Qadri Inzamam

Coca-Cola and PepsiCo have helped turn the Indian state of Maharashtra into a sugar-producing powerhouse. But a New York Times investigation has found that these brands finance a brutal system of labor that exploits young girls and leads to the unnecessary sterilization of working-age women.

It’s nearly two years since I first traveled to Beed in the western Indian state of Maharashtra to learn more about why rural women were having hysterectomies in such large numbers. The region is known for its sugar cane farms and every year, large numbers of migrant workers from Beed travel across the state to harvest sugar — a physically demanding job that they must do in intense heat and with very limited access to clean water and sanitation.

Coca-Cola and PepsiCo have helped turn the Indian state of Maharashtra into a sugar-producing powerhouse. But a New York Times investigation has found that these brands finance a brutal system of labor that exploits young girls and leads to the unnecessary sterilization of working-age women.

Scattered across the globe, the Rohingya are in danger of losing their language. One man is fighting to keep it alive

While these spaces help sex workers gauge their clients before agreeing to meet them, going digital comes with risks.

A new attendance system was supposed to bring transparency to a government work program in rural India. It’s actually forcing people to work for free.

Around 70% of Kashmir’s population earns livelihood through farming. Most of the region’s agricultural land depends on the snowmelt that feeds streams and rivers. Therefore, the recession of glaciers translates into a direct impact on the socio-economic sector of the region.

Unregulated pilgrimage activities in increasingly eco-fragile sites in India have accelerated the retreating of glaciers. What can be done to mitigate the damage?

Women from across the Himalayas are speaking out against discriminatory gender-roles that place them at the centre of the region's swelling water crisis. But is anyone listening?

As climate change and glacial retreat spawn overlapping crises in the Himalayas, including water scarcity, food insecurity and rising poverty, locals turn to community-based methods of adaptation.

Late one recent Saturday night, stand-up comedian Manjeet Sarkar walked up to a makeshift podium inside a jampacked cafe in the posh city of Bengaluru. Mr. Sarkar is a Dalit, a community regarded as “untouchable” by upper-caste Hindus. The audience welcomes him with loud applause, and once everyone settles in, Mr. Sarkar cracks his first one-liner: “If anyone does not laugh at my jokes, I touch them.”

In a bustling market in New Delhi’s Bhogal neighborhood, an unmarked door behind a vegetable stall opens to narrow stairs leading to a basement. From its only small window on a hot and humid August afternoon, Afghan women and children peek out at vendors, rickshaw pullers, and pedestrians. They are students of Anjam Knowledge House, a community school by and for Afghan refugees in New Delhi.

Blocked from international travel and facing more and more challenges at home, Kashmiri journalists say the past few years have been a test of their perseverance.

Telangana is the youngest state in India. It was carved out as a separate political entity in June 2014 from Andhra Pradesh. As a young state, Telangana has been eager to experiment with the use of technology. Its capital city, Hyderabad, is one of the main technology hubs in India.

Kashmiri Hindus find themselves reliving the fear of the early 1990s amid a wave of targeted killings, but the government is keen to prevent another exodus.