-fills, the entire login flow gets bypassed
→ OTP validation happens in the user's browser, not on the server
→ no route guards, every internal page reachable by editing browser storage
→ password reset API never checks the old password
→ systemic IDOR across the entire API, change one value in sessionStorage, become any examiner
→ outcome: take over any teacher account, view answer sheets, edit marks

25 February 2026. He reports everything to CERT-In the same day.

→ CERT-In asks for a screen recording, he sends a full walkthrough
→ acknowledgement comes back as a boilerplate reply
→ reference number assigned: CERTIn-16590126
→ he follows up multiple times. no response.
→ three months pass. portal still live. Class 12 results released. vulnerabilities still there.
→ 22 May: publishes the blog post and a thread on X
→ Deedy Das, Satish Acharya, Internet Freedom Foundation amplify it
→ the post goes viral
→ CBSE issues a clarification: that was just a test portal, no breach
→ the URL CBSE cited in their own tweet was not even a registered domain
→ a friend buys the domain and points it at Nisarga's blog
→ CBSE quietly deletes the tweet

then it gets worse

→ 25 May: finds an SQL injection vulnerability on the live production portal
→ reports to CERT-In, gets a one-line thank you
→ gains admin access to the live https://t.co/1WpmNGsczK server
→ portal stays up for four more hours
→ he uploads anime videos and memes, links them publicly from CBSE servers
→ plays a viral Japanese song on a CBSE page, makes the news for it
→ CBSE finally takes the whole portal down

then he reads the database

→ master table accessed: 10 GB, 9.3 million records
→ examiner names, addresses, school names, bank account details
→ passwords stored in plain text
→ login tokens anyone can paste into a browser to log in as that user
→ 31 May: finds a second live CBSE production portal, 45,074 records of failed payments
→ emails, phone numbers, payment IDs, order IDs, all readable
→ 31 May, the bigger one: an AWS S3 bucket is misconfigured
→ ListObjectsV2 works without authentication, the bucket root is listable
→ samples pulled from 18 lakh scanned 2026 answer sheets, every subject
→ multiple institutions sharing the same bucket
→ also notices something strange in the scans: bedsheets visible in the background of answer sheets CBSE paid for proper scanners to handle

CBSE responds

→ posts an AI-generated image saying the system is robust and secure
→ three days later admits some vulnerabilities existed and have been contained
→ refuses to name the cybersecurity firm doing the audit
→ claims they tried contacting him. he says they have not.

→ Internet Freedom Foundation writes to the Ministry of Education and CERT-In
→ asks for an investigation into CBSE, a review of the contract with vendor Coempt EduTeck, a full audit

→ he points out he could have sold this data and made a lot of money
→ he did not. he is a CBSE student too.
→ his own analogy: the door wasn't just unlocked. the key was lying on the ground in front of everyone.

a 19-year-old with a anima pff broke a national exam evaluation system in 30 minutes with browser developer tools and the government is still pretending it was a test environment

[Chatura Padaki @chaturap]

Has the name actually, & officially, changed to Government of Bharat, @grok ?

If it has, when did that happen?

I dont know how I missed that update.

[Nirupama Menon Rao 🇮🇳 @NMenonRao]

India today needs genuine public television in the truest sense of the term.
Not government television. Public television.

There is an important difference between the two .

A serious public broadcaster does not exist to flatter those in power, inflame public passions, or compete every minute for ratings through outrage and spectacle. Its purpose is to create a trusted civic space: calm, credible, informed, intellectually serious, accessible to ordinary citizens, and insulated as far as possible from both political pressure and market hysteria.

Public television rests on a simple democratic idea: that information is a public good, not merely a commercial commodity. It values verification over velocity, depth over perpetual “breaking news”, and moderation over emotional manipulation. It trusts viewers enough not to assault them every minute with noise.

It means anchors who facilitate discussion rather than perform as protagonists. Panels designed to illuminate rather than provoke. Journalism that leaves room for complexity, ambiguity and thought. Space not only for political combat, but for science, culture, education, the arts, rural realities, public health, serious international affairs and the quieter textures of national life.

And tone matters too. Especially tone.

The finest public broadcasters around the world earned trust because they projected composure in moments of crisis, restraint in language, and confidence without theatricality. They understood that authority does not require hysteria.

India once aspired, however imperfectly, to such an idea. Today, amid the relentless commercialisation and performative aggression of television news, the need for it feels greater than ever.

A nation of India’s scale, diversity and civilisational depth cannot conduct its entire public conversation through nightly televised gladiatorial combat.

Democracy is not sustained by noise alone. It also requires spaces where citizens can listen, reflect, disagree intelligently, and occasionally recover a sense of proportion.

[Meera Matters @meerak]

Chennai voters, all the info you need to make an informed choice!

[Citizen Matters @citizenmatters]

Chennai friends — elections are here!

At Citizen Matters, we've put together a comprehensive Voter Guide for Chennai with everything you need:
📍 Find your constituency & polling booth
👥 Full candidate list
📄 Party manifestos (Tamil & English)
🏘️ Citizens' demands
📊 Report cards on the last 5 years — floods, waste, urban planning
👉 https://t.co/Bfeui86IDK

[Karnataka Development Index @IndexKarnataka]

Panatturu Ura Mundina Kere

It is a storm water drain, but I give a challenge to GBA officials. If they stand here for 30minutes without mask & stay alive without any diseases(in future), they are fit to continue as GBA official.

You can see apartments mushrooming around this,

[Citizen Matters @citizenmatters]

🚨 Chennai Citizens — We Need Your Voice NOW!
Ahead of the Tamil Nadu Elections 2026, Citizen Matters is finalizing the Top 3 civic demands that will be placed before MLA candidates.
This is your chance to directly shape what issues get prioritized for our city.
🗳️ Takes just 2 minutes — make your voice count:
👉 https://t.co/uVIcz2jPMQ

[Meera Matters @meerak]

Chennai folks, a minute of your time -- do take this 1 question survey!
And spread the word too!

[Citizen Matters @citizenmatters]

🚨 Chennai Citizens — We Need Your Voice NOW!
Ahead of the Tamil Nadu Elections 2026, Citizen Matters is finalizing the Top 3 civic demands that will be placed before MLA candidates.
This is your chance to directly shape what issues get prioritized for our city.
🗳️ Takes just 2 minutes — make your voice count:
👉 https://t.co/uVIcz2jPMQ

[Meera Matters @meerak]

@chaturap @citizenmatters

[Janaagraha @Janaagraha1]

Join us at the third edition of the BIC-Janaagraha Bengaluru Debates where we ask: "Can Radical Transparency Transform Bengaluru?"

When: 10:30 AM | Saturday, 11 April 2026
Where: Bangalore International Centre, Domlur
RSVP here: https://t.co/aOp8NCJ9GN

Our panellists ⬇️