India

The Recruitment Racket
High unemployment in India has left people vulnerable to job scams and illegal migration through a complex system of certified and uncertified agents, subagents and intermediaries, who often overcharge and make false promises about salaries and jobs.

Love Under Lockdown
When the Indian government put Kashmir under lockdown and imposed a communications blackout in 2019, people found creative ways to maintain connections and express love and longing, as shown in a new collection of real-life stories.

Modi Is Placating Trump on Illegal Migration, Despite Opposition at Home
As increasing illegal immigration from India to the U.S. comes under the spotlight, New Delhi has been prompt in communicating that it intends to cooperate with Trump.

Contemporary Fiction’s Responses to a Changing India
In recent years, several contemporary Indian novelists have written in direct response to ongoing sociopolitical changes in India and painted an intricate picture of what it means to be young and disenchanted in a deeply polarized country.

Caste Is Having a Cultural and Political Moment Globally. It Has Not Always Been So
While caste has recently infiltrated American discourse and become more mainstream in Indian media, Dalit writers and activists have been flooding the Indian literary markets with memoirs, short fiction and poetry since the late 1960s.

How Diljit Dosanjh Changed the Way Sikh Men Are Viewed in Pop Culture
While it was only in 2024 that Diljit Dosanjh became a household name in India, over the course of two decades the Punjabi pop star has slowly and effectively changed the way people look at Sikh men and present them in South Asian pop culture.

The Lives of Gulf Migrants in Malayalam Literature
When the novel “Goat Days” was published in 2008, it set a new tone for writing in Malayalam on the Gulf, partly by casting an Arab as a villain. Since then, many stories have followed its template.