July 27, 2026

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SATLUJ THE WHOLE TRUTH

When the Modi government ordered that Satluj--the Diljit Dosanjh-Honey Trehan film--be pulled off the ZEE5 platform barely two days after its release on July 3, the official reason was to head off a security flashpoint in Punjab. The ban has had the opposite effect. A film that never saw a single theatrical screen has become the most-watched piece of Punjabi cinema in years, catapulted to blockbuster status by controversy alone. Blocked in India, it stayed live on the platform abroad for several more days, and the diaspora consumed it just as hungrily as Punjab did. Inside the state, community screenings in gurdwaras have drawn packed houses, filled with greying survivors of the Decade of Darkness sitting alongside a Gen Z that knows the period only from family memory, both moved to tears.

THE BIG SKILLING ILLUSION

In early June, Parliament's Public Accounts Committee (PAC), chaired by senior Congress leader K.C. Venugopal, turned the spotlight on the Narendra Modi government's flagship skilling programme, the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY). Drawing on a damning performance audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), the panel flagged serious shortcomings in the scheme's implementation, saying it had fallen well short of its stated objectives.Introduced on July 15, 2015, PMKVY was designed to equip millions of young Indians with industry-relevant skills and formal certification, bridging the gap between education and employability. But the CAG audit report, tabled in Parliament in December 2025, cast a long shadow over the first three phases of the scheme