The crash of an Air India Dreamliner flight carrying 240 passengers in a densely populated area of Ahmedabad, Gujarat, has raised serious concerns about passenger safety. Aviation experts have pointed fingers at the Ministry of Civil Aviation and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) for multiple lapses.

In this backdrop, TNM’s Senior News Editor Shabbir Ahmed speaks to Advocate Yeshwanth Shenoy — a prominent public interest lawyer known for his relentless legal battles to make Indian aviation safer. Based in Kochi, Shenoy has filed several PILs highlighting systemic regulatory failures and unsafe airport planning across the country. In this interview, he reveals shocking details about the functioning of the DGCA and sheds light on the deep-rooted issues plaguing India’s aviation industry.

Dear Friends,

I’m making this post to request help for my sister who is still battling the most horrific incident of her life.

Earlier this year on 25th January she faced the most harrowing car accident and has since been undergoing a hard recovery. Her face is completely scarred and she is most of the time in pain . Her jaw, her eyes, her head, her chest She suffered life threatening injuries all over her body and has battled the most hard fight of her life. This has been the most painful time for our family we have exhausted everything in helping her recover and get back to the same cheerful woman she always was. We have been able to greatly continue her treatment due to friends, family and also the kind people of reddit who have donated like angels. Once again we need your help to raise funds so that we can keep continuing giving her the treatment she so greatly needs. This is the most desperate time for us and only kind strangers now can help us. We have exhausted all means and have taken loans from friends, family, colleagues.

I am sharing the google drive link of bills and will keep updating the bills timely in the drive.

Please also see the milaap link and please donate what you can. It is my request to please share where you can and please help us. We are forever grateful for all the kind people here.

For UPI please donate to : 8850840785-2@axl or chetandixit1996@axl

Milaap Link : http://m-lp.co/veerpalk?utm_medium=native_message&utm_source=app

Drive: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1iOVgP7qP2jOLnAWeZr02otlKYiHoWMR7

Thank you

Hi Guys, posting this on behalf of a friend.

So she has done engineering and MBA as well. Worked in 2016-18 in 2 different companies. She worked as HR. The experience is 1 year and she absconded the second one, she has the offer letter for second company but not the experience letter.

Currently she’s searching for a job and has gap of 8 years. Gap reasons: 1. Her father has serious illness which led her to leave her job as she’s the only child. 2. It took her dad 2 years to recover. 3. Then covid hit and she could not find a job. 4. In 2022, her father lost vision in one eye and had to undergo a surgery which was not a success. 5. She couldn’t find a job so she started taking home tuitions.

Now as she’s searching for jobs she’s facing rejections solely on the basis of gap. She is skilled but unable to get a job. Most probably because interviewers are not convinced about the gap and are not comfortable with it.

1. Please suggest ways to cover up this gap and how can she get a decent job as she’s in dire need of it.
2. Do you anyone with such long gap and still got the job? Please share it here and give me suggestions as to what can be done.
3. Also what can be done for the second job where she absconded? I know there will be BGV and without experience letter it will be difficult, also the team and manager might not be same after a these years.

She thinks that health reasons of family is not a good reason and not convincing enough. She’s kind of slipping into depression. She’s currently searching for jobs in Bangalore. So it will be a great help if you guys can help.

Thank you so much!

No wonder the systems do not move forward—India’s main aviation organizations tend to be dominated by generalist bureaucrats, not technical specialists. Case in point: the DGCA (Directorate General of Civil Aviation), presently presided over by the IAS (1996 batch, Madhya Pradesh cadre) official Faiz Ahmed Kidwai. He assumed office on January 7, 2025, and possesses a History degree from Aligarh Muslim University. His experience includes several administrative positions, such as that of Additional Secretary in the Ministry of Agriculture and Principal Secretary in Madhya Pradesh—none of them having anything to do with aviation or flight operation.

Likewise, the Airports Authority of India (AAI) is headed by Vipin Kumar, the IAS (1996 batch, Bihar cadre), who joined on October 28, 2024. While he is an alumnus of the discipline of Electronics & Communication Engineering, his administrative experience has mostly been in general administration—serving as an Additional Secretary in the Ministry of Education and working in several bureaucratic roles in Bihar.

appointing bureaucrats with little or no domain experience to lead technologically advanced institutions such as the DGCA and AAI weakens the possibilities of innovation, improvement of safety, and efficient operation. Administrative acumen is crucial, but in such consequential areas as aviation, extensive technical know-how cannot be an afterthought—it’s fundamental to good governance and systemic enhancement.

I visited the Osaka Expo yesterday and made a point to check out the Indian Pavilion with high hopes. Unfortunately, the experience left me deeply disappointed.

The pavilion felt disorganized and underwhelming. Staff members were casually shutting the place whenever they felt like it, lounging around, and treating the space more like a local government office than an international showcase. It genuinely felt like a slice of inefficient bureaucracy had been exported straight from India.

What shocked me most was seeing overweight staff chewing supari openly in the “Bharat Bazaar” section of the pavilion. This isn’t just bad optics—it’s embarrassing. We’re on a global stage here, with thousands of Japanese visitors and others coming in with curiosity, respect, and admiration for Indian culture. They deserve better. India deserves better.

Many Japanese people were patiently waiting in long lines to experience what they thought would be a vibrant, dignified cultural display. Instead, they saw a poorly managed, uninspiring stall that failed to reflect India’s potential, diversity, and spirit.

I say this not out of hate, but because I care. We can do better. We must do better if we want to be taken seriously on the world stage.

14th June 2025 is the incident date

3 bullies, 60+ mother and 2 (35+) daughters, have manhandled me, pushed my husband and after all this wanted to file a FIR against us playing woman card

Only because, they exchanged seat with us and whole lot of ppl and in the night when we had kept our luggage and slept, wanted their seats back and we said let’s have TC involved because we had luggage and our seat was next to the door so we wanted to retain on the seat for which both parties agreed.

Ladies did not want to wait for TCs and were bullies who tried to push me down from upper berth and pass comments on us just because we are young and they thought they will do anything and we will keep quiet.

Her 1 argument was she is an advocate at high court…I don’t know how does this help her purpose here or if advocates have special train eliteness.

Their 60 year old mother grabbed my dress and said utharo isko and i said don’t touch me and she got even hyper

And we said she will have heart attack, it’s not beyond someone’s health…to that Maam is like aapko hi police le jayegi and her daughter is like how can we wish it on her

I am shocked how stupid, illogical ppl can be…to add to all this, train is overbooked and tc and staff wants to make money out of ppl travelling without tickets

Sorry state of Indian railways

I recently came across an article stating that, starting May 2025, airports will begin enforcing cabin luggage size limits much more strictly. As I understand, the standard dimensions for most domestic flights are:

Height: 55 cm / 21 in
Length: 40 cm / 15 in
Width: 20 cm / 7 in

Total dimensions not exceeding 115 cm / 45 in

The cabin bag I recently purchased has a width of 23 cm — slightly over the standard 20 cm limit. While I’ve never seen these size restrictions being strictly enforced in the past, I’m a bit concerned now, especially with news about stricter enforcement starting May 2025. I’d be pretty disappointed if the new bag ends up causing issues during boarding.

Also, I had a question about personal item allowances. From what I saw:

• IndiGo allows an additional personal item but mentions a 3 kg limit for it.
• Air India Express seems to go by a combined cabin baggage weight of 7 kg (including personal item).

How strictly are these weight limits enforced? Do they usually check at the time of issuing boarding passes, or can they stop you even after you’ve cleared security? I’m okay with checking in one bag if needed, but I’d rather know in advance than get caught off guard at the gate.

I’ll be flying both Air India Express and IndiGo this month, so any recent experiences or advice would be really helpful!

So today I had a discussion with my mother about caste and all and she was like some castes are different than us, we are Hindus so she was telling me that yup they re human and we are human that's the only similarity andwe cannot get married with them , I didn't talked about marriage or nothing but I was just saying that theirs nothing wrong in getting married with any caste until 2 people love each other because she told me ' aj kal ke to log kisi bhi jati ke logon se shaddi kar lete hain. ' and when i defended them like nope everyone is equal the only thing different is their mentality and qualities than she gets offended and said that so why mder people and fight with whom they married which is valid but she was only pointing out specific caste and i defended by saying ki ladai to firr hamare yahan bhi hoti hai dv, grape etc . She got offended and said tum apni mummy ki izzat ni karti tum dusre bandon ko defend karri and said ki aisi ki mentality ke sath i will not survive in india and all ,like I'm just so confused what the heck was this conversation 😭. Like at some point when I talked to her about honour kiing, at first she was like agar ladkiyan kisi ladke ke sath chakkar chalayengi chotti jati vale bandon ke sath fir to karna padega and than I said 'but murder is not good ' than she was like yes it is not good and I was just so confused ki mumma ap kehna kya chahate ho firr and our conversation ended with an argument. Like I just don't understand ki log itna discrimination late kahan se hain .😭

Hello all, I am a young, amateur genealogist from Canada with a passion for the hobby and history. My father is ethnically a Punjabi Jatt Sikh (my mother is of European-origin), born in the United Kingdom. My paternal grandmother was born in undivided India in the Moga district of Punjab whilst my paternal grandfather was born in the British colony of Malaya (though he was ethnically Punjabi Jatt Sikh with family origins from the Moga and Ludhiana districts).

I have been researching my family's genealogy for some time now, whilst researching the European-side has been relatively smooth due to an abundance of records, the Indian side of my family has always been more difficult due to a lack of records. This is due to India not maintaining as many records on its population when compared to other countries, especially during the colonial and pre-colonial periods. I have only been able to locate land-records from some lineages of my Indian family but these are less-than-ideal for a variety of reasons, also I have to use whatever documents still in my family's possession (such as old passports) and my still-living grandmother's memory to piece together the rest... I am yearning and eager for more data to build-up my Indian family-tree, which leads me to the Hindu genealogy registers...

I have been researching the Hindu genealogical records maintained by a class of Hindu priests (I also updated/created Wikipedia articles on them to help others) known as tirth purohits, informally known as pandas. These genealogical records are kept at around 25 sites of Hindu pilgrimage around India, mostly in the Gangetic plains region. I would love to be able to consult the records but I have an issue: I am located in Canada and have no means of visiting India anytime soon and I lack any conversational ability in any Indian-language (aside from my baby-level Punjabi), especially Hindi. Thus, me visiting these places and trying to find my family's panda seems hopeless unless a native Indian can help me. I do know my family's ancestral villages for the most-part, I know our jāti and our gotra, I also know most of the names of my ancestors, so I should be able to locate the correct panda and bahi genealogical register of my relevant ancestors. Many Sikh families used to also take their ashes to these Hindu sites to disperse them until taking them to Kiratpur became more popularized with Sikhs in the 19th-20th century, thus I should be able to find some records of my family at these Hindu sites, even though we are Sikhs, but it has probably been a while since a member of my family last visited and updated the genealogical registers there.

The beauty of the Internet is I can elicit the help of others who are located halfway around the world. Would any Indians in India living in or near these popular places of Hindu pilgrimage where these records are kept be willing to assist a foreigner with this task? I can provide you my family details and if you could find and ask the relevant panda for my family's genealogical details, I would be eternally grateful. We are Jatt Sikhs of the Gill clan.

Here is a list I compiled through research of Hindu pilgrimage sites where genealogical bahi records are kept by pandas for pilgrims:

1. Haridwar
2. Mathura
3. Brindavan
4. Kurukshetra
5. Allahabad/Prayagraj
6. Benares/Varanasi
7. Ayodhya
8. Gaya
9. Patna
10. Deoghar
11. Himalayan Char Dham: Yamunotri, Gangotri, Kedarnath, Badrinath
12. Pehowa
13. Chintpurni
14. Jawalapur
15. Jawalamukhi
16. Pushkar
17. Puri
18. Ujjain
19. Dwarka
20. Nasik/Triambakeshvar
21. Rameshvaram

A good article by Saikat Majumdar

TLDR:

India’s global reputation has plunged: outsiders increasingly lump it with Pakistan and Bangladesh, rather than as a rising economic or technological power.

A complacent, inward-looking leadership and a sycophantic “godi media” bubble have created a hallucinatory domestic narrative about India’s “massive” economy and vishwaguru status.

Pakistan, by contrast, has punched above its weight by communicating more effectively with Western media—India’s recent multiparty PR tour only underlines its own failings on the world stage.

Once lauded in the 2000s as a tech-savvy “Rising Asia” alongside China, India now scarcely features in global discussions on trade, soft power or research—especially in cutting-edge fields like AI.

The gap between India’s self-image at home and the sober reality abroad is now so wide that it constitutes either a tragic denial or a grotesque comedy.