Siddhartha, an Indian writer and novelist, came to academia in the US in the belief that it was a citadel of free thought and open minds. But as he wrote in his Equator essay From Calcutta to Columbia, disenchantment set in quickly. He saw how students were loaded with debt, how his university was voraciously expanding across its pocket of Manhattan, and how the jargon of theory "allowed people to cultivate a moral distance from capital and empire".

Journalism has suffered in parallel as well, both in the US and India. Siddhartha, a former journalist, tells Pankaj that newspapers as much as universities have cravenly surrendered to the Trump administration and but also to previous presidents. "I grew up with this idea of writing being a noble vocation," says Pankaj. "One of the great disillusioning experiences really of the last two or three decades has been that very few people seem to think of it that way. Most people think of it  as a pathway to the most hideously conventional forms of success."

Read Siddhartha's essay for Equator, From Calcutta to Columbia.

Increasingly, Yi-Ling is asked by people she meets in America: how should they deal with the constraints and diminishing freedoms of their own internet? The internet began as a utopian promise of a free, open and fair space, but for most of the world, it is now distorted by a handful of American tech giants, the tyranny of algorithms, and AI engines that spew out slop.

China's internet has faced different kinds of restrictions, imposed by the government. But it, too, was once more open, allowing new kinds of connections and identities to be forged online. The Wall Dancers profiles several people who blossomed online – including Kafe Hu, a hip-hop artist whose genre blossomed in China thanks to the internet – but who also then saw their lives curtailed by fresh censorship. Still, Yi-Ling says, the internet in China remains playful, vibrant and inventive, as people find ways to collaborate and bypass the state's restrictions. 

As governments and platforms reshape the boundaries of digital expression, what might the future of the internet look like? And who gets to decide? This episode invites you to rethink what you know about life online - both in China and beyond.

Read Have Money Daddy, an excerpt from Yi-Ling's book published exclusive in Equator.

Two-thirds of Bangladesh is less than 15 feet above sea level, making it highly exposed to the rise of oceans, coastal flooding, tropical cyclones and the salination of the soil, all of which threaten homes and food security. Over the centuries, Western development experts have brought their own experiences of Europe and America to bear on the environment of Bangladesh. But as Amitav wrote in an essay for Equator, they have routinely failed to heed local knowledge or local patterns of living and sustenance. If their solutions are destined to fail, it is because of the presumptive and high-handed methodologies behind them. 

Mohsin and Amitav also discuss how these NGOs and aid organisations prize the Western notion of individualism over collaboration and collectivism. That notion can end up clouding our vision for the future, preventing us from finding innovative solutions to climate change and other pressing issues.

Read Amitav’s essay, Beyond the Apocalypse. 

The totalitarianism we see around us, Naomi argues, is different from that of the mid-20th century. For one, the technologies are different, and big American tech companies are deeply complicit in their government's abuses of power. The abusers themselves are of a different order. "Never before have we seen an elite that is not only kleptocratic...but also spiritually vacuous and culturally empty," Pankaj says. The world is worse too, Naomi argues, because of its headlong rush towards momentous collapse. "Our predecessors did not win their revolutionary battles against capitalism, and capitalism has become much, much worse," she says.

Pankaj and Naomi also discuss her Equator essay Surrealism against Fascism, about how a radical artistic movement that emerged a century ago defied the rising fascism of the time. Naomi unpacks what surrealism stood for, how it challenged oppressive systems, and why its spirit could still prove immensely useful.

Osman, a senior editor at ESPNCricinfo and the author of The Unquiet Ones, a history of cricket in Pakistan, recently wrote The Hidden Imran for Equator, about the Pakistani government's attempt to erase the country's most famous man from public view. But even beyond the imprisonment and effacement of Imran Khan, cricket in the subcontinent has long been shaped by political tension, conflict and fragile diplomacy.

Osman and Samanth discuss how cricket matches have doubled as proxy battlegrounds, how players carry the weight of national identity, and how the line between sport and statecraft has all but disappeared. The India-Pakistan rivalry, in particular, escalated around the recent World Cup, to the point that it appears as if cricket and politics in these nations can never be separated. Finally, Osman narrates the story of one of cricket's most iconic figures: Imran Khan, revered as Pakistan's World Cup-winning captain and then as politician and prime minister. Osman explains how Imran was jailed on corruption charges, many of them spurious, and how, as the government has tried to mask Imran and his legacy, the internet has played a crucial role in keeping his story alive.

Read The Hidden Imran on Equator.

In this episode, Pankaj asks Lina about The Disaster Correspondent, her memoir-essay about writing for mainstream magazines and newspapers in the US. She recalls the problems of being pigeonholed as a writer and having her work minimised when she was classified by certain print outlets as a disaster correspondent. Pankaj and Lina discuss the complex balance of wanting to raise awareness of the extreme and destabilising events in her home country with the exhausting and predictable way her pieces would be stripped of nuance, severely limiting her identity as a writer.

Read The Disaster Correspondent on Equator. Also read Lina's short essay "My Home is Burning", about the bombing of her family home.

Nesrine and Nikhil discuss how the recent actions of ICE and the US’ wars overseas are missions with the same end goal. Exploring the similarities of these strategies, Nesrine and Nikhil believe, leaves us better-placed to grasp what is happening – and what political structures are needed to oppose them. Through his vast understanding of the US’ history of race and immigration, Nikhil also describes how the Trump administration has taken advantage of the country’s existing legal structures to carry out his plan, and how these structures were established by both Democratic and Republican governments.

Read Homeland Empire on Equator. To learn more, visit equator.org.

Equator is a digital and print magazine launched by a global group of writers after a consensus that our media landscape today has been tarnished by censorship, complicity and an inability to stand up for the values of justice, solidarity and compassion. No longer should the future of the world be determined through the lens of the West. Now is the time to create something new.

The mission of Equator is to hold up a mirror to a worldwide audience of readers and writers who don’t yet recognise themselves as belonging together. All of us have had intimations of our overlapping identities and affinities, our participation in a shared global history, even while separated by narrow nationalisms and parochial press cultures. For us, the widely proclaimed “end of the West” is not the end of the world; the epoch ahead is ripe with the promise of fresh illuminations, of new horizons of human action and imagination.

Equator is a movement as much as a magazine. We will publish unique longform stories about politics, culture, literature and art – but our work will also encompass public events, reading groups, screenings and exhibitions. Become a member today!