Sunday, July 26, 2026

Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan stepped down on July 25, caving to the student uprising over NEET-UG exam leaks. Pradhan said he was taking "full responsibility" for the paper leak and the scandal's fallout, citing his commitment to protect students from exam malpractice and preserve national unity. Within hours, the movement that called itself the "Cockroach" Janta Party—tens of thousands of angry students who had filled Delhi's streets—announced it would call off nationwide protests immediately (via Al Jazeera).

Parliament's monsoon session has become a brawling ground over exam security. The opposition, led by Rahul Gandhi, continues to demand accountability and sweeping reforms to India's examination system, walking out in protest as the government defends its track record (via The Week).

India's stock market slid a sixth straight day, with the Sensex and Nifty sinking under a rout in crude oil prices and persistent foreign selling. Brent crude surged past $100 a barrel after fresh attacks on Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea, a costly blow for an import-dependent economy that watches energy costs like a hawk. The rupee, already battered, slipped further toward 96.57 to the dollar, compounding import inflation concerns (via Washington Post).

The central bank, meanwhile, is holding its ground. The Reserve Bank of India maintained its repo rate (the rate at which it lends to commercial banks) at 5.25 percent and signaled no rush to tighten, with Governor Sanjay Malhotra calling current inflation pressures "largely supply-side" despite the rupee's slide (via Business Standard).

Yotta Data Services sealed a $150 million raise to build India into a global artificial-intelligence compute powerhouse. The Bengaluru data centre operator, valued at $4.4 billion, plans to scale its AI cloud to 85,000 NVIDIA Blackwell GPUs by year-end, positioning the country as one of the world's three largest AI compute hubs outside the United States and China. The entire funding will flow into the buildout, not founder pockets (via Business Standard).

Across the startup ecosystem, venture capital is flowing toward artificial intelligence and deep tech. Indian startups pulled in $219.2 million across 18 funding rounds in the week to July 9, 2026, with late-stage bets on mature companies dominating the mix (via Industrial Front).

Assam's monsoon catastrophe has swallowed a swath of the northeast. The Brahmaputra River, one of Asia's mightiest, overflowed after days of exceptionally heavy rain, killing at least 50 people and displacing 700,000 across nearly 900 villages. The state has lost more than 7,000 homes to the floods, and nearly 300,000 people have taken shelter in government relief camps as the death toll threatens to climb—some 40 people remain missing (via ABC News).

The scale of the deluge reflects a broader shift. The upstream catchments in Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh logged rainfall 436 percent above normal, a pattern experts link to human-caused climate change intensifying South Asia's monsoon rains, which are expected to pound the region until September (via Washington Post).

India's medal push at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow gathered pace on July 26, with the squad chasing gold across weightlifting, boxing, swimming and beyond. Weightlifter Mirabai Chanu bid for her third successive Games gold as boxers Preeti Pawar (54kg), Jadumani Singh Mandengbam (55kg), and Aditya Pratap Yadav (65kg) advanced to the round of 16. The men's 4x200m freestyle relay team of Olympian Srihari Nataraj and company looked to make waves at Tollcross (via Olympics.com).

The Games themselves are stripped down: Glasgow dropped cricket, hockey, badminton, shooting and wrestling, cutting several of India's usual medal motors. But javelin star and Olympic champion Neeraj Chopra leads a squad still hungry for podiums (via Olympics.com).