Indian cities are very much a man’s world. With less than a third of Indian women in employment, and many of those working from home, there are almost five times as many men as women commuting to work in urban areas. But participating in public life is vital to protect women’s health, and their stake in society. Rahul Goel calls for changes in urban design, to welcome more women into the streets.

Over the past 50 years as Brazil has made itself a major player in the global agribusiness, its own indigenous Kaiowá and Guarani people have been driven from their ancestral lands. Visiting earlier this year, Francesca Fois and Silvio Marcio Montenegro Machado saw firsthand how people had been driven to living on roadsides, and threatened daily by violence and toxic pollution.

The starting gun for Brazil’s election campaign has gone off. Voters can now expect to be bombarded with official TV adverts until the voting in October, whether they like it or not. And most of them don’t. Anthony Pereira takes a look at the state of the political landscape and sees all the hallmarks of a democracy fraying after years of corruption, recession and malaise.

On the conservation front Danilo Ignacio de Urzedo and Robert Fisher explore why Brazil’s current conservation capabilities are far short of what’s needed to meet ambitious goals to protect the Amazon. And from the archives Felipe Antunes de Oliveira explains why he was too optimistic about the country’s economy.