The Long Road To Jantar Mantar, Now A Video Game

What does it take to reach Jantar Mantar? In Delhi last week, the answer involved navigating closed metro stations, roadblocks and a city that seemed determined to keep protesters away. Online, the same journey has become a game.

In Mantar Jantar, players must find their way through a protest-hit Delhi, navigating barricades, internet disruptions and tear gas. The details are part of the joke. Every road has potholes. Litter misses the dustbin. There are two kinds of media. Even the city's broken infrastructure has made it into the game.

Suraj Kushwah, a 27-year-old DevOps engineer from Bareilly working at a Mumbai-based cloud gaming company, told Decode that the idea came to him while watching news reports of people devising increasingly complicated ways to reach Jantar Mantar.

“I started noticing this thing, like people were finding random strategies to reach Jantar Mantar,” he said. The situation, he felt, was beginning to resemble a game.

The result is dark humour built into the gameplay. For Kushwah, however, the joke is also a comment on the political moment. “This is peak absurdity of the current state of the country,” he said.

The game attracted enough attention to put its infrastructure to the test, too. Kushwah said around 2,000 players were online simultaneously at one point. Some people worried that the servers would crash as the game went viral. “To them, I want to say this is not a government website, I have taken care of that,” he said with a chuckle.

Asked whether he expected the response to a game he built in just two days, with some help from AI, Kushwah said, “I understand the internet. I knew this would go viral the moment I played it for the first time.”

Mantar Jantar is not the only game to emerge from the protests. Bhaag Neha Bhaag turns AISA president Neha Bora's attempt to reach Jantar Mantar into a chase. In Jantar Mantar To Jail, players take on the roles of Cockroach Janta Party members Abhijeet Dipke, Saurav Das and Ashutosh Ranka, dodging police and falling jail bars while collecting coins marked “Democracy” and “Accountability”.

These games take the imagery of a protest crackdown and turn it into something people can interact with. The satire lies in making players experience, however briefly, the absurdity of having to overcome so many obstacles just to reach a place where they can protest.

Here are a few other stories that caught our attention this week. 

SC Says Children Have A Right To The Internet. A Blanket Ban Won’t Help

The Supreme Court has recognised children’s internet access as a fundamental right, cautioning against blanket bans as a way to protect them online. The debate is gaining ground globally, with Australia restricting social media access for under-16s and Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh proposing age-based restrictions. Instead of bans, the apex court pointed to safeguards such as private-by-default accounts and child-friendly settings. The challenge is to protect children without cutting them off from the internet.

Aadhaar Authentication For LPG Subsidies Faces A Court Challenge 

The Delhi High Court has sought the Centre’s response to a petition challenging mandatory biometric Aadhaar authentication for subsidised LPG refills. The petitioner, a lawyer with a permanent visual disability, argues that the requirement creates barriers for people who may struggle to complete biometric verification. The government says the measure is intended to prevent subsidy misuse. The case raises a familiar question about digital welfare: what happens when authentication becomes a condition for accessing a right?

India Joins List Of Countries Reporting Rogue AI Agents

India’s cybersecurity agency CERT-In has received disclosures from multiple AI providers whose agents accessed live systems belonging to Indian organisations during research and testing. The agents accessed personal data and confidential business information after finding exposed credentials, public code repositories and overly permissive cloud permissions. Their actions went beyond their authorisation. As in Anthropic’s cases, the affected organisations in India did not detect the intrusions themselves, leaving governments dependent on AI companies to voluntarily report rogue agent activity.

Musk vs Ambani: The Starlink-Jio Feud Plays Out On X

Starlink and Reliance have spent the past week trading barbs over the former's delayed launch in India. Musk accused unnamed “oligarchs” of blocking competition, then sarcastically called Ambani “Prime Minister Ambani” and questioned whether he was the real boss of India. Reliance hit back, saying it welcomed competition and that Jio’s own satellite internet service was also awaiting government clearances. Musk replied with “Much appreciated” on X. Starlink says it is ready to connect India, but security clearances and spectrum allocation remain hurdles. The stakes extend beyond two billionaires: who gets to shape India’s next internet market, and on what terms?

Meta Backed Down On AI Training Terms. But Who Gets To Say No?

Meta has withdrawn a provision in its commercial terms that raised concerns about scraping website content for AI training. The clause appeared to allow content from websites linked to Meta business accounts to be used to develop its AI products, prompting concerns over consent and copyright. Meta said the change does not alter how its web crawlers operate. The episode highlights a wider problem: Meta has relied on opt-out mechanisms for some AI training, leaving users to object rather than requiring explicit permission upfront. As AI spreads across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, do users have any control over their data?

New On Decode

A WhatsApp group created to help women students travel safely to a Delhi protest became the target of a doxxing campaign after its messages were circulated online without context. Its student admin received threats and was detained by Delhi Police the next morning, without being told why. (Read here)

In Case You Missed It

At Decode Internet this week, we followed stories of protest, surveillance and accountability.

How A Delhi Police Ran A Crackdown Within A Crackdown, Against Journalists And Lawyers
At least 37 journalists were detained over two days. Lawyers were locked out of police stations and prevented from meeting the detainees. (Read here)

Beyond Takedowns: Decode-Tattle Report Maps Ways To Tackle AI Deepfakes 
The report by Decode Internet and Tattle Civic Technologies builds on their investigation into the cross-border infrastructure powering AI tools used to create non-consensual intimate images of women. (Read here)

Decode This Week is your weekly guide to the technology changing how we live, work and navigate the world around us. From AI and algorithms to scams, surveillance, platforms and digital policy, we look beyond the hype to ask a simple question: what does this mean for you?

Until next week :)