Swati Pal

Over the past four years, there have been at least five significant protest movements across Asia. Each has left a lasting impact on the region’s political and social landscape. This article studies four of these protest movements, Iran (2022), Sri Lanka (2022), Bangladesh (2024) and Nepal (2025) through the framework of agitational propaganda and mobilisation strategies. Despite their diverse political and economic origins, these cases suggest notable similarities in patterns of mobilisation. Then, drawing on thinkers like Hannah Arendt, Judith Butler, Victor Turner, Richard Schechner, and Manuel Castells, this article tries to understand how protesters move beyond simply voicing dissent to enact opposition through symbolic actions, ritualistic repetition, and digital amplification.

• Swati Pal |
• March-April 2026 |
• Strategic Analysis

This article interprets the COVID-19 pandemic as a profound existential event that exposed the moral, political, and structural fragilities of the global order. Drawing on existentialist philosophy—Sartre’s ontology of freedom, Camus’ ethics of solidarity, Foucault’s bio- politics, and Agamben’s state of exception—it argues that the pandemic mirrored the human condition of interdependence, anxiety, and moral choice. Through literature and philosophy, crises are revealed as tests of responsibility within constraint, as tensions between freedom and surveillance, sovereignty and solidarity, inequality and justice. The study also integrates Marxian critiques of global capitalism and analyses how vaccine nationalism, digital surveillance, and emergency governance redefined sovereignty and ethics. It concludes by articulating an ‘existential diplomacy’ grounded in recognition, responsibility, and redistributive justice, signalling a movement away from technocratic management towards moral and democratic accountability.

• Swati Pal |
• November-December 2025 |
• Strategic Analysis