s

blessings wait for you

[Shashi Tharoor @ShashiTharoor]

An Open Letter to the Jantar Mantar protestors:

My dear young friends,

I address you today not as a politician or an MP, but as someone deeply troubled by what is happening to your generation of young Indians.

This is personal for me. I was born to a middle-class family: my father was a salaried newspaper employee, my mother a homemaker, with three children to educate on one income. For a family like ours, merit was not a slogan. Scholarships, fair examinations, honest results — these were the only way one salary could carry three children's dreams.

I went to school in Mumbai and Kolkata, to college here in Delhi, topped the University and earned admission into IIM — and chose instead to follow my passion for international affairs, in America, on a scholarship. Nothing was inherited; everything was earned by hard work and yes, Exams.

So I know that a fair, merit-based system is the only ladder for young people from lower and middle-income families to climb up. When that ladder is broken — papers leaked, examinations cancelled, trust destroyed — the children of the rich and powerful do not suffer. They have other ladders. It is your dreams, and your families' sacrifices (and tragically, in some homes, young lives themselves) that are betrayed.

To the young people gathered at Jantar Mantar, and those raising your voices peacefully across India: this country hears you. Your anger is not indiscipline — it is the anguish of a generation that did everything right and was still betrayed . You are not alone.

And to the millions of young Indians watching quietly: your generation is not a problem to be managed. You are the answer to India's future. Do not lose hope. This ladder will be rebuilt — by you, and by every Indian who stands with you.

To Shri Sonam Wangchuk-ji, my heartfelt appeal: please end your fast. You have awakened the conscience of the nation; that is what a fast is meant to do. India needs your voice for the long road ahead.

With Parliament in session again from Monday, we will have an opportunity to raise the students’ issues in the highest forum of our democracy. That’s where the problem should be addressed, not by fasting unto death. Please heed my plea.

And finally, to the Government: I respectfully urge you to reach out and engage in the dialogue our democracy owes its young citizens. That is not weakness; that is statesmanship.

[Rajjath @Rajjath24]

it is an unwritten rule of life that after every prolonged period of hardship and uncertainty, there is going to be a period when you are going to achieve quantum leaps across multiple areas of your life. the only requirement is that you do not give up on yourself.

[s @blessedbydrew]

manifesttwt is my last hope fr, please god help your child out 😭🕯️

[s @blessedbydrew]

Manifesting a positive call for work tomorrow 🕯️🕯️ if you read this, pls pray for me 😭🤞🏻🕯️🕯️🕯️

[s @blessedbydrew]

Manifesting a positive call for work tomorrow 🕯️🕯️ if you read this, pls pray for me 😭🤞🏻🕯️🕯️🕯️

[Nani @availablebiebzs]

mood

[Arjun @arjuna_uvaacha]

Bhagwan Shiva having his one banger line at the end of vishnu Sahasranamam is such an elite thing

[s @blessedbydrew]

@SwiggyCares No need to continue with your stupid AI customer care policies, I've already made up my mind. Talk to me only if you have a human employee who's willing to help, unlike your sloppy dead AI

[s @blessedbydrew]

@Swiggy @SwiggyCares has the worst ever customer grievance system. It is pathetic that they make us suffer without any accountability. Their customer cell is dead. Its service and behaviour is so poor and unprofessional, better to uninstall that app. Never using it again 🙏🏻

[𝓜𝓾𝓼𝓱𝓻𝓸𝓸𝓶 @phoolanndevvi]

There's a reason why they're suddenly laying foundations for Data centres in India and it's not for our benefits

[Gaurav Pandhi @GauravPandhi]

In 2014, Modi promised you 100 smart cities.

Today, 100 of the hottest cities in the world are in India.

100 of the most polluted cities in the world are in India.

This was not the case a decade ago. There were consistent efforts to fight pollution and rising temperatures.

Today, the BJP's agenda is only one thing, win elections. Not by governance, but by creating social divisions and manipulating the electoral system. That’s where their focus is, not on improving your quality of life.

Today, ask yourself honestly: has your quality of life improved?

Is the air cleaner?
Are cities more liveable?
Are summers more bearable?

Because "smart city" was never meant to change how you live. It was always a slogan.

You, your whole life, your future has always been reduced to a slogan.

And all of you who continue to support Modi and BJP must understand, you are destroying the future of your children and the future of this nation.

It's never too late.

Wake up.

[Devi @DefiantDevii]

Only 10% Indians have AC at their homes. Im not sure how the other 120+ crore are surviving this hellhole heat, but I have a motivation for them - most of you chose this government which categorises AC and small car as luxuries, so wait till 2047, everything will become fine.

[Darab Farooqui @darab_farooqui]

Look at this map.

Nagpur 45°. Ahmedabad 44°. Prayagraj 43°. Delhi 42°. The entire country is a single dark red mass. This is not a heatwave. This is a country that was told its forests were fine.

And this is April. Not May. Not June. The hottest months have not even arrived yet.

The past few days have been hell. So I did what I always do when something bothers me. I went looking for answers.

What I found was a policy con job that has been running for over two decades.

But before I explain what happened, let's clear some definitions.

A garden is not a forest. An orchard is not a forest. A plantation is not a forest.

A forest is a living system. Soil, water, fungi, insects, birds, mammals, decades of accumulated complexity, specific to its land and climate. It cannot be designed. It cannot be harvested. It regulates water, cools land, shelters hundreds of species. It takes decades to become what it is.

You can plant a forest. But it will take decades to become one.

In 2001, India's forests were disappearing. The Indian state, led by the Vajpayee government, faced a choice. Protect what remained, or change what the numbers said.

It chose the numbers.

The Forest Survey of India quietly changed the definition of what a forest means. Any land with 10% tree canopy cover and more than one hectare in area was now a forest. Your mango orchard. A coconut plantation in Tamil Nadu. A tea garden in Assam. Lodhi Garden in Delhi.

All forests, on paper.

The FSI will tell you that 10% canopy cover follows international norms. The FAO also uses 10% as its threshold. But the FAO's definition comes with a crucial exclusion that India's FSI quietly dropped. 

The FAO explicitly states that fruit tree plantations, oil palm plantations, olive orchards, and agroforestry systems are not forests. The World Bank says the same. India adopted the number but discarded the exclusion. 

It took the cover of international legitimacy while gutting the standard that gave it meaning.

The government will also tell you this was never hidden. That it was publicly stated in every report, disclosed in Parliament. That is technically true. But a disclosure buried in a technical government document is not transparency. It is the appearance of transparency. 

I did not know any of this until I went looking. Neither do most Indians whose forests, whose land, whose air this directly concerns. The con is not in what was hidden from experts. It is in what was never explained to the people it was done to.

This is not a technicality. This is the con.

It was a trick as old as power itself. If you cannot fix the problem, fix the measurement.

For ten years after 2001, Congress governed India. Two terms, two environment ministers, including Jairam Ramesh, one of the more serious ones. They saw the numbers. They knew what the numbers meant.

They did nothing.

Because the lie was convenient. India looked good in international climate negotiations. The fiction of a greening India served everyone in power, so everyone in power kept it. Congress did not create this lie. It simply chose, year after year, to live inside it.

The BJP is different.

When they returned to power in 2014, they came with something Congress never had. An absolute majority, and no coalition compulsions. They did not merely inherit the lie. They built on it. And in 2023, they legislated it.

The Forest Conservation Amendment Act of 2023 removed legal protection from "deemed forests." Forests that existed outside the official definition but were ecologically real. 

Forests that Adivasi communities had lived in and depended on for generations. Forests that cooled land, held water, sheltered species. They were not on the right list. Since the amendment, forest destruction on Adivasi land has accelerated. 

The people who knew these forests best, who had protected them longest, now watch them being cleared. Legally.

CONT++

[गाभरु🚩 @thoda_rude_hu]

The BCCI have planted more than 13 lakhs trees since the green dot ball initiative started

[santiago @bieberskarsgard]

lembrando de quando o justin cantou peaches pela primeira vez no tiny desk e a internet foi abaixo com a perfeição, nós nem conseguíamos acreditar no tanto de viral positivo que teve

[Roshan Rai @RoshanKrRaii]

Tribals have been protesting in Madhya Pradesh against the Ken Betwa Link project.

It has been 11 days since they started their protest.

0 Media Coverage
0 Prime Time Debates
0 Attention

Just notice their pain 💔

[Ankit Mayank @mr_mayank]

This will blow your mind 🤯

Tribals in Madhya Pradesh are holding unique ‘Chitra Protest’ against BJP Govt for stealing their homes & forests

They are covering themselves in mud, holding hunger strike & acting like dead bodies for past 11 days

Their only demands — Land in return of land & proper rehabilitation

They have been living on the same land for 2000 years and suddenly they lost all rights? Really?

[Subbu Iyer / ಸುಬ್ಬು ಅಯ್ಯರ್ @kskiyer]

The greatest loss to India after 2014 is honest Journalism.

[eppy @epppyyy]

India is so ruined, you can never get out of your house, find a park, and just peacefully sit calmly under the morning sky.