John

My review of @SWynnWilliams cracker of a memoir. Don’t read the review, read the book! @frontline_india frontline.thehindu.com/books/careless…

Ha bhai Faiz, ye ghum ki sham bc aur kitni lambi hai?

Amidst a wholesale institutional collapse, at least we have our little wins: DeKoder doing ‘calm election analysis’ to help us quantify the ruins.

New blog post: Automatic Yet Illegal – Analysing the Revocation of Scheduled Tribe Status and Statutory Excommunication of Mizo Women -- indconlawphil.wordpress.com/2026/04/20/gue… [A guest post by Akshay Sriram.]

Remember the two women in Manipur who were stripped, paraded and gangraped in 2023? Here’s what’s happening to the SC monitored case- 3 accused still on the run,2 of 6 arrested persons out on bail, another one has applied for bail. I ✍🏼 thehindu.com/news/national/…

I realized I've only seen maps of the Strait of Hormuz and was curious what it actually looks like. It's majestic! It could be a tourist destination

India's Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals declared force majeure on ​all upcoming gasoline export cargoes amid the Middle East conflict. Force majeure, that's serious reuters.com/business/energ…

US countering Iran off Sri Lanka is the *second* known operation in recent months in the central Indian Ocean. Based on @WSJ @benoitfaucon @laraseligman reporting, a US special operations team boarded a ship in Nov 2025 to prevent military cargo being moved from China to Iran.

The targetted assassination of the leadership of a sovereign nation by the so called leaders of the democratic world and the killing of multitudes of innocent people is despicable and deserves strong condemnation, no matter what the proclaimed reason for it is. It is tragic that multiple nations have now been dragged into conflict. The world needs peace not more unnecessary wars. Those in charge of it would do well to remember Mahatma Gandhi’s words: An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. I do hope that having genuflected before the Prime Minister of Israel and President Trump, our Prime Minister makes every effort to bring all Indian citizens in the affected countries back home to safety.

when you have friends like these who needs enemies

galgotias or langotias can’t decide atm

@SudsG5 Absolutely! I was surprised as well. Here is the press release by MoSPI from Jan 2025 pib.gov.in/PressReleasePa…

A personal note: A sister who is no more …… I met her mother when the wounds were still raw. I was reporting from Manipur in 2023, when fear hung heavier than the smoke, and silence was often safer than speech. She refused to speak on camera then. She barely spoke at all. Not because she had nothing to say but because some pain is too heavy to be performed for the world. I never saw her as a Kuki survivor or a Meiti but as a sister who was wronged by men - my tribe. I remember she was rescued by an auto driver who belonged to a different ethnicity. He had arranged for clothes to drape her and taken her to a police station. She was bruised and had somehow survived the ordeal. Manipur coverage remains one of the most traumatic experiences of my life. The scars it left are deep, personal, and carried quietly inside me. Some stories never leave you. They settle into your bones. She knew she wasn’t alone in her suffering. That knowledge gave her strength, but it also carried a terrible truth: that what happened to her daughter was not an exception, it was a pattern. Nearly three years later, when I heard her mother’s voice again, it broke something in me. This time, there was no fear. Only exhaustion. And grief that had no place left to go. Her daughter wanted a simple life. She wanted to open a beauty salon. To work. To stand on her own feet. That dream died long before her body did. What followed was years of survival - medical files, hospital beds, quiet breakdowns, and a justice system that never arrived. This is not just a story of one woman. It is a story of collective failure. Of institutions that delayed. Of investigations that still ongoing since the violence began almost 3 years back. Of a society that learned to look away. No one is asking what’s the status of the CBI probe that’s still ongoing - if the monsters are arrested! I can’t forgive those who did this. I can’t forgive those who allowed it to fade into paperwork. And I can’t fully forgive myself for moving on to the next story while she kept fighting for her life. In every conflict, in every war, rape becomes the easiest weapon. The cheapest tool of torture. And the hardest crime to undo. The buffer zone still exists in Manipur. Lines that you can’t see on any map. Barriers of fear. And on both sides of it are women carrying identical stories - different names, same trauma, same unanswered questions. Today, she is no more. Yet she is still not alone. She is joined by countless others, yearning not for sympathy, but for justice. For closure. For acknowledgment. My hands are trembling as I write this. Because reporting ends but responsibility does not. And this story, like the scars of violence itself, is far from over.

India's gig economy will employ 23M by 2030. New labour codes promise some protection. But right now? Isolation by design. Sonic punishment. Precarious pay. No safety nets. Our convenience comes at their cost. Full story in @IndianExpress indianexpress.com/article/long-r…

2025 WRAP Till end of 2025, resistance to forced digitisation and coercion continued – litigation by anganwadi workers, protest by teachers in Maharashtra and a powerful strike by over 2 lakh gig workers. We look at a year of resisting coercive tech: rethinkaadhaar.in/blog/2026/1/5/…

IPL aur Bollywood se nikalne ke siwai aur kuch hota hai humse?

Rajiv Shukla lite

Why does toxic air pollution require a democratic newsroom format/segment

@ShabnamHashmi stands acquitted in the criminal case lodged by Delhi Police for exercising the right to protest during Covid 19. @dtulsiani1 and I enjoyed defending her civil & political rights. livelaw.in/news-updates/d…

Just returned from the enba award ceremony. The organizers told me to add "best" to any category and take the award away. Couldn't be happier. Suggested them to recycle the momento for next year function and won the best environment reporter award too.

I’m staring at the mess(i) you’ve made