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Just 11% of organisations in South Asia describe themselves as fully or very prepared for water-related supply-chain risks , according to a new report from ACCA (the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants). The finding, released in the week before the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP31), exposes a significant preparedness gap as extreme weather intensifies pressure on production, transport, and access to critical resources across the region.

  Returning from the United States on October 30—less than a week before the outcome of one of the world’s most closely watched elections—it seemed clear to me that the Indian diaspora had little love left for President Donald Trump . What I observed on the ground felt like a total reversal of Prime Minister Narendra Modi ’s 2019 pitch to NRIs in Houston: " Abki baar, Trump sarkar ."

Cyberattackers grew faster and harder to detect in 2025, increasingly slipping through trusted systems rather than breaking in with obvious malware, claims U.S.-based  cybersecurity technology company CrowdStrike's 2026 Global Threat Report . The report says adversaries "grew more evasive than ever before," exploiting trust in supply chain partners, legitimate software, internal systems and employees. CrowdStrike now tracks 281 adversaries after naming 24 new ones in 2025, plus 150 activity clusters and emerging threat groups.

  A new study by the Indian School of Business (ISB) warns that the proposed Merchant Discount Rate (MDR) framework for UPI transactions could inadvertently reverse digital payment adoption among India’s street vendors, pushing them back toward cash-based transactions and threatening recent gains in financial inclusion.

A groundbreaking new ethnographic study published by Cambridge University Press is challenging optimistic narratives about rural democratic empowerment in India. In "Democracy against Equality: Caste, Institutions and Power in Postcolonial Punjab", Nicolas Martin, Associate Professor of Modern Indology/South Asian Studies at the University of Zurich, argues that formal democratic mechanisms are frequently co-opted by rural elites to perpetuate, rather than dismantle, deep-seated systemic inequality.

  Asbestos , a substance known to cause cancer, has been detected in 60 per cent of rangoli powder samples tested in a laboratory in South Korea, raising concerns about the safety of products used during Diwali and other festivals. Indian samples recorded particularly high contamination rates, according to an investigation released by environmental and public health organisations.