Rail Min Orders X to Take Down 285 Videos Showing Deaths During Delhi Stampede; USAID’s $21 Million Dollars Was Not for India But Bangladesh; Indian and Pak Armies Meet in Poonch to Defuse Tensions
Indian Pharma Company Ships Unlicensed Drug Cocktail to Africa; Will Omar Abdullah Fulfill Promise Made to Kashmiris?; Dharavi Residents Afraid of Resettlement Status by Adani’s Redevelopment Project
A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by Tanweer Alam, Sidharth Bhatia, Pratik Kanjilal, Seema Chishti, Sushant Singh, MK Venu, and Siddharth Varadarajan | Contributing writer: Kalrav Joshi, with additional inputs by Anirudh SK
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Over to Sidharth Bhatia for today’s Cable
Snapshot of the day
February 21, 2025
Sidharth Bhatia
The Indian and Pakistani armies met in Poonch today to try and defuse tensions at the Line of Control that have been heightened as of late, reports Peerzada Ashiq; he cites an official as saying that a brigade commander-level flag meeting was held this morning. There was no joint statement and the Indian army did not say what it discussed during the meeting, which comes on the heels of either army accusing the other of resorting to ‘unprovoked firing’ across the LoC.
Days after 18 people were killed in a stampede at the New Delhi Railway Station, the railway ministry has directed social media platform X to remove 285 links of videos depicting deaths during the mishap, reports The Hindustan Times. In a notice issued on February 17, the ministry cited “ethical norms” and X’s own content policy to direct the platform to remove posts from several accounts, including those of prominent news outlets, within 36 hours, the report said. The ministry’s directive also mentioned concerns about “sensitive or disturbing media depicting deceased individuals”. The ministry is reported to have also said that in light of the “huge rush of trains” these days, the content in question “may affect the operations of Indian Railways”.
Notably, the Indian railways had distributed a total of Rs 1.8 crore in cash to families of victims who died at the station on February 15 in a rather unusual move. Directing X to remove videos of the deceased, the ministry said that such content “may create unwarranted law and order situation”. According to HT, the notice to X is the second instance wherein the ministry has exercised its power to issue takedown down orders, an authority it gained in December last year. Earlier, in December last year, the Railways ministry had empowered its executive director of information and publicity (Railway Board) to issue takedown notices directly to social media platforms under Section 79(3)(b) of the Information Technology Act.
Although the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency has said it cancelled a $21 million grant to the Consortium for Elections and Political Process Strengthening for “voter turnout in India” – about which US President Donald Trump later wondered if the money was intended to “get somebody else elected” – a report by the Indian Express’s Jay Mazoomdar says the amount was sanctioned not for India but for Bangladesh. He says there are no records of the US Agency for International Development funding a project in India through the CEPPS since 2008, and that the only ongoing grant to the CEPPS worth $21 million was given in July 2022 for a project in Bangladesh called ‘My Vote is Mine’; it was later recorded as being intended for a program titled ‘Nagorik’. Mazoomdar also cites “campaign material” and social media posts as showing how sub-allocations within the $21 million grant were spent in Bangladesh.
The external affairs ministry has said regarding news of the $21 million grant that it “would be premature to make a public comment at this stage, so relevant authorities are looking into it and hopefully, we can come up with an update on that subsequently”.
Mumbai-based Aveo Pharmaceuticals makes and ships an unlicensed drug cocktail comprising the strong opioid tapentadol and the muscle relaxant carisoprodol to countries in West Africa, where the product is fuelling addiction, as per a BBC Eye investigation. When an undercover reporter of the broadcaster met with Aveo director Vinod Sharma, the latter admitted the cocktail was “very harmful” but that “nowadays this is business”. Dr Lekhansh Shukla of the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences in Bengaluru said the cocktail “sounds like a very dangerous combination” that “does not sound … rational”. The Beeb adds that Aveo is not alone among India pharmaceutical companies in making and shipping unlicensed opioids.
Reports about religious minorities being attacked in Bangladesh are “exaggerated” by the media, director general of the Border Guard Bangladesh Mohammad Ashrafuzzaman Siddiqui said yesterday following the border coordination conference between the BGB and the Border Security Force. Siddiqui also claimed that the Durga Puja last year in his country was “one of the most peacefully organised Hindu festivals” and that while some incidents of a political nature may have occurred, “they were definitely not targeted at minorities”, India Today NE quotes him as saying.
Within a week of BJP leader Kirit Somaiya travelling to Maharashtra’s Muslim-majority Malegaon town and alleging that there were over a thousand “Rohingyas and Bangladeshis … illegally residing” there (he later upgraded the number to over 4,000), the Maharashtra government set up a special investigation team to probe the allegations. Since then, reports Sukanya Shantha, the SIT has summoned hundreds of people but found that they are not undocumented Rohingya or Bangladeshi immigrants but simply locals who lacked proof of citizenship. It has arrested 19 individuals for allegedly tampering with birth certificates or committing other document-related fraud.
A mega redevelopment project for Asia’s largest slum, Dharavi, awarded to the Adani group, is underway. Under it, some slum residents, who have lived there since before the year 2000 will get new apartments within the Dharavi area, and those who moved there later, will be moved to other locations, one of which is an old dumping ground for the city. There are many however, whose status is uncertain, and they are confused and fearful about where they will be shifted. Moreover, the dump, though barely in use, is hazardous and unhealthy.
A petition was filed last week with the National Green Tribunal (NGT) seeking an immediate stay on the controversial 1,600 MW thermal power plant construction in Mirzapur, Uttar Pradesh, by Adani Group’s Mirzapur Thermal Energy (UP) Pvt Ltd. The company is accused of illegally building a boundary wall and levelling the ground without the mandatory environmental clearance (EC). During the hearing, NGT's Justice Sudhir Agarwal questioned the Adani Group in the absence of a valid EC, asking how construction could continue without it. The project is located near 10 reserved forests and critical wildlife habitats, including sloth bears, leopards, and hyenas. Despite a 2016 NGT order canceling the environmental clearance, Adani took over the project, expanded it, and reapplied for clearance, which is still pending.
India’s wheat crop is facing a grave threat as unusually warm weather and severe rainfall shortages grip the country’s northwest, the key wheat-producing region, reports Bloomberg. With rainfall almost 80% below normal this year and January marking the third-warmest on record, the crop's yield is expected to plummet. Meteorologists warn of continued warm, dry conditions, further diminishing prospects for a healthy harvest. As the world’s second-largest wheat producer, India’s shrinking harvest could jeopardize the government’s efforts to control food prices. With domestic wheat stockpiles already at a 16-year low, there are growing fears the government may cut or eliminate the 40% import duty, potentially flooding the market with foreign wheat to compensate for the shortfall.
Haryana and Manipur tops India’s internet shutdowns
A recent report by the Software Freedom Law Centre (SFLC) reveals that Haryana recorded the highest number of internet shutdowns in India in 2024, with 12 incidents, closely followed by Manipur with 11 shutdowns. While Haryana’s shutdowns were largely enforced due to farmer protests, those in Manipur were linked to ethnic conflicts. In its report, SLFC noted that “prolonged internet shutdowns exacerbated civil unrest” in Manipur “while disrupting access to essential human amenities”. Referring to an experience of a journalist, whose ability to receive and share information for work was hindered, the report said internet shutdowns “tend to escalate violence and civil unrest – instead of dissipating it.”
How Western greed and Indian complicity keep Russia’s war machine aloft
Data shows aircraft parts from more than 100 western companies reached the Russian aviation industry via India, reports the reporters’ collective. Analysis suggests products worth more than $50m have passed through intermediaries in India to Russian airlines and other entities over a 21-month period up to September 2024. The parts appear to have been transported in 700 individual cargoes containing items ranging from critical generators, sensors, propeller blades and cockpit displays to small screws, bolts and filters. But there is no wrongdoing, says this report from The Guardian.
Is Pune’s riverfront development project a good idea?
Construction is underway for the Pune riverfront project, but is it really a good idea? Most such projects, Vaishnavi Rathore writes, involve construction along a river’s banks or its floodplains, which runs the risk of disconnecting it from aquifers and constricting it (which is bad for flood control). Experts say that the typical riverfront project also focuses on beautifying a river rather than rejuvenating it; an activist pointed out that in Pune’s case, only 14% of the project’s budget was allocated for replenishing the water in the river. Such projects can also involve issues around the displacement of people, Rathore notes.
The Long Cable
Will Omar Abdullah fulfil the promise he made to Kashmiris?
Saqib P Yetoo
Time, in Kashmir, doesn’t just pass—it runs out. The 2024 elections, like a bus speeding through a narrow mountain pass, offered a fleeting chance to reclaim lost ground. The National Conference (NC), once the unchallenged driver of Kashmir’s political aspirations, promised to steer the people back toward what was taken from them. Three months later, the road ahead is blurring, and the passengers — who voted with hope — are now waiting for a sign. Omar Abdullah does not have the luxury of delay. In Kashmir’s politics, missed turns don’t just cost time, they change the entire destination.
Political journeys, much like long-distance bus rides, are riddled with unplanned detours. Omar Abdullah, the NC’s frontman, seems to have eased off at the crossroads of principle and pragmatism. The bold, defiant rhetoric of reclaiming Kashmir’s special status has softened into cautious requests for statehood — a bureaucratic plea. The passengers, however, remember the ticket they purchased: one promising a return to dignity, not an administrative upgrade. They peer out the windows, wondering if the bus is headed anywhere.
But the confusion doesn’t just lie on the road ahead. Within the NC itself, a quiet tug-of-war is unfolding. Aga Ruhullah, the MP from Srinagar, sits near the aisle, his voice sharp and unsparing. In his interviews he questions the journey’s altered trajectory: “We said 370. We meant 370.” His challenge has laid bare the party’s internal divide—one faction standing with Omar’s cautious navigation, the other demanding a straight, unapologetic drive back to pre-2019 constitutional status. The bus rattles on, but the tension between the drivers makes every mile feel longer than the last.
Yet, Kashmir’s political journey isn’t entirely in NC’s hands. New Delhi, seated comfortably in the control room, has installed strategic checkpoints along the route. The promise of statehood isn’t tethered to administrative logic but political optics. Why hand over the wheel to leaders they spent years discrediting? Statehood would dilute the Lieutenant Governor’s authority, weaken the newly anointed political actors of the post-2019 era and reignite the very constitutional debates Delhi claims to have buried. For the central government, the status quo isn’t inertia, it’s insurance. The existing arrangement ensures direct administrative control while leaving elected officials to manage the discontent. Why disrupt a structure that works so efficiently in their favour? The carrot of statehood dangles just ahead—a political mirage that moves further each time Kashmiris step closer.
Omar Abdullah stands at an unforgiving junction. Pragmatism urges him to seek incremental gains, to sit across the table in Delhi’s chambers and negotiate the return of statehood. Principle demands he honour the people’s mandate—a clear, collective plea for Article 370’s restoration. His outreach to central leaders has yielded little more than polite smiles and ceremonial shawls, while his critics, led vocally by Ruhullah, grow louder. They argue that pragmatism, in Kashmir’s context, often morphs into submission.
The 2024 vote was never about potholes, pensions, or public sector jobs. It was a statement of identity, a collective declaration that Kashmiris refuse to let a constitutional rupture define their future. The turnout wasn’t driven by nostalgia for a bygone era but by the hope of reclaiming constitutional dignity. Statehood, in this narrative, feels like an insult wrapped in a concession—an offer to paint the walls while the foundation lies in ruins.
Delhi’s playbook in Kashmir is time-tested: delay decisions, dilute demands, and divide dissent. The emergence of new political actors in the post-370 landscape fits neatly into this plan. Handpicked, propped up, and microphone-ready, these players peddle the narrative of “development” and “integration” while sidestepping the constitutional fracture. Like persistent hawkers on a bus ride, they offer solutions no one asked for while ignoring the passengers’ actual destination.
The road ahead, though rough, is clearly marked. The 2024 mandate wasn’t for half-measures or administrative handouts, it was a call for the revival of a political identity long held hostage by strategic compromises. For Omar Abdullah, the challenge is not choosing the route—it is choosing the passengers. The voters have made their aspirations unequivocally clear. Now the driver must decide: will he heed their call, or remain fixated on a map drawn elsewhere? The wheels keep turning. The road stretches on. And the passengers, weary but resolute, remain determined to reach the destination they voted for.
(Saqib P Yetoo is a writer based in Srinagar.)
Reportedly
Speculation about trouble within the Mahayuti government is not that exaggerated after all. Former chief minister and current deputy chief minister Eknath Shinde is not a happy man from the very beginning of this government’s formation. Occasionally, both he and the chief minister Devendra Fadnavis make reconciliatory remarks in public, but their behaviour seems to tell another story. Recently Shinde said “do not take me lightly” and immediately the rumour mills started churning. He was speaking in the context of his rebellion from the Shiv Sena, when he walked out with many legislators, but his message is clear.
Deep dive
How healthy is health Insurance? Anfaz Abdul Vahab and Jean Drèze write. “Ensuring that state-sponsored health insurance schemes serve the public interest rather than private profit is a major challenge. Insurance apart, India needs a radical expansion and improvement of public health services.”
Prime number: 10-15% extraIndian insurers are considering a significant hike in health insurance premiums for residents of New Delhi, proposing an increase of 10% to 15% due to a sharp rise in claims related to air pollution. The potential move, still under discussion, follows a record-breaking spike in air pollution in the capital in 2024. If approved, this would be the first time air pollution is directly factored into health insurance premiums in India. The plan, which requires approval from the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI), could also lead to similar hikes in other cities grappling with poor air quality. In the 2023/24 fiscal year, Indian insurers collected $12.4 billion in health insurance premiums, a 20% increase over the previous year, signaling the growing financial strain of environmental factors on the insurance sector.
Opeds you don’t want to miss
“This entire controversy was engineered to give the government grounds for further crackdowns on free speech and greater control over digital media.” Read this wonderfully sharp and incisive piece by Vir Sanghvi on the Beer Biceps saga.
Anirudh Kanisetti weighs into the furore: the reality of sati is that it was a ritual of elite landowning families, and it was both more widespread and not as common one might think. But it certainly did happen and he presents the evidence.
The various stories of hardship endured by Indian deportees who travelled to the US via the dunki route “miss a very important point”, which is that “migration is not per se a criminal activity”, writes Christine Moliner; she adds that a big reason behind emigration today is the “continuous economic and demographic demand for cheap migrant labour in the Global North despite the anti-immigration rhetoric”.
“As much as we may wish to distance ourselves from Pakistan and notwithstanding all the wider dramas surrounding us, it will remain a permanent fixture of our neighbourhood and foreign policy,” says TCA Raghavan in an article where he also writes about two important institutional changes taking place in Pakistan and of a few areas where the country is experiencing some reprieve.
Dharanidharan Sivagnanaselvam and Vishal Vasanthakumar on why it is anti democratic of the Union government to freeze SSA funds on grounds that Tamil Nadu implements NEP, highlighting the major flaws found in NEP.
Listen up
Article 19(2) of the constitution speaks about decency and morality, but who interprets them? With regard to the controversy around the hypothetical Ranveer Allahbadia made during a comedy show, podcaster Amit Varma told Sidharth Bhatia he worried not so much about politicians or the courts but about society. They also discuss whether the Broadcasting Bill could be passed through the backdoor following this fracas.
And in today’s episode of the Parley podcast on the same controversy, former Bombay high court Justice Gautam Patel and senior advocate Dushyant Dave join Aaratrika Bhaumik to discuss whether there is a ‘right to take offence’.
Watch out
Language has once again become the centre of debate in Tamil Nadu, with Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan justifying the withholding of Samagra Shiksha funds from the state citing its non-acceptance of the three-language policy and chief minister MK Stalin asking which part of the constitution mandated its acceptance. D Suresh Kumar explains why Tamil Nadu has been against the policy.
Over and out
Comedian Varun Grover politely takes on the system with top notch humour. Watch here.
It is the end of the road for Kolkata’s beloved yellow taxis. Numbers of the Hindustan Ambassador, which first rolled off the assembly line in the 1950s, are dwindling fast and those that do remain will be forced off India's roads entirely in the next three years.
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