Compared to the geeky earnestness of her brother, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra is a star. Her belated entry will not stop a likely UPA defeat, but you have to credit her with putting up a fight. If the Congress campaign suddenly seems to have shifted to a more combative mode, it has one woman to thank and her name is Priyanka Gandhi Vadra. After a month of a wishy-washy, hand-wringing, limp-salad of a campaign, the Priyanka roadshow has begun and, no surprise, it’s taken a woman to show the boys how to fight. Priyanka’s pitch is limited to Rae Bareli and…

Compared to the geeky earnestness of her brother, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra is a star. Her belated entry will not stop a likely UPA defeat, but you have to credit her with putting up a fight, writes Namita Bhandare. Priyanka-Gandhi-Vadra-waves-during-her-public-meeting-for-giving-final-touch-to-Sonia-Gandhi-poll-campaign-in-Raebareli-HT-photo-Deepak-Gupta If the Congress campaign suddenly seems to have shifted to a more combative mode, it has one woman to thank and her name is Priyanka Gandhi Vadra. After a month of a wishy-washy, hand-wringing, limp-salad of a campaign, the Priyanka roadshow has begun and, no surprise, it’s taken a woman to show the boys how to fight. Priyanka’s pitch is limited…

With a sex ratio of just 877, permitting such marriages in Haryana is less radical shift and more pragmatic solution. Hisar: The winds of change are gently blowing through Haryana, but, ironically, it is the state’s skewed sex ratio rather than social revolution that is making this possible. In a state where men are increasingly finding it difficult to find wives because of a sex ratio of just 877 girls for 1,000 boys—the worst in the country, according to the 2011 Census—a khap (caste) panchayat’s recent ruling permitting inter-caste marriages is less radical shift and more pragmatic solution. Termed historic, courageous and even revolutionary…

A slap on Arvind Kejriwal’s face or Narendra Modi’s admission of his marriage to Jashodaben attracts more attention than real issues. Has any other poll been so dominated by personalities, asks Namita Bhandare. The BJP candidate standing from my constituency has multiple criminal charges against him but my affable neighbour at the polling booth where we are lined up to cast our vote is emphatic. She is voting for Narendra Modi. An individual’s criminal past is irrelevant for the larger goal, she says. The deification — or vilification, depending on your perspective — of Modi has dominated discourse in recent…

A slap on Arvind Kejriwal’s face or Narendra Modi’s admission of his marriage to Jashodaben attracts more attention than real issues. Has any other poll been so dominated by personalities. The BJP candidate standing from my constituency has multiple criminal charges against him but my affable neighbour at the polling booth where we are lined up to cast our vote is emphatic. She is voting for Narendra Modi. An individual’s criminal past is irrelevant for the larger goal, she says. The deification — or vilification, depending on your perspective — of Modi has dominated discourse in recent times. But elections…

73 farmers in Marathwada have killed themselves after a freak hailstorm ruined their crops, and the number is mounting. Aurangabad: Dattu Narayan Shewale looked at the hailstones that submerged his crop of onion. Wordlessly he returned home and told his wife that their crop had been destroyed. He made a list of all the people he owed money to, largely for the things he had bought for his daughter’s wedding just a fortnight away. He gave her detailed instructions of the clothes she had to buy as a gift for the bridegroom. Then he went to bed. The next morning, 27…

A recent survey found that security and empowerment of women was tenth most important in a list of 30 election issues. New Delhi: Who would have imagined that the roar of the angry crowds at India Gate in December 2012 would echo all the way to the general elections 18 months later? Who could have predicted the ferocity of raw emotion spilling over Rajpath right up to the grand vistas that lead up to Parliament House? Looking back at that winter, it’s hard to say exactly what that raw emotion was all about. Justice, said the slogans, but underlying it was…

States with  the  best sex  ratios,  gender  indices elect the fewest women to Parliament. New Delhi: States with the best sex ratios and gender indices elect the fewest women to Parliament, finds a study conducted for Mint by IndiaSpend.com, a data journalism initiative. Conversely, states with poorer gender indices have the highest percentage of women Members of Parliament (MPs). The top five states with the highest percentage of women MPs are, in order of ranking, Punjab, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and West Bengal. Punjab, with a sex ratio of 893 women for every 1,000 men, far below the national average of 940, as per…

A slim optimism lies in the start to a conversation of a changed India, an India where women outnumbered men as voters in all five of the recently held assembly elections. A slim optimism lies in the start to a conversation of a changed India, an India where women outnumbered men as voters in all five of the recently held assembly elections. A strange thing happened this week. The BJP’s Karnataka unit announced that it was admitting Pramod Muthalik, self-proclaimed protector of Hindu culture and leader of a mob that beat up women in a Mangalore pub in 2009. The…

A slim optimism lies in the start to a conversation of a changed India, an India where women outnumbered men as voters in all five of the recently held assembly elections. HT Image A slim optimism lies in the start to a conversation of a changed India, an India where women outnumbered men as voters in all five of the recently held assembly elections. A strange thing happened this week. The BJP’s Karnataka unit announced that it was admitting Pramod Muthalik, self-proclaimed protector of Hindu culture and leader of a mob that beat up women in a Mangalore pub in…

A photoshopped Twitter photo of Gul Panag with an AAP cap before she was named candidate from Chandigarh is just an example of blatant misogyny reserved for women politicians. New Delhi: If it hadn’t been so predictable, it might have been dismissed as a sick joke. But there it was, in full colour. Scantily dressed with the photoshopped addition of a strategically placed Aam Aadmi cap was politics’ newest debutant, social activist, feminist and actor Gul Panag. The picture, put out on Twitter on 12 March, arrived even before Panag had been officially declared the Aam Aadmi Party’s (AAP’s) candidate from Chandigarh. But clearly…

With very few exceptions, politics no longer attracts the brightest and the cleanest. In an environment where we assume sab neta chor hain we opt for the least unattractive. The names have begun trickling in and speculation is rife. The BJP has announced that former Karnataka chief minister BS Yeddyurappa, forced to step down after an indictment by the state lokayukta in a graft case, is its candidate from Shimoga. ‘Cruel joke’, responds the Congress but has no explanation for fielding Pawan Kumar Bansal (railway posts-for-cash) and Subodh Kant Sahay (coal block allocation) or even whether it will eventually axe…