Bihar, data protection, hospital protests
Headlines that made me want to lie down on the floor
Hello DoorDesi,
If you managed to follow this week’s headlines without crying, sleeping or rage-eating something fried, congratulations. You are not me.
The Centre rolled out a privacy law that gives with one hand and takes with the other like everything it does. Bihar election was a shock, for everyone. For some good, for the others not so much.
The longer I continue working on DoorDesi the more I am realising the need for a new type of journalism. One that does not make you want to roll over and cry AND doom scroll at the same time. One that encourages you to sit with one, maybe two pieces of information, engage with it, feel something, and move on. Is DoorDesi something similar for you? Do you feel overwhelmed, underwhelmed, helpless? Or do you feel like this is something you can engage with for half an hour without wanting to run away from real responsibility?
As I am designing the next phase of DD, your answer to this question will be very helpful so I hope some of you will be able to take the time to answer.
Thanks!
Have a great week ahead, folks!
Just the gist
🔗Broken hearts and big promises
It was a wipeout few saw coming, though many admit the warning signs were there. The RJD-led Mahagathbandhan was flattened by an NDA wave in Bihar, and the Congress is barely scraping past single digits. Even the party’s own critics are stunned.
Insiders blame a confused strategy, a misplaced social justice pitch, and the embrace of too many political turncoats. Rahul Gandhi’s push to woo backward classes alienated what little upper-caste support the party still had, while Nitish Kumar’s targeted outreach to women voters paid off handsomely.
The “vote chori” campaign also failed to catch fire, making the party seem out of touch while Tejashwi Yadav talked jobs and migration.
➡️ People saw a divided alliance, muddled messaging leading to a failed comeback.
India is finally getting a full-country look at one of its biggest and least-understood forces: migration. Starting July 2026, the Ministry of Statistics will launch a year-long national migration survey to track who is moving, why they are moving, how far they are going, and what happens to them after they do.
The last dedicated survey was in 2007–08, and since then we have only had partial data. The 2020–21 labour survey told us two things: almost 29 percent of India’s population are migrants, and women migrate far more than men, largely because of marriage. Men, meanwhile, mostly move for work.
The new survey will go deeper. It will track short-term migration starting from 15 days, ask whether moving improved someone’s income, safety, or access to services, and capture the problems migrants face in their new homes.
➡️ For a country built on mobility, this data could reshape everything from housing and jobs to transport and social security.
Karnataka is in the middle of a healthcare dharma-yudh. For more than fifty days, communities in Vijayapura, Kolar, Tumakuru and beyond have been protesting the state’s plan to hand district hospitals to private operators under a Public Private Partnership model (at this point, the entire country seems to be up for sale). The government says it is about expanding medical colleges but protestors believe that it is just privatisation dressed up to make it palatable.
Under PPP, hospitals get split into “paid” and “free” beds, with the poor forced to collect authorisation letters just to access what used to be free care. Private partners can charge market rates for diagnostics, food and services, while the government still foots much of the bill. Past experiments in Karnataka have already failed, with understaffed hospitals, unpaid workers and BPL patients turned away.
➡️ Critics warn this model will raise costs, shrink access and turn medical education into a luxury for the elite. The question now is simple: will Karnataka protect its public hospitals, or repeat a privatisation history that everyone already knows ends badly?
🔗Less freedom in the name of more rights
The government has officially notified the rules of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2025, kicking off India’s first real attempt at giving citizens control over their personal data. Hmm… my spider senses are triggered.
Platforms will now need clear consent, tighter security, limits on how much data they collect, and a process to delete your information when you ask. A new data protection board is also being set up, and companies have about eighteen months to fall in line.
So far, so good. Erm. No.
he trouble starts when you look at what the law does to press freedom. You know that thing that we kinda sorta have but really don’t? Unlike most global privacy laws, India’s version drops the exemption that protects journalists. Reporters may now need permission to even mention someone’s designation during an investigation.
So the governement wakes up every day and goes “in how many more directions can we come at journalists from?“. Media ownership? Check. Online censorship? Check. Sedition law? Check. Now, more in the name of people.
➡️ If you do not like this, here is what you can do, not just for Indian journalists, but those anywhere in the world. Pay for news. Pay for one to two news outlets at least that you trust. That you think brings value to you. Pay them so they can stay independent. Pay them so they can afford legal fees. It’s usually a cup of coffee per month.
Trending on the internet
I am skipping this section today because the Delhi blast happened only a few days ago and it feels wrong to talk about internet faux pas when real people are losing real lives and no one is held accountable.
Read with me
🔗The bombs that never go off and the one that does
India is drowning in hoax bomb threats and many of them are coming from a very unexpected place. Several recent threats that triggered airport chaos, school evacuations and full police mobilisation were not sent by jihadi outfits at all. They were sent by Hindus settling personal scores, astrologers framing old friends, teenagers fighting classmates and even a robotics engineer getting revenge on a colleague who married someone else.
Police across Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu are now dealing with hundreds of hoax threats each month. The cost is huge. People are are traumatised, police and bomb squads are exhausted, tax-payer’s money wasted because every hoax still needs a full emergency response.
➡️ And then you end up with something like the New Delhi blast. One that shook the nation but not quite enough. Not quite enough because the government barely took responsbility, the perpetrators are still unknown and in a coutry that is growing to value life less, just toll was just not ‘big enough’ to care and that is disturbing.
Thank you for reading this far!
With love on behalf of two women who cringe at the mention of chai tea latte,
Sudeshna
Co-Founder, DoorDesi 💃
Housekeeping
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