Sonam Wangchuk's Health Alarming After 16 Days of Hunger Strike; US-Iran Ceasefire Under Strain Amid Mutual Strikes; SC Issues Notice to Union, UP Govts as Ram Mandir Scandal Wears On
A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by MK Venu, Pratik Kanjilal, Sidharth Bhatia, Siddharth Varadarajan, Sushant Singh, Seema Chishti, and Tanweer Alam | Contributing writers: Kalrav Joshi, Anirudh SK
If you like our work and want to support us, then do subscribe. Sign up with your email address by clicking on this link and choose the FREE subscription plan. Do not choose the paid options on that page because Stripe – the payment gateway for Substack, which hosts The India Cable – does not process payments for Indian nonprofits.
Our newsletter is paywalled but once a week we lift the paywall so newcomers can sample our content. To take out a fresh paid subscription or to renew your existing monthly or annual subscription, please click on the special payment page we have created – https://rzp.io/rzp/the-india-cable.
Snapshot of the day
July 13, 2026
Sidharth Bhatia
Educator and climate activist Sonam Wangchuk is now in medically alarming territory at Jantar Mantar. On the 16th day of his hunger strike, he is down 8.2 kg and his blood glucose has dropped to 67 mg/dL, according to the Cockroach Janata Party. Its founder, Abhijeet Dipke, has urged the Centre to address the agitation over NEET irregularities, demanding education reform and seeking Union education minister Dharemedra Pradhan’s resignation, warning that “lives are at stake”. [See Drawn and quartered]
CPI(M) MP Amra Ram, along with senior party leaders from Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan, visited the site and backed the demands. Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray also supported the agitation over alleged NEET irregularities, saying opposition parties should join without foregrounding their political affiliations. He urged Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi to support the protest and appealed to Wangchuk to withdraw his fast, saying his life was precious while the Centre remained unconcerned and insensitive about his protest.
Congress, meanwhile, has the language but not the momentum. Ahead of his second “Chhatron Ki Goonj” interaction, Gandhi called India’s education system a “dishonest extortion mechanism” and said it was time for a revolution. Yet less than a month after Congress announced a nationwide student outreach campaign, the drive has slowed, with Gandhi’s foreign travel forcing deferments. So far, only one major rally with him has taken place, in Kota.
The rupee slid to a one-month low on Monday, closing at 95.62 to the dollar as oil jumped after US and Iran traded strikes and Tehran claimed it had closed the Strait of Hormuz.
In the second part of his deep dive into the energy scene in India, M. Rajshekhar looks at how, over the past 12 years, the Modi government has locked India into expensive imported natural gas instead of investing in renewables.
Over the weekend, India also
