When it comes to dowry crimes, we may as well be living in the 1970s or ’80s, given the sickening regularity with which they persist in the curtained nooks and crannies of India’s homes today. Those who remember the feminist activism of the 1980s will also remember the sense of hope that a clear articulation of the issue and targeted action would end such crimes. Such optimism has, of course, long been belied. The only difference between yesteryear and today is that six decades ago there was public outrage, countrywide street protests, demands for parliamentary inquiry and an enactment of legal instruments. Families of the women murdered over dowry were unrelenting in their fight for justice, with lion-hearted mothers like Satyarani Chadha even sitting on the steps of the Supreme Court, contesting the claim that her daughter’s death was an “accident.” As for the Supreme Court judges, many of them went the extra mile to deliver verdicts that reflected not just the letter but also the spirit of the law. In keeping with that spirit of resistance, the media gaze on dowry crimes was constant and unrelenting. Newspaper investigations established what the activists were claiming: that mysterious burn injuries suffered by newly married women were not from faulty stoves, rather a result of egregious social mores. Statements made by once living, thriving women, who were now on their death beds, occupied the front pages.Today, there is far more vacillation in the evidence as families continue to “adjust” to such realities, while asking their threatened daughters to do the same. Recently, we even saw a case of such “adjustment” taking place after the dowry murder was committed. The family of a woman, who died in a fire at home, dropped all charges after what the press described as a “panchayat-mediated settlement” with her husband’s family, including promises to transfer property to the woman’s children.The role of the panchayat in this “deal-making” is completely in sync with the three conspicuous societal transformations we are observing today. One, the rise of a spurious, religion-fuelled spiritualism. The doctrine of Manu Smriti enjoins a woman (no matter if she holds a PhD degree) to accept the family’s natural suzerainty over her: marriage only meaning a transfer of this custody from the natal to the marital home. The acceptance of this doctrine is so total, that law officers of the Government of India argue before receptive courts against outlawing marital rape, claiming the move would “destroy the family system.” Two, the wolf began to cry wolf – men facing judicial action for dowry crimes took to playing the victim card to undermine the legislative gains made by the gender movement in India. “Rampant misuse of the dowry law” became their anthem, as they called for repealing protections like Section 498(A) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) (which now falls under Section 85 and 86 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita), gained through decades-long feminist struggle. Successive judicial verdicts, on this supposed “rampant misuse,” saw the protection diluted and made bailable. Jhuma Sen and Asmita Basu, in their article “Curator’s Note – Backlash: The law’s betrayal of feminist gains,” put it well: What we witness today is not just resistance, but an orchestrated backlash that seeks to erase the very legitimacy of feminist legal discourse. A particularly dangerous strand of backlash has emerged from the co-opting of rights language by dominant groups to claim victimhood. Three, the marketisation of marriage. Last November, the Kotak Mutual Funds carried an interesting piece on rising marriage outlays, more in the spirit of encouraging the trend rather than critiquing it. It termed the 45-day peak of the marriage season every year, when an average of over 100,000 daily weddings take place, as “one of the most intense, concentrated bursts of economic activity on Earth.” The period brings in an estimated Rs 6-6.5 lakh crore (approximately $78 billion) into the Indian economy. The piece also decoded Indian families, with one analyst claiming they spend “twice as much on a single wedding as they do on 18 years of their child’s education.” For some, it could be 20% of their entire lifetime earnings. Everybody is invited. The media can even celebrate and whisper “hardik shubhkamnaye (heartfelt greetings)” into the couple’s ears, considering the advertising moolah entailed. Not wanting to unsettle the cash cow could be a major reason why reporting on dowry has seen a distinct decline. There have been sophisticated analyses of this phenomenon. A popular argument is that intensive coverage of dowry crimes, at one stage, provoked backlash. Major media houses like the The Times of India, which tends to look at its readers as fungible assets, argued that people needed to be protected from “atrocity fatigue” and consciously fed “good news” and “positive stories.”However, this eyes-wide-shut approach has consequences. You may choose the stories you wish to highlight – cases like Twisha Sharma’s mysterious suicide may have grabbed more national attention than others, given the socio-economic class she belonged to – but you cannot ignore them. The hydra-headed story of dowry murders in India remains as relevant as it ever was, and media houses who air-brush the story out of frame, only expose their journalistic limitations. The courageous lawyer Indira Jaising, whose latest book The Constitution Is My Home based on conversations with feminist publisher Ritu Menon, makes an important point: women get public and institutional attention only after they are dead, not while they are living. Extending this argument, we could say that by investigating dowry practices only after a woman is dead, the media is allowing dowry crimes to proliferate.Outstanding series on the recent workers’ protestsFor the lack of a labour beat, our ignorance of what is happening with India’s working class is complete, only contributing further to the endemic public indifference with regards to the issue. Things have become so bad that workers’ protests are covered largely through the prism of traffic jams and disruptions in the supply of comestibles. This template, once again, came into view during the recent agitations for better working conditions that broke out in Manesar, Haryana, and Noida, Uttar Pradesh. Click on the icon to read.Breaking this disturbing pattern was an outstanding four-part series from The Wire’s “India Out of Work” stable, carried between May 24 and May 27, 2026, combining painstaking ground reporting with sharp analyses. While all four parts may have made a great long-form piece, dividing the coverage into four parts, I would argue, contributed to its readability and capacity to focus on certain important aspects: evolution of the struggle; the manner in which it was criminalised by the state; the structural reasons behind worker deprivation and the big picture of labour rights in India’s largest state. Many distinct thinking points emerged. Taken together, these four pieces provided an important macro-view, not just of what was happening in the industrial belts of UP and Haryana, but also across the entire country. One, they highlighted the unconscionable stagnation of workers’ salaries, even as corporate fat cats take home increasingly fatter pay cheques. Two, they provided a forensic dismantling of the democracy myth: workers’ demands for better lives, and their right to constitutional guarantees no less, are routinely framed as terroristic acts that disrupt the India growth story. Three, the shrinking of trade unionism under the new labour codes is revisited through this series, reminding us of how the working class’ historic gains, made through centuries-long struggles, are being deliberately ignored. Finally, I must commend the writers for the language of this series: empathetic yet clear. Labour reports often tend to be dry. Yet, here we see word portraits that capture, in a few sentences, the tragedy that workers in this country are living through: …many with placards bearing a single demand: ‘Salary:20,000.’ There were no union banners, no flags, no flexes, just the simple cardboard placards. It was not just a slogan so much as a line drawn against hunger.Readers Write In…I notice how Wire readers repose faith in this portal by placing requests for coverage on certain topics. While these do not necessarily translate into actual stories in The Wire, themes suggested are often important in and of themselves, as these e-mails indicate…Alert readers of The WireMy name is Piyush Lath, from Daltonganj, Palamu, Jharkhand. I have a sister, Riya Lath. I am reaching out to you because your channel exposes the truth that the system tries to hide and my case is exactly that.On November 21, 2025, my sister was alone at home, while my entire family was in Vellore for my father’s medical treatment. P— Lath and G— Lath arrived with 30–35 armed land mafia, led by a local gangster and his accomplice. They tried to forcibly demolish our house. My sister called the police multiple times, to no avail. When she cried for help from the balcony, she was ignored.They broke down the main gate, destroyed all CCTV cameras and looted my father’s entire shop. When they entered the house, P— Lath and G— Lath chased my sister into her room, grabbed her by the hair, beat her, slapped her, touched her with bad intentions and threatened to kill her. They displayed dangerous weapons, including knives, iron rods and swords, and warned her to stay silent or face death. They then looted jewellery, gold and silver coins and brass utensils worth Rs 6-7 lakhs from the puja room.On November 22, my family returned home from Vellore. But instead of finding safety, we were met with the same mafia who then issued life threats to my father and mother, forcing my family to lock themselves in a single room. This terror continued until the morning of November 24, when my father personally went to the Sub-divisional Officer’s office and obtained a Section 144 CrPC order to stop the demolition because the police never helped us. We also sent applications via speed post to the Superintendent, Deputy Commissioner, Deputy Inspector General of Police and Sahar Thana that same day.However, even while Section 144 was in effect, two men arrived at midnight, abused us, and threatened they would “deal with us” once the order expired. The Section 144 order expired on December 28, 2025. Just after, they returned and began demolishing the house. We called the police repeatedly throughout the night, but the Station House Officer of Sahar Thana had switched off his phone.On December 29, 2025, they returned with a JCB bulldozer to destroy what remained of my house, while our family was still inside. On the morning of December 30, when we protested, the SHO arrived not to help, but threaten us. He warned that if we interrupted the demolition, he would send our entire family to jail. By January 5, 2026, our entire house had been demolished. During this period, they locked us inside one room and constructed a brick wall at the entrance to prevent us from leaving. On January 26, 2026, when they began construction on the demolished site and we protested, they summoned more goons and issued horrifying threats, saying they would tear my sister’s clothes, kidnap her at night and throw my sick father into a gutter. Despite all this, not a single first information report has been registered.We have filed complaints with the SP, DC, DIG, Inspector General of Palamu. The police filed a false “action taken report” stating that no such action or demolition took place, no JCB bulldozer used and no CCTV cameras were destroyed. Nevertheless, I have video evidence of the same and am ready to share immediately. My sister was assaulted in her own home. My family was held hostage for weeks. My house, dating back generations, was demolished with a bulldozer. My sick father was threatened. Throughout, the police stood with the mafia. We are not asking for sympathy – we are asking for justice. Please help us expose this truth. Please be our voice. Irregularities in the Punjab civic body pollsBharat Ahuja volunteers to provide The Wire a necessary number:I have been a reader, subscriber and follower of The Wire for many years now and I wanted to bring your attention, what happened at the Punjab civic body polls that were held a few days ago. I wish to inform you about the manner in which they were conducted, the kind of ballot paper that was provided and the serial numbers which were written down on a register for every person who voted, so that tracking was expedited should anything be amiss.Ex-deputy mayor of Mohali, who is the senior Congress leader Kuljit Singh Bedi, spoke about this and wrote to Indian Express and Election Commission, but no action has been taken so far. The Indian Express report which was earlier available on the link: ex-deputy mayor seeks Punjab-wide re-poll is now not accessible. With state elections planned for next year, I hope you do a report on this. I can help you get his interview for the same as I have connected with him many times.The scam that is ethanolGeorge Ninan has a sharp comment to make on ethanol: Ethanol has been one of the longest scams, twisting public policy, thought up and operationalised by the corn lobby in the United States. The importance of the Iowa caucuses is not for nothing in the plutocracy that is the world’s oldest democracy.In India we have the sugar lobby in Maharashtra and UP. Three of our major crops are cotton, sugarcane and rice. All three are water hungry and can only survive because of our promiscuous drawing of water from deep bores. In our country we do not extract water from the water table, but from bounded aquifers, viz. fossil water. The extreme extraction of water in upper India and western US has been recorded to have caused a shift in the planet’s tilt. End NotesIf that tsunami of dust that lashed Rajasthan recently tells us anything, it is that heat and dust are important aspects of the environmental crisis facing India today. International Environment Day came and went on June 5, but what does this scary duststorm tell us? If you need to know more, I would recommend an interesting Wire conversation on how heat and dust are becoming intrinsic to India’s urban life and can potentially affect key biological processes like pollination. Once again the slogan, “Godi media, down down, hai hai” rings in the air. The last time this happened was during the farmers’ protests. Now Cockroach Janta Party activists also see red when they spot the inquiring reporter. Unfortunately, it is the humble reporter who is left to face the wrath of the public for the editorial positions occupied by media owners and their chosen editors.Write to ombudsperson@thewire.in