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Mumbai Fills Shivaji Park, Delhi Turns Jantar Mantar into a Police Exhibition

Namaskar. On Gandhi Jayanti, two cities held up a mirror. In Delhi, the police outnumbered the public at Jantar Mantar. In Mumbai, the public filled Shivaji Park so completely that the police, despite being deployed in massive numbers, looked like an occupying force on the margins. The message was not subtle. If Delhi has Jantar Mantar, Mumbai has Shivaji Park. And the young people who were written off after earlier agitations have not gone home. They have come back with a sharper question: who is stealing the voter list?

Two Protests, Two Police Responses

Abhijeet Deepke had asked Mumbai to reach Shivaji Park by 4 pm. The people did not disappoint. Despite no official permission, crowds gathered in enormous numbers. Film personalities, including Naseeruddin Shah, lent their presence. One speaker at the rally reminded the crowd that dictatorship ends only when the public itself steps out. No one will come to save you, he said. The public must come out. The public did.

The contrast with Delhi was deliberate. In Delhi, the police were everywhere. Barricades, heavy police vehicles, varied uniforms. An Emergency Response and Mobile Surveillance Control and Command Centre was parked at the venue. Riot intervention vehicles stood ready. Cameras were mounted for surveillance and control. Yet the public kept coming. People gave peaceful arrests. They sat down in front of the police and made the massive deployment look useless. The public watched the police as if watching a spectacle. Security forces suffered in the heat wearing heavy gear, while the public simply looked on, wondering why all this was done for them.

From the stage at Shivaji Park came a shout of salute to the Mumbai Police. It was not because the Mumbai Police had granted permission. Permission had been denied. It was because Mumbai did not turn the protest into a battlefield. The comparison with Delhi was explicit. Delhi Police officers Sachin Sharma and Amit Shankar were named from the stage by speakers who accused them of violence against protesters and even small children. A speaker warned that if the government continued, so many people would come from across the country that the barricades would be buried.

The government had thought it could protect Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar by flooding Delhi with police. But the story got bigger than the police. The public in Delhi was fewer, the police were more. And still the protest did not die.

Gen Z Has Not Gone Home

Those who believed that the youth had retreated after their earlier agitations over education and governance issues were proven wrong on October 2. The Mumbai crowd was young, large, and politically alert. The protest was not a party event. It was civic anger. The youth understand that their country has been handed to people who worked against the Constitution. And they understand this not only in Delhi but also in Mumbai.

In June and July, the participation of Mumbai's Gen Z in protests had already been strong. At that time, many dismissed them as a passing trend. Two months later, the same young people have become a force the government no longer knows how to handle. The ruling establishment was forced to talk to these so-called cockroaches. It was forced to accept their conditions. The very people whom government supporters called part of a foreign conspiracy are now setting the national agenda.

The Arithmetic of Deletion

The anger is not without reason. The numbers coming out of Maharashtra are staggering. The draft Special Summary Revision, or SSR, was published on August 31. Before the SSR, Maharashtra had around 9.80 crore voters. After the draft list, 21.14 per cent of them were removed. In absolute terms, 2.07 crore voters were cut. These were voters who had cast their ballots in the April-May 2024 Lok Sabha election and again in the November 2024 Maharashtra assembly election. Now their names are gone.

Here is what the deletion looks like in numbers:

Indicator	Figure
Voters in Maharashtra before SSR	Approximately 9.80 crore
Names deleted	2.07 crore
Percentage deleted	21.14 per cent
Assembly seats with over 40 per cent deletion	25
Assembly seats with over 33 per cent deletion	58
Deletions in Pune alone	17.8 lakh
Deletions in Kalyan Rural assembly constituency	2.5 lakh
Deletions attributed to shifted or absent category in 85 constituencies	75 to 96 per cent

These are not small technical corrections. In a single assembly seat, Kalyan Rural in Thane, 2.5 lakh voters were removed. For every 100 deletions, 96 were categorized as shifted or absent. Where did they shift? To the moon? Are villages suddenly becoming employment hubs? Is India witnessing reverse migration from cities to villages? The Election Commission has not answered any of this.

The pattern raises a fundamental question. Rahul Gandhi had pointed out after the Maharashtra assembly results that around 40 lakh voters were added between the Lok Sabha and assembly elections of 2024, and that the BJP gained exactly in those seats. His question was simple: how can 40 lakh voters be added in a matter of months? The longer comparison is even stranger. Between the 2019 and 2024 assembly elections, 32 lakh voters were added. But between the 2024 Lok Sabha election and the 2024 assembly election, around 39 lakh voters were added in five months. That is almost the population of Himachal Pradesh dropped into Maharashtra's rolls between two elections.

Who are these additional voters? Where were they? Where did they come from? No answer has been given. And now, after the SSR, more than 2 crore names have been removed. Uttar Pradesh, the largest state by voter count, did not see deletions on this scale. Delhi, Maharashtra, and Karnataka combined do not have as many voters as Uttar Pradesh, yet Maharashtra alone erased more than 2 crore names. This is not a routine cleanup. This is a surgical removal of voters from urban areas.

The Referee Was Selected by One Team

The man at the centre of this storm is Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. At Shivaji Park, posters called him a cockroach and said Gyanu Must Go. The protesters call him Gyanu. The contempt is not personal. It is institutional.

His appointment itself was made after the Modi government passed a law in December 2023 that removed the Chief Justice of India from the panel selecting election commissioners. The referee was selected by one team. Now the same referee is presiding over a list that has cut 2.07 crore voters in one state. A speaker at the rally said that if going to jail can restore the votes of 13 crore people and bring accountability, then they are ready to go to jail. That is the mood on the street.

The demands are clear. The SSR must be scrapped. Upcoming elections must be held on the basis of the old voter list. The appointment process of election commissioners must be changed. The Chief Justice of India must be brought back into the selection panel. The process must be made transparent so that the government does not hold the upper hand.

The government could have avoided all this. Gyanesh Kumar could have held a press conference and answered a dozen journalists. That would have been cheaper and more democratic. Instead, the government chose thousands of police officers in heavy gear. A press conference would have been a sign of accountability. This government does not do accountability. It does spectacle.

Political Parties and Civil Society

The Delhi protest was joined by political parties. Congress, CPM, CPI, CPIML, and the Aam Aadmi Party took part. Yogendra Yadav, Sanjay Singh, Manoj, and Neha Bora were detained. Neha Bora was detained multiple times, but she kept returning to Jantar Mantar. Brinda Karat, at her age, was still on the streets, still fighting on public issues. That is both a strength and a warning for the movement.

The ruling party would like this movement to be branded as a party event. But the Mumbai crowd was beyond any single party. It was civic. It was young. It was angry. The Shiv Sena under Uddhav Thackeray supported the Mumbai protest. Aaditya Thackeray had been present at earlier protests. But the crowd was not there for any leader. It was there for the vote.

The media cameras were many at Shivaji Park. Yet the coverage often treats such crowds as law and order problems. When the government deploys thousands of police against its own citizens, that should be the headline, not the size of the crowd.

This Is Only the Beginning

The Mumbai protest started from Gate Number 6 of Shivaji Park. The appeal from the stage was repeated again and again: join tomorrow's protest in maximum numbers. This is a movement to save democracy. The youth have made their point. The political parties have not yet held their full protest. The government has been put on notice.

On Gandhi Jayanti, the public looked at the police spectacle and refused to be afraid. The police outnumbered the public in Delhi, but the public won the moral argument. In Mumbai, the police simply could not match the public. The people filled Shivaji Park and sent a message: the vote is not a small matter. The voter list is not a technical file. It is the foundation of democracy. And if you touch that foundation, the public will come out. From Mumbai. From Delhi. From everywhere.

Criticisms

The following criticisms are recorded:

• It has been observed that the office of the Chief Election Commissioner was brought under political control through a legislative change that removed the Chief Justice of India from the selection panel.
• It has been noted that 2.07 crore voter names were deleted from Maharashtra's electoral rolls without adequate public justification.
• It has been argued that the category of shifted or absent was used to remove urban voters at an extraordinary scale.
• It has been alleged that voter additions between the 2024 Lok Sabha and assembly elections in Maharashtra favoured the ruling party disproportionately.
• It has been reported that peaceful protesters in Delhi were detained in large numbers while police deployment exceeded public participation.
• It has been documented that surveillance vans, command centres, and riot intervention vehicles were positioned at Shivaji Park and Jantar Mantar as a display of intimidation.
• It has been claimed that two Delhi Police officers were named from the stage for acts of violence against protesters and children.
• It has been observed that the Election Commission's silence on the mass deletion of voters was interpreted as complicity by the protesting public.
• It has been suggested that the government chose police deployment over dialogue when confronted with demands for accountability.
• It has been said that the Chief Election Commissioner did not hold a press conference to answer journalists, even as thousands of police personnel were deployed in his defence.
• It has been noted that the term cockroach used by protesters reflected a deep public loss of trust in the office of the Election Commissioner.
• It has been argued that the safety of the vote itself is now in question, and that no democracy can survive such a loss of faith.

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The Unending Agony of India's Exam Warriors: From Ranchi to Raisina

An election is not the only place where a government’s credibility is tested. In India, the examination hall is a far more brutal courtroom. Here, the state stands directly accused by its youngest citizens, and the evidence—leaked papers, rigged OMR sheets, commissions that cannot conduct a single exam on time—is damning. The protests engulfing Ranchi are neither new nor local. They are a national indictment, a scream from the heart of a country where the very institutions meant to guarantee fair selection have become syndicates of loot. And as students gather at Jaipal Singh Stadium, braving lathis and hunger, the silence from New Delhi and the sudden noise of a fractured media expose a conspiracy of indifference that has ruined generations.

The Ranchi Protest: A Microcosm of Systemic Rot

For almost a fortnight, the youth of Jharkhand have been on the streets. They are not asking for a change in syllabus or a few grace marks. Their demands are foundational: that the Jharkhand Public Service Commission (JPSC) and the Jharkhand Staff Selection Commission (JSSC) be held accountable; that the chairpersons of these bodies be appointed with transparency; that the officials who played with their futures face criminal action. A student from Ranchi, Devendranath Mahto, has been on a hunger strike for three days—a picture of Shibu Soren in his hand, a tragic reminder that even a tribal icon’s party now stands accused of the same betrayal as its predecessors.

The facts are not opinion. In 2015, the JPSC advertised an examination. It was cancelled twice. For three years, only the preliminary exam could be held; the mains exam did not happen for four years. This was under a BJP government. In 2024, the Jharkhand Eligibility Test saw question papers not reach centres in Ranchi and Bokaro, and the printing was so abysmal that the papers were illegible. This happened under the Hemant Soren-led JMM-Congress government. Twenty-six years after the state’s formation, the commissions are still not capable of conducting a single examination without controversy. The government now rushes to form committees, to send ministers to talk, to arrest a few middlemen. But the network—the coaching mafia, the corrupt officials, the politicians who protect them—was allowed to grow precisely because no one in power wanted to dismantle it. The students’ rage is not spontaneous; it is accumulated poison.

The following table, assembled from media reports and testimony, captures just a sliver of the chaos:

Incident	Year	Details
JPSC examination cancelled twice	2015–2018	Only prelims conducted in three years; mains never held under BJP rule.
JSSC paper leak arrests	2024	Abhay Tiwari, a former TDP agency marketing manager, identified as mastermind; multiple coaching centres raided.
Jharkhand Eligibility Test fiasco	April 2024	Papers not delivered; unreadable printing; exams cancelled after large-scale protest.
OMR swapping racket busted	2024	Suman Saurabh allegedly scored 48 marks but was passed; CID raids linked to Patanjali Academy.

The government’s response? Threatening words, a committee, and a promise of a CBI probe that may never come. Meanwhile, BJP spokesperson Kunal Sarangi tweeted that “all gangs and their masters will be found” and punished—a statement that conveniently forgets the party’s own history with the Vyapam scam in Madhya Pradesh, where backdoor doctor degrees were handed out like pamphlets. The Congress, in opposition, is no better. Rahul Gandhi holds rallies in Kota and Prayagraj, speaking of paper leaks and student despair. But his own party’s government in Jharkhand has presided over the same rot. The student is asked to choose between two sets of arsonists—one has already set the house on fire, the other is promising to burn it more “justly”.

The All-India Disease: Paper Leaks and the NTA’s Dubious Chief

Away from Ranchi, a larger, more sinister architecture of fraud has been erected by the central government. The National Testing Agency (NTA), created to streamline entrance exams, has become a byword for scandal. And at its helm sits a man whose career is a masterclass in how the RSS and BJP reward loyalty over competence. Pradeep Kumar Joshi—current chairman of the NTA—has spent two decades moving from one top post to another, trailing controversies like a shadow.

An investigation by The Indian Express, based on RTI documents cited by Milind Ghatwai, revealed that Joshi was appointed chairman of the Madhya Pradesh Public Service Commission in 2006 on the recommendation of the RSS’s kshetriya pracharak Vinod ji, who explicitly stated that Joshi was “not the president of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad”—a clear admission that ideological proximity, not merit, was the criterion. After five years in MP, he was made chairman of the Chhattisgarh PSC in 2011. From there, he went straight to the UPSC as a member for five years, and then became its chairman in August 2020. In 2023, he was placed at the head of the NTA. In his 20-year career, at least 13 major controversies are linked to his name, including paper leaks. Yet his rise has been uninterrupted.

The NEET-UG 2024 examination, conducted by the NTA for the first time, was marred by allegations of paper leaks and inflated marks. While students were on the streets in Delhi, the government and its Godi media remained silent. The Prime Minister’s Office, which never misses an opportunity to pose with exam warriors, had nothing to say about the agency it created. The entire architecture of competitive examinations has been reduced to a patronage network, and the chief of that network is promoted again and again. If this is not institutional corruption, what is?

The Two-Faced Media: Silencing Protests in Delhi, Amplifying in Opposition States

Nowhere is the cynicism of this government more visible than in the behaviour of the “Godi media”. When students protested at Jantar Mantar—in the heart of Modi’s Delhi—the same channels that will scream for hours about a temple or a cow vigilante buried the story. They called the protesters Chinese agents, Pakistani agents, anything to delegitimise a cry for employment. But the moment protests erupted in Ranchi, under a non-BJP government, cameras rushed in. Suddenly, every anchor was a messiah of the youth, every prime-time debate a courtroom for Hemant Soren. The switch is so mechanical that even a child can see the script.

These media houses receive hundreds of crores of rupees in government advertisements—money taken from the same taxpayers whose children are now being lathi-charged. They have hundreds of reporters, dozens of empty anchors, and not a single one was allowed to raise the students’ voice in Delhi. Instead, they run four people in boxes spouting nonsense from their bedrooms. Meanwhile, a lone YouTuber can do more factual coverage in a 15-minute video than an entire media empire does in a year. The government should, with immediate effect, stop all advertisement flow to these propaganda machines and redirect the funds to independent journalists who actually stand with the people. Let the prime-time bullies survive without the state’s crutch—they will not last a single evening.

The Larger Rot: Higher Education in the Hindi Belt

But there is a question no political party, no commission, and no coaching giant wants the students to ask: what about the colleges they came from? For years, the Hindi-speaking states have been subjected to a deliberate devaluation of higher education. In hundreds of districts, not a single college is functional. A handful of professors—retired, tired, or simply absent—guard empty corridors. The rest are busy doing “cultural” work: organising religious events, running abvp campaigns, stoking communal tensions. It is a brilliant diversion. A teacher who cannot step into a classroom to explain a basic concept can still pose as a guardian of Hinduism and escape all scrutiny. The student, already weak in language and logic, enters a coaching centre thinking 20 hours of memorisation will compensate for three years of rot. It does not.

For two decades, this destruction has been intentional. It did not happen by accident; it was brought. Brought by design, by a politics that finds it easier to rule over an uneducated, desperate populace that sees a Rs. 15,000 government job as the ultimate salvation. The students who are now marching did not ask for critical thinking; they were trained to crave a post, any post. And they will win their battle for fair exams—they must—but even if they do, they will walk into offices and classrooms with a hollowed-out intellect. The damage will take another twenty years to undo.

Criticisms

— The Prime Minister is observed to have never personally addressed the systematic failures of the NTA, the paper leak crisis, or the brazen political appointments in examination bodies.

— The central government is noted to have weaponized silence and misinformation during the Jantar Mantar student protests, while permitting aggressive coverage in opposition-ruled states.

— The Godi media is seen to have abandoned journalistic duty in exchange for hundreds of crores in taxpayer-funded advertisements, actively branding young protesters as anti-national elements.

— The BJP’s legacy of the Vyapam scam and the continued patronage of individuals like P.K. Joshi is regarded as a direct assault on meritocracy and social mobility.

— The Hemant Soren-led Jharkhand government is found to have procrastinated on dissolving both the JPSC and the JSSC despite years of evidence of their complete administrative failure.

— The Congress leadership is perceived as exploiting student anger for political rallies while failing to reform examination systems in its own states, thereby eroding the credibility of its demands.

— The RSS’s role in placing ideological loyalists in crucial institutional positions is identified as a primary reason for the collapse of impartiality in public service commissions across India.

— The higher education infrastructure in Hindi-speaking states is recognised as having been deliberately degraded by successive governments to produce a dependent, easily manipulated workforce rather than a thinking citizenry.

— The coaching mafia and the political class are believed to operate in symbiosis, with arrests made only as spectacle, never as structural correction.

— The entire competitive examination apparatus, from paper-setting to result declaration, is charged with being captured by networks of corruption that span multiple states and parties, leaving the ordinary student with no recourse but the street.

The Spectacle of Waste: When Development Grandeur Masks a Shrinking Economy and a Starved Education System

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The Spectacle of Waste: When Development Grandeur Masks a Shrinking Economy and a Starved Education System

In a country where net foreign direct investment (FDI) is plummeting, should crores of rupees be splurged on the inauguration of a single international airport? The question is not rhetorical—it is an audit of priorities. Yet, when the Bhogapuram International Airport in Andhra Pradesh was inaugurated with a lavish ceremony, the government did not disclose the expenditure. The media did not ask. Meanwhile, in the Rajya Sabha, the same government revealed that net FDI for 2025-26 hovers around a mere 6 billion dollars. In 2022-23, India’s net FDI stood at 27.99 billion dollars. By 2024-25, it had slumped to less than one billion dollars—a staggering 97 percent decline. But the grand spectacle of the inauguration would have us believe that India is swimming in so much wealth that it must be burned in such pageantry.

The Grand Illusion of the Bhogapuram Airport Inauguration

For Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s event in Andhra Pradesh, thousands of schoolgirls were assembled like a crowd, made to perform a traditional tribal dance, Timsa, to create a Guinness World Record. The ostensible celebration of cultural heritage came at a steep price—one the government has refused to quantify. Over 13,500 students in pink-and-green attire were organized into 433 groups, ferried in 3,000 buses, and made to rehearse endlessly. They waited for hours before the Prime Minister’s convoy passed. But what were the real costs? Was even a token amount paid to these girls? In 2023, Assam’s Bihu record event paid each participant Rs 25,000. That was announced proudly. Here, silence.

The expenditure did not end there. Before the main event, a practice session for 5,000 students was held in the presence of Andhra Pradesh’s Special Chief Secretary M.T. Krishna Babu and Collector Ram Sundar Reddy. That, too, cost money. No accounts were shared. The entire exercise was designed to cushion the political image of a leader at a time when young Indians are on the streets, under lathis, demanding a credible examination system and accountability from the Education Minister.

Guinness Record Mania: At What Cost?

The Guinness Book of World Records is a for-profit private company. To get a record certified, you pay a fee, invite their team, and stage the attempt. India’s government has become a repeat customer. For the Bihu record in Assam, the government later admitted through an RTI that it paid Rs 1.6 crore to Guinness. For the Jhumur dance of 8,888 tea garden workers in Guwahati in February 2025, similar costs were incurred. In Bhogapuram, the expenditure is still hidden. The Prime Minister’s YouTube channel shows a sanitized video—a van gliding past dancers, no public in sight, but party flags of BJP, TDP, and Jana Sena Party parked prominently on the vehicle. The Ashoka Stambha, which should be at the centre, was pushed to the side. State funds paid for a political brand-melding exercise.

The Guinness fixation extends even to ‘Pariksha Pe Charcha’, where 3.53 crore registrations in a month were declared a world record. In a nation where an exam cannot be conducted without paper leaks and protests, the government chases a certification for collecting the most registrations—most of them likely from schools coerced into mass sign-ups. How much was paid to Guinness for that? That money could have funded scholarships for thousands of students. Instead, it was handed to a private entity in exchange for a certificate.

Education: The Sacrificial Lamb

While crores are poured into political mega-events, India’s education budget has been gutted. In 2013-14, education spending was 4.6% of the total budget. By 2025-26, it has fallen to just 2.5%. Over the past decade, more than 93,000 schools have been shut down or merged, and a shocking 2.25 crore children have dropped out. Yet the government finds no money to keep these children in classrooms. But it finds limitless resources to dress up students in coordinated costumes and parade them for a record that the Guinness company profits from.

Empty Airports and Vaporous Promises

The pattern goes beyond dance records. India has opened airports that remain dormant. Khajuraho’s airport recently received a top consumer satisfaction ranking. In July, that airport did not witness a single commercial flight—not one take-off or landing. It was a phantom award for a phantom facility.

The Kushinagar International Airport was inaugurated with great fanfare in October 2021, ahead of the Uttar Pradesh elections. The project cost Rs 327 crore. Yet, since November 2023, the airport has been shut down. Ashok Upadhyay, through an RTI, revealed that maintenance costs of crores continue even when the airport is dead. Airports are built not where demand exists, but where electoral cycles demand a visual of progress. A real hospital or a functional college would serve the public, but that doesn't make for a photo-op with a Boeing in the background.

The Plunge of Net FDI: A Table of Decline

Financial Year	Net FDI (in billion USD)
2022-23	27.99
2024-25	Less than 1
2025-26 (early estimate)	Approx. 6

*Source: Rajya Sabha reply, government data. The 97% drop between 2022-23 and 2024-25 reflects not a global trend but a crisis of investor confidence.

Aesthetics of Power: How Spectacle Replaces Accountability

The political theorist Walter Benjamin wrote about the “aestheticization of politics”—turning governance into a grand, beautiful spectacle so that citizens, mesmerized, forget their own miseries. Fascism, he noted, thrives on such pageantry. When thousands gather and millions watch on screens, they see not their own poverty and despair but a larger-than-life projection of the leader. The event becomes a ritual in which the public, instead of being questioning citizens, become an audience to a grand show. Ram Mandir consecrations, massive Yoga Day extravaganzas, G20 summits in every corner, and record-dance assemblies all serve one purpose: to shift focus from crumbling schools, unaffordable healthcare, and jobless growth towards an intoxicating visual of national glory.

The government’s reply to every crisis is another record, another inauguration, another flood of official photographs. But the numbers tell the real story: FDI collapsing, children out of school, airports shut after a single political season. The “vikas” narrative is sustained not by material change but by sensory overload. The van moves slowly, the dancers move in sync, the cameras capture it all, and the public is told they are witnessing history. But history does not fill empty stomachs or reopened schools.

What the Public Is Not Told

The lack of transparency is deliberate. In Delhi, the BJP promised Rs 2,500 per month to women under the Mahila Samridhi Yojana. But the scheme came with a maze of conditions: a dedicated Program Management Unit, verification by district officers, a monitoring committee, a grievance redressal committee, exclusion for families with three children, for those consuming more than 2,400 units of electricity, and for households earning over Rs 2.5 lakh annually. So the woman struggling to make ends meet must navigate an obstacle course for a promise that was sold as a simple guarantee. Meanwhile, the same government spends unknown crores on one Prime Ministerial event after another, without a single question answered.

Criticisms

• Public funds were burned on a lavish airport inauguration while the country’s net FDI registered a historic collapse.
• Thousands of schoolgirls were forcibly assembled and made to practise for weeks, sacrificing their education to create a photo-op and a private Guinness record.
• Party flags were displayed on a state-funded vehicle during an official event, violating the neutrality of public expenditure.
• No accounts of the Bhogapuram event expenditure were provided to the public or the media.
• The education budget was systematically gutted, from 4.6% to 2.5% of the total budget, while colossal sums were diverted to cultural spectacles.
• More than 93,000 schools were closed or merged, and 2.25 crore children dropped out in a decade, but crores were spent on dance records.
• Crores of rupees were paid to the Guinness Book of World Records—a private for-profit company—for certifications that brought zero developmental value.
• Airports were inaugurated in Kushinagar and Khajuraho at enormous cost, then abandoned, with maintenance costs still draining the exchequer.
• The media’s failure to question the expenditure on these events was exploited to perpetuate the spectacle without accountability.
• A culture of political aestheticization was engineered, where grand ceremonies replaced genuine governance, and citizens were reduced to spectators of their own marginalization.
• The Prime Minister’s official YouTube channel was used to airbrush reality—showing a sanitized event devoid of the public, while the political branding was carefully staged.
• Repeated Guinness records were pursued using government machinery, while basic services like healthcare and education remained starved of funds.
• The state’s complicity in converting tribal and folk traditions into mass choreographed performances drained their cultural essence for political optics.
• Instead of addressing youth demands for a fair examination system, the regime spent public money on a “Pariksha Pe Charcha” registration record, mocking student struggles.

This is not governance. This is a carefully constructed theatre where the audience is supposed to clap while their own resources are incinerated. The question must not be what record was broken, but why the public is never allowed to see the bill. Because once the bill is seen, the illusion of development shatters, and what remains is a painful audit of priorities—one where a crores-strong dance ensemble mattered more than a single functional school.

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The Paper Leak Epidemic: Jharkhand's Unending Agony and India's Broken Exam System

On 28 January 2024, the Jharkhand Public Service Commission (JPSC) was set to conduct its examination. Three hours before the third shift, the General Studies paper for 50% of the candidates was abruptly cancelled. That exam was later re-conducted, but doubts never vanished. In December 2025, results were announced, and within days, successful candidates were issued joining letters. Yet, the embers of protest were already glowing. The anger of the youth, simmering since that hurried joining in late 2025, exploded when the results of the 14th JPSC examination were declared on 2 July. Within 48 hours, allegations of massive irregularities spread, and students took to the streets demanding that not only the latest results but all appointments stemming from the January 2024 exam be scrapped.

The agitation in Jharkhand is not a sudden outburst. It is the logical culmination of a system where merit has been replaced by money, fairness by fraud. And the response of the government — led by Hemant Soren — reveals a deep disconnect between those who rule and those who dream.

The Chronology of Betrayal

On 28 January 2024, the paper was cancelled because of a leak. The re-test was ordered, but questions about its integrity surfaced immediately. Despite this, results were declared in December 2025, and candidates were appointed. Students say that even before the ink dried on their joining letters, they had evidence of foul play. When the 14th JPSC result came on 2 July, OMR sheets of several candidates were leaked online. The data showed that candidates with lower scores had secured jobs while deserving ones were shut out. The demand swelled: cancel the 11th, 13th, and 14th JPSC examinations, and conduct a fresh, fair process.

The government took notice only after the protests grew. A high-level committee was formed, but the students refused to meet behind closed doors. “We will not talk in a closed room,” they declared. “The government must come to us, in the open, with the media present.” This stance mirrors the Jantar Mantar protests of NEET-UG aspirants, where the central government refused to face students publicly. The bargaining power of the youth now hinges on this public confrontation — a strategy that underscores the deep trust deficit.

The Demands: Cancel, Investigate, Rebuild

The students’ charter is clear:

• Cancel the results of the 11th, 13th, and 14th JPSC examinations.
• Annul all appointments made from the December 2025 result.
• Conduct an independent, transparent investigation into the entire examination process.
• Ensure that the probe extends to the assets of all officials linked to the JPSC, Jharkhand Staff Selection Commission (JSSC), and the private agency TDPL that has been repeatedly accused of irregularities.

To understand why these demands are not excessive but urgent, one must look at the history of competitive examinations in Jharkhand. Since the state was carved out of Bihar in 2000, there has not been a single JPSC or JSSC examination that has not been mired in allegations of cheating. Not one. The system is so deeply corrupted that a clean recruitment drive seems an impossibility.

The Government’s Response: Too Little, Too Late

When the protests escalated, the Hemant Soren government sent SDMs and ADMs to the protest site, offering a five-member team to meet at the Chief Minister’s residence. But the students refused. They insisted on an open dialogue. The government eventually formed a committee, but the youth remain unconvinced. Their fear is legitimate: closed-door negotiations can easily turn into a whitewash.

Hemant Soren has claimed that the state’s CID has acted swiftly — 18 people arrested, documents seized, and key conspirators identified. He believes this should restore trust. But the students have ample reason to doubt. The CID is a state agency, and in Jharkhand, political interference in investigations is an open secret. Moreover, the central agencies that might have offered hope — the CBI and the ED — have their own credibility crises. The CBI’s conviction rate in paper leak cases is abysmal; the ED’s selective targeting of opposition leaders has made it a political weapon, not an impartial arbiter.

The Vyapam Precedent and the Supreme Court’s Sword

The students’ demand for cancellation finds strong legal backing. In the Vyapam scam in Madhya Pradesh, the Supreme Court cancelled the degrees of over 600 medical students who had reached the final year of their MBBS. Admissions taken, exams passed over several years — everything was declared void because the foundation was fraudulent. If the apex court could do that, why can’t the Jharkhand government annul appointments based on demonstrably tainted examinations? The answer lies in political will, not legal hurdle.

The irony is that the Jharkhand High Court, in an unrelated case, had strongly indicted the ED for arresting Hemant Soren without solid grounds. The ED lost that case in the Supreme Court too. Yet the same Hemant Soren, when faced with student anger, has not shown the same resolve to uproot the examination mafia that his own government’s agencies are supposed to control.

A Nationwide Cancer: The Paper Leak Industry

The Jharkhand agitation cannot be viewed in isolation. India is witnessing a terrifying surge in examination frauds. A PTI report reveals that the CBI has over 150 cases related to recruitment exam irregularities — investigations are complete in most, but trials have not even begun. Some cases are 20 years old. The CBI is now trying to move these to fast-track courts, but the damage is already done. The faith of the young has been crushed.

The 2024 NEET-UG paper leak case is a glaring example. The main accused, Sanjeev Mukhiya, was discharged by a court because the CBI found no evidence against him. The ED, which arrested Hemant Soren in a money-laundering case, was itself pulled up by the Supreme Court for frivolous arrests of opposition leaders. The investigating agencies that students are supposed to rely upon are either handcuffed or complicit. In such a scenario, the demand for an independent probe becomes a cry into the void.

The Anatomy of a Cheating Cartel

The CID’s raids have thrown up chilling details. In Jharkhand, post-dated cheques worth Rs 6 crore were recovered from the houses of Lalu Yadav and Pradeep Yadav of Hazaribagh. These cheques were signed by different individuals — likely candidates or their relatives — revealing a pay-after-success racket. The CID also found admit cards of constable recruitment exams and carbon copies of candidates’ OMR sheets at the residence of Santosh Kumar Singh in Palamu. The suspicion is that candidates who could not pay cash were forced to part with land documents as collateral.

The private firm TDPL is at the heart of this network. Blacklisted by the Jharkhand Staff Selection Commission in May 2025, the company was re-engaged to conduct examinations. That re-appointment itself stinks of a deep nexus. The case of Abhay Tiwari is even more instructive. The CID claims that Tiwari, between 2013 and 2024, passed over 12 competitive examinations, including those of Jharkhand and the Centre. In every exam where Tiwari succeeded, TDPL was involved in some capacity. That is not coincidence; it is a meticulously managed, exam-clearing formula for sale.

A similar pattern emerged in the NEET-UG case. Dinesh Binwal, his brother Mangilal Binwal, and Mangilal’s son Vikas were arrested. Of the five arrested by the CBI, three belonged to the same family — a family whose five children had cleared NEET-UG in the previous year. Rajasthan Congress chief Govind Singh Dotasra had tweeted the names and asked uncomfortable questions about where these children were studying. The answers are still buried.

The Political Calculus and the Media’s Silence

On the protest stage at Jantar Mantar, several political parties sent leaders, but the ruling BJP in Jharkhand exerted no real pressure on the state government. Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan never once engaged with NEET aspirants. The NTA chief, despite the paper leak, did not resign; he did not even accept moral responsibility. In contrast, the JPSC Chairman, E. Khizangte, stepped down on 22 July after CID raids at his home and office. That resignation, however, is little solace to students who have lost years of their lives.

The students in Jharkhand have displayed remarkable discipline. They have consciously kept political, religious, and caste symbols off the stage. They have banned personal attacks on individuals and maintained a sharp focus on systemic reform. This is a movement led by young people who understand that their power lies in their unity, not in the patronage of any party.

Data Points: The Scale of Contamination

Aspect	Detail
Exams passed by Abhay Tiwari (2013-2024)	More than 12 (state and central)
Post-dated cheques recovered	Rs 6 crore (number of cheques undisclosed)
CBI cases on recruitment fraud	150+ (investigations complete, trials pending)
Oldest pending CBI paper leak case	20 years
NEET UG 2024 arrested family members	3 out of 5 accused from one family; 5 family children passed NEET
JPSC examinations since state formation without corruption charges	None

The Road Ahead: A Republic Without Fair Exams?

Every country’s examination system carries a certain prestige. India’s used to. Today, it is a market. The youth are not just protesting a leak; they are questioning the very legitimacy of a state that cannot hold a single honest test. The Jharkhand government must accept that no closed-door committee will placate the anger. The central government must ensure that the CBI is empowered to deliver swift justice, not just file chargesheets. The political class must understand that using agencies like the ED to harass opponents while ignoring exam mafias is a recipe for social explosion.

The students have said it plainly: “We do not care about any party. Come and support us, understand our pain.” Their agony is not partisan. It is the agony of a nation that has told its young: work hard, and you will rise. But when the results come, the seats are already sold. The paper has leaked, and so has the dream.

Criticisms

• A transparent dialogue with protesting students in an open forum is consistently avoided by the government.
• The moral responsibility of resigning upon witnessing a paper leak is not accepted by senior bureaucratic officials in central agencies.
• Blacklisted private firms are re-hired for conducting competitive examinations, with no explanation provided.
• The ED is utilized as a political instrument to target opposition leaders rather than as an impartial investigative body.
• Fast-track trials in paper leak cases are not completed, and delay in justice is perpetuated.
• The credibility of the CBI is eroded by repeated failure to secure convictions in recruitment fraud cases.
• The Hemant Soren government in Jharkhand is allowed to project the CID’s actions as sufficient while systemic rot remains unaddressed.
• The network of post-dated cheques and land documents as collateral is not investigated with the urgency it demands.
• Political parties are observed to treat student movements as vote banks rather than engaging with the core issue of examination integrity.
• The NTA’s flawed examination processes are not overhauled despite repeated national-level leaks.
• A uniform national law to punish exam cheating with stringent action is not enacted by Parliament.

The Parliament of Missing Answers

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The Parliament of Missing Answers

Fifteen days. Fifteen long, rain-drenched days in the monsoon session of Parliament, and one question hangs heavier than the Delhi sky – where is the Home Minister? The familiar scene outside and inside the House has frozen into a still frame: opposition MPs clutching placards, hoisting banners, demanding an answer. “Amit Shah, jawab do!” they chant. Cameras beam this ritual daily, but the man they seek remains invisible. Not a single frame captures him entering the Lok Sabha or Rajya Sabha. No off-record whisper explains why the man who once boasted of his 56-inch chest, who promised to walk into the lion’s den, now scuttles through the parliamentary corridors without ever taking his seat. The question is not just political – it is existential for our democracy: if the executive refuses to be questioned inside the temple of accountability, what remains of the temple?

A Monsoon without a Statement

The demand is simple. The opposition wants a statement from the Union Home Minister on the violence that unfolded in Delhi – where students, including young women, were lathi-charged, tear-gassed, and struck with pellet guns. It was not a border skirmish, not a foreign policy crisis; it happened on the streets of the national capital, under the watch of a police force that answers directly to the Ministry of Home Affairs. The nation saw bodies of young men and women bruised, their parents weeping. Yet, for fifteen days, the minister in charge refuses to walk a few steps into the House and address the elected representatives of the people. This is not a matter of scheduling; it is an arrogance that mocks the very idea of parliamentary oversight.

The Silence of the ‘Godi Media’

Where are the fearless anchors who hound the opposition over every whisper? Where are the YouTube patriot-chasers who camp at Jantar Mantar for every minor cause? Their microphones suddenly go mute when it’s time to ask the Home Minister why he is dodging Parliament. The same machines that amplified the Prime Minister’s promise to make Assam flood-free now cannot find the bandwidth to ask why Delhi’s streets ran red under police batons. Instead, the TV studios divert the question, turning it sideways – maybe they ask an Abhijit, an Ajit, a scribe who will pose a soft query so the audience feels that journalism is still breathing. But nobody asks the man who holds the baton, literally, under his ministry. The Godi media, once so eager to frame Rahul Gandhi’s every blink, now blinks itself when Amit Shah’s disappearance turns into a national spectacle. Is it fear? Or is it a silence that has been purchased?

What Does the Government Fear?

The ruling party’s logic, if it can be called that, is a puzzle wrapped in evasion. Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju argues that the House should function first, and then the minister will reply. But the House cannot function precisely because the opposition insists on a statement before any other business. It’s a deadlock crafted by design. Rijiju also claims the issue is “over,” that the country has moved on. Moved on? A nation that cannot forget a temple fund embezzlement is told to forget that its police smashed the bones of students? The BJP spokespersons and their digital army are spinning a fresh narrative: Amit Shah will arrive on August 6 with a bill to choke the funding of “anti-nationals.” Suddenly, the Home Minister’s calendar is leaked to friendly handles, creating a buildup of a heroic entry. But not a single anchor dares to ask why the same Home Minister could not spare fifteen minutes on any of the preceding fifteen days to utter a single sentence about the violence. He is not hiding in an undisclosed bunker; he is reportedly sitting in his Parliament chamber, attending office meetings, even meeting various Chief Ministers and religious leaders – his pictures with Bihar’s Shambhavi Chaudhary, Rajasthan’s CM, Goa’s CM, and a Christian spiritual guru on August 6 are proof that his legs work perfectly well. The walk to the Lok Sabha chamber, it seems, is the only journey his courage cannot complete.

A Double Game of Cowardice

Only two conclusions can be drawn from this prolonged vanishing act. One: the government deliberately disrespects Parliament, treating it as an irrelevant debating club that must not interfere with the executive writ. Two: the ruling party is terrified of facing the opposition inside the House. For a regime that once thundered about decisiveness and fearlessness, this cowering is a spectacular reversal. The very man who promised to rewrite the geography of Kashmir and end floods in Assam now hides behind procedural tricks to avoid a question on a police lathi. The irony is brutal. And the opposition, stunned perhaps by the sheer audacity of the denial, keeps holding up posters – “Amit Shah Missing” – and I can imagine the Home Minister chuckling at those placards from some safe distance. But the laughter can’t mask the constitutional vacuum his absence creates.

The Cooperative Disaster: A Minister’s Report Card

While the government’s defenders dodge the Delhi question, let’s examine another portfolio that Amit Shah holds – the Ministry of Cooperation. This was the grand experiment of Atmanirbhar Bharat, a ministry created to empower cooperative societies, particularly in the Prime Minister’s home state of Gujarat. The data, placed in Rajya Sabha by the central government itself, tells a story of spectacular failure. Out of over 18,000 cooperative societies in Gujarat, between 10% and 15% are completely non-functional, and more than 1,300 are on the verge of bankruptcy. The state that is showcased as a laboratory of governance is drowning in cooperative losses. And the Cooperation Minister, who promised to make Assam flood-free (Assam still floods), who failed to bring peace to Manipur as Home Minister, now presides over a financial ruin that unfolds silently. If a minister cannot manage a department of friendly cooperatives, what confidence can the country have in his ability to manage the security of 1.4 billion people?

Gujarat Cooperative Societies: A Portrait of Collapse

Indicator	Data (as per Govt. reply in Rajya Sabha)
Total Cooperative Societies in Gujarat	Over 18,000
Societies in Loss	A significant portion, with many incurring continuous losses
Non-functional Societies	Approximately 10% to 15%
Societies Facing Bankruptcy	Over 1,300

These are not the numbers of a minister who can lecture others on efficiency. Yet, the same government that dodges accountability on police brutality expects the opposition to stay silent on a record of administrative negligence. The demand for a statement is not a “drama,” as Rijiju calls it; the drama is the Government’s stalling of Parliament to protect a minister from answering for his failures.

A Broken Promise: Jammu and Kashmir’s Statehood

The protests outside Parliament are now also laced with another unkept vow – the restoration of Jammu and Kashmir’s statehood. The Supreme Court’s constitutional bench in December 2023 directed the Centre to restore statehood at the earliest and hold assembly elections by September 2024. Elections were conducted, but statehood remains a phantom. Two years after the court’s historic order, and over six years since the abrogation of Article 370, the Modi government has failed to produce a timeline. In December 2025, when petitioners approached the apex court again, the government pleaded that “ground realities” and “cross-border situation” cannot be overlooked – the same old excuse wrapped in new paper. The Prime Minister himself had given a “sovereign guarantee” that statehood would be restored, and Amit Shah had repeated that pledge in Parliament. Today, with opposition MPs including Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah holding banners that remind the Home Minister of his own words, the promise lies buried under a silence as deep as the one over Delhi violence. The government’s tactic is transparent: stall, deflect, create a spectacle of legislative activity on bills that neutralise dissent, while the core questions of democratic accountability are left to rot.

A Session Held Hostage

The monsoon session is bleeding away. Day after day, the Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha are adjourned after verbal clashes between the Leader of Opposition Mallikarjun Kharge and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju. Kharge has made it excruciatingly clear: the opposition wants only two things – an apology from the Prime Minister for the breakdown of parliamentary discourse and a statement from the Home Minister on the Delhi student violence. The request is so minimal that it shames the government’s refusal. The government, meanwhile, hides behind the bizarre argument that the opposition cannot dictate which minister should come and when. True, but the Home Minister is not a random junior functionary; he is the custodian of internal security. When the police under his command are accused of brutality, his presence in Parliament is not an opposition’s whim – it is a constitutional necessity. But the government has chosen to strangle the session rather than let a single day of debate expose the rot.

A Calculated Absence

The media’s role in normalising this paralysis is chilling. Not a single prime-time debate has stripped the layers of this evasion. Instead, the managed narrative keeps the country distracted – a new bill, a new threat, a new enemy. The Home Minister, who once strode the corridors with an air of invincibility, now reveals a political fragility that his earlier bluster concealed. He has shown that when a storm of questions rises, he can step backwards and vanish. But the real damage is not to his image; it is to the institution of Parliament. If a minister can refuse to answer for fifteen days and remain unscathed, then the sovereign body that fought for its right to question the executive has been reduced to a stage prop. The opposition is left wondering: is the government so weak that a single statement would shatter its narrative? Or is the opposition so strong that it cannot be faced? Both possibilities are ominous for a democracy that still pretends to function under the rule of law.

Criticisms

• No statement is provided by the Home Minister on the police violence against students in Delhi, despite daily demands for over fifteen days.
• Parliament is deliberately prevented from functioning by the government’s refusal to allow a discussion on the conduct of the Delhi Police.
• Accountability for the baton charges, pellet gun use, and tear gas on unarmed students is completely evaded by the Ministry of Home Affairs.
• The media’s failure to persistently question the Home Minister’s absence is allowed to become a shield for executive arrogance.
• Questions about the financial collapse of thousands of cooperative societies in Gujarat, under Amit Shah’s ministerial charge, are not raised by the so-called nationalist press.
• The restoration of Jammu and Kashmir’s statehood is delayed indefinitely, disregarding a Supreme Court directive and a solemn promise made by the Prime Minister and the Home Minister.
• The government’s tactic of using bills to divert attention from unanswered questions of democratic accountability is not challenged by the parliamentary majority.
• The opposition’s legitimate demand for a ministerial reply is dismissed as a “drama” by the ruling party, while the real drama of ministerial vanishing is ignored.
• The moral authority of the Home Minister’s office is eroded by a prolonged absence from the House, yet no censure is initiated by the Speaker or the Chairman.
• The narrative that the issue is “over” is promoted by the government, while the victims of police excess still await justice and a single word of acknowledgment.
• The courage to face elected representatives is exhibited so little that the entire parliamentary session is sacrificed to protect one individual from scrutiny.

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Will UPI Payments Remain Free? Or Is the Noose Tightening Around Digital Payments?

So, the question on every chai stall and every kirana counter: till when will UPI remain free? The government that once thumped its chest about a zero‑cost digital payment revolution is now quietly rewriting the law. The promise — backed by legislation — that UPI would always be free is about to be hollowed out. An amendment has already been slipped into a bill, giving the Centre the power to decide, by a simple executive order, which digital payments will attract a charge and which won’t. No parliamentary debate needed. No questions asked. Just a stroke of a pen, and the “free” era of UPI could be over.

The whispers have begun. For a person‑to‑person transfer, it may stay free. But if you pay a trader — say, a merchant whose turnover crosses Rs 1.5 crore — and the transaction exceeds Rs 2,000, a fee could be slapped on. The weapon has a name: MDR, or Merchant Discount Rate. And behind this move, there is not one story but a tangled web of stories. Let’s pull at the threads.

The American Angle: When “Level Playing Field” Means Killing the Competition

First, look west. The free‑flow success of UPI has bruised two American giants — Visa and Mastercard. Both earn their billions from transaction fees. In a market where a merchant can simply flash a QR code and accept money without a cut, the card duopoly struggles. Reports have been piling up since 2020 about UPI eating into their business. By August 2026, the pain was visible: Visa laid off 1,400 employees in India, slashing 40% of its Bengaluru workforce. The official reason — “restructuring and AI” — is a convenient cover. But well before the AI scare, UPI had already dimmed the card business’s sheen.

Then, in March 2026, the Office of the United States Trade Representative dropped its report. It accused India’s digital payment policies of favouring domestic players and creating barriers for foreign companies. Translation: Visa and Mastercard are not happy that UPI and RuPay are free. They want the same “level playing field” where everybody charges a fee. So they leaned on the Trump administration. And the impact? An influential newspaper noted that the pressure is on — and suddenly, the talk of levying charges on UPI is not a coincidence.

This is not the first time. Brazil faced a similar attack. Its wildly successful instant payment system, Pix, launched in November 2020, became a global benchmark. Low‑cost, fast, and largely free for users, Pix gobbled up market share from the same American card networks. The U.S. trade representatives criticised Pix then, too. And now India is in the crosshairs.

Congress leader Jairam Ramesh has pointed straight at Washington. He says the doors are being opened under American pressure so that once‑free Indian digital payments can be handed over to foreign companies. The government denies it. No one will name Visa or Mastercard; everyone will insist they don't take decisions under duress. But the timeline is telling.

The Subsidy Shell Game: How a Burden Is Manufactured

The official narrative now running in media circles is that banks bleed billions maintaining the UPI infrastructure. Every year, we are told, banks spend Rs 20,000 crore on payment gateways and maintenance. The government, they add, subsidises this — Rs 3,600 crore a few years ago, now scaled down to Rs 2,000 crore. The NPCI’s own costs are a modest Rs 750 crore. And yet, the proposal being floated is to earn Rs 17,000 crore through an MDR of just 0.25%. Why such a fat margin?

Hold that thought and look at the other side of the ledger. UPI has saved banks a fortune. ATM visits have plummeted. Between 2023 and 2025, cash withdrawals through debit cards fell by lakhs of crores of rupees. Branches are no longer choked with cash management. Printing and transporting currency costs less. So where is the net loss? And that’s not even the only silent gain. Banks have earned over Rs 25,000 crore from “minimum balance” penalties alone in recent years — a quiet extraction from the poor that never made it to the prime‑time debate.

Now add the mightiest cushion of all. The Reserve Bank of India transferred a surplus of Rs 2,86,000 crore to the government in 2025‑26. Even if we take the upper‑end estimate of UPI’s annual cost — say Rs 24,000 crore — it is still less than 9% of that RBI bonanza. As analyst T.C.A. Sharad Raghavan of The Hindu calculated, the cost of running UPI is just 3% to 8.5% of what the RBI hands over to the government. The question then becomes piercing: when the central bank sits on a mountain of cash, why should a neighbourhood merchant pay for the digital rails that the state proudly owns?

Item	Amount (Rs in Crores)
RBI surplus transferred in 2025-26	2,86,000
Government subsidy for UPI (current year)	2,000
NPCI’s annual cost	750
Banks’ claimed infra expense	20,000
Potential MDR revenue at 0.25%	17,000

The numbers don’t lie. The government’s own subsidy has shrunk while the appetite for fee‑based revenue is growing. Somebody is making room for a new stream of earnings, and that somebody is not the ordinary citizen.

MDR: The Tax That Dare Not Speak Its Name

The fine print of MDR is seductive. The fee, we are told, will be “only on merchants” — not on end users. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, in her carefully parsed statement, said that even if MDR is imposed, it will be borne by traders, not consumers. But the Reserve Bank governor, Sanjay Malhotra, was more candid. He admitted that in some form or another, “the customer may also have to pay.” He added that it may not be directly visible, but the burden will be felt somewhere in the economy. This is circular talk for a simple truth: if the shopkeeper is charged, she will either raise prices or refuse UPI. The small customer will pay — either in cash or through inflated bills.

Cast your mind back to ATMs. Once upon a time, withdrawing cash was free, no matter how often you did it. Then came the cap: beyond a few transactions, a fee. Then “minimum balance” penalties. Both started small and then swelled. The banking system has a habit of turning savings into charges, and the government watches with folded arms. When it suits them, they call it a “small fee” that nobody will notice. But from a billion transactions a month, even a micro‑charge becomes a roaring river of revenue.

What stings more is the betrayal of small traders. In the 2024‑25 budget, the Modi government set aside Rs 1,500 crore to incentivise small merchants — offering them a cashback of 0.15% on transactions up to Rs 2,000. The then IT minister proclaimed that this was to support small businesses and promote digital payments. Barely a year later, the same set of merchants is being told they may have to pay for those very transactions. The whiplash is not just policy inconsistency; it is a breach of trust.

The Banker‑Fintech Bonanza: Who Really Stands to Gain?

Follow the money. Media reports, citing unnamed sources, are already gleeful about the windfall. If a 0.25% MDR is imposed on transactions above Rs 2,000, the total take could be Rs 17,000 crore every year. HDFC Bank, Bank of Baroda, and Punjab National Bank alone could pocket Rs 700–800 crore each. Payment apps like PhonePe and Google Pay are projected to earn Rs 500 crore to 700 crore. Is the government bleeding for banks, or are banks being fattened for something else?

What is never adequately explained is why 0.25% is the chosen rate when the real compensation required is only a fraction of that. The NPCI’s cost is Rs 750 crore. The subsidy top‑up is Rs 2,000 crore. Even with a generous mark‑up, a much lower rate would suffice. The scent of a larger deal hangs in the air. Could it be that the system is being primed to make certain entities lucrative before a sale — to a waiting big player? Or is the groundwork being laid so that a new entrant, perhaps one with American backing, finds a pre‑warmed market with guaranteed margins? The questions are uncomfortable, and the silence around them is deafening.

The Security Farce: Innovation, You Say?

While the government and banks sing hosannas about innovation and infrastructure, let’s talk about what they have actually built. In the last six years, India has witnessed bank frauds totalling Rs 52,976 crore. Cyber fraud is not an anomaly; it is an epidemic. People’s lifelong savings are wiped out in a single phone call. They are then made to run from pillar to post, dialling useless helpline numbers, often with no recovery. The state and the banks have spectacularly failed to secure digital payments. Where is the “innovation” that a tiny MDR will supposedly fund? The banks have not been able to stop crooks from emptying accounts. The very same banks that want a slice of every UPI transaction cannot guarantee the safety of the money already entrusted to them.

Once, a bank robbery would shake the establishment. Now, thousands of cyber‑heists happen daily. The dacoits don’t need to visit a branch; they sit at home and trick people. And nobody is held accountable. If the government wants a fee, let it first demonstrate that it can protect every rupee in the digital pipeline. Asking traders to pay for a system that leaks like a sieve is an insult to the public.

The Freebie Hypocrisy: “Free Is Expensive” Only When It Suits Them

The government’s chief economic advisor, V. Anantha Nageswaran, recently declared that “free” is the most expensive word in public policy. Listening to him, you would imagine a deeply principled economist. Yet, when elections approach, the very same dispensation distributes thousands of crores in cash promises, freebies, and doles — without a whisper about hidden costs. The free cylinder, the free ration, the loan waivers: none of that is “expensive”? But when it comes to a public digital infrastructure used by hundreds of millions, suddenly free is a dirty word.

UPI was sold as digital India’s gift to the common man, a shining example of a homegrown system that beat the world. The political mileage was enormous. Now that the applause has faded and fiscal pressures are mounting (or priorities are shifting), the same gift is being repackaged as a burden. The citizen is being told, “You never thought something free could last, did you?” The question back is: why didn’t you say so from the beginning?

The Coming Burden and the Quiet Erosion of Trust

What is unfolding is not merely an accounting adjustment. The government has taken upon itself the absolute authority to decide when and how much to charge — no parliamentary approval required. A taxation‑and‑other‑laws amendment bill was passed in silence, with barely a minute of discussion. That is the subtlety of the trap. One order, and a “small fee” becomes permanent. Tomorrow, the threshold may drop from Rs 2,000 to Rs 500. The day after, person‑to‑person transfers may be included.

Small traders — already crushed by GST compliance, already grappling with e‑commerce giants — will be the first to fold. They will either absorb the cost and slip deeper into losses, or they will push back and tell customers to pay by cash. And just like that, the hard‑won shift to digital will begin to reverse, not because people don’t like it, but because the system made it uneconomical for those who implemented it at the last mile.

The government owes the public a clear answer. Is the MDR meant to make up for a subsidy it can no longer afford, or is it the price of pleasing a foreign power? Is the small merchant being sacrificed on the altar of bank balance sheets? And if the RBI can cushion the blow many times over, why is a single rupee being extracted from the neighbourhood shopkeeper? If the answers are not forthcoming, the people are entitled to smell a grand design — a design where public infrastructure is slowly monetised, and the citizen is first hooked, then billed.

This is not just about a fee. It is about the steady, quiet unmaking of a promise. The digital grapevine is whispering that free UPI’s days are numbered. And when the number is up, remember it wasn’t technology that failed. It was trust that was sold.

Criticisms

• A legislatively guaranteed free UPI service is being dismantled by the government.
• The power to impose charges on digital payments is seized by the executive without meaningful parliamentary debate.
• Small and medium traders are being burdened with a new levy after they were incentivised to adopt digital payments.
• The narrative of unbearable bank losses is promoted while hidden gains from falling ATM usage and minimum‑balance penalties are obscured.
• The RBI’s massive surplus is overlooked as a viable source of funding for public digital infrastructure.
• The potential windfall for large banks and fintech giants is prioritised over the interests of common citizens.
• The state’s abject failure to curb cyber frauds and bank scams is conveniently ignored while a security‑innovation tax is proposed.
• The language of “level playing field” is used to open doors for American card networks at the cost of an indigenous, pro‑people system.
• Broken promises are normalised by arguing that no free service can last, despite the government’s own history of distributing pre‑election freebies.