The protests in Punjab are happening at a time when the agrarian economy is under stress. With increasing uncertainty, previously antagonistic groups across classes, castes & gender are coming closer, building a broader base for the agitation & beyond.

There is little scientific evidence for widely used forensic tools like truth serums, lie detectors, and brain fingerprinting. Their continued use in India for investigating crime is a new form of torture.

The three new labour codes passed by Parliament without discussion make sweeping changes to labour laws; they reduce the regulatory powers of the government; they hand over some oversight functions to third parties, and, all in all, disempower labour.

Unless an attempt at reforming India's criminal laws questions the power imbalances in the system, the exercise will only end up beautifying the facades. This unfortunately is to be the fate once again of the 2020 iteration at reform of the colonial era laws.

As autonomous ‘citizens’ capable of acting on the responsibilities that go with Constitutional rights have been technologically replaced by populations to be ‘managed’, what we see is the populist abstraction of the ‘people’ being used against actual people.