#OPINION | Across West Asia, the same gap between military power and political authority persists. Israel holds most of Gaza but has not ended Hamas. Washington has choked Iran’s oil exports but cannot force a deal. Riyadh can bomb Yemen but has not broken the Houthis’ hold on Bab al-Mandeb. The thesis is simple: force wins battles, not political settlements.

#WestAsia

https://www.newindianexpress.com/opinion/2026/Oct/06/west-asia-again-tests-limits-of-military-power

#OPINION | Education must not teach us to adjust to an unjust world. Students anxious about facing an unfair system must be assured that dissent is the first language of citizenship. Brazilian philosopher Paulo Freire’s works give us a language to understand Indian students’ unease today.

https://www.newindianexpress.com/opinion/2026/Oct/06/students-need-to-challenge-stasis

#OPINION | The RBI policy, always something to look forward to for a succinct overview of the economy, comes just after the Union finance ministry released its own view. The sense one gets is that the economy is doing well and the main risk factor is rising inflation, which the monetary policy is seeking to address.

#RBI

https://www.newindianexpress.com/opinion/2026/Oct/07/getting-on-a-cycle-to-ride-over-bumps-on-the-way

#OPINION | The war between the US and Iran has settled into a dangerous, unstable equilibrium. Washington possesses overwhelming destructive capacity, yet lacks the strategic leverage or political willingness to enforce a decisive outcome. Tehran lacks the capability to win conventionally, but retains sufficient asymmetric reach to hold its own against US attacks.

As military stockpiles run low and global markets adjust to prolonged instability, the Iran War serves as a stark demonstration of the limits of unilateral military force in an increasingly multipolar world.

#IranWar #US

🔗https://www.newindianexpress.com/opinion/2026/Oct/08/operation-epic-fury-is-an-epic-failure-at-home-and-in-hormuz

#OPINION | Rahul Gandhi has emerged as a battle-hardened politician and, alongside sister Priyanka, energised Congress workers. But how their equations with the CJP and the SP play out remains to be seen.

#Protests #RahulGandhi

https://www.newindianexpress.com/opinion/2026/Oct/09/the-battle-lines-coming-into-focus-around-protests-20

#OPINION | If Washington increasingly treats India as an adversary on trade and energy, it cannot expect the wider strategic partnership to remain insulated from the consequences. Cooperation in areas important to the US also depends on reciprocity and respect for Indian interests. This is a reminder that the benefits of partnership must not flow in only one direction.

#US #Trump

🔗https://www.newindianexpress.com/opinion/2026/Oct/11/the-diesel-pact-double-standards-and-the-price-of-strategic-partnership

#OPINION | Focus on US visas misses the woods for the trees. As the link between revenue and headcount weakens, India must ensure more IT architectures and products are made here.


https://www.newindianexpress.com/opinion/2026/Oct/12/make-india-the-hq-of-global-infotech-calls

#OPINION | The present controversy does not, by itself, establish great wrongdoing in the 2024 election. But elections after that date are in question. Now, Gyanesh Kumar’s appointment was made at the behest of the Prime Minister and Home Minister. And neither of them is likely to be keen to dissolve back into the crowd. Their attire, public personas and entire political style insist on separateness.

#DelhiProtest

https://www.newindianexpress.com/opinion/2026/Oct/12/leaders-drawing-electricity-from-crowds

#OPINION | If India wants to excel in science again, it should remember the stalwarts who treated the subject as a celebration and tolerated each other’s eccentricities.

https://www.newindianexpress.com/opinion/2026/Oct/13/missing-in-india-the-aesthetics-of-beautiful-minds

#OPINION | The Election Commission’s notes in late September amounted to first denying the problems and then announcing their solutions. Apart from an independent probe into its decisions and halt to SIR rollout while the probe is conducted, a state-by-state account of every deletion is needed.

#SIR

https://www.newindianexpress.com/opinion/2026/Oct/13/time-to-audit-the-auditor-of-electoral-rolls

#OPINION | The electronic voting machine continues to be blamed for technological troubles concerning conduct of elections. We must also look closely at the system that governs voter rolls.

#Elections

🔗https://www.newindianexpress.com/opinion/2026/Oct/14/the-crucial-voter-tech-we-arent-scrutinising

#OPINION | Successful environmental treaties have a peculiar disadvantage: the disasters they prevent never become news. The Montreal Protocol, agreed in 1987, has put the ozone layer on the path to recovery. It has also helped avert a much hotter planet. Yet its capacity to do more remains underused, just when governments are starved for actionable ideas to slow warming.

https://www.newindianexpress.com/opinion/2026/Oct/15/climate-action-whose-time-is-here

#OPINION | India needs many corporatised defence producers, public and private, competing at home and abroad. A multitude of smaller enterprises, startups and other smaller players engaged in development and manufacture of sub-systems and components would go a long way in ensuring India’s strategic independence in defence production.


https://www.newindianexpress.com/opinion/2026/Oct/15/pincer-move-needed-for-atmanirbharta-in-atmaraksha

#OPINION | The near-unanimous support for a call to shut down a state spoke volumes of the raw sentiments festering behind the immediate cause. A number of political parties, farmer organisations and religious bodies joined the call for a Punjab bandh on Thursday following the killing of anti-drugs activist Parvinder Singh Jhota on Tuesday. Jhota’s family had called for the bandh after he was allegedly killed by a pharmacist selling substances used by abusers in Mansa, a town close to the Rajasthan border.

#ParvinderSinghJhota

https://www.newindianexpress.com/opinion/2026/Oct/15/how-a-murderer-revealed-the-open-veins-of-punjab

#OPINION | Goddesses are thus not replaced. Their food is. And much of it has to do with sectarian rivalry and the rise of money power. Marwari and Gujarati trading families, Jain and Vaishnava both, fund the renovations, the marble floors, the bhandaras, the management trusts.

Once they hold the purse, the goat goes. Bali stops quietly, a coconut is broken instead, and a story appears explaining that the Mother never wanted blood. Gita Press Gorakhpur, itself a Marwari project, printed vegetarian Devi into millions of homes.

In the Devi Bhagavata Purana (3.26), Vyasa tells Janamejaya how to keep Navaratra. After the fruit offering (verses 30 to 31), verses 32 to 34 add a second path for meat-eaters: buffalo, goat, and boar are the best offerings, animals killed before the Goddess go to heaven, and sacrificial killing counts as ahimsa, echoing Manusmriti 5.44.

#DurgaPuja

🔗https://www.newindianexpress.com/magazine/2026/Oct/18/how-to-turn-the-goddess-vegetarian-2

#OPINION | Mohan Bhagwat turned 76 on 9/11. Ominous or auspicious? I would say the latter. Because unlike RSS haters and baiters, he is so much closer to Swami Vivekananda than the Al Qaeda terrorists at the opposite end of the religious spectrum.

At 76, just past the pinnacle of success, Modi has little left to prove except how power should be exercised, shared, restrained, and eventually passed on.

That is where greatness must be tested.

Modi can still learn from Bhagwat, if not from history. For the finest legacy of a leader is not that people continue to worship him, but that the cause he served becomes strong enough to survive without him.

#Modi #RSS #MohanBhagwat

🔗https://www.newindianexpress.com/opinion/2026/Oct/18/the-tale-of-two-birthdays

#OPINION | West Asia is confronting a paradox. Never has the region possessed such military capabilities, defence systems and security partnerships. Yet its sense of security has never seemed so fragile. The US-Iran war, renewed fighting in Yemen, attacks on Saudi Arabia and the unresolved Gaza question are not identical conflicts. But their effects overlap. The danger is that each clash is weakening the region's ability to contain the others.

✍️ Lt Gen Syed Ata Hasnain (retd)

🔗https://www.newindianexpress.com/opinion/2026/Oct/18/a-region-that-can-no-longer-afford-endless-conflict

#OPINION | Unlike the Gen Z movements in Bangladesh, Nepal, Indonesia, Madagascar, Morocco, France, Spain and Greece, the protests in India against the CEC have generally been peaceful. The young people exercised their freedom to assemble and express themselves fearlessly. These fundamental freedoms are constitutionally protected, and governments or the police have no right to suppress them by force.

✍️ Kaleeswaram Raj
🔗 https://www.newindianexpress.com/opinion/2026/Oct/19/the-wise-choice-to-deter-anarchy-and-authoritarianism

#OPINION | Night-time festivities are in the air across the nation. While there are restrictions on the timing and use of loud-speakers, these are violated routinely. Staying awake for a good part of the night during festive seasons has been normalised, especially in urban India.


✍️Geetha Ravichandran
🔗https://www.newindianexpress.com/opinion/2026/Oct/19/dont-close-the-eyes-to-good-sleep

#OPINION | Come October 21, a unique journey of patriotism-centric politics, started on this day in 1951, will be completing 75 long years. The day marks the founding of Bharatiya Jana Sangh by Syama Prasad Mookerjee.

BJS came into existence at a conference held at the Raghomal Kanya Madhyamik Vidyalaya in Delhi. The rectangular saffron flag was accepted as its standard and a ‘deepak’ inscribed on it was declared its election symbol.

✍️Vinay Sahasrabuddhe


🔗https://www.newindianexpress.com/opinion/2026/Oct/20/politics-of-patriotism-then-and-now