The Curry Leaf in the Corporate Dish: A Story of Age, Layoffs, and the Gig Economy

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5 Key Takeaways

• A 56-year-old former insurance employee with 14 years of service was laid off and now works as a gig delivery driver for Porter, highlighting the fragility of job security for experienced workers.
• The worker used a curry leaf metaphor to describe how experienced employees are essential during company growth but are the first to be discarded when downsizing occurs.
• Age and health concerns are major barriers for older workers re-entering the formal job market, forcing many into the gig economy which lacks stability, benefits, and retirement security.
• The story sparked widespread social media discussion about ageism in hiring, corporate layoffs, and the emotional toll on displaced professionals who still take pride in their work.
• Policymakers and corporate leaders are urged to create stronger social safety nets, portable benefits, and age-inclusive hiring practices to address the growing crisis of experienced workers pushed out before retirement.

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Long Read · Workplace

The Curry Leaf Generation: When Experience Becomes Dispensable

A routine Rs 40 parcel pickup in Noida turned into a national conversation about loyalty, ageism, and the hidden cost of corporate restructuring.

Based on an encounter shared by Kiran Verma 12 min read Noida, India

🍃 Curry leaves — essential during cooking, first to be picked out at the table.

In a bustling Noida neighbourhood, a routine Rs 40 parcel pickup turned into a story that has forced thousands of professionals to confront uncomfortable truths about loyalty, age, and the changing face of India's workforce. A 56-year-old former insurance employee, laid off after 14 years of service, is now delivering packages for the logistics platform Porter. One conversation with a customer, shared on social media, has reignited a national debate about what happens to experienced workers when companies decide they are no longer needed.

A delivery that carried more than a letter

Kiran Verma, a social entrepreneur who leads the non-profit initiative Change With One Meal, booked a Porter delivery in Noida to send an urgent letter — something that cost him only Rs 40. What he expected was a quick handover. What he got was an encounter he describes as a sobering lesson about work, dignity, and the fragility of job security.

When the delivery partner arrived, Verma — who lives on the first floor and was not fully dressed — asked the rider to come upstairs. The man climbed the stairs with visible difficulty, politely declined an offer of water, and handed over the envelope with a smile. Something about his demeanour stood out: he was well-spoken and professionally dressed, not the typical image of a gig worker. As they exchanged pleasantries, the rider let slip a line that stopped Verma in his tracks:

"Aaj kaam hi nahi tha, wait kar raha tha kaam ke liye.

— Manoj, delivery partner & former insurance professional

Curious, Verma called him back after the pickup and invited him to sit down for a conversation. What followed was a revelation that would soon echo across LinkedIn and beyond.

From insurance administration to the gig economy

The rider introduced himself as Manoj, a 56-year-old resident of Noida. For 14 years, he had worked in the administration department of Tata AIA Life Insurance, one of India's well-known private insurers. In 2023, during a wave of corporate layoffs, he lost his job. Despite his experience, he found it almost impossible to secure another position. The two barriers that stood in his way, he told Verma, were his age and ongoing health concerns.

Manoj's story is far from unique. India's formal employment sector has seen repeated rounds of restructuring across industries such as insurance, technology, and financial services. When firms trim headcount to cut costs or restructure operations, employees in their 50s often find themselves disproportionately affected — viewed as expensive and, fairly or unfairly, less adaptable to rapid change. The options for those without a financial cushion quickly narrow. For Manoj, the gig economy became a lifeline.

The curry leaf metaphor that struck a chord

The most poignant moment of the conversation came when Verma asked Manoj directly about the layoff. The former corporate employee did not offer a lengthy grievance. Instead, he shared a metaphor rooted in everyday Indian cooking, one that instantly resonated with anyone who has ever felt used and discarded by an employer.

"Beta jab sabzi banate hai toh curry leaf sabse pehle daalte hai, par jab sabzi khate hai toh sabse pehle curry nikalte hai.

— Manoj

The meaning is simple yet devastating: "When you cook a dish, you put in the curry leaves first, but when you eat it, you take them out first." Manoj was comparing experienced workers to those curry leaves — essential during the building and running of an organisation, yet the first to be discarded when the meal is served. It was a quiet, dignified description of how corporate loyalty, in his experience, had been repaid.

Verma was careful to clarify that he had no knowledge of the actual circumstances surrounding Manoj's layoff, and he could not independently assess his performance at the insurance company. That, he said, was not the point. The metaphor, he felt, captured a broader emotional truth that many professionals carry privately. The post made no accusations against Tata AIA Life; it simply let one man's experience speak for itself.

Before the rider left, Verma paid him more than the standard delivery fee — a gesture of appreciation, he said, for the life advice and perspective Manoj had shared during their brief conversation. Verma wrote that he watched Manoj leave from his balcony "as if I am seeing off someone known to me."

Porter responds, but the larger question remains

As Verma's LinkedIn post gained traction, amassing reactions from professionals, recruiters, and the startup community, Porter, the logistics and intracity delivery platform, issued a public response.

Porter's Official Response

"We thank you for sharing this heartfelt post and appreciating the effort showcased by our team."

The company did not comment on Manoj's personal circumstances or the broader implications of a 56-year-old former insurance professional turning to gig work for survival. The reply, while polite, highlighted a familiar gap. Platforms like Porter, Swiggy, Zomato, and Blinkit have become the safety net for many displaced workers, particularly those over 50 who find corporate doors closed. They offer flexible work with minimal entry barriers, but they rarely come with the stability, healthcare benefits, or retirement security that formal employment once provided. Manoj's story put a human face on a structural shift that is reshaping India's labour market at breathtaking speed.

Social media reactions: a wave of empathy and recognition

The comments on Verma's post revealed a deep well of empathy — and a collective nod of recognition.

AK "Life is hard, people have battles we cannot see and sometimes we don't even understand. Kindness, compassion, a conversation is all a person needs to make it through the day."

RS "This underscores how experienced professionals are often overlooked despite years of contribution. We need to do better as a society."

PM "Thank you for sharing this reminder that life is hard for everyone — only the situations are different."

The curry leaf analogy, in particular, spread beyond LinkedIn, sparking wider discussions about ageism in hiring, the emotional toll of corporate downsizing, and the often invisible struggles of those who once held stable jobs. For many readers, Manoj's quiet dignity was as striking as his circumstances. He did not place blame, did not ask for sympathy, and took pride in the work he was doing — even if it meant climbing stairs with aching knees for a handful of deliveries a day.

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Why this story matters

Manoj's journey from a 14-year stint at a major insurance firm to picking up parcels for Porter embodies a collision of forces: the cost-cutting logic of modern business, the persistent bias against older workers in a youth-obsessed job market, and the rise of a gig economy that offers income but little else. India's demographic dividend is often celebrated, but it masks a quieter crisis — the underemployment and sudden downward mobility of experienced professionals who are pushed out before they are ready to retire.

The Bigger Picture

Without stronger social security nets, portable benefits for gig workers, and age-inclusive hiring practices, stories like Manoj's will multiply. Corporate India still struggles to recognise the value of institutional knowledge and the mentorship that older employees provide.

The curry leaf metaphor works precisely because it rings true: organisations benefit from experience while building themselves up, yet that same experience is often the first to go when balance sheets need trimming. Verma's decision to share the encounter has done what the best storytelling does — it has made an abstract trend personal and urgent. There is no tidy resolution here. Manoj continues to deliver packages. Porter continues to connect customers and riders. And the corporate world has been handed a reminder that behind every restructuring announcement, there are individuals with decades of their lives invested, trying to figure out what comes next.

🍃 As for the curry leaves, they remain in the dish.
Sometimes someone notices them.
And occasionally, someone writes about them.

Gig Economy Ageism Corporate Restructuring Workforce India Human Interest Social Commentary

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Letters, Not Answers: The Ram Mandir Donation Theft and the Anatomy of a Cover-Up

Nearly four weeks have passed since the first faint hints of a monumental financial scandal at the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya seeped into public discourse. What has followed is not a transparent probe, not a single press conference by the trust, but a flurry of carefully worded, self-exculpatory letters. The treasurer of the Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Kshetra Trust, Swami Govind Dev Giri, has now thrown his hands up, confessing that he never actually discharged the duties of a treasurer. The trust chairman, Mahant Nritya Gopal Das, has issued an open letter placing his complete faith in Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. Meanwhile, the international president of the Vishva Hindu Parishad, Alok Kumar, dispatched a letter to the Ayodhya police, demanding interrogation of opposition leaders for making allegations—while meticulously omitting the names of those within the governing ecosystem who have admitted to large-scale theft and corruption.

This is an elaborate theatre of evasion. The central question—who stole the offerings of millions of Ram devotees, and on whose watch—is being buried under layers of deflection, political intimidation, and manufactured moral outrage. A closer reading of these letters unearths the fault lines inside the temple trust, and reveals how political power is being deployed not to deliver justice but to shield insiders and punish critics.

The Treasurer’s Confession: A Nominal Post at the Heart of Power?

Swami Govind Dev Giri’s two-page letter, addressed to the devotees of Lord Ram, is a textbook in the art of disowning responsibility without a shred of institutional accountability. For more than four years—since the trust’s formation—he held the office of treasurer. Yet now he claims:

• He is “not a signatory” on any bank instrument; all trust expenses go through direct bank transfers, which he never handles.
• He resides in Pune and has “from the beginning” had no connection with the place where devotees’ offerings are counted.
• Guidelines for counting temple offerings, supposedly framed in coordination with the SBI, were shown to him only “last month for the first time.”
• His own expenses are handled by a chartered accountant who visits Ayodhya for the last four or five days of each month, leaving him “worry‑free” about the accounts.
• He has personally received only two cash/donations in all these years—Rs 11,000 in cash and 1 kg of silver bricks—and issued receipts for both.

The admission is staggering. A person entrusted with the financial custodianship of India’s most politically consecrated temple says he neither counted the money, nor signed cheques, nor even saw the counting protocol until the scandal broke. The letter then concludes with a grand moral pronouncement: “Stealing from offerings is a great sin,” and demands that the guilty be punished regardless of their stature.

But here’s the contradiction that cannot be wished away. If the treasurer was merely a namesake, why did he remain silent for over four years? Why did he accept the post if he could not perform even its basic functions? And why, as photographs and video recordings from the grand inauguration on 22 January 2024 show, was he consistently positioned at the very center of power—next to Prime Minister Modi, next to RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, next to trust general secretary Champat Rai?

Indeed, on the day of the consecration ceremony, it was Swami Govind Dev Giri who delivered the first speech, framing the temple not merely as a religious structure but as the “identity and self-respect of the nation.” A person who could connect the temple to national pride so centrally cannot, today, plead helplessness about the very finances that sustain that edifice. He owes the public an explanation: when he had no real charge of the treasury, why did he not resign? And when accusations of theft and commission‑taking first surfaced—pointed out by Akhilesh Yadav on 7 June—why did he wait a full month before writing an open letter, a letter that pointedly avoids naming any individual within the trust?

The optics also betray the claim. Photographs of the inauguration day show Swami Govind Dev Giri deeply engaged with Champat Rai and Mohan Bhagwat. He belongs to the very inner circle that controls the trust. He cannot now portray himself as an outsider who was kept in the dark. Either he was complicit in the negligence, or he was deliberately sidelined—both scenarios demand his resignation, not a letter to the faithful.

The Chairman’s Appeal: Trust in Modi-Yogi, Not Accountability

While the treasurer was busy disowning his portfolio, the trust’s chairman, Mahant Nritya Gopal Das, broke his silence with an open letter of his own. He wrote that he is “deeply hurt” by the theft of donations and that the guilty must receive the strictest punishment. But the operative part came next: “I have full faith in Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath ji and Prime Minister Narendra Modi ji that they will ensure punishment to every person involved in this sin.”

This is the language of political absolution, not institutional integrity. The trust was set up by a government order; its key members were appointed largely by the central government. Yet when faced with a crisis of legitimacy, the chairman appeals not to an independent judicial process but to the very political executive that placed them there. It is an invitation to believe in the impartiality of those who have a direct stake in protecting the reputational capital of the temple project.

The chairman further urged that “nobody should do politics for personal gains in this matter.” But it is precisely because politics brought the issue to light that we are discussing it at all. Had Akhilesh Yadav not hinted at the theft on 7 June, and had journalists not followed it up, the trust would likely have continued its silence. The demand to keep “politics” out of the scandal is itself a political tactic—an attempt to delegitimise all questioning and to frame critics as anti-Hindu or Ram‑drohi (traitors to Ram). It is a well‑worn strategy, and it is being deployed with surgical precision.

VHP’s Selective Outrage: Interrogate the Critics, Protect the Insiders

The third letter, written by Vishva Hindu Parishad international president Alok Kumar to the Deputy Superintendent of Police, Ashutosh Tiwari, takes the manipulation to a new level. The letter demands that the police summon and interrogate:

• Prof. Ram Gopal Yadav
• Arvind Kejriwal
• Priyanka Gandhi
• Sanjay Singh

for allegedly making unsubstantiated claims about a Rs 1,000-crore loot. The letter argues that such statements could spread “hatred” and calls for action against them.

But look at the names that the VHP chief omitted—deliberately and dishonestly:

Person	Affiliation	Statement / Allegation
Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh	Sitting BJP MP (till recently) / Father of BJP MP Karan Bhushan	“In Ayodhya so much loot took place that I have not even gone for darshan till today… from the first day the game was on.”
Nripendra Mishra	Chairman, Temple Construction Committee; former Principal Secretary to PM Modi	“There has not just been theft, there has been dacoity.” - reiterated in multiple interviews.
Engineer Mahipal Singh	Affiliated to VHP / RSS ecosystem	Alleged in 2020-21 that temple offerings were being stolen; accused Anil Mishra of taking 40% commission on construction.
Kamal Nain Das	Successor designate of Mahant Nritya Gopal Das	Admitted that theft and corruption were rampant at the temple.
Vinay Katiyar	Former BJP MP	Publicly acknowledged “dishonesty and corruption” in temple affairs.

The VHP letter did not include any of these names. It did not ask the police to question Nripendra Mishra about his “dacoity” remark. It did not summon the engineer who spoke of 40% commission. It did not even acknowledge that the entire episode was first flagged internally in 2020-21. Instead, it trained its guns on the opposition, on those who dared to amplify what insiders already knew.

This is not an investigation; it is a gag order wrapped in legal language. It is an attempt to criminalise dissent while the trust’s own house burns. The true purpose of the letter is to send a chilling message: if you speak about the loot, you will be deemed a spreader of hatred and face consequences. Meanwhile, the actual perpetrators—whoever they may be—remain unnamed, unbowed, and protected.

The Grand Cover‑Up: No Press Conference, an Endlessly Extending SIT

In a functional institution, a theft of this magnitude would trigger an immediate press conference, suspension of office‑bearers, and a forensic audit. The Ram Mandir Trust has done none of these. Not a single spokesperson has faced the media. Instead, the trust has resorted to letter‑writing as a substitute for accountability, dispersing blame and buying time.

The Uttar Pradesh government initially announced that a Special Investigation Team (SIT) would separate “milk from water” within 15 days. Those 15 days expired, and the deadline was extended by another 15 days. Thirty days later, there is no public report, no interim findings, no list of suspects beyond a few low‑level employees. The Chief Minister, who visited Ayodhya on 19 June to celebrate the trust chairman’s birthday, used the occasion to declare from the stage that “people associated with the Ram Mandir were never sold” and asked the faithful to have “faith.” It was a certificate of integrity issued by a political authority to an institution under investigation—a gesture that collapses the necessary distance between the investigator and the investigated.

Contrast this with the letter of the treasurer, who writes that he was never told about the counting process. If the SIT were genuinely probing, one of its first tasks would be to establish why a statutory office‑bearer was kept in the dark, and who actually signed the cheques. Yet we hear nothing. The silence is loud.

The Older Land Scams and Commission Charges

The focus on donated cash and silver is itself a diversion. The real scandal predates the consecration. Since 2021, allegations of massive irregularities in land purchase by the trust have been raised repeatedly by Samajwadi Party leader Pawan Pandey and others. Documents show a piece of land bought for Rs 2 crore being valued at Rs 18.5 crore within minutes. The trust has never explained these transactions, nor has the SIT been tasked to probe them with the same urgency seen in anti‑corruption cases elsewhere.

Add to this the sworn statement of engineer Mahipal Singh that construction work involved a 40% commission. With an estimated total budget of Rs 2,000 crore, that would translate to Rs 800 crore in siphoned funds. And yet the VHP letter, and the trust’s entire communications strategy, studiously avoid these figures. Instead, they fixate on whether a few kilograms of silver were properly receipted—a disaster of priorities that points to a systemic effort to contain the narrative.

The Faith Gambit: Weaponising Sentiment to Shut Down Questions

The moment critical voices grow louder, a familiar semantic shift occurs. The theft of offerings is recast not as a law‑and‑order or governance failure, but as a “test of faith.” Any demand for transparency is branded an insult to Hindu sentiments. Opposition leaders who skipped the temple visit are declared unworthy of speaking on the matter. Images of them are juxtaposed with the temple to suggest they are “Ram‑drohi.”

This is the most dangerous aspect of the entire episode. When financial corruption inside a temple trust is turned into a litmus test of religious identity, the state and its proxies grant themselves a licence to ignore criminality. The public is told to “trust” the very political leadership that appointed the trust members, while those who demand proof are threatened with police interrogation. The trust, the VHP, and the ruling party are together manufacturing an environment where asking “Where is the missing money?” becomes an act of heresy.

Criticisms

• The Ram Mandir Trust functions as a closed cabal of ruling party‑affiliated figures; it has refused a single press conference, opting instead for manipulative letters that shed responsibility without naming the powerful.
• Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who personally inaugurated the temple and stood shoulder‑to‑shoulder with the very office‑bearers now under a cloud, has maintained a calculated silence, treating the theft of crore‑rupee offerings as beneath his attention.
• Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath issues pre‑emptive certificates of integrity to trust members and extends SIT deadlines indefinitely, turning a criminal investigation into a performance of administrative busyness.
• The BJP and its ideological affiliates indulge in intimidation—through letters to police threatening opponents—while ignoring the damning statements of their own insiders and former office‑bearers who have confirmed large‑scale theft and commission‑taking.
• The mainstream media, often called “godī mīḍiyā,” amplifies the diversionary narratives of the VHP, broadcasting videos of a recovered golden “Ramcharitmanas” without asking why the trust itself has not authenticated them, or why the original donors were never given receipts.
• By portraying every question about financial embezzlement as an attack on faith, the government and its ecosystem convert a criminal matter into a communal loyalty test—silencing millions of genuine devotees who have a right to know where their money and gifts vanished.

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The Exam That Failed the Nation
How 18‑Year‑Olds Exposed the Modi Government’s Education Sham

On the last Sunday of May, the Prime Minister’s Mann ki Baat filled the airwaves with tips to beat the summer heat – desi drinks, cool recipes, and the like. He spoke about nothing of exams. Nothing about the paper leaks, the blurred answer sheets, the ruined futures. And we should not be angry about that omission. Rather, we should be reassured: after 13 uninterrupted years of the same government, the examination system has remained so stubbornly dishonest and opaque that discussing it or ignoring it cannot make a difference anymore. The man had 13 years. In that time, papers leaked repeatedly, students took to the streets only to be beaten back by lathis, and still the system never mended. So exchanging summer‑drink advice for an honest conversation on exams changes nothing. The rot is complete.

The Children Who Became the Opposition

When a government loses the young, it loses its moral compass. This time, it is not the Opposition that is exposing the hollowness of the Modi dispensation – it is 18‑ and 19‑year‑olds with laptops, curiosity, and an ethical spine. Vidansh Srivastava, Sarthak Sidhant, and Nisharg Adhikari – three names that should be framed in every school – dragged the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) into the light. Vidansh was handed an answer sheet that wasn’t his own; he tweeted the evidence, and CBSE quietly corrected its mistake. Sarthak, from Ranchi, dug through the tenders and unearthed a pattern of rigged clauses that made a specific company the inevitable winner. Nisharg, a 19‑year‑old ethical hacker who never shows his face, cracked the CBSE’s digital vaults and proved that any student’s answer sheet was accessible to anyone with minimal skill. Siddharth Raylan and Anil Teerth Parmar, too, asked uncomfortable questions. This is an unprecedented moment in Indian democracy: for the first time, Class 12 students are risking their careers and peace of mind to expose a sitting government.

Think of the previous prime ministers – Jawaharlal Nehru, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, Chandra Shekhar, VP Singh, Deve Gowda, IK Gujral, PV Narasimha Rao, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Manmohan Singh. In none of their tenures did teenagers systematically strip the falsehoods off a government’s education policies. Narendra Modi is the first PM under whom 18‑year‑olds have become the de facto accountability mechanism. The response was predictably vicious: these children were called “anti‑national”, linked to Pakistan, and the tired bogeyman of George Soros was wheeled out. Yet the students responded with dignity, brushing off the smears with the maturity that the government sorely lacks.

Rahul Gandhi’s decision to invite these whistleblowers for a conversation was an act of rebellion in today’s India, where even journalists hesitate to be seen with opposition leaders. The children went to him, and he listened. The Prime Minister, on the other hand, chose to ignore them entirely – a deafening silence that speaks louder than any summer‑drink anecdote. If there was even a shred of shame, the Education Minister and the CBSE Chairperson would have been sacked instantly. But shame is a luxury this government never afforded its citizens.

The Tender Trail: How CBSE Rigged a Corporate Heist

Sarthak Sidhant’s forensic audit of CBSE tenders reads like a thriller. What he found was not an accident but a carefully scripted sequence that steered a multi‑crore contract towards a single entity – Co‑Amt (Quent Edutech). The tender documents, which he accessed and compared, tell a story of methodical weakening of safeguards. The table below, based on his blog and corroborated by independent reports, lays bare the manipulation.

Criterion	Original Tender (Aug 2025)	Revised Tender (Sep 2025)	Consequence
Turnover requirement	Rs 50 crore (FY 2021‑23)	Rs 30 crore (FY 2022‑24)	Co‑Amt, which earlier failed by 14%, now qualified with a razor‑thin margin of 1.7%
Technical experts	At least 100	Only 15	Quality control for over 1.7 lakh answer sheets was drastically diluted
Scanner type	Automatic book / robotic scanner mandatory	“Sufficient scanner”	Allowed any scanner, resulting in blurred, stapled, and folded‑paper images
Blacklist clause	Present	Removed	Co‑Amt cannot be blacklisted; only a fine can be imposed

Sarthak’s questions are damning: why was the turnover limit inflated to exclude competitors? Why did the board accept a firm that just barely scraped through? And why, as Hindustan Times journalist Sanjay Maurya reported, was the blacklist clause quietly erased from the final contract signed in September 2025 – a full two and a half months before Co‑Amt was awarded the deal? The CBSE can now only levy a penalty; it cannot bar the company. That is not negligence; that is complicity.

The Scanning Scandal: Blurred Copies and Broken Trust

The consequences of a tender written to favour a crony are now visible on thousands of screens. An Indian Express investigation (by Vidisha Kutta Malla and Shrinivas Janyala) revealed that CBSE has already identified over 5,000 scanned answer sheets that are “blurred” and unreadable. These are the copies of students who applied for re‑evaluation, only to discover that the document they paid to see was not their own. Some received sheets with a stranger’s handwriting; others found stapler pins, bent pages, and loose wires in the photographs – clear evidence that robotic scanners were never used.

Shivraj Mehta, a Class 12 student, broke down on social media after receiving an answer sheet that wasn’t his. “The handwriting is not mine. My teachers, my family – everyone who knows me is shattered,” he wrote. He is not alone. There will be countless others who couldn’t even afford the Rs 2,000 re‑evaluation fee, or who gave up in despair. CBSE has no mechanism to proactively correct these errors. The board only acts when a student screams loud enough on Twitter – and even then, it thanked “ethical hackers” without mentioning Nisharg or Siddharth by name. The erasure of individual credit is deliberate: acknowledge the flaw, bury the whistleblower.

The Financial Extortion: CBSE, the Pocket Thief

Rahul Gandhi called the CBSE a “pocket thief” (जेब कटरा), and the label sticks. When the board’s own negligence – or the outsourced company’s incompetence – produces a wrong result, why should the victim pay to verify the error? Yet students are charged up to Rs 2,000 simply to see their own scanned copies and request re‑evaluation. The Congress leader pointedly asked: if 4 lakh students demanded re‑checking, how much revenue did the CBSE pocket from its own blunders? The answer is tens of crores. Education has been converted into a lucrative business where mistakes generate profit. The government that promised “minimum government, maximum governance” has perfected minimum accountability, maximum extortion.

The human cost is unbearable. In Sikar, Rajasthan, NEET‑UG aspirant Pradeep Meghwal ended his life after a paper leak shattered his hope. Rahul Gandhi visited his family. The Education Minister was nowhere to be seen. Neither was the Prime Minister. For a man who telephones ISRO scientists and film stars, a call to a grieving mother or to the courageous student‑hackers is apparently too much to ask. The silence confirms what the 13‑year record already shows: this government views critical young citizens as adversaries, not as assets.

Media’s Double Standards: Advertising the ‘Mafia’

While the government now labels coaching centres a “mafia”, the front pages of the country’s most respected newspapers – Indian Express, The Hindu, Hindustan – are plastered daily with their advertisements. The same coaching teachers are invited as heroes on TV debates. If they are a mafia, why does the media sell space to them? The double game reveals a brutal truth: in the new India, even crime is a purchasable commodity. The fourth estate cannot excoriate a government for failure when its revenue model depends on the very ecosystem that preys on student anxiety. This is a corruption deeper than any tender: the sale of editorial integrity for a coaching centre’s full‑page ad.

A System in Disrepair: From BPSC to Sewer Exams

The CBSE scandal is not an isolated outbreak; it is the symptom of a systemic decay. The BPSC (Bihar Public Service Commission) exam for the 70th main cycle was held in December 2024. As of June 2025, interviews are still ongoing and final results haven’t been declared. An entire generation of Bihar’s youth is being held hostage by administrative apathy. In Kanpur, students appearing for a B8 exam fell into a sewer because of a broken manhole – the exam was cancelled. A country that dreams of a $5 trillion economy cannot even keep its drains covered on exam day.

Trust in examinations is eroding exactly the way trust in electoral processes has frayed. When every other day brings a paper leak, a cancellation, or a digital fiasco, what message does it send to the young? That merit is an illusion, and the system is a lottery where only the connected win. And the government’s response? A radio show about summer coolers.

Mann Ki Baat of Distraction

The Prime Minister’s address skirted the most pressing crisis in Indian education. Instead, he offered advice on what to drink in the heat. One can almost predict the next episode: tips on the correct technique to bathe, perhaps with anchorman‑style debates on whether mustard oil in the hair improves concentration. The absurd is now normal. A government that cannot tell you how a medical entrance paper got leaked can certainly tell you which indigenous beverage to sip. That is the state of the union in 2025: the Prime Minister as lifestyle influencer, while the students he ignores turn into the true opposition.

Rahul Gandhi’s meeting with the whistleblowers, his tweets, his Parliament questions – none of it receives a sliver of prime‑time coverage on the channels that beam the Prime Minister’s every breath. Yet it is the students who have forced CBSE into repeated confessions and clarifications. They have done what the opposition and the media together could not: hold power to account. The least the country can do is remember their names.

Criticisms

• The Modi government has squandered 13 years without instituting a transparent, leak‑proof examination system, betraying the trust of millions of students.
• When school children exposed CBSE’s corrupted tender process and digital vulnerabilities, the government and its supporters labelled them anti‑national and dragged in foreign conspiracy theories instead of fixing the problem.
• CBSE deliberately altered tender conditions – lowering financial and technical barriers, removing the blacklist provision – to favour a specific company, compromising the integrity of millions of answer sheets.
• The Education Minister remained invisible throughout the crisis; not a single official has been held accountable, let alone dismissed.
• Students are being charged up to Rs 2,000 to view their own incorrectly evaluated answer sheets, turning a systemic failure into a revenue stream for the board.
• The Prime Minister used his monthly address to discuss summer drinks rather than acknowledge the examination meltdown, trivialising the future of an entire generation.
• Mainstream media outlets routinely run full‑page advertisements of coaching centres while simultaneously reporting on the “coaching mafia” – a hypocrisy that reveals the commercialisation of editorial judgment.
• The government’s silence on student suicides triggered by exam‑related stress and paper leaks demonstrates a shocking absence of empathy and responsibility.
• India’s examination infrastructure, from BPSC to CBSE, has become a symbol of administrative apathy, where results are delayed indefinitely and physical safety is an afterthought.
• By refusing to even name the ethical hackers who forced CBSE to admit its lapses, the board and the government sent a clear message: whistleblowers are unwanted nuisances, not guardians of public interest.

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The Sindoor Operation: The Unpardonable Scandal of Concealing the Martyrs’ Names

A critical examination of how the Indian government traded transparency for a facade of bloodless victory — and how it deepens a pattern of national deceptiveness.

1. The Names That Took a Year to Surface

On the night of May 10, 2025, India declared a ceasefire in Operation Sindoor — the military strikes against Pakistan‑based terrorist infrastructure. Celebrations erupted. Road shows and victory rallies followed. Yet, for 13.5 months, the government remained silent about the soldiers who did not return. It was only in August 2026, when the National War Memorial in Delhi received six new names engraved on granite plaques, that the nation learnt — through a handful of newspapers — that these heroes had been killed in that very operation. The Hindu, Indian Express, India Today, and Dainik Bhaskar all reported it as a “first‑time official release”. The very phrase “first time” exposes the earlier suppression: these names had not been officially declared before.

These are the six men who made the supreme sacrifice:

Rank	Name
Subedar Major	Pawan Kumar
Rifleman	Sunil Kumar
Lance Naik	Dinesh Kumar
Agni Veer (Aviation Technician)	M. Murali Nayak
Havildar	Sunil Kumar Singh
Sergeant	Surendra Kumar

(Note: Some reports list Lance Naik’s first name as Vinesh; the official record uses Dinesh.)

2. How the System Should Work vs. What Actually Happened

The nation’s war memorial does not operate on whim. A clear, time‑tested procedure exists. The Adjutant General branches of the three services forward names of fallen personnel to the Integrated Defence Staff (IDS) headquarters. Screening committees, meeting every six months, scrutinise each case. Once approved by the Chief of Integrated Staff, the names — along with IC number, unit, and operation — are inscribed at the India Gate memorial. After the Kargil War, this entire cycle took two to three months. After Operation Sindoor, it took 13.5 months. The delay was not bureaucratic sloth; it was a deliberate attempt to bury the human cost until the government’s carefully crafted image of a casualty‑free operation had hardened into public memory.

3. A Minister’s Lie on the Floor of the House

The most damning evidence of this cover‑up is the statement made by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh in the Lok Sabha on July 28, 2025. Standing before elected representatives, he said: “No soldier was harmed during Operation Sindoor.” The treasury benches applauded. At that moment, the families of Pawan Kumar, Sunil Kumar, Dinesh Kumar, Murali Nayak, Sunil Kumar Singh, and Surendra Kumar were already mourning in private — their sons dead for 79 days. The ceasefire had been declared on May 10, 2025. The names were known within the army. So either the Defence Minister was kept in the dark by his own establishment, or he knowingly misled Parliament. Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera framed it bluntly: “Only two possibilities — either the minister did not know that six soldiers had been martyred, or he knew and lied.” Both are unacceptable for a government that wears “national security” as a permanent badge.

4. Agnipath: Inequality Even in Sacrifice

If the concealment of names is a political scandal, the treatment of Agniveer M. Murali Nayak’s family is a moral one. Nayak was not a regular soldier but an Agniveer — recruited under the short‑service Agnipath scheme. After his death, his family did not receive the same pension and welfare benefits that a regular soldier’s kin would. They were forced to approach the Bombay High Court in November 2025, pleading for equality. The government’s affidavit, filed in May 2026, stated coldly: “Agniveers and regular soldiers are not equals.” Consequently, the claim for equal post‑humous benefits was contested. This distinction drawn at the border of death is grotesque. The same government that cannot afford a martyr’s family a dignified pension lavishes multiple pensions on politicians who serve in Vidhan Sabha, Vidhan Parishad, Rajya Sabha, and Lok Sabha. The math of sacrifice has been upended: dead soldiers are ranked by their service contract, while living netas collect cheques from four legislatures.

5. Galwan: The Original Sin of Secrecy

Operation Sindoor’s cover‑up is not an aberration. It is a photocopy of what happened during the Galwan Valley clashes in 2020. In May 2020, credible reports emerged that around 5,000 Chinese troops had intruded deep into Indian territory in Ladakh. Defence journalist Ajay Shukla, writing in Business Standard and his blog ‘Broadsword’, became almost a solitary voice — he reported that Indian land had fallen into foreign hands for the first time since Kargil. For this, he was branded a “traitor” on social media and by self‑styled nationalists. The government maintained a deafening silence for over a month. Mainstream media, terrified of losing access or being labelled anti‑national, refused to touch the story.

It was only on June 9, 2020, that Rahul Gandhi, citing Shukla’s tweet, asked: “Has the Chinese army occupied Indian territory in Ladakh? Why is the PM silent?” Even then, the media dragged its feet. On June 16, 2020, the army finally acknowledged that 20 soldiers — including Colonel B. Santosh Babu — had been killed in a brutal hand‑to‑hand fight. But even that statement used the word “killed”, not “martyred” or “shaheed”. The names were released piecemeal. For two months, the nation banged plates on balconies to cheer the government, while the same government hid the loss of territory and the bodies of its soldiers. The pattern was set.

6. The Deafening Silence of Mainstream Media

Contrast this with how American media operated during the Trump administration’s military confrontations with Iran. When the US killed General Qasem Soleimani, news organisations relentlessly questioned the administration, demanded evidence, and ran story after story even as Trump claimed victories. In India, after the Galwan disaster, the loudest news channels — the ones that scream patriotism daily — did not ask a single tough question. The same happened after Operation Sindoor. When six jawans died, the headlines preferred the tone of celebration. Even now, as the names emerged after 13.5 months, there was no primetime debate on Rajnath Singh’s parliamentary falsehood. The Defence Minister himself did not tweet a clarification for hours. The silence from his office was a message: the media will not hold us to account, so why bother?

7. Trump’s Revelation and Our Government’s Mute Response

Another unexplained thread hangs over Operation Sindoor. In a public address to the US Congress, former President Donald Trump claimed that Prime Minister Modi had asked him to mediate between India and Pakistan. The Indian government instantly denied any such request, but it never challenged Trump’s authority or provided a detailed rebuttal. More importantly, the wider question of what exactly unfolded during those May 2025 strikes remains unanswered. How many Indian Air Force aircraft were lost? Was there a Chinese role in jamming or shooting them down? Why were the injured soldiers’ numbers never released? The government hides behind “operational sensitivity”, yet it conveniently allows victory posters and road shows to use the imagery of the forces. Transparency is offered only when it feeds the political narrative; the rest is smothered.

8. The Age of Manufactured Darkness

There is a strange, creeping numbness. When news broke of a theft at the Ram Mandir, large sections of the populace declared, “Modiji will not let anything go wrong,” as if a divine shield protected a single leader from all failure. When soldiers die at the border and the information is withheld, the same public is conditioned to not ask, to not feel. The government has turned the citizenry into passive recipients of curated triumph. We have become so accustomed to darkness that any demand for light is treated as sedition. Maybe the final step is to cut the electricity supply permanently; then we shall never complain again. This is not governance; it is the systematic manufacture of ignorant consent, and it is eating into the soul of the republic.

9. Criticisms

• The Modi government deliberately withheld the names of six martyrs for 13.5 months to sell a false narrative of a bloodless Operation Sindoor.
• Rajnath Singh lied to Parliament when he claimed no soldier was harmed — an act that erodes the very foundation of democratic accountability.
• The Agnipath scheme institutionalises a second‑class soldier status, and the government’s affidavit proving inequality in death is a moral disgrace.
• From Galwan to Sindoor, the government has perfected the art of weaponised silence, prioritising Prime Minister Modi’s personal image over national security transparency.
• Mainstream Indian media has abandoned its watchdog role, choosing to amplify government propaganda rather than ask the hard questions that a democracy requires.
• Politicians who draw multiple pensions while a martyr’s family fights in court for basic benefits represent a corrosive inequality that this government not only tolerates but defends.
• The suppression of operational details — aircraft losses, injuries, Chinese involvement — treats the public as undeserving of truth, reducing national pride to a hollow spectacle.
• The delay in releasing martyrs’ names is not inefficiency; it is a premeditated strategy to control the narrative and shield the government from uncomfortable scrutiny.

10. A Light Cut Off by Design

The six names that finally found their place on the National War Memorial are not just entries on granite. They are an indictment of a government that fears the truth more than it respects the fallen. The nation deserved to mourn Subedar Major Pawan Kumar, Rifleman Sunil, Lance Naik Dinesh, Agni Veer Murali, Havildar Sunil Singh, and Sergeant Surendra when they fell — not over a year later as a reluctant afterthought. Until we, as a society, demand accountability for these silences, the darkness will only deepen. And the next casualty will be democracy itself.

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Pelted by Eggs, Protected by Silence: The Incredible Shrinking Space for India’s Opposition

There is a right time to speak in a democracy. It is not when the microphones are friendly or when applause is guaranteed. The right time arrives when you feel that speaking might cost you your life, that a mob might set your house on fire, and that those around you are too scared to even whisper. It arrives when the so-called loudest voices are merely filling their bellies, tweeting ritual condemnations and moving on to the next tweet before anyone notices. It arrives precisely when you realize that neither the law nor the government will shield you—in fact, the government might just clobber you for daring to raise your voice. That is the moment to speak. And it is exactly in such a moment that you should looked at the timeline of Mahua Moitra, the Member of Parliament from Krishnanagar, on the first of July. What you see there is not merely the frantic scrambling of a cornered politician; it is a document of how a democracy deserts its elected representatives.

Mahua Moitra did not whimper. She screamed, tagging Indian ‘Godi’ channels by name, demanding they change their false headlines—she was not part of any raid, she insisted; it was BJP goons who had attacked her office. She screamed that the police stood watching the spectacle for four full hours. She tagged The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, the BBC, Al Jazeera, the Financial Times—pleading with the world to see what was unfolding in Bengal: a mob, wearing the face of the ruling party’s enforcers, lynching an opposition MP with eggs and abuse while the state stood still. She tagged the BJP’s national president, the state president, and the country’s Home Minister. When we checked, the Home Minister had written nothing. No news emerged that he had taken cognizance or promised action. Moitra then tagged Inter-Parliamentary organisations, the West Bengal police chief, named BJP leaders Bapan Ghosh and Kali Das Pal, released their videos, accused them of incitement. She tagged the Speaker of the Lok Sabha, Om Birla, and wrote that the opposition MP received no protection from his office. There is no reply from the Speaker on her timeline. For hours, a sitting Member of Parliament performed the police’s work herself—identifying over sixteen individuals, tagging the police, pleading. It was the thrashing of someone drowning, a hand flailing in every direction before the water pulls her under.

The Speech That Asked for an Inch

Why should you scroll that timeline? Because it will make you understand your own fear. In these ten years, you have become a coward. But Mahua Moitra, standing before the very mob that pelted her with eggs, holding her party’s flag, did not flinch. In any other country, such an image would turn an opposition leader into a hero. In India, the Godi media no longer admires such scenes; its job is to turn the opposition into a villain, never a hero. You must recall her maiden speech in the Lok Sabha, 2019. She was 44, freshly elected from Krishnanagar. The BJP had won 303 seats under Prime Minister Modi, and the 67% who did not vote for the ruling party were beginning to lose hope. Moitra stood up and, wrapping her words in history, asked for “one inch of space” for those 67%—a small, dignified corner to speak and be heard. That speech, barely ten-and-a-half minutes long, went viral. People who were watching the vehicle of democracy break down but were too afraid to speak found a voice. She said, “I have struggled to achieve one inch of space.” Today, that same MP had eggs hurled at her, was cornered by a mob, and the inch turned into a millimetre of survival. The features of unchecked authoritarianism she had warned about—where dissent is denied even a millimetre—are now her daily reality.

The Anatomy of Mob and Machine

On the surface, what happened on July 1 is simple: a crowd of alleged BJP supporters gathered outside Moitra’s office, shouted slogans, threw eggs, and held her captive for hours while the police stood idle. But those four hours are a precise dissection of power. Moitra was not caught in a spontaneous outburst of public anger. She was targeted in a choreographed operation where the state machinery either collaborated or acquiesced. The video evidence shows her, surrounded, without security, forced to show her injuries to the camera—a woman MP stripped of the most basic protection that her office should guarantee. It is an assault on her political rights as much as on her personal dignity. And yet, the large portion of India’s political and media establishment responded with a colossal shrug.

Consider the response from the Bengal BJP. State minister Arjun Singh declared that once upon a time Bengal echoed with bombs and bullets; now the sound of eggs had replaced them, and the police had no metal detector to catch an egg in a pocket. He added that those who once threw stones and bombs were now afraid of eggs. Another leader, Shamik Bhattacharya, said breezily that the law has no specific section against egg-throwing, as if the entire criminal machinery depends on whether the weapon is listed in the penal code. “The egg is small, how can police search every pocket?” he asked. This is the voice of a ruling party in a state where the Centre’s writ looms large—mocking the victim, trivialising the violence, and inventing an alibi of helplessness.

The ‘Public Anger’ Charade: A Tale of Two Protests

We are told repeatedly that the egg-throwers represent “angry public.” Let us examine this public anger with a scalpel. If public anger automatically translates into mob violence, then every pocket of India should be covered in egg yolk. Look at Varanasi. In 2019, Prime Minister Narendra Modi won by a margin of over 4.89 lakh votes. In 2024, that margin collapsed to just about 1.52 lakh votes. That is a staggering 3.37-lakh erosion in a single constituency. The people of Varanasi, by all democratic measures, were deeply angry with their MP. Did they surround his office, pelt eggs, or force him to show his back? They simply cast their vote and stepped aside. Ayodhya, after the Ram Mandir inauguration and the subsequent revelations about land deals and alleged temple trust irregularities, voted out the BJP candidate in 2024. Did the angry citizens of Ayodhya form a mob outside Champat Rai’s residence? There is no FIR against Rai, no egg mark on his kurta. The public that is furious about paper leaks, unemployment, and inflation has not once marched to a BJP office and showered it with breakfast items. That ‘public’ remains miraculously restrained—until the target is an opposition MP. The violence in Bengal, therefore, is not a democratic overflow. It is a selective weapon.

Location / Incident	Target	Nature of Protest	Response by Authorities	BJP's Public Narrative
Varanasi (2024 reduced margin)	PM Narendra Modi	Electoral verdict (no street violence)	No security breach	Democratic mandate respected
Ayodhya (land scam allegations)	Champat Rai, BJP	No mob protests	No FIR filed	Denials, no outrage
West Bengal (July 1 egg attack)	Mahua Moitra (TMC MP)	Mob egg-pelting, four-hour siege	Police stand by, minimal FIRs	"Public anger", "TMC infighting"

Every time an opposition leader is humiliated in this manner, the BJP deploys the phrase “TMC vs TMC” — as if the hands pelting eggs belong to some internal feud. The language is deliberate: if you call them goons, people will ask why the police did not stop them. So you don’t call them goons. You pretend they are just an amorphous public quarrel. The term “goonda” would make the state’s failure unignorable, so the official vocabulary strips the attackers of agency and pins the blame on the victim’s own party. This is not a slip of the tongue. It is a rhetorical shield manufactured to protect the real orchestrators.

The Court Watches, The Mob Laughs

The Calcutta High Court, dealing with a PIL about eggs being thrown at accused leaders being taken to court, had earlier pulled up the police. Chief Justice T.S. Sivagnanam (as he was then) and Justice Hiranmay Bhattacharyya observed that police personnel themselves were getting soiled by eggs, and the state was doing little. “You are shaming the entire force,” the court remarked, adding that guidelines must be framed to protect the dignity and life of anyone in custody. The court asked the state’s Additional Advocate General what concrete steps were being taken. A few arrests were mentioned. The court warned that if the mob one day does something more drastic, what then? That “something more” nearly materialised when the mob cornered Moitra. Supreme Court guidelines on mob lynching lie on paper, fat and toothless. And the mob knows this—they laugh at the law because the law, in practice, has chosen to laugh with them.

A Pattern of Silencing the Opposition

This was not an isolated egg. Trinamool Congress’s national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee has been targeted with eggs and brickbats earlier. A CCTV video released by him shows a helmeted youth calmly picking up a stone and hurling it at his residence. Before that, he was attacked on May 30. The police arrested five people then, but the sense of impunity is so thick that another stone-thrower returned. Kunal Ghosh, Kalyan Banerjee, Kirti Azad—the list of TMC leaders who have been hounded, their houses attacked, their movements restricted, is growing. The message is unspoken but clear: if you are with Mamata Banerjee, if you are in the opposition, stepping out of your home is a gamble. Your life can be made unbearably difficult. You are not being silenced by a law; you are being silenced by a carefully modulated street terror that the state refuses to recognise as terror. This is a campaign designed to make opposition impossible before the next electoral battle begins.

A Woman MP, But Without the ‘Women’ Shield

There is a special cruelty in how the category of ‘woman’ vanishes when the woman in question belongs to the opposition. Moitra was forced to lift her garment and show her back to the camera. If that is not an attack on the dignity of a woman, what is? Yet the outrage that normally floods social media when a woman is humiliated—the candles, the hashtags, the parliamentarians thumping desks—remained absent. Prime Minister Modi, who often speaks of ‘nari shakti’ and the nation’s reverence for women, issued no statement. The Home Minister said nothing. The Lok Sabha Speaker, who is the guardian of every MP’s privilege, was silent. The only bustle came from those defending the eggs. Even the assault on the daughter of SP chief Akhilesh Yadav, trolled viciously after the Ram Mandir scam exposure, drew at least a belated public stand from UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. In Moitra’s case, the hum of silence is the government’s verdict.

The Real Threat Is the Cowardice We Have Accepted

Why should this matter to you, sitting far from Bengal? Because the shrinking of space does not happen in one state alone. It happens inside you. The fear that stops you from speaking about the Ram Mandir land-grab, about ethanol being forced on you, about the paper leaks ruining your children’s futures—that fear has been methodically injected over a decade. Mahua Moitra’s timeline is a mirror. Look at it and you will see your own growing cowardice. It is not a complaint; it is a diagnosis. The people pelting eggs are not the real danger. The real danger is the officers sitting on cushioned chairs, the honourable persons occupying constitutional posts, who have found a hundred ways to frame, frighten, and silence you. They have outsourced the dirty work to eggs and mobs while they maintain a facade of legality. The egg is innocent; it should stick to being boiled, scrambled, fried, or masala-omeletted. The coup against democracy is being carried out by men in power, not by the breakfast on the street.

Criticisms

• The Modi government has nurtured a political ecosystem where organized mobs are permitted to physically intimidate elected opposition representatives with near-total impunity.
• Home Minister Amit Shah’s complete silence after the assault on a woman MP demonstrates that law and order is a selective instrument, activated only when it suits the ruling party.
• BJP state leaders Arjun Singh and Shamik Bhattacharya trivialized the egg attack as mere “breakfast from the public,” normalizing political violence and mocking the victim.
• The West Bengal police, operating under a state where the Centre wields significant influence, stood idle for four hours, thereby actively enabling the mob and undermining public trust.
• Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla failed in his constitutional duty to safeguard an MP, offering neither protection nor even a token statement, thus degrading the dignity of the House.
• Mainstream television channels, especially those notoriously labeled ‘Godi media,’ distorted the incident to fit the narrative of “public anger,” effectively acting as amplifiers for the mob’s script.
• The transformation of egg-throwing into a recurring political weapon reflects a deliberate strategy to intimidate opponents without triggering conventional legal accountability.
• The government’s rhetoric of “angry public” is a dishonest cover; no comparable mobs ever target BJP figures despite proven public discontent in Varanasi, Ayodhya, and elsewhere.
• Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who frequently invokes women’s dignity and empowerment, remained conspicuously mute, exposing the deep partisan nature of his concern for ‘nari shakti.’
• The systematic targeting of Trinamool Congress leaders — Abhishek Banerjee, Kunal Ghosh, Kalyan Banerjee, and others — suggests a coordinated campaign to physically disable the opposition before elections, orchestrated with the collusion of the state apparatus.

At the close of this video, Mahua Moitra stands amidst the din, a flag in her hand. A journalist asks her if she is running away. “Are you running away?” — the question itself indicts the times. Had that mob entered the building, we know what could have happened. The women who used to fill the streets of India before 2014 to protest atrocities now step out only after checking the party flag of the victim. This is not the disappearance of one MP’s safety. It is the vanishing of a democracy’s last inch. Watch the video, understand your own dread, and at least tell a friend — not the name of those you fear, but that you are terrified. Because the eggs will spoil and wash off, but the fear, if not named, will become the very air you breathe.