Peony Hirwani

President Donald Trump has long been called an authoritarian and compared with authoritarian leaders. His loss to President-elect Joe Biden begs the question: what becomes of authoritarianism in a post-Trump world? Even once Trump leaves office on January 20, authoritarianism on the worldwide stage will still be strong as ever and its toehold in the US will not be gone.

India is one of the most culturally diverse countries in this world. We take pride in calling ourselves the biggest democratic nation that has so much to offer. However, recent laws passed by prime minister Narendra Modi’s party BJP are letting the entire nation down. The most recent is a law passed in the state of Uttar Pradesh which prohibits so-called “love jihad”.

Practices like slaughtering or harming animals for producing leather goods are not legal as appropriate laws have been set up In India to protect wildlife. However, the case is different in various states of India; in the province of Rajasthan alone, every shop is loaded up with products comprising genuine animal leather with vendors claiming all the products to be made of camel skin (both alive and dead) even when the species is protected under the Prohibition of Slaughter and Regulation of Temporary Migration or Export Act.

Once again, for the second time this year, New Delhi is facing protests. This time, because of prime minister Narendra Modi’s new laws, which seek to reform agricultural practices and open up the process of buying farmers’ wares to private market forces.

With the global population growing, the demand on resources will keep on increasing. We now have to worry about conserving something which for millennia appeared boundless. As the late French innovator, explorer, and scientist Jacques Cousteau once said: “we forget the water cycle and the life cycle are one”.

The world was not prepared for the fight against Covid-19 but it has been heartening to see many different fields, including healthcare and hospitality, come together to confront this deadly virus. The tech industry has played a vital role, delivering apps to track infected patients, thereby giving everyone else the best possible chance of staying safe.
A different story is emerging in India, however.

After years of being the voice that brought social change, the media in India is now being controlled and manipulated by the authorities. In just over five years under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's administration, India's place in the World Press Freedom Index has dropped and journalists in India have been beaten, arrested, and forced to resign for trying to report news about the government or other contentious issues.

Since moving back to India, I've realised that simplicity is the ultimate luxury. Using these natural and raw products gave me a sense of lightness - and, most importantly, without any unwanted side effects. Turns out everything I have ever needed to keep my skin gleaming and healthy has been right in front of me all along.

Our caste system has long treated individuals in a condescending manner that they don’t deserve. The unforgiving Hindu caste system has, for decades, viewed “Dalits” to be the lowest class of citizens. Our system is broken, we as people are broken. If the whole country doesn’t decide to collectively do something in order to bring positive change, then innocent lives will keep suffering.

The amount of manipulation that we face on a daily basis is normalised in our society to a point where no one sees its destructive impact until it's past the point of no return. While a large proportion of people know that they're being surveilled for information when using these websites, only a few acknowledge how profound the larger impact is.

India and China share a long history of mistrust and conflict concerning their boundaries. The two nuclear-armed nations, with a combined population of more than two billion, have never agreed on the length of their Line of Actual Control (LAC). India believes the LAC to be 2,175 miles in length, China considers it to be only around 1,242 miles.

In the history of television, certain TV shows have left a huge mark on people around the globe. One of those shows is Friends – the sitcom that gave fans everywhere somebody to identify with, whether it was Ugly Naked Guy or Joey and his passion for sandwiches. The show touched so many viewers that one director even decided to create an Indian remake of the sitcom, calling it Hello Friends.

For over two months, Gen Z and millennials have been dropping ‘fairy comments’ in the comments section of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Instagram posts with the purpose of registering their protest against recent government policy decisions.

My beloved nation of India has been on a rollercoaster ride since the beginning of this decade. It’s high time that the ruling body starts listening to all the young Indians because not only are they the ones who have genuinely taken a stand about the vast majority of the pressing issues that need consideration, but they also have established that they are the future.

This decade has seen numerous disturbances in essentially every field, alongside the thought that an individual can be ‘cancelled.’ a.k.a. automatically silenced, and socially blocked. When a person accomplishes something that is viewed as offensive or problematic; that specific occurrence mushrooms over the web, allowing countless people to put pressure on them until they’re essentially, done.