Commentary

Patronage politics and the economic crisis in Sri Lanka’s North and East

The North and East saw fewer protests amid Sri Lanka’s economic crisis, but disillusionment with mainstream parties is changing the region’s electoral politics.

| May 15, 2023

Making Prothom Alo “the enemy” in Bangladesh

Sheikh Hasina and her Awami League government have gone after Bangladesh’s top newspaper – the last one standing in the country’s media

| May 12, 2023

Canadian-Tamil comedian Sunthar V navigates queerness and Tamil identity

Sunthar V, founder of the Tamil Comedy Club in central London, attempts to push social boundaries with his comedy in Chennai

| Mar 27, 2023

Delhi’s longest-running play reflects the changing city

The shape-shifting ‘Ghalib in New Delhi’ captures 26 years of sociopolitical change in Delhi and beyond

| Mar 24, 2023

Punjab’s battles over Bhagat Singh

Controversies over the anti-colonial revolutionary expose Punjab’s political fissures, with the farmers’ protest movement, Communists, Khalistanis, the AAP and other parties all having staked their own claims

| Mar 16, 2023

The secrets of ‘All That Breathes’

Shaunak Sen’s Oscar-nominated documentary looks at Muslim brothers caring for kites in Delhi, but also carries a veiled message on religious hatred in Modi’s India

| Mar 11, 2023

Sri Lanka’s great IMF lie

Decades of looking to the IMF for salvation has yielded only crises. Sri Lanka’s economic crisis demands urgent relief measures for a desperate citizenry and a new, self-sufficient model of development

Pashtuns will not be pawns in Pakistan’s dangerous game with the TTP and Taliban

Recent protests in Swat and Waziristan highlight discontent with rising militancy and the Pakistan military

| Feb 17, 2023

The paanwallah 

A devotee’s paean to the culture of paan.

| Dec 09, 2022

Tunnel to the future

How the Atal Tunnel is reshaping life in Lahaul.

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Latest Articles

In Mizoram, a refugee crisis highlights Mizo tribal affinities and hostility

Shared Zo identity has Mizos extending hospitality to Chin and Kuki-Chin refugees from Myanmar and Bangladesh. More remarkable is that Chakmas, mistreated by the Mizo majority in Mizoram, have welcomed Kuki-Chin refugees too

In ‘Agra’, a grim portrait of the repressed Indian man

Director Kanu Behl’s Hindi feature film examines the sexual obsession and frustration of men, mental health and the transactional nature of human relationships in a patriarchal society where space is in short supply

When neoliberalism came to the Indian farm

With a focus on agricultural policy since the 1990s, 'Distress in the Fields' demonstrates how neoliberal interventions sowed the seeds of the crisis faced by farmers today