📢 แจ้งเตือน: social issues - Kapook Update 2025

The latest order by Judge Ravi Kumar Diwakar equates judicial fearlessness with choosing the death sentence. This image is representational.

Why hanging cannot become a badge of judicial courage

Ravi Kumar Diwakar’s run of capital sentences in Muzaffarnagar exposes the danger of personalising the death penalty and the sentencing gap created by the Supreme Court’s Sriharan ruling.

Conversation around youth and protest assume that someone needs to reach a certain age before their problems are valid. This image is representational.

Who speaks for children too young to protest?

India has laws, school committees, and digital systems meant to protect children’s rights, yet the youngest children have few ways to make the state answer when those systems fail.

Disenfranchisement

SIR is destroying the ethos of Indian citizenship

Mass deletions from the electoral rolls are pushing India’s marginalised out of political society and remaking every party in the BJP’s image.

Parakala Prabhakar

The history of protest is a history of emotions becoming political

At a moment when dissent is reduced to a law-and-order problem, it is worth looking at what makes people willing to protest. India’s history shows movements are born when private emotions become collective political demands.

Manoj Kumar Jha

A tea stall in Doda, Chenab, that has “Sarazi” in its name to represent one of the Chenab Valley’s fading languages.

Jammu and Kashmir

The fading tongues of the Chenab Valley

As Kashmiri, Urdu, and Hindi spread through classrooms, migration, and digital media, Kishtwari, Padri, Sirazi, and other Chenab Valley tongues are being spoken by fewer households each generation.

The curious case of Delhi’s voters who went missing before SIR

Over 11 lakh voters were missing from the electoral rolls in Delhi even before the SIR began. While many may have been legitimate deletions, there is no record of why their names were struck off or why they were removed without even being notified.

Shubhangi Derhgawen

FRONTLINE CONVERSATIONS

Exclusion by design: Sagrika Rajora on Delhi’s SIR voter roll clean up

The lawyer and researcher associated with the Voter Adhikar Manch discusses the Special Intensive Revision of Delhi’s electoral rolls, its impact on migrants and the poor, and more.

More stories from Social Issues

A farm on the outskirts of Vijayawada, a file photograph.

Far from the madding fields

The crisis in farming, powered by climate shocks and government apathy, is forcing farmers out of agriculture and into unsafe urban jobs. As the men migrate, more agricultural labour falls on women, whose work goes unpaid and unrecognised.

A man takes pictures in a devastated area near the Trishuli River, following the deadly flash floods and a mudslide, in Devighat, Nepal, September 4, 2026.

The history and geography of grief in Nepal

The land has built a rich grammar for absorbing catastrophe, from the rituals of Gai Jatra to the fatalism of the “cursed country”. But it has yet to find a language for responsibility and accountability.

Debate over the use of DJs and dhols in Pune has been running since August 24, 2026. This image is representational.

Pune’s DJ row gets noisy and political

What began as an annual debate over noise pollution during Pune’s Ganesh Festival has grown into a political controversy, leaving the BJP caught between its festival-mandal base and growing public anger over DJs.

Heavy police deployed outside NG Acharya and DK Marathe College a day after Muslims students were denied entry for wearing a burqa in Mumbai on August 3, 2023. This image is representational.

The burden of proving faith

The Essential Religious Practices test applies across religions. But it can still operate unequally when some practices enjoy cultural familiarity and others must enter court as conspicuous demands for exception.

Sahil Hussain Choudhury

Former BJP MP Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, who is also former Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) chief, arrives to offer prayers at Hanuman Nagar in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh, on August 6, days after his acquittal in a case of sexual harassment filed by women wrestlers.

Two judgments, two ideas of how a victim should behave

How the acquittal of Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh and the conviction of Tarun Tejpal reveal contrasting judicial approaches to survivors’ conduct, credibility, and trauma in sexual-assault cases.

T.K. Rajalakshmi

The Dystopian Times

‘The Dystopian Times’ by Appupen

Various political party flags, including the All India Trinamool Congress, the BJP, and the Indian National Congress, are displayed for sale at a store in the New Market area, Kolkata, on April 30, 2019.

India is a coalition, and its democracy needs coalitions

India’s political diversity is not fragmentation. Regional parties, opposition voices, and coalition politics are essential to keeping power accountable and the republic larger than any one government.

Manoj Kumar Jha

Namdeo Dhasal, poet, activist, and co-founder of the Dalit Panther movement.

The surge and its shadow

Arjun Dangle’s timely volume offers a clear-eyed analysis and an unvarnished critique of the rise and fall of the radical, youth-led Dalit Panther movement in 1970s Maharashtra.

Purnachandra Naik

Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, addresses a press conference at Indira Bhawan in New Delhi, on August 29, 2026.

Why the Manusmriti row exposes the myth of Hindu unity

Rahul Gandhi’s attack on the “Manusmriti mentality” has provoked anger from dominant-caste Hindus but little from Dalits—revealing how unevenly the text is actually claimed.

Rohingyas gather during an event at a refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, on August 25, 2026, marking the anniversary of their exodus.

Recontaining the Rohingya

UNHCR’s closure of the Cox’s Bazar Transit Centre in southeastern Bangladesh is sending Rohingya refugees who were moved there for their safety back into the camps, without clear safeguards or meaningful alternatives.

Jayalakshmi Itla Ragiri

Cockroach Janta Party supporters sitting beside a poster of mainstream television anchors during a mass youth-led protest over exam irregularities at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi on July 24, 2026.

A generation that television can no longer command

Prime-time debates shout past India’s Gen Z, who now decide for themselves what news is worth their attention, and it usually isn’t on television.

Activists shout slogans during a protest against the amendments to the RTI Act in the Lok Sabha of the Indian Parliament, in New Delhi, on July 25, 2019.

When privacy becomes a wall of secrecy

India’s new data protection regime promises citizens control over their digital lives, but a single amendment to the RTI Act could make it harder to track the spending of public money, the route of public decisions, and the names of public officials.

Madhavi Ravikumar,Anees. M

Sign in to Unlock member-only benefits!

Bookmark stories to read later.
Comment on stories to start conversations.
Subscribe to our newsletters.
Get notified about discounts and offers to our products.