The Latest: Top stories of the day
1. Human Resource Development minister Smriti Irani said Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti had assured her of the safety of students at the National Institute of Technology Sringar, which has been tense.
2. The authorities have detained two people in connection with the murder of a National Investigation Agency officer's murder in Uttar Pradesh.
3. Pakistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Wednesday said that the visit of the Joint Investigative Team looking into the Pathankot attacks took place in the context of Islambad's "cooperative approach" to the matter.

The Big Story: Let them watch cricket

The Bombay High Court on Wednesday asked an important question of priorities: How important is cricket to Indians? Is the sport so important to us – particularly the blatantly commercial Indian Premier League version – that we will continue to use massive amounts of water keeping cricket grounds green even in a state that has a drought?

The question may involve a bit of moralising, but it is a stark reminder of our skewed priorities. Obviously, few would defend the use of massive amounts of water for sport when government hospitals are shutting for the lack of H20 and clashes are breaking out in areas where supply has been cut off. The more nuanced approach would be to question where Maharashtra's cricket grounds are getting their water from and whether the business generated from the IPL brings in enough money to better offset the water situation.

While the High Court considers whether the IPL matches should go ahead in Maharashtra, it may be worth looking at all the little local variants of over-watered cricket grounds that exist in our urban spaces. Travel through any major Indian city right now and you are unlikely to reliase that we have had two bad monsoons and a severe drought in large portions of the country.

The High Court, thanks to a timely petition, may have given the IPL a wake-up call and a reminder that the water situation in the country simply isn't normal. When will the rest of us catch on?

The Big Scroll
Read Meltdown 2016, Scroll.in's daily feature in which Nayantara Narayanan collects stories of how weather and water-stress are causing havoc around the country. We start with parts of the Godavari drying up, even as reservoir levels around the country are sinking to record lows.

Politicking & Policying
1. Panama Papers: The drumbeat of revelations from the Mossack Fonseca leaks now includes an Indian Premier League franchisee hopeful that used the offshore route, but shut it within 10 days.
2. US authorities set up a fake university to successfully bust an immigration and jobs visa racket, with nearly 1,000 applicants from India and China now having to return home.
3. Mumbai Police have issued a security alert suspecting a terror attack through the aerial route, while Punjab Police are on the lookout for a car that allegedly has been commandeered by terrorists.
4. The Supreme Court has criticised the Centre for not providing enough funds under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act to drought-hit states.
5. Factory workers in Tamil Nadu are demanding a "heat allowance" paid to people who work in hostile summer conditions.

Punditry
1. A leader in Mint examines the Reserve Bank of India's new approach to liquidity management, saying it reduces volatility but could confuse markets.
2. The only "ism" that the business world professes is opportunism, writes Kanika Datta in the Business Standard.
3. Swami Agnivesh in the Indian Express calls on Baba Ramdev to go into vanvaas for sowing the seeds of horrendous violence.

Don't Miss
Darryl D'Monte says the very rationale of building flyovers needs to be revisited.

"Traffic, comprising cars and two-wheelers, has burgeoned and is merely redirected to another bottleneck further away. Flyovers, like coastal highways and other mega road projects, are in fact their own worst enemy because they end up causing further congestion, not relieving it.

As Ashok Datar of the Mumbai Environmental Social Network, argues, it makes no sense to build roads over roads or along rivers or other waterfronts."