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When a significant proportion of women say they want to stay home, the message is clear: Gender stereotypes about unpaid care work and a woman’s place in it remain prevalent A woman makes fresh spices for her family of seven at a slum, Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India(Burhaan Kinu/HT) Fifty-nine years ago when my mother, a […]

Like Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela represented the best version of who we are as human beings: People who could be imprisoned but never diminished. People who never allowed themselves to become caricatures of how they were viewed by their oppressors. People who retained dignity despite systemic attempts to belittle them Fired with idealism and passion,

How the urban local bodies qualify as “customary” institutions is anybody’s guess. But in the past 16 years there has been no election to them. The women’s groups insist on reservation. But the tribal bodies remain adamant about not sharing power. Without reservation, women will simply not be given the opportunity to compete The Kohima

The price of annoying the establishment is steep, as Khan knows, it’s perhaps easier to compromise — a simple answer to the question of why we don’t have our Meryl Streep People gather at the Nizamuddin railway station to meet actor Shah Rukh Khan, New Delhi, January 24(PTI) A sure way of knowing when a

At a time when opinion and ideology are sharply polarised, when a rant is what passes for news debates and large sections of mainstream media are under attack for a litany of sins including loss of credibility and openly aligning with one or another political party, when social media is patrolled by paid trolls and

It can help me cope with a changing, unpredictable world, enlarging a personal worldview to embrace those outside my own experiences and ideology We have been similarly clueless about those live-tweeting the end of their world from the frontlines of Aleppo. We cannot comprehend what it means to be refugees so desperate to leave a

All of us with smartphones are now publishers of our own stories on social media, consuming, sharing, forwarding often to groups that think and feel like us. The truth must be out there, somewhere. But when we have a yarn to spin, does it really matter? Just this past one week, a hacker called Legion

The Global Slavery Index estimates 45.8 million people globally are in some form of slavery. With 18 million people as slaves, India has the highest absolute numbers. They are found in the sex trade, in mining, as bonded labour, as domestic labour, in manufacturing, in fishing and agriculture. One-fourth of all trafficked people are children

Narendra Modi’s decision to strike at black money and corruption by wiping out 86% of the currency notes in circulation has hit women vendors the hardest. These are women who are not part of the banking system, survive on one income (their own), which is entirely in cash earned daily and must negotiate petty bribes

If we are to talk about apologies with any degree of honesty, then there’s plenty to be remorseful about in post Independent India. It’s not a foreign colonial power, but our own governments that also owe us a range of apologies. Nobody is owed an apology more than the Dalits and the women of this

When Bollywood bluebloods like Karan Johar must prove their patriotism and grovel before the ruling regime for protection, you know you’re in trouble. Like the writer Perumal Murugan before him, you know which side is winning: The thugs with muscle Mumbai, India – Oct. 19, 2016: Maharashtra Navnirman Sena workers at Metro Cinema in Mumbai,

Politicians in India have rarely been forthcoming about their health, taking refuge in the argument that they are entitled to their privacy. Do we as citizens have the right to know? People hold a portrait of Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa as they pray for her well-being as they stand in front of a