‘Power’ According to Me
I thought I was being headstrong and obstinate, but not powerful Life has unravelled the many meanings of power to me. I have come to understand that power is not always with others, but with us as well. Being myself, expressing myself in the way I like, is also an act of power. I got […]
The Dailiness of Violence
There is a specific way in which we react to a gruesome sexual assault in India. From Nirbhaya to the recent Kolkata case, we come out in protest against the victimization of women, and our outrage, anger, and arguments are about justice, crime, and punishment. We want a solution from the State. We want to […]
Fighting the Good Fight: My Journey as a Feminist Researcher
“The heart of justice is truth telling, seeing ourselves and the world the way it is rather than the way we want it to be. More than ever before we, as a society, need to renew a commitment to truth telling.” bell hooks This month of March is quite significant for many of us in […]
Indian women work much harder than men – is anyone listening?
All women work. Even those who are not considered ‘working,’ work, and work hard. That is because they are the ones who are usually responsible for all care work in the family. This is true for the entire world but truer for India and other South Asian countries. According to a global report published by […]
The question of difference (Part three of three): Poverty of Imagination
Feminist or a Womanist? . . . Those in the middle get caught in the cross—fire away at the other side. If you are not for us, then you must be against us. If you are not for us, then you must be against us. People get scared enough, they pick a team. Be it […]
The question of difference (Part two of three): Meaning of difference
Sleeping, turning in turn like planets Sleeping, turning in turn like planets rotating in their midnight meadow: a touch is enough to let us know we’re not alone in the universe, even in sleep: the dream-ghosts of two worlds walking their ghost-towns, almost address each other. I’ve wakened to your muttered words spoken light- or […]
The question of difference (Part one of three): Two stories
Postcard from God – I Yes, I do feel like a visitor, a tourist in this world that I once made. I rarely talk, except to ask the way, distrusting my interpreters, tired out by the babble of what they do not say. I walk around through battered streets, distinctly lost, looking for landmarks from […]
How has Beti Bachao Beti Padhao fared in five years?
One of the flagship programmes of the Narendra Modi Government that has created a lot of buzz is Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao. However, the scheme has fared well neither in its design nor in its implementation. The scheme majorly runs in two components; mass media communication and multi-sectoral intervention. I will be commenting critically on […]
The identity of woman
. . . I have been standing all my life in the direct path of a battery of signals the most accurately transmitted most untranslatable language in the universe I am a galactic cloud so deep so invo- luted that a light wave could take 15 years to travel through me And […]
Just Another Tea-Break Rant
Being in love with tea is the most committed relationship I have ever been in. I have been accused of romanticizing tea by the whole world and I am not shy to admit that I am indeed, guilty as charged. Each cup of tea brings a sense of tranquillity that awakens all my senses together. […]
Fitting into my own shoes: Reflections from the Field
Reflexivity is customary in social anthropology and resultant epistemology. George Herbert Mead defines reflexivity as “turning back of the experience of the individual upon (her – or himself)”. Reflexivity is always retrospective, and hence this blog post is about what I was looking for in the field, what I found and how I perceived it […]
Life Imitates Art – Cinema and Violence against Women
Life imitates art far more than art imitates life – Oscar Wilde In the normal course, it is art that imitates life. The art forms – literature, painting and cinema – for the most part depended upon and depicted reality. It was art holding up the mirror to life in the description of pastoral England […]
Do Women in India Require Empowerment?
A blog post in three parts. Part One: A question. Do women in India require empowerment? This was a question posed to me on a recent trip to Bihar. I said yes. But the answer is actually very simplistic to what we see in the field. This question is attached to a larger group of […]
Women’s Empowerment: Still a Long Way to Go! (Dilli Abhi Bahut Door Hai)
Women’s empowerment is an important issue that India needs to deal with on an urgent basis. Women’s position continues to be secondary in the Indian society and the process of change is extremely slow. This is obvious irrespective of what indicator you take and which area you choose: education, health, political and labour market participation, […]
Ensuring Women’s Representation in Parliament and State Legislatures
The proposal to reserve one-third of the seats in Parliament and the state assemblies for women has passed in the Rajya Sabha, but has stalled in the Lok Sabha. The opponents of the Bill want ‘quotas within quotas’. But this is a polite way of opposing the Bill. The men are worried about having a […]