The Latest Breaking News from IndiaSpend

For 15 years, Binita and Mridul Buragohain built their pig farm in Betbari village, starting with two pigs and slowly expanding to a herd of 75. In October last year, one of their pigs fell ill, and five others died soon after from African Swine Fever (ASF). The rest had…

By the end of last year, 16 major Indian datasets were delayed across sectors such as health, education, economy, environment, and demography as IndiaSpend reported in 2024. Ten of these have since been released.

In March 2025, the Ministry of Railways had stated that most of its divisions maintain “over 90% punctuality”. Behind the headline figure lies the everyday reality of passengers, with the punctuality index actually declining. Reliance on diesel locomotives, signal failures and congestion lead to most delays, data show and experts say.

Indian roads are increasingly becoming more dangerous for its most vulnerable users, an IndiaSpend analysis of national data shows. In a decade to 2023, road accident deaths increased 24 percent to about 173,000, but pedestrian deaths nearly tripled, those of two-wheeler riders nearly doubled, and cyclist deaths rose 13 percent.

There is an uneasy calm in Kuradiphasa village at the foothills of the Gandhamardhan Hills. “It is the calm before the storm,” says Himanjali Das, who belongs to the indigenous Kondh tribe.

On a cloudy afternoon, CH Padmini, in her mid 20s, strolls along the Rushikulya beach, lost in memories. A group of fishermen mending nets exchange greetings in Telugu as she walks by. She stops close to the water, where a fishing boat is tied up.

When Asif Khan was arrested in Belgaum in October 2006 in connection to the Mumbai blasts in July of that year, he did not think it would be the beginning of a 19-year prison ordeal involving physical torture, terrorism allegations and “mental torture”.

Eleven years after India launched the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, the Union government’s flagship rural sanitation programme, it has missed its target of ‘Sampoorn Swachhata’ by 2024-25, exposing gaps in waste management, untreated sewage, and behavioural change that challenge the sustainability of India’s sanitation progress.

Dowry-related crimes in India are routinely underreported and undercounted, an IndiaSpend analysis of government data and various studies shows. This reflects in official data as well. National crime data show that several states routinely report hundreds of dowry deaths but few or no cases under the dowry harassment law. In 2022 for…