Arthashastra (अर्थशास्त्र)

Monsoon crosses Himalayas/Source: IMD On a pale September morning in 2025, the skies offered an image no climatologist expected. Satellite frames showed moisture from the southwest monsoon climbing the ridges of Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and Ladakh — not halting at the Himalayan divide but slipping into the Tibetan Plateau. For a moment, the mountains that have long held the monsoon captive seemed to falter. The sight was first noticed by Manish Mehta, glaciologist at the Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology, while examining early September maps. “Moisture appears to have crossed over to Tibet,” he said, his caution matched only by the significance of the claim. Schematic: Southwest Monsoon Moisture Crossing the Himalayas Scientists Urge Caution No one rushed to announce a climatic revolution. Raghu Murtugudde, climate scientist at IIT Bombay and the University of Maryland, noted: “We have to be careful about inferring moisture transport based on such images. Strong advection into...

Symbol of resistance: The Nepali flag bleeding in 2025, reflecting the struggles and sacrifices of a protesting generation/Image created using AI In Kathmandu, the heart beats twice: once for the mountains, and once for the children who leave them. In 2024, those children sent home eleven billion dollars in remittances—money that became rice in a bowl, a school uniform, a hospital bed. It was not wealth, but survival. Survival spoke through WhatsApp calls from Qatar, Viber messages from Seoul, Facebook photos from Malaysia. So when Nepal’s government banned twenty-six social media platforms in September 2025, it did not merely silence dissent. It severed the threads of daily life. A mother in Pokhara who waits each evening for her son’s voice suddenly heard only silence. A father in Dhangadhi, eager to show his grandson’s first steps through a flickering video call, found the screen frozen. Overnight, the distance between loved ones became infinite. That is why the protests erupted...