Akanksha Singh
Journalist and copywriter
Former agency copywriter turned freelance journalist and content writer. Bylines: BBC, CNN, The Globe and Mail, HuffPost, The Independent, Sydney Morning Herald, NatGeo Traveller India, and more.
CNN
A jailed priest’s death sends a message about India’s crackdown
Editor’s Note: Akanksha Singh is a journalist based in Mumbai, India. She covers politics and social justice and has written for the BBC, The Independent and the South China Morning Post, among others. Follow her on Twitter @akankshamsingh. The views expressed in this commentary are her own. View more opinion at CNN.
CNN —
On July 5, the Rev. Stan Swamy, an 84-year-old Jesuit priest, passed away in a hospital in a suburb of Mumbai. Swamy spent nearly nine months in jail, without trial, under ...
CNN
Modi has offered little more than hollow words amid India’s horrifying covid crisis
Editor’s Note: Akanksha Singh is a journalist based in Mumbai, India. She covers politics and social justice, and has written for the BBC, The Independent and the South China Morning Post, among others. Follow her on Twitter @akankshamsingh. The views expressed in this commentary are her own. View more opinion on CNN.
CNN —
On April 20, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the country following a surge in Covid-19 cases. People were expecting answers, a plan, something. Instead, Modi...
South China Morning Post
How Modi’s vaccine diplomacy has left India at the mercy of others’ political agendas
As Indians gasp for air, Modi’s vaccine efforts appear to have done little more than fail Indians and the country’s global standing
Far from being ‘self-reliant’ or the ‘pharmacy to the world’, India’s international image is now one of desperation
Illustration: Craig Stephens
India is currently undergoing a massive surge in Covid-19 cases – a second wave which was, according to most experts, unavoidable but manageable. Social media has been overwhelmed with requests for medication, hospital b...
Poynter
Is it possible to decolonize the media?
Earlier this month, Rihanna tweeted a CNN article about Delhi’s internet being cut after protestors and police clashed in the city on account of controversial farm laws. Searches for the Indian farmer protests instantly spiked. Google Trends data show the term “India farmers” reached peak popularity. Yet, the protests in India have been going on for nearly six months, having started in Haryana and Punjab in August 2020.
As shocking as that might sound, it’s not surprising. “World” news has ra...
The Globe And Mail
The race for a COVID-19 vaccine wasn’t about humanity. It’s about imperialism
Akanksha Singh is an India-based journalist and political commentator.
In April, 2020, two French doctors suggested that a potential COVID-19 vaccine should first be tested on people in Africa. Their logic: To see whether a tuberculosis vaccine would prove effective against the novel coronavirus in a place where “there are no masks, no treatment or intensive care, a little bit like it’s been done for certain AIDS studies.” Debates about “white saviour” attitudes rightly followed, even as “exp...
CNN
‘Love jihad’: Indian states want to pass laws to prevent interfaith marriages. The move is unconstitutional and misogynistic
Editor’s Note: Akanksha Singh is a journalist based in Mumbai, India. She covers politics and social justice, and has written for the BBC, The Independent and the South China Morning Post, among others. Follow her on Twitter @akankshamsingh. The views expressed in this commentary are her own. Read more opinion at CNN.
CNN —
Daily, being a woman in India feels like an achievement. If friends and relatives don’t concern themselves with who my significant other is, it seems the state does.
Curre...
The Independent
The backlash against an Indian jewellery advert with a Hindu-Muslim couple makes me despair
This past weekend, when I logged into Twitter, I saw “#boycottTanishq” trending. Tanishq, an Indian jewellery brand, released an advert featuring a Hindu-Muslim couple. The premise of the advert is heartfelt: a pregnant Hindu woman says to her Muslim mother-in-law, “This tradition [of baby showers] doesn’t happen in [Muslim] homes, does it?” Her mother-in-law in response says, “Keeping daughters happy is a tradition in every home, isn’t it?”
The reason people wanted to #boycottTanishq, it app...
South China Morning Post
Amnesty International’s halting of operations in India highlights the dangers of dissent
The government’s targeting of the human rights NGO is part of an ongoing campaign that has also involved the arrest of activists, intellectuals and journalists, and is a sign of how bad things have become
Amnesty International India announced on September 29 that it was halting its operations in the country due to government reprisals. The human rights organisation said that New Delhi’s freezing of its bank accounts was “the latest in the incessant witch-hunt of human rights organisations by ...
CNN
What Kamala Harris means to Indian Americans
Editor’s Note: Akanksha Singh is a journalist based in Mumbai, India. She covers politics and social justice and has written for the BBC, The Independent and South China Morning Post, among others. Follow her on Twitter @akankshamsingh. The views expressed in this commentary are her own. View more opinion on CNN.
CNN —
Kamala Harris, the daughter of Indian and Jamaican immigrants, became the first Black and South Asian American woman to run on a major political party’s presidential ticket aft...
CNN
Democracy is dying in India, and Trump shouldn’t be on Modi’s side
Editor’s Note: Akanksha Singh is a journalist based in Mumbai, India. She covers politics and social justice, and has written for the BBC, The Independent and the South China Morning Post, among others. Follow her on Twitter @akankshamsingh. The views expressed in this commentary are her own. View more opinion on CNN.
CNN —
For decades following World War II, the free world has looked to the United States for democratic and civil guidance. So, when President Trump wrapped up his two-day visit...
restofworld.org
Hard sells and ‘toxic’ targets: How Indian edtech giant Byju’s fuels its meteoric rise
Since Byju’s launched The Learning App in 2015, the Indian edtech company, named for its co-founder Byju Raveendran, has become an education behemoth. Even before the coronavirus pandemic disrupted classroom schooling, the company had reached over 40 million users and 2.8 million paid subscribers. Those numbers have more than doubled in the past year.
The company’s latest funding round is forecast to value it at $21 billion. In 2021 alone, it’s bought six other education startups, including I...
restofworld.org
Nykaa’s blockbuster IPO created India’s richest self-made female billionaire — and a role model for women in tech
In early November, Falguni Nayar became India’s richest self-made female billionaire after her company Nykaa, the country’s largest online cosmetics retailer, went public. The initial public offering was oversubscribed more than 80 times, and its shares listed at a 78% premium to the offer price.
Nayar, a 58-year-old former investment banker, now has a reported net worth of around $7.7 billion. Her success is an outlier in India’s startup ecosystem — the world’s third-largest — where just fiv...
Al Jazeera
India: Why justice eludes many Dalit survivors of sexual violence
Mumbai, India – In February last year, Divya Pawar*, 35, left home after a dispute with her husband to visit her parents
The Globe And Mail
An Indian family sought a new life in the U.S., but never made it out of Canada alive
The Patels are believed to have been victims of a major human smuggling operation spanning India, Canada and the U.S.
Published September 26, 2022Updated September 27, 2022
This article was published more than 6 months ago. Some information may no longer be current.
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Wired
The Alarming Rise of India’s Pay-to-Breathe Industry
Photograph: Vijay Bate/Hindustan Times/Getty Images
The mild winter months are always busy for Mumbai-based pulmonologist Revathy K, but these past few months have been especially hectic. In November, a sudden drop in ocean temperatures slowed the winds that normally shift the city’s construction dust, debris, and traffic fumes. The Bandra-Worli Sea Link, a bridge that connects the center of the city to its northern suburbs, disappeared behind a curtain of smog as the city’s air quality dropp...