A new national analysis reveals that the most common causes of death among pregnant and postpartum women are not traditional medical complications, but preventable injuries and violence. Columbia University researchers report that injuries and violence are now the primary causes of death among pregnant and recently postpartum women. Specifically, accidental drug overdose, homicide, and suicide […]
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At CES (Consumer Electronics Show) 2026 in Las Vegas, a man sits blindfolded in a self-driving personal mobility chair as it calmly navigates a crowded convention hall. Around him, a LiDAR-equipped, voice-controlled scooter threads its way through clusters of staring visitors, while an autonomous robotaxi announces its arrival not with a horn, but with glowing LED initials projected from a halo on its roof.
None of it feels futuristic in the old sci-fi sense. It feels oddly casual, almost playful.
For the first time since the early 2020s, electric vehicles took a back seat at CES, while autonomous vehicles (AVs) surged ahead. Across convention halls and demo zones, the message was unmistakable: the driverless age has become a reality. The question hanging in the air was whether 2026 might be the breakout year for robotaxis.
But while Las Vegas hosted the spectacle, the real testing ground lay elsewhere: on ordinary streets, amid pedestrians, reckless drivers, delivery trucks, and in general, unpredictable human behaviour. To understand what this future feels like when it collides with daily life, I go not to a convention hall but to two cities quietly living inside the experiment: Austin and Las Vegas.
Austin skyline
| Photo Credit:
Nitin Chaudhary
My sojourn starts one evening in Austin when I bump into Jeff, a local guide, as he walks down South Congress Avenue with his cohort. “This is the most Instagrammable mural in Austin,” he says, pointing to a bland peach-coloured wall graffitied across which, in red, are the words ‘I love you so much’.
“The most Instagrammable mural in Austin”
| Photo Credit:
Nitin Chaudhary
I tell him that I am visiting from Dallas to study the AVs that seem to be crawling all over the city. Jeff looks up to ask: “And did you risk getting into one?”
“Yes, I did. Many times,” I reply. I had spent the whole day stepping in and out of Waymo robotaxis (more on that later).
Jeff looks surprised at my audacity to ride in a vehicle that drives by itself.
“On these Texan streets!” he exclaims. “I drive a truck, and I still feel unsafe!”
I mention offhandedly that I felt safe riding in these vehicles.
“Till they’re not…!” Jeff says, waving goodbye.
Indeed, not all the signals have been reassuring. Recently, a Waymo robotaxi struck a child near an elementary school in Santa Monica, triggering a federal safety investigation. The child sustained minor injuries, but the incident serves as a reminder that even today’s most advanced autonomous systems can struggle in complex, unpredictable environments such as school zones.
Navigation panel in a robotaxi
| Photo Credit:
Nitin Chaudhary
Autonomy is spreading far beyond passenger cars. For instance, robotics and AI-enabled machinery are transforming heavy industry and construction. Today, autonomous excavators, bulldozers, and earth-moving equipment use sensors, GPS, and real-time algorithms to perform tasks with minimal human intervention, boosting productivity and safety on worksites. At CES 2026, Caterpillar Inc. unveiled a new generation of autonomous construction machines designed to change how work gets done on jobsites.
Austin has rapidly evolved into one of the biggest tech hubs in the U.S., attracting big names, including Meta, Google, Oracle, Tesla, Snap, and Apple. If government initiatives to boost growth outside traditional centres draw companies to Austin, the promise of lower costs of living, cultural openness, job surplus, and flexibility to work remotely post-pandemic have seen tech workers flock here from Silicon Valley.
Austin is also where many AV companies are testing their fleets. At least three — Zoox, Tesla, and Waymo. I am determined to try them all.
Estimates vary widely since autonomous driving is still a nascent market. According to U.S.-based Grand View Research, the global autonomous vehicle market is projected at $86.3 billion in 2025, and is expected to reach $214.32 billion by 2030.
But where can I spot one? The hotel receptionist directs me to Rainey Street, a residential neighbourhood turned laid-back nightlife hotspot. On a Friday night, the boundaries between where the eateries end and the road begins have blurred. Vehicles navigate this confusion carefully, moving in gentle hiccups.
“Look!” my partner points. It is a Tesla with a vacant driver’s seat. A person is in the front passenger seat, carefully monitoring the surroundings, ready to take over in case the car does something funny. I stand gaping as the car slickly navigates the pedestrians around it.
Spotting a tesla
| Photo Credit:
Nitin Chaudhary
The next morning, as I sit at breakfast, I spot a Chinese-origin man at the next table wearing a Tesla T-shirt. Michael turns out to be a Tesla employee of seven years. Over bland coffee and crusty muffins, I describe to him my first encounter with a driverless Tesla.
“You’ll see more of those in the coming years,” says Michael. “But did you notice that the RoboTaxi logo was scratched off the car?”
I hadn’t. I ask him why.
“That’s because we were seeing a backlash. Both against Elon Musk, given his political affiliations, and against our driverless cars in general. So, Tesla started removing the RoboTaxi logos. Otherwise, people were hitting these cars.”
I later learn that many in Austin have expressed fears about the reliability and safety of autonomous vehicles, particularly Tesla’s, which have reportedly failed to stop at hazards or stop signs. But I am still determined to ride in one.
Riding a Tesla RoboTaxi requires prior registration. Ours hasn’t come through. So, we decide to hail the next best alternative, a Waymo robotaxi.
Alphabet’s autonomous driving division, Waymo began testing in Austin as early as 2015. It now operates several fully autonomous, all-electric Jaguars across roughly 90 square miles of the city.
The Waymo cars are white sedans with a large spinning unit on top, which is a 360-degree Light Detection and Ranging sensor (LiDAR) that uses laser beams to create a detailed 3D map of the surroundings. I order one through the Uber app. It arrives and neatly parks beside me. I unlock it and begin the trip entirely through the app. Inside, it is luxurious and quiet. Through the interface, I direct the car to start, and once it does, it feels like being in a normal taxi, except for the missing driver. The steering wheel twists and turns as the vehicle follows the route displayed on a large screen in the middle of the dashboard.
A Waymo car
| Photo Credit:
iStock/Getty Images
It seamlessly merges into Austin’s traffic. Locals don’t even turn their heads when one passes. By the end of my two-day Austin stay, I have taken eight Waymo rides, feeling secure in each.
India remains at an early stage. The country’s autonomous vehicle market is projected to grow to about $11.37 billion by 2030, according to Grand View Research. Much of this growth reflects the broader AV ecosystem. Progress is most visible in the spread of semi-autonomous safety features, with models from Mahindra and Tata offering tech such as adaptive cruise control.
After the CES conversations and my first encounters, I reach out to Chinmay Chaudhary who works at Stellantis, the parent company of brands such as Jeep, Chrysler, etc. He offers a grounded, industry-facing perspective on why AVs behave so differently depending on who builds them.
When I describe my Waymo rides, he immediately frames them not as a technological marvel but as a business model. “Waymo is more of a fleet ownership model. You can only avail it in specific towns where they run currently,” he says. In other words, Waymo doesn’t sell autonomy to individuals. It deploys it selectively, city by city, street by street. That selectiveness, he explains, is precisely why the experience feels so polished. “Waymo is specifically based out of a geofence network. It performs better in a closed vicinity where everything is mapped.” Seen through that lens, it makes sense that the Waymo is executing on a script rehearsed endlessly on Austin’s streets.
Inside a driverless cab
| Photo Credit:
Nitin Chaudhary
This contrasts with Tesla’s approach, Chaudhary points out. “Tesla’s is like a personal ownership model. You can buy the car out of the showroom and start using it,” he says. Where Waymo centralises risk and control, Tesla distributes it by placing experimental autonomy directly into the hands of individual drivers and onto unmapped streets. That openness may explain both Tesla’s scale and the anxiety surrounding it. “It’s not that one technology is better than the other,” Chaudhary cautions. “It’s how well you master it.”
While in Austin, I spot a few Zoox cars, which are Toyota Highlanders retrofitted with radars and cameras, each with a safety driver, just like Tesla’s AVs. Founded in 2014, Zoox was acquired by Amazon in 2020, bringing yet another tech giant into the self-driving race.
Legacy automakers across the world have been quietly building their own paths to autonomy. Mercedes-Benz, for instance, is rolling out autonomous driving in the U.S. this year, using Nvidia Drive AV, an AI software, allowing drivers to take their eyes off the road under specific conditions. Nissan has been testing autonomous mobility services in Japan, while Baidu already operates large scale robotaxi fleets across multiple Chinese cities.
The technology remains expensive, with the sensor and computing stack on each vehicle estimated to cost about $100,000 over the car’s base price. Still, there is a growing sense in the U.S. that it is now in a race as China’s AV sector is outpacing competitors in deployment speed.
As an Indian in America, I find myself thinking about the many Indians shaping this industry from within the U.S. Ashok Elluswamy, vice-president of Tesla’s AI software, has come under online scrutiny for arguing that the “obvious” solution to Tesla’s long-running self-driving challenges lies in its camera-only approach, dismissing the need for additional sensors such as LiDAR. At Uber, another Indian, Balaji Krishnamurthy, has stepped in as chief financial officer, taking over from Prashanth Mahendra Rajah, at a moment when robotaxi investments are moving from experimentation to execution.
“Zoox is taking different approaches in different cities,” Michael, the Tesla employee, tells me. “In Austin, it’s retrofitting vehicles and is still in testing mode. But if you want to see the full promise of Zoox, go to Las Vegas.” I am intrigued enough to do that.
Zoox began testing retrofitted vehicles near its Las Vegas headquarters in 2019. It took a bold new route in 2023 by launching futuristic, purpose-built robotaxis. Last year, it officially launched its public robotaxi service. It currently operates on limited stretches of the Strip, offering a controlled environment with predictable traffic. Rides are free for now, with Zoox offering the service at no cost while it gathers real-world feedback and awaits approval to begin charging passengers.
At one of five pickup spots where Zoox cars can be hailed, I wait. Soon, a minivan-shaped vehicle rolls up. It drives bi-directionally, meaning it has no front or rear. Its sliding doors, designed to minimise the risk of hitting nearby objects, opens to reveal a four-seater layout.
After I’m seated, the car doesn’t budge. It keeps reminding me to fasten my seatbelt, though I already have done so. Then, a human voice comes through a speaker on the roof. “I suggest you remove the bag from the seat. It’s interfering with our sensors,” the voice says. I do so, and the car starts to move.
Waymos on the street
| Photo Credit:
Nitin Chaudhary
“Do you monitor what happens inside the car?” I ask.
“No, not always. Only when there’s an issue,” the faceless voice says.
This realisation is discomfiting. To function, these AVs need a view of the streets, sidewalks, and the people moving through them. It is, in effect, a kind of god’s-eye vision. Always on, always watching. These cars are also recording and retaining visual and location data. How long that data lives, who controls it, and under what circumstances it can be accessed and by whom remains murky. Without clear guardrails, these AVs risk becoming mobile surveillance systems.
The Zoox car starts to move gently. No hiccups, no jolts. Unlike the retrofitted cars, it has no steering wheel or pedals, just the smooth confidence of a system built from scratch. Zoox completes a five-mile loop and brings me back to where I started.
In China, autonomous and semi-autonomous technology has already reached scale. Data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology shows that advanced driver assist systems were present in about 62.6% of new passenger cars sold in the first half of 2025.
In Vegas, another vision of the future is unfolding 40 feet below ground. The Vegas Loop, a network of narrow tunnels (roughly 12 feet wide) dug by Musk’s Boring Company, now shuttles passengers between stations in Tesla vehicles. At one Loop station, accessed via an elevator, I watch a neat line of Teslas picking up passengers and shooting off into the tunnels.
Rodrigo comes to pick me up in his Tesla Model S. He eagerly explains to me Musk’s vision: the Boring Company would build the infrastructure, and Tesla taxis would run through it. “The long-term plan,” the taxi driver says, “is to transition the Vegas Loop to fully autonomous Tesla robotaxis. We won’t need human drivers then.”
“What about your job, and those of other drivers?” I wonder aloud.
Rodrigo shrugs. It is a shrug of uneasy acceptance. The silence that follows lasts less than a minute; my stop arrives under 10 minutes and costs less than $5, a trip that would have otherwise taken 30 minutes in surface traffic.
I emerge from the tunnel into the chaos of Vegas. My journey is coming to an end. Despite all the warnings and fears of jobs being lost, I feel strangely optimistic. It is a future that holds the promise of a frictionless-commute world. As Stellantis employee Chaudhary put it earlier, the question is no longer which technology is superior, but who will master and scale their chosen path first.
The writer is a U.S.-based professional with an interest in travel and culture reporting.
Drivers from L to R- Sohil Shah (P2), Alister Yoong (P1), Ruhaan Alva.
| Photo Credit: Arrangement
The heat and dust at the Manohar International Airport didn’t deter the race enthusiasts from being a part of the inaugural Goa round of the Indian Racing Festival. The races which began after a delay of couple of hours delivered edge-of-the-seat excitement as Raoul Hyman and Alister Yoong claimed victories in Round 4 at the Manohar International Airport Street Circuit.
The tight 2.064 km, 12-turn street circuit; with limited run-off and heavy braking zones; proved unforgiving and unpredictable for the racers. With identical machinery across the grid, the Goa round underlined that driver skill and racecraft remain decisive.
The tight circuit and limited run off is what gave drivers an edge over the other. There was a slight Oh! moment in the first leg of the race, this is where the driver’s timing and concentration played a big role in saving the moment. And when they powered ahead, all seemed to be well.
Representing Goa Aces JA Racing, Raoul Hyman powered to win Race 1 in 24:03.490, giving the home team a memorable triumph on debut at the Goa street circuit.
Aqil Alibhai from Chennai Turbo Riders put on an incredible performance, finishing just a thrilling 3.310 seconds behind Raoul Hyman! Alibhai crossed the finish line in second place with a time of 24:06.800! Followed by Ishaan Madesh from Speed Demons Delhi, who clinched the podium with an impressive time of 21:44.818! Although the race was red flagged in the final moments of the 25-minute showdown, the excitement was palpable as the results were reclassified based on the drivers’ positions on the track. What a day for racing.
To keep the crowd engaged between races; bike and car stunts were brought in. The stuntmen swerved, braked, did wheelies and a few circus tricks like standing on a moving two wheeler etc. These tricks were thoroughly enjoyed by the children and adults alike.
At certain point the cops also rushed to watch the stunts armed with their phones on video shooting mode.
Race 2 was owned by Alister Yoong of Speed Demons Delhi. He took the lead and secured victory in 27:50.811. Sohil Shah of Kolkata Royal Tigers deliivered one of the drives of the weekend, slicing through the field to finish second in 27:51.119, just 0.308 seconds behind Yoong. Ruhan Alva of Kichcha’s Kings Bangalore completed the podium in 28:23.984.
Early on, pole-position Gabriela Jilkova ran wide under pressure, allowing Shah to make a decisive move and trigger a reshuffle at the front. Despite Shah closing rapidly in the final laps, a late safety car neutralised the race and locked the order.
“When I saw Sohil in my mirrors, I knew I had to find a few extra tenths,” said Yoong. “Luckily, it was just enough to hold on.”
With a Race 1 podium via Madesh and a Race 2 win through Yoong, Speed Demons Delhi emerged as the biggest winners of the weekend and now lead the championship standings.
Published – February 15, 2026 09:45 am IST
The Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Amendment Rules, 2026 require social media platforms to “prominently” label “synthetically generated” content, or AI-generated images and videos. Image used for representation only.
| Photo Credit: Reuters
The story so far: The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) earlier this week notified an amendment to the IT Rules, 2021, that would require users and social media platforms to label AI-generated content, and tighten the takedown timelines for all content — not just AI-generated posts — from 24-36 hours to two to three hours. The rules come into effect on February 20.
Also Read | IT Ministry mandates label for AI-generated content, reduces takedown timeline to 2–3 hours
The Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Amendment Rules, 2026 require social media platforms to “prominently” label “synthetically generated” content, or AI-generated images and videos. The requirement was first proposed in October last year, and was notified this week. Social media platforms with more than five million users are required to obtain a “user declaration [for AI-generated content] and [conduct] technical verification before publishing [AI-generated content]”.
MeitY said in an explanatory document that this requirement was introduced to counter “deepfakes, misinformation, and other unlawful content capable of misleading users, causing users harm, violating privacy, or threatening national integrity,” and that it was important that users be aware whether what they are viewing is inauthentic.
The October draft definition of “Synthetically Generated Information” (SGI) was wider, encompassing any audiovisual content that was AI-modified or generated. The final rules carve out some exemptions: for instance, smartphone-clicked photos that are retouched automatically by the camera app will not be considered SGI, and special effects in films will not be considered something that needs to be labelled. The rules also prohibit certain types of SGI: child sexual exploitation and abuse material, forged documents, information on developing explosives, and deepfakes falsely representing a real person.
Also Read | AI labelling rules nearing finalisation, says IT Secretary S. Krishnan
The government has asked large platforms to “deploy reasonable and appropriate technical measures to prevent unlawful SGI, and to ensure labelling/provenance/identifier requirements for permissible SGI”. A senior official at the IT Ministry argued that large platforms have sophisticated tools to detect SGI, and that this requirement merely requires them to perform detection that they are already doing. Additionally, some AI firms and platforms have participated in the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA), which offers technical standards to invisibly label AI-generated content in a way that can be read by other platforms, in case AI-based detection fails. The rules allude to this effort by requiring “provenance/identifier requirements,” but the official said they don’t want to endorse any single effort, but would like to formalise the aims of such collaborations.
Also Read | India’s new AI governance guidelines push hands-off approach
The IT Rules enable some government authorities and police officials to issue takedown notices under Rule 3(1)(b), and users to send in grievances for “illegal” categories of content enumerated in the IT Rules. Those categories include misinformation, nudity, and threats to sovereignty. For both government- and court-issued takedown notices, the timelines have been reduced to 2-3 hours, while for all other categories of user complaints (like defamation and misinformation), the response timelines have been reduced from two weeks to one week. The timelines for responding to user reports (under Rule 3(2)(b)) on “sensitive” content has also been slashed from 72 hours to 36 hours. The government reasoned that the previous limits allowed a lot of damage to be done even within those timelines, necessitating a revisit of the time platforms have to act.
EDITORIAL | Too fake to be good: On AI-generated imagery, labelling
Users will now have to receive a reminder of platforms’ terms and conditions more often. “The amendments include revisions to Rule 3(1)(c) of the Intermediary Rules, increasing the frequency of user notifications from once every year to at least once every 3 (three) months, and expanding the content of such notifications to clarify potential consequences of non-compliance and reporting obligations,” JSA Advocates and Solicitors said in an analysis.
The rules also require platforms to specifically warn users that harmful deepfakes and other illegal AI-generated content could expose them to legal action, including the disclosure of their identity to law enforcement agencies and “immediate disabling of access or removal of such content, suspension or termination of user accounts”, JSA said in its analysis.
Published – February 15, 2026 02:20 am IST
Anthropic’s AI model Claude was used in the U.S. military’s operation to capture former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, with Claude deployed via Anthropic’s partnership with data firm Palantir. File.
| Photo Credit: Reuters
The Pentagon is considering ending its relationship with artificial intelligence company Anthropic over its insistence on keeping some restrictions on how the U.S. military uses its models, Axios reported on Saturday (February 14, 2026), citing an administration official.
The Pentagon is pushing four AI companies to let the military use their tools for “all lawful purposes,” including in areas of weapons development, intelligence collection and battlefield operations, but Anthropic has not agreed to those terms and the Pentagon is getting fed up after months of negotiations, according to the Axios report.
The other companies included OpenAI, Google and xAI.
An Anthropic spokesperson said the company had not discussed the use of its AI model Claude for specific operations with the Pentagon. The spokesperson said conversations with the U.S. government so far had focused on a specific set of usage policy questions, including hard limits around fully autonomous weapons and mass domestic surveillance, none of which related to current operations.
The Pentagon did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment.
Anthropic’s AI model Claude was used in the U.S. military’s operation to capture former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, with Claude deployed via Anthropic’s partnership with data firm Palantir, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday (February 13, 2026).
Reuters reported on Wednesday (February 11, 2026) that the Pentagon was pushing top AI companies including OpenAI and Anthropic to make their artificial intelligence tools available on classified networks without many of the standard restrictions that the companies apply to users.
Published – February 15, 2026 08:51 am IST
Image used for representational purposes only. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters
Facebook and Instagram parent Meta is sharply cutting the fees it pays out to professional fact checkers in India, two people with knowledge of discussions between the social media giant and its partners told The Hindu. The amounts fact-checking organisations that are approved partners of the social media firm get paid has been reduced for the coming six month period by anywhere from a third to 50%, the people said.
Meta’s fact-checking partnerships ended in the United States following the election of U.S. President Donald Trump. After that election, the firm’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, said that Instagram and Facebook would transition to “Community Notes,” a system of fact-checking that relies on an ideologically diverse group of users agreeing that a given post needed to be annotated with additional context.
Professional fact checkers were engaged by Meta in December 2016, following concerns about the spread of misinformation on the platform. The fact checkers that the firm partnered with around the world counted on revenue from Meta as a key source of survival. The cuts portend existential concerns for smaller organisations that exclusively do fact checking, as opposed to units within larger newsrooms.
One of the people aware of the discussions speculated that such smaller organisations may have to lay off some staff to continue operating. Meta did not respond to a request for comment from The Hindu on the cuts.
The firm said that it has plans for its Community Notes feature to go through an “expansion to other countries,” although the firm has not unequivocally said whether this would mean that fact checking partnerships outside the U.S. will end or not.
A 2024 review of Community Notes as implemented on X by The Hindu showed that the feature failed in the face of polarisation, allowing blatant falsehoods to remain on the platform unannotated. “Research indicated [professionally applied] fact-check labels reduced belief in and sharing of false information,” the International Fact Checking Network, which includes members in India receiving Meta revenue, said in an open letter to Mr. Zuckerberg last January.
“The plan to end the fact-checking program in 2025 applies only to the United States, for now. But Meta has similar programs in more than 100 countries that are all highly diverse, at different stages of democracy and development. Some of these countries are highly vulnerable to misinformation that spurs political instability, election interference, mob violence and even genocide. If Meta decides to stop the program worldwide, it is almost certain to result in real-world harm in many places.”
Published – February 15, 2026 08:00 am IST
The petition submitted that Section 44(3) has amended Section 8(1)(j)of the RTI Act to facilitate public authorities to blankly refuse information on the ground that the details sought are of a “personal” nature.
| Photo Credit: Special arrangement
The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear on February 16 a petition which accuses India’s new digital personal data protection law of weaponising the right to privacy to disarm the citizens’ right to seek information from the state under the Right to Information (RTI) Act.
A three-judge Bench headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant would hear a petition filed by human rights and transparency activist Venkatesh Nayak, represented by advocate Vrinda Grover, who has challenged Section 44(3) of the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act of 2023.
The petition submitted that Section 44(3) has amended Section 8(1)(j)of the RTI Act to facilitate public authorities to blankly refuse information on the ground that the details sought are of a “personal” nature. It said the provision has turned the fundamental right to privacy on its head. The right, meant to protect ordinary citizens against state incursion, has been extended to protect the state and public functionaries from RTI disclosures.
Originally, the RTI provision had exempted authorities from disclosing personal information to an applicant if the details sought had no relationship to any public activity or if disclosure would amount to unwarranted invasion of privacy. Even then, the government had to disclose if public interest outweighed privacy. The decision whether or not to reveal ‘personal information’ was taken by a Public Information Officer or the First Appellate Authority under the RTI Act after thoroughly weighing privacy and transparency concerns.
“The Constitutional consequence is immediate and serious. Every RTI application involving identifiable public officials, procurement records, audit reports, appointment files, utilisation of public funds, or exercise of statutory discretion can now be denied automatically on the ground that it ‘relates to personal information’. The balancing mechanism that ensured proportionality has been dismantled. The exemption operates as an irrebuttable bar at the first gate. This is not a minor statutory adjustment; it is a structural alteration of the decision-making architecture of the RTI Act,” the National Campaign for People’s Right to Information (NCPRI), represented by advocate Prashant Bhushan, argued in a separate petition filed in the apex court.
The petition represented by Ms. Grover said the amendment introduced by the DPDP Act accorded “unguided discretion to the Executive to deny personal information, which is unconstitutional”.
“It is an unreasonable restriction on the right under Article 19 (right to free speech). Privacy is not a fundamental right available to the state. It violates Article 14 (right to equal treatment) by equating the privacy of public functionaries to that of ordinary citizens. It inverts the jurisprudence of privacy vis-à-vis the right to information and prioritises privacy over the larger public interest of transparency and open governance,” Mr. Nayak’s petition argued.
It contended that the amendment to Section 8(1)(j) of the RTIAct, when read in conjunction with the definition of the term ‘personal data’ in the DPDP Act, has brought within its fold “all information which even remotely relates to the identity of an individual, and renders the right to information illusory” and sounded the death knell for participatory democracy besides being ruinous to ideas of open governance.
The pleas also challenged provisions of the DPDP Rules, 2025, which provide the Executive dominance in the formation of search-cum-selection committees for the appointment of the chairperson and members of the Data Protection Board in violation of the doctrine of separation of powers. Similarly, the law allows the Centre to call for any information without any statutory guidance or limitation from the Data Board of Data Fiduciaries, making it manifestly arbitrary. Besides, it has provided penalties without any statutory guidance on what constituted a “significant” data breach.
Published – February 14, 2026 10:04 pm IST
New research maps genetic “hotspots” for hemochromatosis, revealing uneven risk and possible underdiagnosis across the UK and Ireland. A new study indicates that residents of the Outer Hebrides and north-west Ireland face the greatest likelihood of developing a hereditary disorder that causes the body to accumulate excessive iron. This condition, hemochromatosis—also known as the ‘Celtic […]
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CEO of Nvidia Jensen Huang. File
| Photo Credit: Steve Marcus
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang will not be travelling to India next week for the India AI Impact Summit, which global technology industry and political leaders are likely to attend, the company said on Saturday (February 14, 2026).
Mr. Huang was expected to be one of the biggest attractions at the summit, which will be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
While Mr. Huang was due to address the media in New Delhi on Wednesday (February 17, 2026), the company’s media agency in India, MSL, said in an e-mail that he would not be travelling due to “unforseen circumstances.”
Published – February 14, 2026 07:23 pm IST
A high-fat ketogenic diet may help shield developing brains from the lasting impact of stress before birth. Scientists report that young rats placed on a ketogenic diet—a diet with high fat and low carbohydrates—were largely protected from the long-term consequences of stress experienced before birth. The findings were presented at the ECNP conference in Amsterdam […]
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