THREE bills moved together through Parliament in August 2025, and taken separately, each look almost technical. The Constitution (One Hundred and Thirtieth Amendment) Bill, 2025 deals with what happens to a chief minister or prime minister who is arrested. The Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation (Amendment) Bill, 2025 and the Government of Union Territories (Amendment) Bill, 2025 extend a similar logic to other Union Territories.

THE British Raj functioned as an authoritarian regime, primarily oriented towards resource extraction and maintaining law and order. After independence, India inherited much of this colonial bureaucratic and policing apparatus, continuing to prioritise state security over civil liberties. Legal instruments originally crafted to suppress dissent such as sedition laws, preventive detention and sweeping emergency powers were seamlessly absorbed into the framework of the independent Indian state, persisting as regressive tools of governance.

The oceans have long been celebrated as the highways of global commerce, carrying nearly 90 per cent of world trade and connecting economies across continents. Yet beneath this image of prosperity lies a harsh and often forgotten reality. Every cargo of crude oil, every shipment of food, medicines and industrial goods reaches its destination because millions of seafarers spend months at sea, isolated from their families and exposed to extraordinary occupational risks.

IN the first part of this analysis, we traced the trajectory of hollowing of India's constitutional institutions including the Election Commission, the anti-defection law, the judiciary's countervailing role, the conventions of federalism. Each instrument of democratic accountability has been bent, bypassed, or broken. That, however, was only the scaffolding. In this second part we try to highlight what is being constructed on that scaffolding.

On June 13, Karnataka’s home minister Priyank Kharge sent a letter to RSS supremo Mohan Bhagwat asking him to reveal its ‘legal status, registration, office bearers, funding, expenditure, taxation and permissions for public activities.’  This drew two bizarre responses. One was from Bhagwat himself, who even while saying that he doesn’t need to respond to the letter, declared that "Hindu Dharma is not registered. Many things are not registered,” and that the government knows that the Sangh exists.