In IndiaSpend, I look at the state of India’s shelter homes for children to discover endemic abuse and, worse, absolute apathy.  She has no memory of her early childhood, no recollection of her biological parents and no idea of how or why she got separated from them when she was about three years old. What she does remember is the day she arrived at the Udayan Home for girls in south Delhi. “I had then been living at a government-run shelter for some years,” said Ritu, who often uses Udayan as her last name. “I must have been around six years…

In my Hindustan Times column, I look at a state that has, despite having India’s worst gender indices (sex ratio at birth, crimes against women, including gang-rape and stalking), there is a high level of ambition and aspiration amongst young girls and women. Yet, when there’s a gang-rape of one woman, it impacts and restricts the mobility of the other women and girls in the village.  The first-year BSc student was on her way to coaching classes to prepare for the railways entrance exam. She was abducted, drugged, gang-raped and then dumped back at the bus stop from where they had…

A heinous gang rape of one girl impacts the mobility of many others, affecting their ability to participate in public life Members of All India Democratic Women’s Association and various other organisations protest against the Rewari gang rape case, Haryana Bhawan, New Delhi, September 17, 2018(Sanchit Khanna/HT PHOTO) The first-year BSc student was on her way to coaching classes to prepare for the railways entrance exam. She was abducted, drugged, gang-raped and then dumped back at the bus stop from where they had taken her. The crime touches so many aspects of what it means to be female in Haryana.…

Women cricketers in outer Delhi juggle school, tuition and housework and still find the time to practice on the field Hima Das celebrates after securing silver medal in the women’s 400m final on athletics track event at the 18th Asian Games 2018 in Jakarta, August 26. Despite the Asian Games success of Swapna Barman, Hima Das, Harshita Tomar and Dutee Chand, the sight of girls playing a sport is rare anywhere(PTI) When I first met them two years ago, the girls of the Saksham Sports Club were playing cricket in Shahbad Dairy, on the outskirts of Delhi, where they live.…

Today, we know that while floods, droughts, fires, earthquakes and tsunamis do not discriminate on the grounds of caste, religion or gender, their impact is profoundly discriminatory. Studies have shown that it is women (and the poor and marginalised) who bear their heaviest burden. Following a disaster, incidents of sexual and domestic violence shoot up and there is often a spike in the trafficking of children and women.Relief camps leave many women feeling vulnerable.(Raj K Raj/HT PHOTO) When Swarna Rajagopalan, a political scientist who specialises in gender issues, mentioned the g-word at a meeting to discuss natural disasters, she was…

Today, we know that while floods, droughts, fires, earthquakes, and tsunamis do not discriminate on the grounds of caste, religion or gender, their impact is profoundly discriminatory. Studies have shown that it is women (and the poor and marginalized) who bear their heaviest burden. When Swarna Rajagopalan, a political scientist who specialises in gender issues, mentioned the g-word at a meeting to discuss natural disasters, she was told curtly: “This is not about gender. It’s about an emergency.” That was 10 years ago. Today, we know that while floods, droughts, fires, earthquakes and tsunamis do not discriminate on the grounds…

Muzaffarpur is emblematic of the large-scale systemic abuse of institutionalised children that we choose not to see Brajesh Thakur, main accused in the Muzaffarpur shelter home case , after a woman allegedly threw ink on his face while he was being taken to a special POCSO court, in Muzaffarpur, August 8(PTI) One fought with her stepmother and ran away from home. Another was sold into prostitution and rescued in a raid. And a third was brought in by her mother who was too poor to feed her. The girls who end up at shelter homes are, very often, nobody’s children;…

Muzaffarpur is emblematic of the large-scale systemic abuse of institutionalized children that we choose not to see. One fought with her stepmother and ran away from home. Another was sold into prostitution and rescued in a raid. And a third was brought in by her mother who was too poor to feed her. The girls who end up at shelter homes are, very often, nobody’s children; society’s most vulnerable. They have no one to ask, are you okay? Not even the State whose job it is to protect them. While the scale of horror at the state-funded hell house shelter…

Now that we are making our child sexual offences law gender neutral, isn’t it time we started talking about adult male rape survivors? Men themselves are reluctant to report being raped for fear of being judged by a society with iron-clad notions about masculinity. “Aren’t you a man? Why didn’t you hit back? Were you enjoying it,” are some of the questions survivors are often asked, “pushing them further into a closet by their own kind,” says activist Harish Iyer.(HT File Photo) Sohaila Abdulali is telling me about the time many years ago when a man called up a Rape…

Now that we are making our child sexual offences law gender neutral, isn’t it time we started talking about adult male rape survivors? Sohaila Abdulali is telling me about the time many years ago when a man called up a Rape Crisis Centre in the US. He had been raped by a teacher some years ago, he said. But men can’t possibly be raped, replied the people at the centre, and hung up. This would be unthinkable today, says Abdulali whose book, What We Talk About When We Talk About Rape is out in October. The fact that men too…

In Scroll.in, I argue that the judgment on the just-concluded arguments for and against section 377, the section that criminalises sex ‘against the order of nature’, must go beyond mere decriminalisation. It must ensure freedom,  choice and rights for every citizen — more so at a time when the plurality of India is sought to be reduced to a monolithic identity of one nation and one predominant religion. I had not planned it but during a visit to London I found myself bang in the middle of a pride parade on July 7. As a swirl of 30,000 people, including ambulance…

In Foreign Policy: A new act gives more maternity leave — and reinforces the same old patriarchal values. American progressives often bemoan the country’s lack of maternity leave, but in India, the problem may be too much time off, not too little. As many as 12 million Indian women could lose their jobs next year thanks to a new law that mandates employers must allow 26 weeks paid time off after giving birth. There have been worries about the Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Act since it was passed in March 2017, bumping paid leave up from the previous 12 weeks and…