Sutta

[Rahul Srinivas @whizkidd]

Don’t know about Rang De Basanti, but let me tell you what some of us millennials actually grew up watching.

I was in primary school during the 1993 Mumbai bombings -- too young to even understand what terrorism meant. But I distinctly remember my mom repeatedly warning me not to pick up anything lying around while playing outside because, you know, it could be a bomb.

That was childhood.

Then came the seemingly endless procession of attacks: the 1993 Mumbai blasts, Red Fort in 2000, Parliament in 2001, the Mumbai bus bombings and Akshardham in 2002, three separate blasts within eight months in Mumbai in 2003, the 2005 Delhi blasts, the 2007 Hyderabad bombings, and the 2008 Bangalore and Ahmedabad blasts.

In July 2006, I was supposed to be on one of the trains that was bombed near Mahim. I stayed back at the office because of a meeting. A completely mundane change of plans is probably the reason I’m alive to type this instead of being a name on a list of the dead.

I remember that evening far better than I remember any stupid movie. Our office went into lockdown. Phones were jammed. People were crying and frantically trying to reach their families. Nobody knew what was happening, whether there were more bombs, or whether someone they loved was lying dead inside a mangled train compartment.

Two years later came 26/11.

I had the misfortune of watching uncensored footage of the aftermath. One clip showed bodies being piled and stacked inside a makeshift room at CST while someone wheeled in another load on a bloodied wheelbarrow, with blood dripping onto the floor. The sanitised footage shown on television didn't come remotely close to what actually happened inside that station.

So yes, us millennials lived through an era where we went to work knowing that the crime of simply boarding the wrong train, getting on the wrong bus, eating at the wrong restaurant, or standing on the wrong street at the wrong fucking moment could get you blown to pieces or riddled with bullets.

Some of us literally went to work wondering, somewhere at the back of our minds, whether this would be the commute we wouldn't come home from.

So please, spare us millennials this sanctimonious horseshit about Rang De Basanti and what some Bollywood movie supposedly should have taught us about how to vote.

[Tarun Raju @btarunr]

Cockroaches are surprised India even has such tech.

Let me tell you what else we [very likely] have: Starlink receiver triangulation.

[Aravind @aravind]

Modi G's message to Gen Z:

Listen up friends, it's very late but I'll be real quick.

Paper leaks ain't no small thing, fr. It's been hurting lakhs of students and their parents. I understand.

So when it happened, we acted fast, investigated and caught the culprits, last 2.5 months they are still locked up, no cap. They're rotting in jail without bail.

Our main mission was making sure y'all didn't lose a whole year. We moved crazy fast, got exams sorted for almost 2.2 mil students ASAP, and dropped the results on 19th.

But we ain't stopping there. Today, I got my depts to cook up fast-track courts with strictest punishments for paper leaks. They pulled an all-nighter and handed me the draft late night, now.

Tomorrow's cabinet is where we discuss it, lock it in after everyone's input, then push that bill in Parliament starting Monday. We'll move fast.

-------

So the main message:

Your future is non-negotiable. Anyone even thinks to mess with GenZ's dreams by leaking papers, we'll ensure they're getting cooked big time. Period.

And, we need to remember, these are just some of the steps taken by GoI. There's a lot more happening behind the scenes.

Also, due to the repeat issues, and the concerns, criticism, and protest of the genuinely aggrieved this time, am sure a lot more reforms are coming in the whole testing process.

We need to give this time. Because, as far as I can remember, for decades India has had this paper leak issue, every year, in every state, under every govt in power. It's a systemic issue that can't be solved in a night. But good to see the govt trying hard now.

[The Emissary @TheEmissaryCo]

This is a nuclear bomb of a thread comparing Indian STEM vs Indian Humanities ☢️

[Kaushik Mudda @MuddaKaushik]

This photo predates the factory, the funding and the headlines.

We couldn't afford backup power.

So we used my car's headlights and kept building.

Manufacturing isn't built in moments of glory. It's built on nights like these.

Picture from 05/2019. @etherealmachine

[Parimal @Fintech03]

If an Indian startup/defense firm wants to build rocket engines/satellite parts/surgical implants/advanced drone components, they need sub-micron precision metal parts made from heavy-duty alloys like Titanium & Inconel.

Historically, the ultra-precise 5-axis CNC machines required to carve these complex 3D parts had to be imported from countries like Germany/Japan/Switzerland at astronomical costs. To make matters worse, foreign suppliers face tight export controls on high-precision machining tech due to its dual-use potential in defense/missiles.

India had the engineering talent to design hardware, but was held back by a reliance on imported tooling & machining infrastructure.

A not so known startup Ethereal Machines is doing genuinely game-changing work for Indian deeptech & manufacturing, operating in a sector that rarely gets flashy headline attention compared to consumer tech.

Founded by Kaushik Mudda & Navin Jain out of RVCE in BLR, they hit on a fundamental bottleneck that was quietly crippling India’s hardware, aerospace & defense ecosystem.

Instead of just buying machines, Ethereal built their own multi-axis CNC machines from the ground up in India including their proprietary hardware, mechanics & complex CNC controller software. 🙏🙏

They built flagship proprietary machines like Halo, Aura & Nimbus that deliver sub 10 micron precision allowing intricate metal geometries to be carved in a single setup w/o manually repositioning the raw block.

Their early breakthrough was combining 3D printing (adding material) & multi-axis CNC milling (carving material away) into a single machine platform.

Instead of just selling machines, they run a massive 50K+ sq ft Smart Factory in Peenya, BLR operating 24/7. Startups in spacetech, drone tech, semiconductor equipment & medical devices can upload CAD designs & get aerospace-grade precision components delivered in days instead of months, cutting customer lead times by ~40%.

They became the 1st Indian company to win a CES "Best of Innovation" Award in Las Vegas for their hybrid manufacturing tech.

By controlling both the hardware & the software behind multi-axis machining, they give India's spacetech & defense ecosystem a local manufacturing fallback that cannot be disrupted by global supply chain shocks/export bans.

Top-tier deeptech investors like Peak XV Partners, Blume Ventures & Avataar Ventures backed them with major Series A & B funding rounds to set up a massive 300K sq. ft. mega-factory outside BLR.

Most people think of "Indian tech" as SaaS apps/fintech/q-com, Ethereal Machines is doing the heavy, unglamorous lifting, building the physical machine tools required to manufacture the rockets, drones, medical implants & chips of tomorrow right inside India. 🙏🙏

[Nandini @NBDwrites]

I am always surprised when someone asks, “What exactly has Modi done?”

Then I begin listing the accomplishments, and the mood invariably shifts.

I’ve never understood this collective short-term memory loss. It isn’t just puzzling - it can be fatal for both the nation and its people.

So today I decided to look at just one area: education.
Specifically, the institutions established since 2014.

Too often, we form our opinions on hearsay, emotion and sentiment rather than evidence. So let’s look at the numbers. They may well challenge what you think you know.

- Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs)

First 67 years: 16 IITs established.
Last 12 years: 7 new IITs established, taking the total to 23.
Capacity expansion: 5 existing IITs expanded, adding 6,576 seats.

Global footprint: Two international IIT campuses established - in Zanzibar and Abu Dhabi.

- Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs)

First 67 years: 13 IIMs established.
Last 12 years: 8 new IIMs established, taking the total to 21.

Global footprint: In September 2025, IIM Ahmedabad opened its Dubai campus.

- All India Institutes of Medical Sciences (AIIMS)

First 67 years: 7 AIIMS established.
Last 12 years: 16 new AIIMS established, taking the total to 23.

- Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs)

First 67 years: 9,977 ITIs.
Last 12 years: 4,705 new ITIs, taking the total to 14,682.

Skill development: PM–SETU (Pradhan Mantri Skilling and Employability Transformation through Upgraded ITIs), launched in October 2025, will upgrade 1,000 Government ITIs under a hub-and-spoke model.

- Universities

First 67 years: 723 universities.
Last 12 years: 607 new universities, taking the total to 1,330.

- Colleges

First 67 years: 38,500 colleges.
Last 12 years: 13,500 new colleges, taking the total to 52,000.

- Medical Colleges

First 67 years: 431 medical colleges.
Last 12 years: 387 new medical colleges, taking the total to 818.

- MBBS Seats

First 67 years: 51,348 seats.
Last 12 years: 77,628 additional seats, taking the total to 128,976.

- Postgraduate (PG) Medical Seats

First 67 years: 31,185 seats.
Last 12 years: 36,990 additional seats, taking the total to 68,175.

- Internationalisation of Higher Education

15 foreign universities are expected to establish campuses in India.

[John Oldman @PrasunNagar]

"Nihangs are loafers and desperados and have received no share of wisdom or intelligence from God."

-- Maharaja Ranjit Singh, 19 January 1838.

[Anurag @Jhunjhunuwala_]

Their problem is that Modi is a Dictator.
Our problem is that Modi isn't a Dictator enough.

[Aravind @aravind]

So you want Indian govt to fall, political instability, anarchy and riots, Indian economy to suffer, you to suffer, India to have a weak coalition govt manipulated by foreign countries, for an issue like paper leak done by some unscrupulous elements in the system?

An issue that happens in every state of India every year but no such protests happen? That too now months after the issue which has been resolved by GoI earnestly and students already finished their exams successfully?

Why is it only now resignation of PM, abrogation of article 370, independence for Ladhak, certain farmer demands, fight Adani and all things that will benefit our adversaries being asked?

[Aravind @aravind]

Do you understand we didn't require all that, facing crisis of milk, wheat, and power if we had managed our capitalism well without nationalizing private companies, demonizing capitalists and wealth creators? We could have had many private nuclear plants like Japan. We could have had private universities the likes of Harvard better than IITs. We could have had large scale private farms that yielded more.

[Nick Collins @nickcollins1953]

Mesopotamia was never the cradle of civilisation. India was.

I spent forty years in international shipping, not academia. When I began researching the history of maritime trade, I had no orthodoxy to defend. I followed the evidence, and it kept arriving in the same place: the Indian subcontinent.

Nineteenth century archaeologists dug in Mesopotamia because the climate preserved artefacts, the biblical sources pointed them there, and the Ottomans allowed the excavations. That is the entire basis for the myth of Mesopotamia as "the cradle of civilisation."

Nobody applied the same rigour to India. Mohenjo-daro was not discovered until 1922. By then the narrative had already hardened.

What was actually there was the largest civilisation of the ancient world. Three hundred cities. Fifty thousand people in each, by 2600 BC. Two thirds of them stood on the banks of the Sarasvati, the central and greatest of the seven rivers described in the Rig Veda, flowing down from the Himalayas before the river vanished entirely by 1900 BC. The Vedic kings claimed territory stretching "sea to sea," from Afghanistan to Maharashtra, some 1.5 million square miles, against Egypt's 13,000. A dock at Lothal built to handle thirty ships of sixty tons, unmatched in Europe for four thousand years. When it was first excavated, it was recorded as a bathing pool.

When the scale became impossible to dismiss, the theory was not corrected. It was replaced with a story of pale-skinned nomads from the steppe who supposedly arrived around 1500 BC and brought civilisation with them. There is no evidence. The chronology doesn't work. The Vedas describe no invasion.

In 2019 a Harvard-led genetic study revived the claim, and the press reported it as confirmation. It was not. The same study found the builders of these cities were indigenous. The Sarasvati river that the Rig Veda described had already dried up before these newcomers arrived. What the study also found is that a small group of men, arriving after the Sarasvati had already dried up, interbred with the existing population and left a genetic signature. That is all.

So, where they chose to dig was mostly an accident of climate and access. The Aryan invasion theory was constructed because an Indian civilisation that owed nothing to Caucasians was a fact the late nineteenth century could not accommodate.

Link to full Substack essay with sources in the comments below.

[Eminent Intellectual @total_woke_]

India launched a private rocket, a hydrogent train, a barrier free expressway, three war ships, new long range missiles & misside defence shield, won Physics Olympics gold medals, Quantum communication, virtual magnet motor & fast breeder reactor just to divert attention from Jantar Mantar protest. What a terrible country 😡

[Balaji @balajis]

India is building startup cities.

[Megh Updates 🚨™ @MeghUpdates]

Biggest fraud caught red-handed?

He was roaming at the CJP protest in guise of fake hindu priest and eating with a muslim from the same plate and defaming Hinduism.

Now some Sanatnis caught him and asked him to recite the Gayatri Mantra, but he was unable to recite it and simply ran away from there.

This whole protest is not for the students, but it is completely to play narrative!

[Shambhav Sharma @shambhav15]

AcCoUnTaBiLiTy

[Sutta @NaiveSutta]

Btw, One of the founders of Saronic is of Indian origin from Pune.

[Saronic @Saronic]

Today, we're proud to announce the future home of Port Alpha: Brownsville, Texas.

Our next-generation shipyard moves from vision to reality through a planned investment of more than $3 billion to establish one of the world's most advanced shipyards, built for software-defined shipbuilding and autonomous maritime systems.

Port Alpha is expected to generate more than $160 billion in regional economic impact for Cameron County and $264.5 billion for the State of Texas, while creating up to 10,000 direct jobs — which makes it one of the largest economic development projects in modern Texas history.

More than a shipyard, Port Alpha represents a new model for American shipbuilding — combining advanced manufacturing, software-defined production, and autonomy at unprecedented scale. We're proud to continue building in Texas.

Learn more: https://t.co/02rXoR9vR4

[Nupur J Sharma @UnSubtleDesi]

Good to know that this specific drama isn’t limited to India. I wonder why Christian priests or “apostles” pay people to convulse like they’ve been electrocuted, though. None of them can think of some other skit to perform?

[दिव्या @divya_16_]

Would have laughed at this a year ago. Now reading this leaves me with dread and horror. It is very possible.