Why does the five-man bench get to decide which of the three issues in the triple talaq case is more important than the others? When the history of Indian women is written, 2017 will go down as the year when the Plight of the Muslim Woman was uncovered. So grave is this plight that politicians […]
Why is triple talaq more important than nikaah halala and polygamy? Read More »
Speaking up has consequences and, so, in the din of divisive discourse that makes way for majoritarian force, the solitary voice is now hard to hear. I don’t know if you ever read Roger Rosenblatt’s essay in Time magazine in the early eighties: the air-crash over Washington, the rescue helicopter picking up survivors and, in
In an age of beef killings and human shields, speaking up is an act of courage Read More »
The meek acquiescence by citizens to the growing intrusion of state and other actors is alarming. Don’t eat beef. Don’t transport cows. Don’t buy cows. Don’t drink alcohol if in Gujarat and Bihar or within 500 metres of state and national highways. Don’t play cricket with Pakistan and don’t hire Pakistani actors in films. Stand
Welcome to the vigilante nation Read More »
We do the army no favours by placing it on a pedestal from where it cannot be asked legitimate questions. We do it no favours when we seek to draw it into an emotional public debate. Military action cannot be based on populist sentiment; wars are not fought and won in TV studios. A solution,
Hyper-nationalism does not help the cause of the Army Read More »
Nothing exemplifies the moral slide from Dadri to Alwar as much as the indifference on display. A family counts itself blessed that the 85-year-old mother is blind and is ,therefore, spared from having to watch the video of her son being told to escape – then chased and lynched. We shrug at a bride’s disappointment
Fear and loathing in new India: Dadri, Alwar lynchings leave us unmoved Read More »
Doctors can be super-heroes in white coats. Last year they wrote about their working conditions — long shifts, short sleep, bad food – to the state Human Rights Commission. Shifts in a stressful job can stretch to 48 straight hours. But when you’re short of five lakh doctors in the country, what choice do you
Government doctors work in trying conditions. The least they need is safety Read More »
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. Fifty-nine years ago when my mother, a full-fledged lawyer with a fledgling practice, got married, she declared that she would no longer work. In her
Indian women have no time to work outside the house Read More »
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. For a
Who’s afraid of the Naga Mothers? Read More »
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. A sure way of knowing when a superstar is about to release a film is by seeing how accessible he becomes. Voila, suddenly, there
Shah Rukh Khan, don’t blame the media if we don’t have an Indian Meryl Streep Read More »
At a time when opinion and ideology is 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
Good news websites: Silver linings playbook Read More »
It can help me cope with a changing, unpredictable world, enlarging a personal worldview to embrace those outside my own experiences and ideology. And before you know it, it’s here again. That time of year to make fresh resolutions, determined to wake up energized and renewed. Learn a foreign language; meet new people; read more
I have just one word on my new year’s resolution list: Empathy Read More »
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? The great truth about social media, it used to
On social media, facts are less than sacred Read More »