Vidhi Doshi

Five years since India legalised gay sex, persistent discrimination means many LGBTQIA+ Indians continue to suffer “mental trauma and alienation”, said one of the Supreme Court judges who lifted the ban.

Indu Malhotra was part of the five-judge constitutional bench that in 2018 unanimously struck down part of Section 377, a law introduced by India’s former British colonial rulers that had stood for almost 160 years.

Adjusting their swimming goggles and wrapping their fingers in cloth to protect them from the jagged coral below, a group of women plunge into choppy waters off southern India to gather seaweed - their routine since childhood.

The work is hard, the days long and the earnings slim - selling the seaweed to industrial plants earns the average picker about 2,000 rupees ($24) per month.

Female protagonists are often the biggest stars in Bollywood films, but behind the scenes it is still an industry dominated by men. Tired of being sidelined, women workers are banding together to ensure their voices are heard - on set, and off.

"We'd have at least 80-90 people on a set and only three or four of them were women," said Petrina D'Rozario, a film producer.

Official maps show the roads, the power stations, the lighthouse - but skip all the special spots where generations of Indian fishermen have moored boats or dried their silvery catch, prayed for the living and buried their dead.

So now the fishermen of southern India are learning a whole new skill: mapping their ancient land by app - plot by precious plot - to stop industry from swallowing life on the lagoon.

Vijay Surwade may have worked as a bank manager by day – but for five decades he spent his evenings building one of the world's biggest archives dedicated to India's pioneering Dalit rights campaigner B.R. Ambedkar.

His collection includes everything from documents and photos to Ambedkar's broken spectacles and dentures, all housed in shoe boxes and concertina files in Surwade's apartment in the western city of Kalyan, about 45km northeast of Mumbai.

In a small laboratory on the outskirts of the Indian city of Hyderabad, professor Kirti Sahu is studying raindrops.

Using a machine that simulates the conditions of clouds, he is among a number of scientists aiming to understand how climate change and pollution are affecting the monsoon rains that underpin the country's agrarian economy.

When Sonali Singh was little, she would beg then brawl with her brother for a turn on his video games. Her mother would broker peace by handing Singh a story book.

"It's our Indian culture. Girls don't play games," Singh said.

Fast forward to adulthood and Singh now works remotely as a software engineer for a big U.S. university, adding an extra 50-60% to her already high earnings playing video games by night.