Asian Dispatch

Earlier in June, Tabassum Khan, a trial court judge in Madhya Pradesh was subjected to online abuse for convicting a group of cow vigilantes to life imprisonment for lynching truck driver Sheikh Lala Nazir Ahmed in August 2022. Khan’s religious identity took centerstage as an online mob issued rape and death threats.

Delhi woke up to a slight drizzle on Monday, July 20, but that couldn’t deter tens of thousands of students, parents, political leaders, activists, and even actors from joining the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) led protest at Jantar Mantar. As crowds gathered near the protest site in the national capital to march towards the Parliament, they had only one demand — Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation. Huge crowd at the Jantar Mantar protest site.

For years, Chithra Devi* counted down the days until she could escape. Every morning, she woke up before dawn and walked into the tea fields of a privately owned estate in Sri Lanka’s Southern province. Every evening, she returned to a small house beside a fertiliser storage facility, where the smell of chemicals lingered in the air and breathing often became difficult. Chithra, a Malaiyaha Tamil worker, married to a Sinhalese worker employed at the same estate, had one goal: escape.

Before entering the Mawphlang Sacred Forest in Meghalaya, visitors are warned not to take anything out — not a leaf, not a stone, not even fallen wood. “Nothing is to be disturbed,” says Born, a stern-faced guide from the Khasi community, pausing beside a cluster of monoliths near the entrance. Then he turns and walks into the grove. Inside, the shift is immediate. The green canopy of towering oak, rudraksha, rhododendron and Khasi pine trees shuts out much of the sky in Mawphlang.

Sneha Mahale Sneha Mahale is a Mumbai-based journalist and editor who covers climate change, wildlife, health, technology, and culture. She specialises in long-form features, reported essays, and deeply researched stories that connect policy, people, and place.

For more than a decade, Meillyssa Chandra has worked as a general practitioner assessing whether people are fit to set sail. As the health examiner at the Maritime Occupational Health Center under Indonesia’s Transportation Ministry, she conducts medical checks for seafarers. These include eyesight and hearing, blood pressure, urine content, lung function, and even heart activity through an electrocardiogram (EKG). All seafarers must meet strict standards.

“SIS! BERAPA?,” a fish seller shouts out to marine biologist Dr Achier Chung. “Sister! How much are you offering?” He lifts a fish to the water surface. In his palm, the fish flaps its pectoral fin. Chung is at Semporna’s live seafood market, where most seafood is sold live, without price tags or weighing scales. Instead, sellers and buyers – largely tourists – negotiate through loud bargaining, hand gestures, and phone calculators.

News reports from early June suggest that countries like the United Kingdom and Canada are likely to announce restrictions on social media usage by teens. Australia’s decision to enforce a blanket ban on social media access for users under-16, making it among the first economically advanced democracies to do so, set off a wave of regulatory contagion of countries either attempting to enact or considering various grades of social media restrictions targeted at teenagers and children.

“We had planned to cook this feast on gas,” says Riyaz Ahmad, staring quietly at the dying embers nearby. “But given the shortage, I switched to firewood instead. It’s costing us almost double.” Riyaz Ahmad Anchari, 50, is, a waza, a traditional Kashmiri chef. In fact, he’s the head waza here, at a friend’s sister’s wedding. And he’s grappling with a till-now unforeseen problem. The war in Iran nearly 3,000 kilometres away is disrupting weddings in Kashmir. Earlier, the entire house seemed alive.