Shivangi Kaushish

One evening in Manipur, an ambulance carrying an elderly patient stopped at a checkpoint between two districts. The driver hesitated before moving ahead, uncertain whether the road beyond was safe. A journey that once took less than an hour had now become a passage through fear, suspicion and invisible ethnic boundaries. Around the ambulance stood armed security personnel, deserted shops and silent divided roads that had once connected the people. Since May 2023, Manipur has witnessed...

On a humid summer evening in a small town in eastern India, Madhav returned home exhausted after a day of construction work. His earnings for the day were barely enough to cover groceries and medicines for his ageing parents. His wife supplemented the household income by stitching clothes for neighbours, while their son had recently left school to work at a mechanic’s shop. Life moved from one uncertainty to another. A fever, an accident or the loss of employment could dismantle the family’s...

In the winter of 1973, long queues began appearing outside petrol stations across much of the world. In the United States, fuel rationing became common. In parts of Europe, governments reduced street lighting and introduced “car-free Sundays,” while Japan launched nationwide energy-conservation campaigns. The trigger was thousands of kilometres away: the Yom Kippur War and the subsequent oil embargo imposed by Arab nations. For India, then still a fragile and import-dependent economy, the...