Vikram Gopal

Journalist.
Creator of House on Fire podcast:

[Ritika Chopra @RitikaChopra__]

We spent months investigating the inner working of the EC.

What we found: the majority of the Commission, kept in the dark for almost a year.

Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi objected on record at least 14 times in 10 months, FOUR times on a single day, to decisions taken in the Commission's name without their knowledge.

Here is what they flagged:
(3/10)
https://t.co/LuOZBDxKt8

[Anusha Ravi Sood @anusharavi10]

EXCLUSIVE: CDSCO suspends HCG-Bangalore’s Ethics Committee for 24 months.

This is a big impact of @chetanabelagere's expose on concerns in clinical trials at HCG hospitals in 2025.

https://t.co/e5Jd3YdsFY

[Anusha Ravi Sood @anusharavi10]

@siddaramaiah Time – What @INCIndia refused to give @siddaramaiah but gifted itself with

https://t.co/A3bt8qE7NY

[Anusha Ravi Sood @anusharavi10]

Perhaps as his last official engagement on Wednesday, Karnataka CM @siddaramaiah accepted Caste Census report.

The report had a detail that revealed a story of shock, denial and disbelief.

Unlike most government reports, this one was neither bound nor branded, lacking even a proper cover page or illustrated paperback.

Why?

It was simply a stack of papers inside a light blue A4 envelope, with a hastily pasted black-and-white printout reading “KARNATAKA STATE COMMISSION FOR BACKWARD CLASSES REPORT – 2025”.

Read the story behind the bare backed report.

[Anusha Ravi Sood @anusharavi10]

Why I repeatedly say this is a popularity contest where nothing else but Vijay mattered. Voters don’t know the names of their MLA-elect but have voted TVK for “Vijay” in most cases. Like voting in a reality show.

Tamil Nadu’s convention of voting out the incumbent, duopoly fatigue & cult worship tendency have guided the “let’s vote & see once” mandate.
Good thing in all this, Vijay has crushed caste, cash & demographics variables. Hope that sticks
https://t.co/9OqVsZQTnf

[Nagarjun Dwarakanath @nagarjund]

🤭

[Meera Srinivasan @Meerasrini]

Sensational headlines are easy, perspective needs rigour.

Read @the_hindu's data story on West Bengal's SIR-marred turnout by @SambaviParthy, @pon_vasanth, & @devyanshibihani

https://t.co/GHhaCdj0Jw

[Srinivasan Ramani @vrsrini]

The only needle that moved was that of misplaced optimism.

[Anusha Ravi Sood @anusharavi10]

Popularity contest vs political clarity: Tamil Nadu Assembly polls 2026 in a nutshell

Euphoria abt Vijay is real, yet, even those voting @TVKVijayHQ are convinced it is near-impossible to outdo @arivalayam & @AIADMKOfficial that have structural dominance
https://t.co/d6OgBf7KQa

[Anusha Ravi Sood @anusharavi10]

The little hecklers of TVK in Tamil Nadu.

It's a cute nuisance for other parties now but will be an actual challenge next election or the one after. For now, it's BTN.

As one noted, "if kids had voting rights, @TVKVijayHQ would win hands down"

https://t.co/bANHX6cRrm

[S.R.Praveen @myopiclenses]

Finally, after a long wait, my book titled 'Ticket to Kerala: The Story of Malayalam Cinema', which looks at the history of the industry as well as its contemporary works, is set for release this month, after the Kerala Assembly elections. The pre-order link is up on Amazon (https://t.co/uLerElum3E )

When Rupa Publications (@Rupa_Books ) reached out to me to write a book on Malayalam cinema for those outside Kerala who have begun discovering it, I felt that this was an opportunity to collect my thoughts on all that I have witnessed in these years, ever since I started reviewing Malayalam films for The Hindu in 2012, and as an avid movie buff since the early 1990s.

Reviewing involves the occupational hazard of having to watch an abnormally large number of bad films that one would usually avoid, given a choice. But the perks of reviewing during an industry’s purple patch are the inevitable good or great films that would release every month, at the least. That golden run has now continued unabated for over a decade and a half. Reviewing has given me a ringside view of the industry’s journey during
these eventful years of remarkable change and churn.

This book has been written with the intention of introducing Malayalam cinema beyond its immediate past to an audience outside of Kerala. The recent films from this sliver of a state in the southern corner of India has garnered much attention, much more than at any point in its close to a hundred years of existence. Yet, due to various reasons, the attention has been focused mostly on what has come out of the film industry after 2020.

The time I spent on writing this book, using every waking hour left after the daily work as well as all my off days during this period, has been richly rewarding. It gave me an opportunity to rewatch some of my old favourites, to watch films I have missed over the years, to read memoirs of filmmakers, actors and technicians, to meet and speak to some of them, and also to revisit all that I have written on cinema over the past many years. I hope that the book which came out of it will be as rewarding for the readers as the process has been for me.

[Jathan Sadowski @jathansadowski]

“How do you lift the veil on a system making 37mn computations per second? How on earth would you be able to trace that back in any way? Are you going to meaningfully exercise context-appropriate human control and judgment over decisions that are generated by these systems?”

[Frederik Pleitgen @fpleitgenCNN]

Iran is considering allowing a limited number of oil tankers to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, provided that the oil cargo is traded in Chinese yuan, a senior Iranian official tells CNN. @CNN @cnni

https://t.co/UF4jkAoLvT

[Isabella M Weber @IsabellaMWeber]

The war on Iran likely brings a new oil price shock and windfall profits.

So, who stands to win?

Our research shows: Last time around (2022), the US reaped the largest fossil fuel profits of any country ($377bn). 50% went to the top 1%, only 1% to the bottom 50%. A🧵

[Vikram Gopal @v1kramgopal]

Just 0.08% of companies earned two-thirds of India Inc’s profits before tax in financial year 2023-24, according to the #UnionBudget2026. These companies also faced the lowest effective tax rate of 18.85%

https://t.co/Ye6TbW2GuH

[Vijaita Singh @vijaita]

In a first, private persons will be engaged to assist govt officials during the Census enabling the “release of Census data in the shortest possible time” The outsourced staff will be hired for 18 months for Rs 25k per month. I ✍️
https://t.co/gDpwe3q1Wf

[S.R.Praveen @myopiclenses]

Crisis at IFFK as I&B Ministry denies censor exemption to 19 films, including 100-year old Battleship Potemkin
https://t.co/NiajY1IADW

[Matt Stoller @matthewstoller]

Obama’s goal as President during the financial crisis was not to prevent a Great Depression it was to prevent a New Deal.

And he succeeded.

[Sridhar V @sritara]

In this piece on the Budget I explain how FM’s utter marginalisation of the Indian Railways - India’s biggest enterprise - heightens systemic risks that pose risks to safety & lower efficiency and miss a chance to effect a wider economic recovery
https://t.co/7Uq9q282cY

[Rema Nagarajan @RemaNagarajan]

Central govt has been steadily cutting share of health in budget
This after collecting 1000s of crore as health cess, which is not shared with states
Cess hides cuts to health sector
Thanks to states upping health spend, India's public health spend might hit target of 2.5% of GDP