Rules of engagement

Netflix’s new show, Indian Matchmaking is regressive, but not more than the patriarchy that governs the rules of marriage. Sima Aunty, everybody’s favourite matchmaker, in a still from the Netflix show. One critic calls it “this year’s scariest horror show about arranged marriages”. And on social media, there is a raging storm over sexism, casteism, colourism and a range of other isms. As Netflix’s eight-episode reality show, Indian Matchmaking kicks off, the conversation about the business of arranged marriages has gathered pace. Indian Matchmaking doesn’t claim to wear a reformist cloak. Executive producer Smriti Mundhra calls it an “unscripted, fun, crazy, light look on…

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Gendered language has its roots in sexism, bias | Opinion

Gendered language is not just an annoyance. It can harm Facebook’s 71 gender options, including the two-spirit person, are a stretch. But “they”, used by singular non-binary gender identity people, was Merriam-Webster’s word of 2019 and India has recognised “other” as an official gender since 2014(Shutterstock) Last week, my friend Kanta Singh took issue with a retired bureaucrat for his tweet on how civil servants must “evolve in a manner that those who want to corrupt him aren’t able to muster the courage to do so. His conscience must be his firewall”. Kanta’s objection wasn’t the content. “Will request you…

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How Covid-19 has set back the education of girls | Opinion

The risk of girls dropping out of school in large numbers is real. The time to act, plan and stop a predictable slide is now. In India, 320 million children have been affected by school closures caused by the coronavirus disease (Covid-19). Online classes do not factor in the country’s digital divide where 16% females have Internet access, compared to 36% males, according to the National Sample Survey 2017-18(HT Photo) Her family has always “believed in education,” Vidhi Kumari, 18, tells me on the phone from her home in Mangolpuri, Delhi. So even though her mother never went to school…

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Women in labour must be treated with dignity

The coronavirus pandemic has highlighted an old problem of the mistreatment of women in the labour room The mistreatment of women in the labour room is fairly common, especially if you’re poor(Diwakar Prasad/ Hindustan Times) Don’t touch me, the nurse yelled at the woman who was about to deliver her second child. On March 26, when the woman went into labour, fears of the coronavirus were high at the community health centre in Atraulia, Azamgarh. The Dalit wife of a daily wage labourer was made to wait outside until it was time to give birth. “Even then, the nurse refused…

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Build a society that respects individual choice | Opinion

Demonising doctors and families who force individuals to undergo conversion therapy is the easy bit. The far harder part is the work that must go into building an affirmative society that is respectful of individual choice In 2018, the Indian Psychiatric Association clarified that homosexuality is not a mental illness but stopped short of calling for an explicit ban on conversion therapy. Doctors who practise it face no action(Amal KS/HT PHOTO) K’s parents prided themselves on being educated and liberal and yet, when he told them he was gay, he remembers his mother saying: “You don’t have to flaunt it.…

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Start talking to boys on what constitutes consent

If sex education is such a loaded term, call it something else — value education, life skills, consent education — but we can no longer ignore how desperately we need it in India’s school curriculums. Projects such as The Consent Project seek to create awareness about legal protections and prohibitions. They challenge norms about what it means to be desirable, to be a man, to be “cool”. And they open conversations on personal spaces and consent.(Getty Images/iStockphoto) In 2018, Mini Saxena, a lawyer, moved back to India from the United Kingdom (UK) and learned for the first time just how…

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The lockdown is hard for women with disability

Before Covid-19, women with disabilities were already undergoing their own lockdown, invisible and shut out from the rest of the world. Now, the walls are closing in. An Afghan woman with a child waits for alms in front of closed shops during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Kabul, Afghanistan April 23, 2020. REUTERS/Mohammad Ismail(REUTERS) As a girl of 15, Nidhi Goyal wanted to be a portrait artist. Then she became visually-challenged, and turned to activism. “I was 16,” she says about losing sight to a rare genetic condition called retinitis pigmentosa. “It was a struggle and I was slipping…

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Shut in/shut out

The lockdown that has resulted from the coronavirus pandemic is especially hard on women with disability. Nidhi Goyal. Pic courtesy: Rising Flame As a girl of 15, Nidhi Goyal wanted to be a portrait artist. Then she became visually-challenged, and turned to activism. “I was 16,” she says about losing sight to a rare genetic condition called retinitis pigmentosa. “It was a struggle and I was slipping into depression until I looked at my own privilege.” She then decided to “do something about it”. Now 34, the Mumbai-based founder and director of Rising Flame, a non-profit committed to changing the…

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Singapore’s coronavirus success story hits a snag

I report from Singapore on new cases of Covid-19 exploded among migrant workers who live in the country’s far-flung dormitories. Human rights watchers say these developments should be no surprise. A near-empty Changi airport greeted us as we arrived in Singapore on March 22 as the country was being hailed for its ‘gold standard’ response in battling Coronavirus. Taken by me on my iPhone. Hailed as a model for its early success in containing the spread of coronavirus, Singapore is now having to explain an alarming surge in infections—more than 75 percent of which are among low-paid migrant workers who…

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Covid-19: The centrality and invisibility of women

As the world battles the pandemic, it cannot be a coincidence that countries headed by women — Taiwan, Germany, New Zealand — are doing comparatively well. In Taiwan, President Tsai Ing-Wen’s early intervention, including screening passengers from Wuhan, limited the outbreak to 393 infections and six deaths. Six days before Kerala recorded its first coronavirus case on January 30, health minister KK Shailaja made plans. She was following the news from Wuhan, China, where many students from the state were studying, and the minister knew there was no room for complacency.(ANI) Six days before Kerala recorded its first coronavirus case…

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Women show the way

It cannot be a coincidence that countries headed by women are doing comparatively better at battling the Covid-19 pandemic Angela Merkel’s Germany witnessed a high infection but comparatively low death rate. Creative Commons/eugenbittner Six days before Kerala recorded its first coronavirus case on January 30, health minister KK Shailaja made plans. She was following the news from Wuhan, China, where many students from the state were studying, and the minister knew there was no room for complacency. The state’s international airports began screening, a control room was set up, and contact tracing and testing started. By early February, Kerala had…

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Post lockdown spike in domestic violence

The lockdown caused by the coronavirus pandemic has led to a rise in rape, domestic violence, sexual harassment, stalking & voyeurism, according to online data from the National Commission for Women. With husbands at home, many women unlikely to complain. Pic courtesy: Breakthrough India The woman calling on the phone from Ghaziabad was distraught. Her husband, she told counsellor of the Delhi-based NGO Shakti Shalini, used to beat her occasionally. Now since the lockdown came into effect on March 24, she said, he has been home and beats her, brutally, every single day. The woman’s parents live only 10 km…

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