Explainers

October 21: Images of burning barricades, damaged shops and police confronting crowds in France...

History explainer | Reviewed on October 17, 2026. Gandhi Jayanti and the International Day...

Explainer | Reviewed on October 17, 2026. India’s Unified Payments Interface has made paying...

China's central bank added about 23 tonnes of gold in September, its 23rd straight month of buying, lifting gold to 8.5% of its reserves. What is driving it, whether it signals a move away from the dollar, and where India stands.

A sourced history of Abhijeet Dipke: his education and political communication work, the launch of CJP, education and election protests, court proceedings and unanswered funding questions.

What Neha Bora reportedly said about Bangladesh, Bhushan’s full reported argument, BJP’s allegations and Dipke’s response—an evidence-based explainer.

A September 23 newspaper investigation intensified calls for CEC Gyanesh Kumar’s resignation. This explainer examines the findings, the ECI response and the campaign’s timeline.

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi is pressing to delete the World War II “enemy state” clauses from the UN Charter, a campaign that may deepen the rift with China. We explain what the clauses say, why they survive, and why any deletion needs China’s consent.

The IMF and World Bank annual meetings open in Bangkok on October 12. The World Bank has raised its 2026 growth forecast for developing East Asia and the Pacific to 4.5%, driven by AI-related exports. Our table compares the June and October forecasts for each economy.

The Swedish Academy has awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature to Canadian poet and classicist Anne Carson. Who she is, what the Academy said, and a table of Asia’s literature laureates from Rabindranath Tagore in 1913 to Han Kang in 2024.

Narendra Modi completed 25 years as head of an elected government on October 7, 2026: 12 years and 7 months as Gujarat chief minister and more than 12 years as prime minister. Our tables cover the dates, election results, major decisions, controversies and challenges ahead.

France’s Henri Kagan and Japan’s Kenso Soai share the 2026 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for reactions that amplify one mirror-image form of a molecule over the other. The work bears on how medicines are made and on why life uses molecules of a single handedness.