Nileena MS

Comrades in Retreat: How Kerala’s CPI(M) took a hammer to its ideology while chasing electability Nileena MS (@nileenams) reports: caravanmagazine.in/politics/keral…

Binoy Viswam, the state secretary of the Kerala unit of the Communist Party of India, leads the party into a challenging assembly election this month. The Left Democratic Front alliance, under the Communist Party of India (Marxist)’s Pinarayi Vijayan, already won an unprecedented second term in the state five years ago. With four ministers and a voteshare stable between seven and nine percent in assembly elections, the CPI has been the younger brother of the alliance since the communist party split in 1964. As the smaller, but usually more ideologically driven partner, the CPI has had to face public anger because of Vijayan’s growing distance from communist ideology. Nileena MS (@nileenams), a senior staff writer at The Caravan, interviewed Viswam days after the alliance met a drubbing at local body polls, to ask about what the party could learn from its loss. Read the entire interview here: caravanmagazine.in/politics/binoy…

"The distinctive role of the Left parties in the national political scenario emerges from its secular politics and, importantly, its socialist economics. Communal and extremist forces of all hues need to be exposed and opposed. The Hindutva forces create insecurity among minority communities. In the name of opposing the Hindutva forces, fundamentalist organisations emerge among minority communities too. While not equating them both, the fact that both pose serious threats to India’s diversities and our society’s inclusive nature needs to be stressed." MA Baby, the current general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), in an interview with Nileena MS (@nileenams), senior staff writer at The Caravan. This interview was part of the reporting for the cover story this month, which traced the ideological deviation of the CPI(M), criticised by opponents and sympathisers alike. Read the entire interview here: caravanmagazine.in/politics/ma-ba…

Comrades in Retreat: How Kerala’s CPI(M) took a hammer to its ideology while chasing electability Nileena MS (@nileenams) reports: caravanmagazine.in/politics/keral…

Archives | India’s defence minister Rajnath Singh sits in the first IAF Rafale fighter jet on the tarmac in Merignac near Bordeaux, France, in October 2019. The Rafale deal, one of the costliest in Indian history, faced severe opposition criticism of corruption, an allegation proven by the Gupta Papers. Read the entire report by Nileena MS (@nileenams): caravanmagazine.in/reportage/gupt…

The January 2026 issue—Judicial overreach and Sangh mobilisation bring Ayodhya to Tamil Nadu; Jean Dreze on the Modi government’s new rural employment bill; Why the Congress keeps losing elections; The new ST classification in Assam is political eyewash; Dhurandhar and the manufacture of a national consensus; Food in Dalit and Adivasi writing; and more. Read now: caravanmagazine.in/magazine The January 2026 issue is now available online for all subscribers. If you are a subscriber and unable to log in to our website, please write to subscriptions@caravanmagazine.in Print copies of the issue will be delivered to print subscribers and rolled out to newsstands over the next two weeks, depending on location. Copies will also be available for purchase on Amazon from January 10th. The Caravan is able to publish journalism like this thanks to the support of our subscribers. To help us continue doing this work, subscribe today: caravanmagazine.in/subscribe Or contribute: caravanmagazine.in/contribute

Open Access | Seeing the Sangh is the world’s first comprehensive map of the organisational affiliates surrounding the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh—which together constitute the largest far-right network in the world. This interactive dataset, which currently includes comprehensive qualitative and quantitative data on over two thousand and five hundred organisations, is stored at a repository housed at the Science Po’s Centre for International Studies (CERI), and has been fact-checked and published by The Caravan. Explore the network map here: rssproject.caravanmagazine.in For a deeper reflection on why such an intervention is necessary, see Felix Pal’s (@FelixPal8) essay, “Exposing the largest far-right network in history”, read here: caravanmagazine.in/politics/unvei…

Any Resemblance to Actual Events is Not Coincidental: Interfaith romance fiction in the era of love jihad Read the entire essay by Maya Palit (@mayapalit1): caravanmagazine.in/communities/in…

The 2025 Media Issue—The convenient evasions of Rajdeep Sardesai; The dismantling of Outlook’s legacy; The story of an alternative newspaper in Karnataka; How Samayantar fights against the shrinking of Hindi society; How a Washington Post columnist laundered the Sangh’s violent history; and more. Read now: caravanmagazine.in/magazine The December 2025 media issue is now available online for all subscribers. If you are a subscriber and unable to log in to our website, please write to subscriptions@caravanmagazine.in Print copies of the issue will be delivered to print subscribers and rolled out to newsstands over the next two weeks, depending on location. Copies will also be available for purchase on Amazon from December 15th. The Caravan is able to publish journalism like this thanks to the support of our subscribers. To help us continue doing this work, subscribe today: caravanmagazine.in/subscribe Or contribute: caravanmagazine.in/contribute Cover photograph by Shahid Tantray (@shahidtantray)

Archives | In March 2024, the Tata group—in a joint venture with another Taiwanese firm—was allotted 160 acres of land in Dholera to set up a Rs 91,000 crore semiconductor assembly plant that, the government hopes, will begin production in 2026. A report by the Association for Democratic Reforms noted that, before the 2019 general election, the Tata-backed Progressive Electoral Trust donated Rs 455.15 crore, an overwhelming majority of which went to the BJP, making the group the largest corporate donor through electoral trusts." Contracts, legal immunity, lasting policy changes: Everything electoral bonds can buy, report by @nileenams and @swethakadiyala: caravanmagazine.in/politics/elect…

The November issue—The many betrayals of Nitish Kumar; Towards a coherent definition of political terrorism; How a union-led dam board and BJP-ruled states watched as Punjab flooded; The language wars have primed West Bengal for the RSS; An interview with Anand Teltumbde; and more. Read now: caravanmagazine.in/magazine The November 2025 issue is now available online for all subscribers. If you are a subscriber and unable to log in to our website, please write to subscriptions@caravanmagazine.in Print copies of the issue will be delivered to print subscribers and rolled out to newsstands over the next two weeks, depending on location. Copies will also be available for purchase on Amazon from November 10th. The Caravan is able to publish journalism like this thanks to the support of our subscribers. To help us continue doing this work, subscribe today: caravanmagazine.in/subscribe Or contribute: caravanmagazine.in/contribute

Genuine anger among the youth and civil society may have launched the protests, but the simmering discontents in Nepali politics and society, some of whom had been kept at bay by Nepal’s constitutional democracy, rose to the surface. Most concerning among these was the rising prominence of controversial politicians such as Lamichhane, the monarchist Durga Prasai and Balen Shah, a rapper who is the current mayor of Kathmandu. Read the entire report by Vishnu Sharma (@hellovishnu): caravanmagazine.in/politics/nepal…

CEC Gyanesh Kumar under direct line of fire; Rahul Gandhi accuses him of stonewalling request for information held by the poll body that could help identify the culprits who sought illegal deletion of around 6,000 votes in Karnataka’s Aland constituency deccanherald.com/india/rahul-ac…

The September issue—The designed irrelevance of the NITI Aayog; Revanth Reddy’s Musi river project protects neither the river nor the people; School girls in Odisha tune into right-wing YouTube; The SIR threatens a century of progress in advancing voting rights; Women in fishing communities author stories of labour and resilience; Why the struggle for transgender rights must evolve beyond tokenism. Read now: caravanmagazine.in/magazine The September 2025 issue is now available online for all subscribers. If you are a subscriber and unable to log in to our website, please write to subscriptions@caravanmagazine.in Print copies of the issue will be delivered to print subscribers and rolled out to newsstands over the next two weeks, depending on location. Copies will also be available for purchase on Amazon from September 10th. The Caravan is able to publish journalism like this thanks to the support of our subscribers. To help us continue doing this work, subscribe today: caravanmagazine.in/subscribe Or contribute: caravanmagazine.in/contribute

"And now #Nepal, from its present abyss, dreams of a new politics that actually works for the people. Let it not have to see more blood in its striving," writes Himal EIC @romangautam about the #GenZprotests in #Kathmandu himalmag.com/politics/nepal…

In this latest episode of the Caravan Baatcheet, host Vishnu Sharma (@hellovishnu) is in conversation with staff writer Sunil Kashyap (@SunilKashyap0) on the growing Thakur-versus-others dynamics and how it is creating fresh challenges for the BJP. Wartch now: youtu.be/J-I01Ae3RZM Or read the entire report in the Caravan's latest issue: caravanmagazine.in/crime/increasi…

Getting Away With Murder: The increasing clout of Thakurs in Uttar Pradesh leaves behind a trail of caste violence Report by @SunilKashyap0: caravanmagazine.in/crime/increasi…

“ What else is expected if you don’t lay out the true evidence? ... I was out since 2017, and before that, I had presented plenty of evidence and the Supreme Court had upheld it all. Where did it all vanish?" indianexpress.com/article/cities…

The August issue—The Bihar Model and how revising electoral rolls could disenfranchise millions and threaten their citizenship; The increasing clout of Thakurs in Uttar Pradesh leaves behind a trail of caste violence; The continuing struggle of persons with disability for documentation; Brahmin-Yadav friction in Uttar Pradesh exposes the fragility of the BJP’s project of Hindu consolidation; Simulated animals and ecological amnesia in West Bengal; and more Read now: caravanmagazine.in/magazine The August 2025 issue is now available online for all subscribers. If you are a subscriber and unable to log in to our website, please write to subscriptions@caravanmagazine.in Print copies of the issue will be delivered to print subscribers and rolled out to newsstands over the next two weeks, depending on location. Copies will also be available for purchase on Amazon from August 10th. The Caravan is able to publish journalism like this thanks to the support of our subscribers. To help us continue doing this work, subscribe today: caravanmagazine.in/subscribe Or contribute: caravanmagazine.in/contribute

"The NIA failed to produce crucial evidence in court, witnesses turned hostile and evidence collected by Karkare’s ATS team was undermined. The initial evidence filed by the agency pointed to a clear conspiracy that was spelt out by a special court judge in 2016.#MalegaonBlast