The Science Editor of The Hindu says that Monday’s failure of ISRO’s PSLV rocket is a major setback and a very big blow to the organization. He agrees that it raises worrying questions about the reliability of the PSLV rocket which is ISRO’s workhorse. In an interview to Karan Thapar for The Wire, Vasudevan Mukunth raised questions about the functioning of ISRO Chairman V. Narayanan and ISRO’s lack of transparency during his tenure. He made this point in connection with the fact that this is the second successive back-to-back PSLV rocket failure. The earlier one was in May 2025. On both occasions the problem occurred during the third stage of the flight when the rocket was attempting to get into orbit around the earth. However, the Failure Analysis Committee investigation report into the May 2025 failure has not been made public. It was submitted to the Prime Minister’s Office but has not been released from there. This means that independent experts have not been able to review and analyse the findings. In turn, that has led to questions being asked whether there is something in the failure analysis report that is being hidden from the Indian public.

In an interview where he seeks to explain the many reasons why Bangladeshis have reservations about India as well as the historical character of Hindu-Muslim relations within Bangladesh, the former CEO of Prasar Bharati and former Trinamool Congress Rajya Sabha MP, Jawhar Sircar, has called for India to moderate the anti-Bangladeshi fury sweeping through the country and to “refrain from reacting to every provocation” from Bangladesh.

Sircar argues that the anti-Bangladeshi fury in India is playing into the hands of extremists and fundamentalists in Bangladesh. In this context, he points out that the decision to force Kolkata Knight Riders to drop Mustafizur Rahman was completely mistaken and wrong. It overlooked the fact that Rahman is an icon and hero for Bangladeshis and in no way responsible for the mistreatment of Hindus in that country. Now, he says, this will encourage ordinary Bangladeshis to turn against India.

India’s former Ambassador to Venezuela, who has also served as High Commissioner to Sri Lanka and the United Kingdom and, subsequently, as Chief Information Commissioner, says that Trump’s action in Venezuela to kidnap and spirit away the country’s President and his wife was “a brilliantly executed military operation”. Yashvardhan Sinha adds that “the Venezuelan military was caught flat-footed”. However, Sinha declined to say that the US has become a rogue superpower under Trump, even though in recent weeks it has carried out air strikes over Iran, Syria and Nigeria, repeatedly threatened to takeover Greenland, cast covetous eyes on Panama and is now threatening Colombia, Cuba and Mexico.

In sharp criticism of the Supreme Court’s decision to deny bail to Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam, lawyer and former President of the Supreme Court Bar Association Dushyant Dave has called the decision “completely wrong”.

Dave says its “really flawed both in facts and law”. He says the two judges have done a disservice to themselves as well as to the Supreme Court. He says increasingly in India, judges are afraid to give bail.

In sharp and focused criticism of the government’s new rural employment scheme, which he says is mistaken and misleadingly called a guarantee, Nikhil Dey, a founder member of the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan, says it has “completely demolished the idea of a rural employment guarantee scheme”.

It's time for our end-of-year tradition, an interview where Karan Thapar is the interviewee and is toughly or teasingly questioned by an interviewer we have invited on the show. On this occasion the guest interviewer is the highly popular YouTuber, journalist, radio jockey and political satirist Akash Banerjee, in the avatar of Bhakt Banerjee.

Chairman of Cerg Advisory and economist Omkar Goswami has said that IndiGo, which controls nearly 66% of domestic air travel and on many routes is the only airline flying, has become too big to regulate. As Goswami put it: “When one player accounts for almost two-thirds of the passenger market and when it’s often the only carrier to many airports, the shoe is firmly on IndiGo’s foot. Not the governments, irrespective of what the DGCA may claim …IndiGo has become too big to regulate. It effectively calls the shots.”

Professor of history Mridula Mukherjee, who taught at Jawaharlal Nehru University and is a former director of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, says Prime Minister Modi was “economical with the truth” in his Vande Mataram speech in the Lok Sabha on Monday when he accused Jawaharlal Nehru of removing stanzas from Vande Mataram under pressure to appease Jinnah and thus put the country on what the PM called the path of “appeasement politics” that ultimately led to partition. Mukherjee says he is guilty of “not placing facts on the table as they should be”.