COVER STORY This issue: Carrying the revolution. Women are on the FRONT LINES of India’s farmer protests—and making themselves HEARD. THE MESSAGE TO WOMEN WAS CLEAR: Go back home. Since November, hundreds of thousands of farmers had gathered at different sites on the outskirts of the Indian capital to demand the repeal of three agricultural laws that they say would destroy their livelihoods. In January, as the New Delhi winter set in, the Chief Justice of India asked lawyers…To understand the world we live in, read TIME.

India on the precipice. For decades, the world has turned a blind eye to India’s abysmal human-rights record. This approach draws from a broad Western perception of India as a strategic ally. The U.S., like many other countries, sees India as an important counterweight to China. They are the two most populous nations with megaeconomies. Global powers tend to prefer India because of its standing as the world’s largest democracy. At the same time, India’s adversarial relationship with neighboring Pakistan, as well as its increasingly anti-Muslim policies, positions it as a bulwark against so-called Islamic terrorism. Over the past few years, however, the rise of right-wing authoritarianism had brought…

The comfort of Lunar New Year in isolation. Lunar New Year might bring to mind festivals and fireworks, but I’ve always associated it with a kind of isolation. Long before the pandemic, long before the rest of America learned about sriracha and pho, I grew up in a Vietnamese refugee family in a mostly white town in Michigan. We knew that it meant to be at once invisible and too visible. But at least once a year, on Tet, that racial isolation felt self-chosen; this holiday, the most important of the year, seemed to be just for us. I could stay home from school, forget about homework and chores. Collect red envelopes filled with money…