On October 2, a date deeply associated with Mahatma Gandhi’s ideals of truth and non-violence, senior Congress leader Jairam Ramesh launched a blistering attack on the Election Commission of India, accusing it of telling a “lie” about the much-debated ECINET portal. The immediate trigger was the ECI’s decision, announced in a press note on September 26, to set up a committee to review whether ECINET actually complies with the country’s election laws. For Ramesh, this act of self-review was itself an admission; in his view, no such verification would be needed if Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar had acted with…

In a hotel conference hall in Baku, Azerbaijan, on a crisp October morning, media leaders and government officials from across Asia gathered not to celebrate the reach of modern communication, but to confront its fragility. The room was filled with the quiet hum of simultaneous translation and the occasional click of cameras—a fitting backdrop for a conversation about how words and images shape reality. The occasion was the First Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) Media Forum, a day-long meeting organized by Azerbaijan’s Media Development Agency under a theme that could not be more urgent: “Building…