A recent Karnataka High Court order is not just a simple legal comment. It is like a post-mortem report on the system of governance. The court has clearly admitted that the state has lost all control over illegal sand mining. The law is exhausted. The administration has surrendered. Politics has shut its eyes.

India's big cities are exhausted. Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Kolkata are choking under suffocating traffic, sky-high rents, and air that's hard to breathe. The common man is fed up with these cities.

At 6.30 every morning, Lakshmi steps out of her small tiled house in a sleepy suburb of Mysuru. One hand clutches her tiffin, the other her faded handbag. Until two years ago, her biggest daily worry was not the workload at the private school where she works as an assistant, but the bus fare. Some days she walked. Some days she borrowed. Some days she simply skipped work.

In a significant ruling delivered on 8 January, the Karnataka High Court quashed the FIR in Abuzar Ahmed & Others vs State of Karnataka, sending out yet another stern reminder that Section 498A of the IPC cannot be invoked to settle personal scores or ordinary marital disagreements.

An evening walk, a gentle breeze, and a harmless joke triggered a harsh truth. As I strolled along the park pathway, I ran into our ever-polite Bengali bank manager, Chatterji Babu. With the casual cruelty of small talk, I asked, “So, April 1st retirement ke baad, Kolkata ki train pakad rahe hain?”

What does it mean to be a “common man” in India today? Is it an identity, or merely a lifelong compulsion to endure? In Digital India, you are not first a citizen, you are a number: Aadhaar, PAN, credit card, OTP, voter ID. Your existence is neatly catalogued, your dignity less so...