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The Gen Z protesters created a public space where privilege and social hierarchy mattered far less than creative performances of humour and revelry. Here, the scene at Jantar Mantar on July 19, the day after Sonam Wangchuk was forcibly removed from the protest side.
STUDENT PROTESTS

It was one big protestival

Asim Ali
Pankaj Sekhsaria speaking at the awards ceremony for the Prem Bhatia Award for Excellence in Environmental Journalism on August 12, 2026.
RECOGNITION

Frontline contributor Pankaj Sekhsaria wins Prem Bhatia award

Frontline News Desk
Members of Codava National Council demonstating at Town Hall on the World Indigenous People's day, demanding an autonomous Codava Union Territory Land on August 9, 2018.
Language Preservation

A script in search of a language’s future

The push to get Kodava into the Eighth Schedule has revived old arguments over scripts, censuses, and what a language needs to survive.
Nitin Kushalappa
Nitin Kushalappa

Videos

WATCH | Gen Z Protests: How digital surveillance and censorship are changing India’s internet | Apar Gupta
WATCH | Gen Z Protests: How digital surveillance and censorship are changing India’s internet | Apar Gupta
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WATCH | JKNC MLA Tanvir Sadiq on J&K statehood, Delhi protest, and Article 370 | The Kashmir Notebook Ep 16
WATCH | CJP’s Saurav Das on NEET protests, police crackdown, and the politics of Gen Z
WATCH | Arundhati Roy on India’s student protests, Modi, and democracy | SpeakEasy episode 19
WATCH | Neha Bora on NEET paper leaks, student anger, and political change
WATCH | Arup Kumar Dutta on Assam tea plantations, colonialism, and “Leaves No Longer Green”
WATCH | The Police Brutality at Jantar Mantar | Frontline Insight Box
WATCH | Irfan Habib on Gandhi, Nehru, RSS, & rewriting Indian history | SpeakEasy with Amit Baruah Ep 17
WATCH | PARI photo exhibition: Young photographers in Ramanathapuram document palmyra & fishing communities
VIEW MORE
VIEW ALL VIDEOS

Editor's Pick

STUDENT PROTESTS

Editor’s note

Vaishna Roy
The protest site in New Delhi on July 25. If the anti-Mandal protest was against the redistribution of access to state resources, this generation protested against the state’s failure to create enough opportunities to distribute at all.
STUDENT PROTESTS

A generation betrayed

India has entered the present moment of global economic uncertainty without resolving the structural problems that liberalisation was supposed to fix. This crisis of failed expectations and betrayal of promises is what is fuelling Gen Z’s anger.
Shone Satheesh
A portrait of Dr B.R. Ambedkar at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi on July 20. The protests brought together marginalised-caste Gen Z voices on a scale hitherto unimaginable.
STUDENT PROTESTS

Caste and the cockroach

With Ambedkar portraits and cries of Jai Bhim, this protest’s rhetoric and symbolism seemed to foreground social justice amid the widespread waning of political commitment to the cause.
K. Kalyani
India has increased the number of Supreme Court judges to deal with a growing backlog of cases. The photo is representational.

92,101 pending cases. Four more judges

Parliament has expanded the Supreme Court from 34 to 38 judges to tackle a growing backlog. But neither the government nor the court has explained why 92,101 pending cases require exactly four more judges, or what they will change.
V.Venkatesan

Next in Context

INDIA-PAKISTAN

Nehru, Kashmir, and the Indus Waters Treaty

COMMENT

Bhagwat’s platitudes, and the caste truth the RSS cannot outrun

STUDENT PROTESTS

How Gen Z unplugged powers-that-be

GEOPOLITICS

Makkah defence pact: Should India be worried?

Platform Regulations

What Meta won’t explain about content moderation

View All

FL IconSpotlight

Joan P. Mencher, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, in Bangalore on November 27, 2009.

Joan P. Mencher (1930–2026): Anthropologist who had the soul of India

Subhadra Channa
Neelum Saran Gour reflects on Allahabad, her literary influences and her long career as a writer and teacher.

Small towns have turned into a boutique sub-mode for writers and filmmakers: Neelum Saran Gour

Majid Maqbool
Coral reefs near Great Nicobar Islands in 2008.

The Great Nicobar coral heist

Galathea Bay is packed with millennia-old coral colonies. But they are not to be found in official maps, which have airbrushed them out of existence to ensure approval for the contentious megaproject on the island.
Pankaj Sekhsaria
Piazza Cavalieri.

Byron and Shelley’s Pisa, still slightly tilted

Shreya Sen-Handley
At an indefinite hunger strike as part of a protest against the Jharkhand government over alleged irregularities in the 14th JPSC examination, JSSC-CGL, and other recruitment tests, demanding a CBI probe and reforms in the recruitment agencies, in Ranchi, Jharkhand, on August 8, 2026.

Jharkhand’s students force the opposition to look in the mirror

Anand Mishra

Featured Authors

Nilakantan R.S.
Contributor
Jyotsna Mohan
Contributor
Raghu Murtugudde
Contributor
Nirupama Subramanian
Contributor

Photo Essay

Photo Essay

GEN Z PROTEST

A counter culture is born

Memes, music, satire, and social media have given Gen Z a new language of protest: one that unsettles both state power and political convention.
T.K. Rajalakshmi

Arts & Culture

Sections

Current Issue

The Gen Z protesters created a public space where privilege and social hierarchy mattered far less than creative performances of humour and revelry. Here, the scene at Jantar Mantar on July 19, the day after Sonam Wangchuk was forcibly removed from the protest side.
STUDENT PROTESTS

It was one big protestival

How the protest at Jantar Mantar became a public canvas where young people created a democratic, inclusive and joyful social imaginary that jubilantly rejected the segregation and ugliness of Hindutva modernity.
Asim Ali
Read E-Magazine
STUDENT PROTESTS

Editor’s note

Vaishna Roy
STUDENT PROTESTS

The atmosphere of fear is gone now: Saurav Das

Soni Mishra
STUDENT PROTESTS

A generation betrayed

Shone Satheesh
STUDENT PROTESTS

The CJP made the passage from screen to street: Arvind Rajagopal

Abhish K. Bose
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