If one day you find out that your city’s population has increased by millions, with school seats running out, long waits at hospitals, falling wages and increasing pressure on government programs, would you call it just a coincidence?

How does love really begin? Does it arrive carrying a bouquet of roses? Does soft music suddenly float through a moonlit night? Do flowers rain from the heavens while violins play in the background? Films and television would have us believe so.

Not long ago, vast stretches of rural India went dark after sunset. From the remote villages nestled in the hills of Uttarakhand to scattered hamlets in Rajasthan's deserts, nightfall meant dim kerosene lamps, unreliable electricity and lives governed by the setting sun. Children struggled to study. Farmers depended on erratic power supplies. Small businesses shut early. Darkness was not just a daily reality; it symbolised deprivation. Today, that picture is changing dramatically.

The safety lock on a fairground ride in Agra came undone, sending a young man on a one-way journey to eternity. In Belanganj, an excavation caused an entire bank building to collapse. Shoe factories catch fire with disturbing regularity. Poor maintenance traps people inside malfunctioning elevators. Daily crashes on expressways have become too numerous to count. The only people seemingly untouched by this brutal system are politicians, who invariably appear only at condolence meetings and funeral feasts.

History does not change course every day. Occasionally, however, an election arrives that appears to mark the beginning of a new era. For supporters of the Bharatiya Janata Party, the party's sweeping victories in Assam and West Bengal this year represent precisely such a moment...

What happens when the people raising environmental concerns are treated as obstacles rather than guardians? Who speaks for rivers, forests, wildlife, and future generations when bulldozers arrive carrying the banner of development...