Independent Multimedia Journalist from South Asia based in Kashmir writes on Gender, Health, Social Justice, Human Rights, Culture, and Environment. Pulitzer Center Grantee.
Is the World’s Pharmacy Also Killing People?
On a frigid January afternoon, I traveled through the narrow lanes of downtown Srinagar in Kashmir to meet Shaista Bano. As I crossed tiny lanes filled with dirt, I asked people to direct me to her house. After following the flurry of instructions, I reached her house and knocked on the door. Bano peeped out of a small kitchen window, then stepped out to talk to me. Sitting on a parapet on the banks of the Jhelum River, the woman in her late 30s started speaking slowly about how she had sudde...
Has the media enabled a new age of scientific misinformation?
Social media and complex AI newsroom tools are combining to produce a toxic environment in which dangerous misinformation is flourishing
Two decades ago, science researchers and journalists would receive hard copies of professional journals and browse through them regularly to keep up with developments and the latest science news.
These days, anyone interested in science can find articles online using search engines and social media. The result has been a worrying rise in misinformation, whic...
Once Trafficked, Now Trained to Defend
These survivors have gotten tough — because their former traffickers remain free, and are lurking close by.
The road to Canning, a town in the southernmost region of the Indian state of West Bengal, is narrow and lined on both sides with small ponds where residents breed fish. The houses along the route are mostly single-story mud dwellings with thatched roofs.
Canning is the site of a compound belonging to the NGO Goranbose Gram Bikash Kendra, which fights human trafficking and is known loca...
Young Scientists Are Surprisingly Optimistic
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Facing wicked problems in the environment and global health, these rising scientists have their eyes on solutions.
When 27-year-old doctoral candidate Ayushi Chauhan first heard of the Falling Walls Science Summit held in the vicinity of the old Berlin Wall, she knew she had to participate. Held annually since the 20th anniversary of the wall's histo...
“Neither a widow nor a wife”: India’s abandoned brides
New Delhi:
Paulomi Biswas had been married for only two weeks when her husband stunned her with a sudden announcement: He was leaving for Canada the very next day – without her.
“The news came as a shock. It was difficult for me to accept it as a newlywed bride,” recalled the 30-year-old. “That was the last time I saw him.”
Anay Kumar Biswas had seemed like a great candidate for an arranged marriage – working in Canada, with a permanent resident application already in progress. But things did...
Locals Lose Big in Hydropower Construction
Demand for electricity erases a way of life in Indian-administered Kashmir.
Shama Begum is sitting with her back up against her kitchen wall. She wears a traditional Kameez Shalwar, her head draped in a pink headdress, as she recalls how beautiful her former village was and how she enjoyed working in the fields and tending to the cattle.
Begum was born and brought up in the Kishtwar district, a region of dense forest nearly 250 kilometers (155 miles) northeast of Jammu, the winter capital of ...
The common struggles of female journalists around the world
Female journalists from different regions speak out
It has been five months since Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was shot dead by Israeli forces while covering army raids in the West Bank's Jenin.
Her death prompted global outrage as the veteran television correspondent for Al Jazeera was wearing a press vest when she was killed and was not in close proximity to any violent conflict. The incident triggered a new focus on the increasing number of attacks against women journa...
Married for dowry and abandoned, ‘NRI brides’ are caught between international and domestic laws
Paulomi Biswas had been married for only two weeks when her husband stunned her with a sudden announcement: he was leaving for Canada the very next day – without her.
“The news came as a shock. It was difficult for me to accept it as a newlywed bride,” recalled the 30-year-old. “That was the last time I saw him.”
Anay Kumar Biswas had seemed like a great candidate for an arranged marriage – working in Canada, with a permanent resident application already in progress. But things didn’t quite g...
Damned ecology: Seven new dams carry high human and environmental cost in Kashmir
Aimed at generating 5,190 megawatts of hydroelectricity, these projects will, however, affect the lives of over 20,000 locals, including members of Indigenous communities who depend on the forest for survival.
Sewarbatti was a small village with only 36 households. Only construction workers now occupy the lands and the once-bustling village is a ghost town. These families together owned 230 kanals of land, which was acquired by the government to construct the Dungduro hydropower project with ...
India’s Dams and Pakistan’s Water Crisis
The country is being strangled by a chronic water shortage that stands to exacerbate tensions with its giant eastern neighbor.
ORANGI, KARACHI — Thirteen-year-old Kaneez Sughra, a resident of Pakistan’s Orangi town near Karachi, has a strange problem. Every day, before coming to school, she has a choice to make about what is more important: her education or the stored water at her home?
“All the taps in my school are dry. Even when I go to the school toilet, I use the water that I bring from ...
India’s Grand Plan for Kashmir Dams
Seven new dams India is constructing in the fragile ecology of Indian-administered Kashmir will come at a high human and environmental cost.
DUNGDURO, KISHTWAR — Until a few years ago, Ghulam Hassan Magray, 36, was living comfortably in his native village, Sewerbatti, located just on the banks of the Chenab River. Magray owned six kanals of land, which roughly translates to 0.75 acres, that was used for agricultural purposes. The family used this land to cultivate rice, corn, vegetables, appl...
See Berlin Through Syrian Eyes
The newsletter to fuel — and thrill — your mind. Read for deep dives into the unmissable ideas and topics shaping our world.
He survived two civil wars, smugglers and state surveillance. Then he had an idea that has transformed tourism — at least, for those who meet him.
On a sultry and humid afternoon in Berlin’s historic Spandau district, a young man addressed a group of rapt tourists while dotting his sweaty brow with a white handkerchief. In a city teeming with visitors at the peak of tou...
Refugee Nation of Single Moms Holds Strong
The newsletter to fuel — and thrill — your mind. Read for deep dives into the unmissable ideas and topics shaping our world.
Almost as soon as news broke that Russia had invaded Ukraine in February, the Ukrainian government determined that men of “fighting age” must remain in the country rather than flee with their families. The unintended consequence? A refugee population composed almost entirely of children and the women who are struggling to hold families together, even as they face devast...
‘I gained a new purpose’: Kashmiri women embrace wheelchair basketball
Inshah Bashir was just 15 when she fell from the third floor of her under-construction house in Kashmir’s Budgam district and lost mobility in her legs. Although 14 years have passed, Ms. Bashir still vividly remembers that period in her life after the accident.
“In a region like Kashmir, where even able-bodied people struggle to live their daily lives, there was little hope for a disabled woman,” says Ms. Bashir, who uses a wheelchair. “My disability threatened to put an end to my dreams of ...
Queer Afghans Just Want to Be Your Neighbor
The newsletter to fuel — and thrill — your mind. Read for deep dives into the unmissable ideas and topics shaping our world.
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