The Right to Information Act (RTI), once hailed as a revolutionary tool empowering citizens to hold power accountable, now stands at a critical crossroads. Two decades after its enactment, the law that once illuminated corruption, exposed scams, and strengthened democracy has been systematically hollowed out through political interference, bureaucratic evasion, and legislative dilution. From the 2019 amendments weakening Information Commissions to the Digital Personal Data Protection Act’s Section 443 shielding the government under the guise of privacy, transparency has been recast as a threat. India today suffers from data opacity, manipulation, and denial—where evidence is replaced by erasure and secrecy becomes governance. Institutions once devoted to public integrity—the NSSO, CAG, and Indian Statistical Institute—face interference, delayed data releases, and censorship of inconvenient truths. Activists who dared to ask questions have been attacked or killed, while citizens encounter silence and obstruction. The RTI’s decline mirrors a deeper democratic crisis: the transformation of a people’s right to know into the state’s right to conceal. Yet amid suppression, citizens continue to resist—filing mass RTIs, exposing institutional failures, and demanding reform. The fight to save RTI is no longer just about access to information; it is a struggle to reclaim the soul of Indian democracy itself.
Between Cosmetic Grooming, Pharmacology and DHFL Haircut: Ambiguities in the Case of Bohem by Piramal Pharma Limited
This paper investigates the regulatory and ethical positioning of Bohem, a men’s grooming product line launched by Piramal Pharma Limited (PPL), within the Indian cosmetic–drug regulatory framework. Drawing upon publicly available documents from the Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO), Piramal Pharma’s corporate communications, and state regulatory norms, the study demonstrates that Bohem—while branded under a major pharmaceutical conglomerate—is not a pharmacologically approved medicine. Rather, it is classified as a cosmetic or personal-care product, subject to the relatively lenient provisions of the Cosmetics Rules 2020.
The analysis underscores how blurred categorizations between cosmetics and therapeutics enable large corporations to exploit brand trust associated with pharmaceutical credibility while avoiding the rigor of clinical testing and drug regulation. The paper situates this within broader debates on consumer safety, regulatory opacity, and corporate ethics in India’s post-liberalization health-industrial economy. A parallel case study juxtaposes the cosmetic “haircut” of Bohem with the financial “haircut” suffered by DHFL investors, illustrating how governance and grooming converge in the moral economy of neoliberal India.
(W)holistic Resistance and the Courage to Stand Alone: OBMA’s Call for Justice and Dissent in India
This statement reflects OBMA’s introspection and reaffirmation of purpose amid ongoing struggles for justice, accountability, and ecological integrity in India’s increasingly oligarchic and censored environment. Drawing inspiration from Gandhi’s satyagraha, Tagore’s “Ekla Chalo Re,” and the resilience of figures like Umar Khalid, it underscores the moral necessity of walking alone when truth demands it. Acknowledging internal hesitations, systemic suppression, and self-censorship, OBMA calls for renewed ethical persistence, strategic communication, and collective courage — bearing one’s own cross with conscience, foresight, and faith in transformative action.
Defending Dissent, Protecting Ladakh: OBMA Stands with Climate Activist Sonam Wangchuk
The Once in a Blue Moon Academia (OBMA) stands in unwavering solidarity with Sonam Wangchuk and the Ladakh Movement, recognizing their struggle as a fight for environmental justice, climate action, cultural autonomy, and democratic dissent. Highlighting Ladakh’s vulnerability as the “Third Pole” of the world, the statement critiques the abrogation of Article 370 and the selective, contradictory application of Article 371, exposing the central government’s sidelining of local governance and ecological concerns. OBMA condemns Wangchuk’s arbitrary NSA detention and the violent suppression of peaceful protests, emphasizing that the movement’s constitutional demands for statehood, Sixth Schedule inclusion, and ecological protection are lawful, ethical, and globally aligned. The statement affirms that safeguarding communities, ecological integrity, and the right to dissent are duties of conscience, wisdom, and citizenship.
Dynastic Capitalism and Ecological “Externalities”: The Ambani–Piramal Nexus in Post-Liberalization India
This essay investigates how the marital and corporate nexus between the Ambani and Piramal families consolidates dynastic power while enabling ecological, social, and ethical impunity in India’s neoliberal economy. Operating through the Mitakshara coparcenary system, this “nepo-capitalist complex” centralizes vast wealth across Reliance Industries, Piramal Group, and affiliated ventures, while systematically externalizing environmental degradation, resource depletion, and socio-economic costs onto marginalized communities. Through an integrated critique of Ambani’s Reliance’s pollution and cronyism, Campa Cola’s water-intensive operations, Piramal Pharma’s Digwal effluents, Piramal Realty’s climate-vulnerable coastal real estate, Russian oil dealings, Z+ state protection, and the contested Vantara wildlife project, the essay traces the nexus of dynastic wealth, environmental exploitation, and geopolitical opportunism. The Mitakshara mechanism emerges not as a cultural relic but as a structural tool that facilitates intergenerational wealth consolidation, shields elites from accountability, and perpetuates ecological and social extraction in twenty-first century India.
Schrödinger’s Dilemma and Ajay Piramal: The Mystery Behind “Oxford Talks” — Where Prestige Meets PR
Ajay Piramal’s 2025 appearance at the Oxford India Forum, widely promoted as an “Oxford Talk,” illustrates the modern commodification of academic prestige. While held at Oxford’s Saïd Business School, the event was business-led, not university-sanctioned, blurring the line between genuine scholarly engagement and curated corporate spectacle. Piramal’s speech echoed government slogans on India’s so-called development, emphasizing optimism and digital progress while ignoring structural inequalities, institutional failures, and empirical critiques. This case exemplifies how elite actors leverage the symbolic authority of Oxford to perform legitimacy, transforming proximity to knowledge into a marketable status symbol rather than a pursuit of wisdom and truth.
Where Have All The Flowers Gone? Disclosing Piramal Pharma’s “Little’s”
This investigative article, dedicated to the twenty-two children who perished from contaminated cough syrup in India—a stark emblem of systemic regulatory failure, profit-driven negligence, and ethical erosion in the pharmaceutical sector—unveils the moral contradictions embedded in Piramal Pharma’s “Little’s” baby-care line, encompassing wipes, oils, powders, shampoos, diapers, toys, and the whimsical “Jungle Magic” extensions like perfumes, sanitizers, and repellents. Through a meticulous dissection of product variants, their petrochemical-derived ingredients (such as talc, polypropylene, parabens, phenoxyethanol, and superabsorbent polymers), and associated health risks—including asbestos contamination, endocrine disruption, microplastic ingestion, respiratory hazards, and unverified pediatric safety—it exposes how corporate rhetoric of “gentle care” and “purity” masks a toxic alchemy of commodified infancy, where parental anxiety is monetized amid opaque supply chains reliant on Chinese imports (15% of raw materials), environmental externalities like Digwal’s pollution, and regulatory gray zones that classify these as non-pharmacological FMCG rather than scrutinized drugs. Interweaving poetic laments, folk songs, philosophical dialogues, and political-ecological critiques, the piece frames infancy as a battleground of postcolonial capitalism, where the cradle mirrors the coffin through iatrogenic harm, false patriotism (boycotting Chinese goods in rhetoric while importing them in practice), and the Anthropocene’s uninhabitable legacy of climate toxicity and microplastics; appendices provide granular data on toy industry economics, material toxicities, and sourcing hypotheses, culminating in demands for transparency, independent audits, pharmacovigilance for consumer goods, and a reclamation of nurture from market fetishism to honor the lost children not as accidents but as indictments urging societal reform and remembrance.
Why Cannot DHFL FD and NCD Holders Approach the International Forum, OHCHR?
This article examines the legal and moral impasse faced by Fixed Deposit (FD) and Non-Convertible Debenture (NCD) holders of Dewan Housing Finance Corporation Ltd. (DHFL) in seeking justice through international mechanisms such as the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). It argues that under Article 5(2)(b) of the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and Rule 96(b) of the OHCHR’s procedural framework, individuals may only appeal to the OHCHR once all domestic remedies have been exhausted. However, in the DHFL–Piramal case, where India’s Supreme Court upheld Ajay Piramal’s contentious resolution plan despite ongoing review petitions, this exhaustion clause becomes a site of moral contradiction. The article situates the DHFL takeover within a broader architecture of crony oligarchy, judicial abdication, and financial human rights violations, where legality becomes the instrument of dispossession or expropriation. Drawing upon the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), it reframes financial exploitation as a form of systemic human rights abuse. Ultimately, it concludes that while procedural routes to international justice remain closed, mass civil disobedience and collective non-compliance emerge as the only viable pathways toward moral and political redress.
From Itching Skin to Itching Palms: Calamities of Lacto Calamine of Piramal Pharma’s Pharmakon
This paper examines Lacto Calamine, a widely used topical cosmetic-lotion marketed by Piramal Pharma, through the lens of pharmacological efficacy, regulatory ambiguity, and ethical marketing. Drawing from publicly available data on its ingredients—primarily kaolin clay, zinc oxide, glycerin, and aloe vera—this study interrogates whether the formulation justifies its “pseudo-medical” truth-claims. It situates Lacto Calamine within India’s broader landscape of over-the-counter (OTC) cosmetic-medicinal hybrids that thrive on consumer faith rather than clinical validation. Methodologically, the paper employs both toxicological data analysis and self-reflexive ethnography, integrating critical theory and personal testimony to illuminate how pharmacological discourse and neoliberal consumerism intertwine. Ethical questions regarding celebrity endorsements, placebo reassurance, and gendered beauty expectations are explored. The study concludes that Lacto Calamine functions less as a pharmacologically commensurable product and more as a symbolic artefact of cosmetic capitalism, merging colonial legacies of fairness with neoliberal health consumerism.
Piramal’s Supradyn: Illusory Vitality and Expensive Urine
This communication critically examines Piramal Pharma’s over-the-counter multivitamin supplement Supradyn, highlighting concerns of pharmacological redundancy, cumulative risks, and misleading advertising. While promoted as a universal “energy booster,” Supradyn’s formulation—comprising multiple water- and fat-soluble vitamins, trace minerals, and herbal additives like ginseng—offers limited physiological benefit for healthy adults: water-soluble vitamins are largely excreted, fat-soluble vitamins and trace minerals may accumulate to toxic levels, and ginseng poses risks of insomnia, cardiovascular effects, drug interactions, and psychiatric destabilization. Evidence from Indian and global experts underscores that routine supplementation is unnecessary in non-deficient populations, and clinical trials consistently show minimal to no outcome benefit, contrary to perception-driven surveys like the EIGEN 2020 study. Piramal’s marketing strategies, which exploit fatigue, lifestyle anxieties, and survey-based claims, risk contravening the Drugs and Magic Remedies Act, Food Safety regulations, and ethical standards of pharmaceutical communication, while fine-print disclaimers fail to ensure informed consumer consent. The analogy with financial exploitation through DHFL underscores how trust is commodified in both finance and health, extracting costs under the guise of benefit. In light of public health ethics, global regulatory frameworks, and consumer safety, the letter urges Piramal Pharma and relevant authorities to adopt transparent labeling, evidence-based advertising, and stricter oversight, emphasizing diet-first strategies and targeted supplementation for clinically confirmed deficiencies rather than universal promotion of multivitamins.
Once in a Blue Moon Academia 