November 17, 2025

-

Premium

BREAKING BOUNDARIES

That night on November 2, there were several heart-stopping moments when Indian cricket fans--a record 190 million of them watching the 2025 Women's Cricket World Cup final on television and streaming services, and another 40,000, dressed mostly in blue, present at the DY Patil Stadium in Navi Mumbai--sensed that victory for the home team was nigh. One was when an athletic Amanjot Kaur--already the star of a stunning direct runout--took a fumbling, tumbling sky-high catch that stopped South Africa captain Laura Wolvaardt in her tracks just as she seemed poised to take the game away from India. Another was when Deepti Sharma yorked Annerie Dercksen to take the third of her match-winning five wickets--all that after a steadying, run-a-ball 58 while batting. Then there was the stroke of pure genius by captain Harmanpreet Kaur, Harry Di to teammates, when she took the high-risk gambit of getting Shafali Verma, known more for wielding the willow, to bowl. Verma delivered handsomely by taking two priceless wickets. Finally, the captain herself took a magical leaping catch to close off the match`Harry's Heroines'--most born a generation after Kapil's Devils--have scripted not just India's first-ever women's World Cup victory but etched out a game-changing moment for gender empowerment in the country. "It's a win for the ages," declared cricket legend Sunil Gavaskar, who was part of that legendary team that won India's first men's World Cup in 1983. "It will rank as one of the greatest in the history of Indian cricket." Tennis star Sania Mirza, who had herself blazed a lonely trail, turned emotional, saying, "This win feels personal. The next time a young girl tells her parents, `I want to be a Smriti Mandhana', they will not think it is a ridiculous dream." Ten-year-old Straina Soumya Biswal, a Smriti fan, perhaps encapsulated that exact sentiment as

THE POWER OF NITISH

THE GREY SKIES LOOKED OMINOUS, but Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar was still on the road on November 1, addressing four election meetings on the day. One of them was in Jandaha in Mahnar constituency, Vaishali district, from where Umesh Kushwaha, the state president of his Janata Dal (United), is contestingDressed in an immaculate white kurta, Nitish, 74, showed none of the portentous stiffness his opponents ascribe to the `tired septuagenarian'. On the dais, he accepted garlands with an affable smile and took in the audience, a sea of female faces, with a smattering of old allies and earnest young men. "Aap toh jaante hi hain (You all know by now)," he begins, in a voice weathered by two decades in office and the many more running such campaigns. He soon gets down to it, listing the many works his government has done--the roads paved, the schools opened, electric poles erected across sleepy villages--summoning in the same breath the possibility that things could regress: the spectre of `jungle raj' rising on the horizon. He called out the frictions that scarred the state under Lalu Yadav's rule back in the early noughties and then, with gentle insistence, asked not just for another term but for time: another chapter to complete the project he began two decades agoHaving planted the seeds of doubt about the Opposition, Nitish turned to a theme that has come to define much of his political identity: women's empowerment. Remind- ers about reservations in police and government posts aside, it'll be the `dashazari yojana'--the Rs 10,000 Mukhya Mantri Mahila Rozgar scheme announced just before the election, money handed out to 12.1 million eligible women (one per household) to start small businesses--that should ensure the support of this relatively caste-neutral constituencyAs Nitish spoke, scores of women in the crowd raised their hands in approval; many were members of self-help groups, known as JEEViKA. Many are expecting it soon, but several have already received the money. They spoke of buying new clothes and Diwali sweets, of repaying part of a micro-loan--small transactions that, in the campaign's rhetoric, consti- tute the currency of "empowerment". Later on, JD(U) working president Sanjay Jha's brief speech stressed another point: "Yeh paisa nahin lautana hai (You don't have to return the money)". Meaning, it's all a bonanzaOThe Nitish Calculus ver the past two-and-a-half decades, Nitish has been CM nine times--propped up by the BJP on seven occasions and twice in alliance with the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD), now led by Lalu's son Tejashwi Yadav. Nitish now fronts the NDA once again against the brisk, young energy of Tejashwi's Mahagathbandhan (MGB). What explains Nitish's resilience? Well, among reason-