Aam Aadmi Party’s work in schools and mohalla clinics, free bus rides for women and subsidies for electricity and water was a major draw. But if Kejriwal really wants to be a game-changer, he might want to end an old bias against including women in the cabinet. Following his party’s triumph in the Delhi elections, […]
Women have their own perspective based on their struggles to ascension. To exclude them from crucial meetings is to shut out the voices of nearly half of our population. They flank the prime minister, six on one side, five on the other, dressed in sombre suits to discuss serious matters. The photograph was taken on
In the concluding part of my three-part series for IndiaSpend, I analyse the results. How little has changed. A beauty queen, an award-winning writer and four giant-killers; one who contested because she received a “signal from God” and another who once famously showed her middle finger to a hectoring news anchor, it is safe to
This is the second in a three-part series on gender and the 2019 general elections I wrote for IndiaSpend She may be the head of her village, but making rotis for her extended family of 22 is still her responsibility. Hunched over the small chulha (earthen stove) in the family house at Hussainpur village in Haryana’s Nuh
Muslim women: nearly 7% of the population, less than 1% in the Lok Sabha Read More »
This is the first in a three-part series I wrote for IndiaSpend, looking at the 2019 Indian general election from a gender angle. To understand how some political parties seem to have woken up to the need for greater women’s political representation ahead of the general elections scheduled for April and May 2019, you have
Record Women Voters’ Turnout But Few Women Contestants Read More »
In Hindustan Times, I look at the bleak prospects for women in the forthcoming 2019 general election. Although women are exercising their franchise in larger numbers as voters, their presence in Parliament and the assemblies remains dismal. It is early days but already a troika of powerful women — Mamata Banerjee, Mayawati and, now, Priyanka
No new deal for women this coming election Read More »
It has been reported that these godmen had planned to launch a Narmada Ghotala Yatra on April 1 to highlight a slew of ills from Chouhan’s apparent failure to stop cow slaughter to alleged corruption in the planting of saplings along the Narmada river. By some uncanny coincidence, the Shivraj Singh Chouhan-led Madhya Pradesh government’s
The official government patronage of godmen and sadhus is worrying Read More »
At the heart of this controversy lies not so much the right of a woman to choose her religion and spouse, but society’s attitude to women. We should be grateful for small mercies. On International Women’s Day, a day when hashtags were declaring ‘Time’s Up’ and ‘My Body is Mine’, our highest court reaffirmed a
The lamentable humiliations of Hadiya Read More »
We are simply not prepared to grant daughters the right to choose their spouses, particularly in inter-faith marriages. In New Delhi, Ankit Saxena made the fatal error of falling in love with a 20-year-old Muslim woman. In Kerala, Akhila Ashokan converted to Islam and, as Hadiya, married a man in accordance with her new faith.
Love and longing in modern India Read More »
Padmavat has been cleared for release; its attempted censorship and ban comes from non-state actors and Vasundhara Raje’s decision to block its release in Rajasthan out of respect to the ‘sentiments of the people’ is meek acquiescence to these non-state actors I’m not a fan of advocating mass suicide by women as a method of
Padmavat is not a political film and yet, seeing it can become a political act Read More »
Hillary Clinton concedes that her new book titled ‘What Happened’ isn’t a comprehensive account of the elections, admitting that, “I couldn’t get the job done, and I’ll have to live with that for the rest of my life.” I was on a flight out of Delhi when the results started coming in. But I wasn’t
What Happened: Hillary Rodham Clinton comes to the sisterhood party a little too late Read More »
College campuses must breed productive citizens – not by placing battle tanks on their premises but by teaching students to question authority. I’m trying figure out which one of the two is more outrageous: that a university should be considered an appropriate location for an Army tank, or that the suggestion should have come from
Why an Army tank in JNU and not a farmer’s plough? Read More »