Holding his ground: PMK founder S. Ramadoss has ruled out any patch-up with his son Anbumani. He says he has prepared his elder daughter Srikanthi, and the party will go only to her.
| Photo Credit: S. PRASAD

A symbol of determination: Former Union Minister Dhanuskodi Athithan lost a hand in an accident in 2006. But it has not deterred him from carrying on his normal activity in public life.
| Photo Credit: A. SHAIKMOHIDEEN

The Tamil Nadu government has given in-principle approval for three extension projects — Chennai airport to Kilambakkam,  Koyambedu to Pattabiram, and  Poonamallee to Sunguvarchathiram — and recommended them to the Union government for approval and financial assistance. 
| Photo Credit: FILE PHOTO

When you think about India’s Gen Z, a collage almost instinctively forms in your mind, often decoding what this 370-million-strong cohort is supposedly about. They are reshaping work culture, bringing back Y2K fashion, embracing the joy of missing out, and reinterpreting identities and lifestyles. But how much do we actually understand about this chronically connected generation’s political awareness? Where do they get their news, and what are their concerns and non-negotiables?

And for all those questions, Chennai’s Gen Z had answers that did not necessarily align with one another. Yet, among all the Gen Zers this reporter spoke to, one thing was irrefutable: they get their news from social media, absorbing the gist before swiping on. Some, however, do gravitate towards long-form pieces through newspapers and digital subscriptions.

Ciby Sankavi, a 25-year-old educational psychologist from Guduvanchery, says she follows certain news outlets on social media to stay informed about political developments. She feels that Gen Zers often find it safer to advocate on social media, but notes that advocacy cannot end with a story or a reel.

“We do care; we resonate with the socio-political environment very deeply. But online advocacy can become performative; there is an illusion that you are doing something, but it can also stop you from doing more. Only when we turn to action can we feel grounded in our belief systems and politics; otherwise, it will continue to exist in silos,” says Ms. Sankavi, who believes Gen Z needs to think about how to bring youth mobilisation into their constituencies.

“Everything is political. The climate is not equitable for all of us, from the air we breathe to the water that floods only certain parts of Chennai,” she adds.

Voting in digital age

Voting is the most productive way to express one’s political opinion, says a 24-year-old data scientist from Chennai who did not want to be named. “There is simply no reason to miss it. We are all part of a social structure,” he says, adding that he actively reads newspapers to remain objectively politically aware, and that he travelled from the city where he was studying back to Chennai to cast his vote in the 2021 Tamil Nadu election.

“I have seen a few people my age being politically aggressive with their opinions but still missing out on voting. Many in Gen Z also form their ideologies and opinions from social media — tweets, reels, and Reddit skirmishes — but do not acquire genuine political literacy. Only by reading widely can one cultivate well-rounded political consciousness,” he adds.

Sanjith Singh, a Gen Zer from Chennai who works in event management, says he relies on social media for updates on current events and circles back to read more only when something hits close to home.

Political priorities

Among the younger cohort of Gen Z, a couple of 18-year-olds browsing books at the Anna Centenary Library confessed that politics is simply “not their cup of tea.” They said women’s safety and freedom take absolute precedence, but remarked that political parties in the country have not accorded these concerns the priority they deserve, which, in turn, diminishes their inclination to vote. For context, according to Election Commission of India (ECI) data, only about 38% of 18-year-olds in India were registered to vote in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

Another set of 18-year-olds — friends who say they might cast their ballots in the 2026 Tamil Nadu election — take a markedly different stance. Poorna, a first-year MBBS student, and Shyam, a CA aspirant, mention that they are politically aware. “Now, even political parties are posting memes about each other and sparring through reels. And Gen Z is specifically getting their updates through this meme culture, unfortunately,” the duo adds. However, Ms. Sankavi points out that resistance through memes is not trivial, since Gen Z copes with humour and enjoys political satire.

Concerns over SIR

GenZ had thoughts on the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls, too. Dharmarajaguru K., a resident of Kodambakkam who is in his mid-twenties, shares his observation that Booth Level Officers themselves are not given adequate training on the SIR process. “With the election just months away in Tamil Nadu, why is there suddenly such a rush to execute such a massive exercise within a single month? How are daily-wage labourers supposed to run around and somehow protect their voting rights? The first thought that crosses any worker’s mind is: nothing is going to change for me in particular, so why should I scramble like this?” he adds.

Mr. Shyam and Ms. Poorna had another concern: a significant section of the Gen Z population does not actually know what the SIR process entails. “Yes, ideally this should clean up the voter list and make the electoral roll more accurate, but we don’t know how effectively it will be done or how far its intended impact will reach,” they add.

As they spoke, there was a perceptible restlessness between words, even as their opinions pulled in different directions. Still, the younger crowd kept returning almost in unison to their list of non-negotiables: not only to build stable careers but to have less exploitative working conditions, to breathe clean air, and to live in a system that recognises mental health, autonomy, and social equity not as afterthoughts but as absolute, core necessities.

Published – November 24, 2025 06:00 am IST

From the United States to Italy, Britain, and Pakistan, female politicians are increasingly becoming victims of AI-generated deepfake pornography or sexualised images, in a troubling trend that researchers say threatens women’s participation in public life.

An online boom in non-consensual deepfakes is outpacing efforts to regulate the technology globally, experts say, with a proliferation of cheap artificial intelligence tools including photo apps digitally undressing women.

The intimate imagery is often weaponised to tarnish the reputation of women in the public sphere, jeopardising their careers, undermining public trust, and threatening national security by creating conditions for blackmail or harassment, researchers say.

In the United States, the American Sunlight Project, a disinformation research group, identified more than 35,000 instances of deepfake content depicting 26 members of Congress — 25 of them women — across pornographic sites.

A study published by the group last month showed that nearly one in six women in Congress have been victims of such AI-generated imagery.

Alarming rate

“Female lawmakers are being targeted by AI-generated deepfake pornography at an alarming rate,” said Nina Jankowicz, chief executive of the ASP. “This is not just a tech problem — it is a direct assault on women in leadership and democracy itself.”

ASP did not release the names of the female lawmakers depicted in the imagery to avoid public searches, but it said it privately notified their offices.

In the United Kingdom, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner was among more than 30 British female politicians found to be targeted by a deepfake porn website, according to a Channel 4 investigation published last year.

The high-traction site, which was unnamed, appeared to use AI technology to “nudify” about a dozen of those politicians, turning their photos into naked images without their consent, it said.

The tech advancements have given rise to what researchers call an expanding ‘cottage industry’ around AI-enhanced porn, where users can turn to widely available AI tools and apps to digitally strip off clothing from pictures or generate deepfakes using sexualised text-to-image prompts.

‘Form of violence’

In Italy, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is seeking 1,00,000 euros in damages from two men accused of creating deepfake porn videos featuring her and posting them to American porn websites.

“This is a form of violence against women,” Ms. Meloni told a court last year, according to the Italian news agency ANSA.

“With the advent of artificial intelligence, if we allow the face of some woman to be superimposed on the body of another woman, our daughters will find themselves in these situations, which is exactly why I consider it legitimate to wage this war.”

In Pakistan, AFP’s fact-checkers debunked a deepfake video that showed lawmaker Meena Majeed publicly hugging an unrelated male Minister, an act culturally deemed immoral in a conservative Muslim-majority nation.

In a separate episode, Azma Bukhari, the Information Minister of the Pakistani province of Punjab, said she felt “shattered” after discovering a deepfake video online that superimposed her face on the sexualised body of an Indian actor.

“The chilling effect of AI-generated images and videos used to harass women in politics is a growing phenomenon,” the nonprofit Tech Policy Press said last year, warning that the trend will have a “silencing effect on the political ambitions” of women.

The proliferation of deepfakes has outstripped regulation around the world. Pakistan lacks legislation to combat sexualised deepfakes.

UK laws criminalise sharing deepfake porn and the government has pledged to ban its creation this year, but so far no firm timetable has been laid out.

A handful of U.S. States including California and Florida have passed laws making sexually explicit deepfakes a punishable offense and campaigners are calling on Congress to urgently pass a host of Bills to regulate their creation and dissemination.

‘Disparity of privilege’

While high-profile politicians and celebrities, including singer Taylor Swift, have been victims of deepfake porn, experts say women not in the public eye are equally vulnerable.

After ASP notified the targeted U.S. Congresswomen, the fake AI-generated imagery was almost entirely scraped from the websites, reflecting what it called a “disparity of privilege.”

“Women who lack the resources afforded to members of Congress would be unlikely to achieve such a rapid response from deepfake pornography sites if they initiated a takedown request themselves,” ASP said.

First, a disclosure. One of the authors of the book India on the Move is a friend I have known and admired for years. I urge you to keep that in mind while reading this review.

The book is an honest attempt to make sense of the multi-layered 2024 Lok Sabha verdict. It does so in a way few others have attempted to decipher elections thus far: Through WhatsApp group chats, by examining the issues that unified and polarized the country, through long and arduous train journeys, and through conversations with some of the most prominent figures in Indian politics, among other methods.

In that sense, the book is a collection of impressions drawn from real events as they unfolded. As master chroniclers of our time, the authors must be commended for not imposing their biases and prejudices on their written words. That is no mean achievement considering the polarised world we are living in.

A few lines from the book are worth highlighting here. “While JNU catalysed a resurgence of nationalist discourse in India, it concurrently sowed seeds of discord among the youth, whose disillusionment would manifest in subsequent political landscapes,” the authors observe, referring to a series of events at India’s premier Jawaharlal University, which eventually contributed to the emergence of contrasting narratives.

Let’s consider another passage: “While the virus tested the robustness and contingencies of the country’s healthcare systems, the fear of the virus also amplified existing prejudices at a time when the nation needed to fight a common enemy,” the authors argue, reflecting on the Covid pandemic, which tested our bodies and nerves like few other events in recent decades.

There are chapters, and then there are unique phrases. Here are some chapter titles from the book: When a Deadly Virus Meets Viral Nationalism, Nationalism Goes Global, Of Ideology and Semantics, New Parliament and New Names, Political Tricolour and Soft Hindutva, and Popular Culture: The New Battleground. My favourite remains the one dealing with multiple discourses during the Covid-19 pandemic. The authors are spot-on when they observe that “the new plan of benevolent statesmanship linked with nationalism has now become an inevitable part of politics”.

My own take is that while the 2024 verdict leaned more toward benevolent statesmanship, the element of macho nationalism was somewhat missing. It seemed like a collection of several state elections. While West Bengal voted one way, neighbouring Bihar went the opposite. The verdict in Uttar Pradesh was full of surprises, and the people of Maharashtra, Jharkhand, and Rajasthan chose to punish some and reward others.

One theme that stood out was that people did not appreciate any political party taking them for granted. “Logon ne aukat dikha di” (people showed a mirror to all), as a friend said the day the Lok Sabha election results were announced.

The book delves into the multiplicity of the 2024 Lok Sabha verdict. Instead of a single meta-narrative, there were several at play—some cancelling each other out, and some reinforcing one another.

My editor-in-chief beautifully captured the pattern here: “It is a multi-layered verdict—the beauty of the India we know and have grown up in. The 2024 mandate is like a rainbow whose colours politicians will have to work hard to decipher. And decipher they must, with humility and passion, not dismissively. This verdict signals a triumph of individualism.”

(The author is Consulting Editor, NDTV)

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author

New Delhi:

The society continues to view former judges as custodians of the law and their lifestyle must accord with the sense of faith the society has in the legal system, said DY Chandrachud, former Chief Justice of India when asked if retired judges should join politics.

Asked if he would ever join politics himself, he asserted he would not do anything after the age of 65 which would cast an element of doubt on his work and the integrity of the judicial system.

“The society continues to look at you as a judge even when you lay down office. Therefore, things that are alright for other citizens, the society expects would not be alright for judges to do, even when they cease to be in office,” he said at NDTV’s Samvidhan@75 conclave.

Read: Judiciary Has No Exclusive Role In Collegium System. DY Chandrachud Explains

Justice Chandrachud, who retired earlier this month after serving as the country’s top judge for two years, clarified he was not casting an aspersion on judges who joined politics in the past.

“It is for every judge to take a call on whether a decision that they take after retirement will have a bearing on how people assess the work they did as a judge. If you join politics right after retirement, it may give rise to a certain perception on the members of the society on what was the extent to which his judicial work was influenced by the politics he adapted,” he added.

Acknowledging the role that the judicial institution has played in his career, he said, “Whatever a former judge does – his behaviour or personal lifestyle – must accord with the sense of faith the society has in your institution.”

Read: “Always Stable, Always Solid”: DY Chandrachud Praises This Retired Cricketer

He said judges are also private citizens and are entitled to the same rights that any other citizen gets, but society expects a higher standard of behaviour from them. “There should be some element of consensus within the judiciary on what is acceptable and what not is acceptable. That consensus has still not evolved,” he added.

He also suggested that sitting judges may discuss with former judges what is most appropriate for retired judges to do.

With just days to go for the U.S. presidential elections on November 5, after what is arguably the most polarised campaign in recent history, it is time to start looking at what the future may hold. In the run-up to the polls, there were surprising turns, including the Joseph Biden-Kamala Harris switch as the Democrat candidate, and the assassination attempts on former President and Republican nominee Donald Trump.

A number of books on the upcoming elections makes it clear there are not two, but three likely outcomes: a Trump win, a Harris win, and a contested outcome that goes to the courts, and possibly the streets. “This is the strangest election cycle I’ve ever seen… I’m telling people, you’re worried about November, I’m worried about tomorrow morning,” says Trump loyalist and Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, according to an exchange in War, Bob Woodward’s latest book, out just weeks before election day.

Important conversations

To turn the covers of a Woodward book is to spend hours as a fly on the wall in the White House and other places where important conversations take place in the U.S. capital.

From his iconic start with reporting partner Carl Bernstein on the Watergate scandal that ended the Nixon Presidency, and their book All the President’s Men, Woodward has honed his skill as the ultimate insider-outsider in Washington with more than a dozen books focused on different presidencies. His trilogy on the Trump Presidency (2017-2021), Fear: Trump in the White House, Rage, and Peril (written with Robert Costa), brought out in granular detail the chaos, the unpredictability and the insecurity of the world’s most powerful country, and how that period changed the world.

Woodward’s latest, in that sense, takes off from previous books, Bush at War and Obama’s Wars, to speak about how the Biden years have dealt with three global conflicts: the U.S. pullout from Afghanistan, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Israel’s assault on Gaza and Lebanon after the October 7, 2023 attacks. The book is remarkably up to date, and provides an insight on the past few years in the Oval office and just outside it. Woodward takes note of Biden’s dogged decision to withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan, something he had failed to convince former President Barack Obama of doing.

He looks at Biden’s unsuccessful attempt at deterring Russian President Vladimir Putin from going into Ukraine, even though the U.S. had remarkable intelligence far ahead of time that Russia would invade. Woodward also observes how the U.S. Presidency has tackled Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a leader that Biden has a long history of run-ins with, while supporting Israel to the hilt.

Woodward’s recording of the profanity used by heads of state is sometimes jarring, but conveys the seriousness of the times: At one place, Woodward recounts Biden saying that Obama never took Putin seriously enough and “f***ed it up” in 2014 with the Crimean invasion, about the same time that Trump says that Biden had “f***ed us up” by not handling Putin better.

A lunch conversation Woodward reveals between U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Biden, where Blinken convinces the President to step down from the campaign is proof of how close the author is to the principals.

Where they stand

While the book is about the Biden Presidency, it is by far the best account of where both former President Trump and Vice-President Harris would likely stand on foreign policy and dealing with Russia and Israel if they come to power. Trump’s obvious admiration for Putin, and easy understanding with Netanyahu comes through in a number of events described in War. One of the most telling chapters deals with Harris’s tough talk with Netanyahu in September this year, where she raises civilian killings in Gaza, and warns that the next generation of Americans may not share the sympathy for Israel’s actions that hers does.

Unfortunately for readers here, War makes little mention of India, with the exception of the White House’s outreach to India, China, Turkey and Israel to send messages to Putin cautioning against nuclear adventurism, and a reference to high levels of illegal immigration from India and China. Even the Indo-Pacific strategy bears scant notice or indication where the Presidential contenders will stand.

What memoirs tell

For those seeking less policy and more personal stories about the candidates, there are several books like Kamala Harris’ updated memoir, The Truths we Hold: An American Journey. This adds more on her worldview in the concluding chapter.

Trump put out a book after surviving the assassination attempt, Save America, which is prohibitively expensive and expectedly bombastic. A more personable account comes from former First Lady Melania Trump’s book Melania, that has, however, been panned as a “tell-nothing” sanitised version of events.

Interesting details of Trump’s beginnings come from his nephew Fred Trump’s All in the Family: The Trumps and How We Got This Way, out recently, and his niece, Mary Trump’s Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man, which is a profile in Trump psychology.

suhasini.h@thehindu.co.in

Israel:

Top US diplomat Antony Blinken was due to travel to Egypt on Tuesday for talks on a Gaza ceasefire after saying Israel had accepted a US “bridging proposal” for a deal and urging Hamas to do the same.

Blinken, on his ninth visit to the Middle East since the Palestinian operative group’s October 7 attack triggered the war with Israel, was scheduled to fly from Tel Aviv to El Alamein, the Mediterranean city famous for a World War II battle in 1942, to speak to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi at his summer palace.

Afterwards, he will head to a meeting with Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, in Doha, the scene of ceasefire talks last week.

Both Egypt and Qatar are working alongside the United States to broker a truce in the 10-month Gaza conflict.

Washington put forward the latest proposal last week after the talks in Doha.

Blinken said Monday he had “a very constructive meeting” with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who “confirmed to me that Israel accepts the bridging proposal”.

Ahead of those talks, Hamas called on the mediators to implement the framework set out by US President Joe Biden in late May, rather than hold more negotiations.

The movement said on Sunday that the current US proposal “responds to Netanyahu’s conditions” and leaves him “fully responsible for thwarting the efforts of the mediators”.

Earlier on Monday, the US secretary of state had said: “This is a decisive moment — probably the best, maybe the last, opportunity to get the hostages home, to get a ceasefire and to put everyone on a better path to enduring peace and security”.

Months of on-off negotiations with US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators have failed to produce an agreement.

Israel and Hamas have blamed each other for delays in reaching an accord that diplomats say would help avert a wider conflagration in the Middle East that could draw in Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

“There is, I think, a real sense of urgency here, across the region, on the need to get this over the finish line and to do it as soon as possible,” Blinken said.

The Biden administration is under domestic pressure over Gaza, with pro-Palestinian protests taking place outside the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Monday.

Biden said in his farewell speech to the convention that the protesters “have a point”, adding that “a lot of innocent people are being killed, on both sides”.

Permanent ceasefire

Israel and Hamas have traded blame for delays in reaching a truce deal.

Hamas insisted on “a permanent ceasefire and a comprehensive (Israeli) withdrawal from the Gaza Strip”, saying Netanyahu wanted to keep Israeli forces at several strategic locations within the territory.

Western ally Jordan, hostage supporters who protested in Tel Aviv during Blinken’s visit, and Hamas itself have called for pressure on Netanyahu in order for an agreement to be reached.

Far-right members crucial to the prime minister’s governing coalition oppose any truce.

The October 7 attack on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,198 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive in Gaza has killed at least 40,139 people, according to the territory’s health ministry, which does not give details of civilian and operative deaths.

Out of 251 hostages seized during Hamas’s attack, 111 are still held in Gaza, including 39 the military says are dead.

The Biden framework would freeze fighting for an initial six weeks while Israeli hostages are exchanged for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails and humanitarian aid enters Gaza.

Netanyahu said on Monday that negotiators were aiming to “release a maximum number of living hostages” in the first phase of any ceasefire.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Kyiv:

A Ukrainian deputy energy minister accused of taking a bribe worth half a million dollars has been arrested along with three alleged accomplices, Ukraine’s SBU Security Service said on Monday.

The minister, whom the SBU did not name, allegedly demanded mining industry officials pay him to transfer equipment from mines in the frontline eastern Donetsk region to a coal basin in western Ukraine.

“The equipment in question is unique and scarce, belonging to one of the state-owned coal companies located in the most active area of the eastern frontline — Pokrovsk,” the SBU said in a statement.

“In the spring of 2024, industry representatives approached the deputy energy minister to obtain permission to evacuate the equipment from the war zone and use it at mines in a western region,” it added.

“However, the official, whose duties included the preservation of mining equipment, demanded money for its removal,” it said.

The minister took the payment with the help of three alleged accomplices, all of whom were caught “red handed” after the minister had received part of the bribe, according to the statement.

The SBU did not disclose the identity of the four accused, posting photos of its officers arresting the suspects with their faces blurred.

But Ukrainian opposition MP Yaroslav Zheleznyak named the minister as Oleksandr Kheilo, a deputy energy minister.

Ukraine’s Cabinet of Ministers later issued an order to dismiss Kheilo from his post, according to a government Telegram channel.

Ukraine, which had severe corruption problems even before Russia’s 2022 invasion, has pledged to bolster efforts to combat graft as it seeks EU membership and to reassure its Western military backers.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky rose to power on a platform of ending corruption, and has fired a number of officials including his defence minister last year over graft scandals in the army.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)