In defining ‘cruelty’ in divorce cases—wives who don’t wear a mangalsutra or prioritise careers or want to live separately from their in-laws or do not make tea—Indian courts often fall back on stereotypes of the role of wives in marriage. My report with Surbhi Karwa for Article14. Illustration: Tara Anand for Article14 Momita was visiting her grandmother at 7 pm on 13 January 2018 when Alamin Miah dropped by and asked her to step outside. Then, he threw acid on her face. The attack left her with third-degree burns on her forehead and eyelids and second-degree deep burns on her…

There are 6,57,800 sex workers in India, according to a 2016 UNAIDS study. Other estimates put the number at three million. The lockdown and social distancing measures have pushed them to the edge. NGO workers hand over dry ration to sex workers, Pune , June 23, 2020(Ravindra Joshi/HT PHOTO) In March, Jayashree Patil learned that she had been accepted to a nine-month leadership training programme in Washington, DC. She had every reason to be proud. It was a competitive programme and she had completed her schooling under challenging circumstances. Then the coronavirus disease paralysed the world, and the training programme…

The lockdown and social distancing measures have pushed India’s sex workers to the edge Pic courtesy: International Women’s Health Coalition/Creative Commons In March, Jayashree Patil learned that she had been accepted to a nine-month leadership training programme in Washington, D.C. She had every reason to be proud. It was a competitive programme and she had completed her schooling under extremely challenging circumstances. Then coronavirus paralysed the world, and the training programme was deferred by a year. Jayashree, the daughter of a sex worker born and raised in Mumbai’s red-light district, Kamathipura, was devastated. “I can’t wait for a year,” she…

Arranged or otherwise, marriage in modern India continues to be bound by rigid social-economic-caste structures While marriage remains an inevitable goal in most societies and certainly in our own, a new generation of Indian women is changing the rules(Shutterstock) 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 other isms. As Netflix’s eight-episode reality show, Indian Matchmaking (IM) kicks off, the conversation about the business of arranged marriages has gathered pace. IM doesn’t claim a reformist cloak. Executive producer Smriti Mundhra calls it an “unscripted, fun, crazy,…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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.…

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…

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…

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…