As we step into our 71st year as republic, and witness the elaborate Republic Day parade, we must ask: What does the Constitution mean to us today? As a wave of anti-CAA demonstrations and gatherings ebbs and flows across the country today, the popularity of the Preamble to the Constitution as a tool of protest has revived. But will it last?

Zomato acquired UberEats in a huge corporate merger this week. A company shut down, and people are potentially going to lose jobs, but the internet was more worried about having to pay full price for a plate of biryani.

A couple of weeks ago, as the CAA protests started gathering steam, I tweeted a video from a gathering in Bandra’s Carter Road. It prompted a gentleman on Twitter to label me a “bloody Khalistani”. My name was enough for him to sum up my entire existence. This is what happens when communities are othered and demonised.

Even if JNU was a stunt, the simple act of bringing one’s star power to a social battlefield can go a long way. The influence of Bollywood on India’s people cannot be undermined. And if Deepika Padukone has urged even a handful fans to sit up and take notice, to question the government, it is worth the fight.

The government’s reaction to what was a simple campus protest at Jamia has created a situation that has snowballed beyond their control. Finally, it feels like there is more than one force at play in Indian politics, and refreshingly, it doesn’t belong to any political party. It took the students speaking up, risking their lives for the rest of India to be shaken into action.

Remember the excitement as we entered the 2000s and the 2010s? The internet and fruits of liberalisation sweetened the former, as did a strong economy and smartphones for the latter. But this time it seems different — global expectations from the decade we’ve just entered seem to oscillate between tempered realism and outright dread.

The protests at JNU and Jamia reinforce one crucial thing – students are the government’s greatest opposition. They’ve been facing the threat of violence head-on with nothing more than copies of the Constitution, slogans, poetry, and a kind of patriotism that makes the world sit up and take notice.

The attack on JNU students has sparked a wave of protests across campuses in the country. The widespread agitation is long overdue. Because students, despite being quite literally the future of this country, have been on the receiving end of a sustained vilification campaign for years now.

Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s “Hum Dekhenge” was written in 1979 against Zia-ul-Haq’s dictatorial rule in Pakistan. To strip the poem of this crucial context, is essentially an act in unlearning what is sacred about art. A complaint filed in IIT-Kanpur against the narration of the nazm reeks of prejudice.

The anti-CAA protest in Mumbai was an evening of the young ‘uns. They couldn’t have cared less that it was at this place, the erstwhile Gowalia Tank, where citizens converged to ask the British to quit governing us. But they obviously cared enough to cut lectures and leave work to trek to August Kranti Maidan – concerned about the health of the entire nation.

This year is ending much the same way it began: With widespread marches that will go down in history. Their sheer number, variety, and scope has compelled me to call “protest” my word of the year.

Middle India sold its soul a long time ago. As long as we have our comfortable jobs and pretty homes, our children are in good schools, we don’t want to question anything. And it is because of this calculated indifference and opportunism that we have left young students – like those at JNU and Jamia – to fend for themselves.

The BJP knows the power of student politics, having been a part of it and learned from it. The young can’t be systematically downed like their adult counterparts, resigned to the everyday drudgery of work and responsibility. Students are effectively freer and closer to fact compared to grown-ups, who have migrated to the world of convenience.

The crackdown on students at Jamia Millia Islamia has sparked a wave of protests across campuses in the country. The widespread agitation is long overdue. Because students, despite being quite literally the future of this country, have been on the receiving end of a sustained vilification campaign for years now.

Social media activism is not the only kind of activism we can practice today. As students from Jamia and other universities raise their voices against the Citizenship Act, we need to show up at demonstrations and ensure that our dissent is heard. The current political scenario demands it.

As I witness this carousel of rape roll on, day after day, like everyone else I too am caught between two instincts. I want to celebrate the Hyderabad police, and join the chorus baying for the blood of rapists, in Parliament and on social media. But I also want to mull over the process of justice itself.

In Uttar Pradesh’s Unnao, the rape survivor, who was set ablaze while she was on her way to a court hearing, has died. This shows that after rape is committed, the fallout doesn’t affect the rapist as much as it punishes the victim.

Regardless of differences in opinion, Indians can agree that India’s rape problem needs stamping out. But the “celebration” after the encounter of the alleged rapists in the Telangana vet case neglects the fact that it’s not enough to merely punish the perpetrators. We also need to prevent the rapes from happening in the first place.

The Bhopal gas tragedy is not just a painful reminder of the price people can be made to pay for someone else’s ignorance or callousness, but also of the fact that a country is only as big as its last mistake. In this case, however, forgetting Bhopal, and what it ought to have taught us, may well be the biggest mistake yet.

It’s telling that most reports announcing the arrest of the 26-year-old victim's murderers don’t mention the names of three non-Muslim suspects, but they do prominently feature terms like “Prime Suspect Mohammed Pasha”. It fits the false narrative that some are trying to manufacture out of the tragedy.

A break from morning meetings, tax returns, bills, grocery shopping, and housework to go ride a bicycle in a park, play hopscotch with kids, or even read a Tintin or Tinkle comic book is probably the perfect way to unwind and forget the banality of adult life.

Over a year after India’s #MeToo movement, we’re finally confronting the complexities of consent. It’s the misconceptions surrounding it — that if a woman consents once, she is always “available” — that seem to dissuade women from publicly acknowledging that they might have consented to some part of an exchange.

Nithyananda, who has now been accused of kidnapping, already has rape charges filed against him. But he is hardly the first godman to have perpetrated heinous crimes while masquerading as a saviour of the masses. He is in the illustrious company of Gurmeet Ram Rahim and Asaram.

Benaras Hindu University’s newly appointed Sanskrit professor Firoz Khan should have been celebrated as the living embodiment of India’s diversity and tolerance. But “new” India would rather constantly complain about how Hindu culture is under threat from minorities, only to protest when a member of a minority displays expert knowledge of Hindu culture.

The lines between work and non-work hours have long been blurred, and that’s a bad thing. A three-day weekend in India would be pretty pointless unless the remaining four days are utilised well, and we stop glorifying long work hours.

It’s odd that the ongoing student protests against fee hikes in JNU are being viewed by most as an excuse for the students to sponge off the privileged taxpayer’s money. Especially in a country where qualifying for a tax slab is in itself a privilege that most would be happy to have.

Twitter decided to ban all political ads on the platform globally, advocating for a level playing field across parties and communities – at least on paper. But its blocking of accounts of prominent figures from India’s marginalised communities shows that the microblogging website appears to be reluctant to walk the talk when it comes to diversity and equality.