At Delhi’s plush, high gloss marble-floored Garvi Gujarat Bhavan, Geniben Thakor is sitting in her room, her bags packed. She had planned a quick shopping trip before catching a train back home to Banaskantha, Gujarat, but now there’s no time for that and she gamely settles down for a chat. Her hair neatly pulled back, the 49-year-old has been in the news for winning the sole opposition Parliamentary seat out of 26 since 2014. It’s a big deal. Since 2014, the BJP has won all 26 seats in the state. Located on the northern border with Rajasthan, known for its…

Iqra Hasan had just completed her master’s degree in international law and politics from London’s School of Oriental and Asian Studies when Covid’s second wave struck and she found herself back home in Kairana, Uttar Pradesh. With a B.A. from the Lady Shri Ram College and a law degree from Delhi University, Iqra had submitted her PhD proposal—a study of the first-past-the-post system of India’s parliamentary democracy—with no thought of joining politics, even though it was in her blood and she had seen her parents and elder brother campaign for as long as she could remember. When her father, Chaudhary…

In the video, Sanjna Jatav is dancing to Rajasthani folk music. Her head is covered but her joy shines through. Shot on June 4, soon after the results were declared, the clip has already gone viral with close to 100,000 views and god only knows how many retweets and forwards. The new Congress representative of Bharatpur is Dalit, married, a mother of two, a graduate and will, at 26, be amongst the youngest MPs in the 18th Lok Sabha after defeating the BJP’s Ramswaroop Koli by nearly 52,000 votes. This must seem like a sweet vindication. Six months earlier, Jatav, a…

No party can ignore us any longer. That would explain the grand announcements and the lofty promises, from eliminating cervical cancer to job reservations; from unconditional cash transfers to night shelters for migrant women. But what does the just concluded seven phase-long election really tell us about political parties and their stand on gender? I think this much is clear: Flavour of the election It doesn’t take a genius to guess why. According to The Quantum Hub, 47.1 crore women were registered to vote this time. That’s 48.6% of the voting population. There’s increasing evidence too that women are exercising choice…

On Monday morning, Swati Maliwal, a Rajya Sabha member of Parliament for the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), arrived at Flagstaff Road, chief minister Arvind Kejriwal’s official residence. Kejriwal had just made interim bail and had already plunged headlong into campaign mode. As she waited to meet her party leader in his drawing room, who should arrive but his aide, Bibhav Kumar? According to Maliwal’s statement to the police made three days later on Thursday, Kumar slapped and kicked her multiple times on her face, chest, stomach and lower part of her body “without provocation”. On Tuesday at a press conference,…

A prestigious constituency in the Capital is offering voters a curious choice: A first-time woman candidate versus a man once accused by his wife of physical violence. It’s infuriating. Do political parties think so little of women that a man accused by his wife of domestic violence is still considered a suitable candidate? To be sure, an accusation is not a conviction. That is the logic Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman used to explain why the BJP gave the Kaiserganj ticket to Karan Bhushan Singh, the son of former Wrestling Federation of India president Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh against whom a…

At an election rally, Congress’s Rahul Gandhi is speaking about something rarely spoken about by Indian politicians. In academic papers, yes. By feminist economists, also yes. But women’s unpaid care work is not the usual stirring, vote-garnering speech you’d expect from a mainstream politician. After working outside the house for eight hours, says Gandhi, women put in another eight hours of work inside the house, cooking, caring for kids, ensuring the future of the country. “But no government has ever paid you for your work at home.” What must sound like sweet music to economists and academics who’ve been hammering away about…

Why would a giant multinational add sugar to a baby product? Come to think of it, that’s the second question to ask after the first: Why is there even a distinction between Nestle’s baby products sold in markets in Africa, Latin America and South Asia and the same brands sold across Europe? The revelation that Nestle allegedly adds sugar to its various Cerelac cereals by a Swiss NGO, Public Eye and the International Baby Food Action Network has, quite rightly, sparked a storm. In Europe, the same Cerelac is sold minus any added sugar. So, why bother to add sugar?…

India’s Supreme Court has, for the first time, weighed in on climate change, ruling that citizens have a right to lead a life safe from its adverse effects. The apex court was hearing a petition filed by wildlife activist M.K. Ranjitsinh to protect the critically-endangered Great Indian Bustard and Lesser Florican. Due to the death of these birds after colliding with overhead transmission wires attached to solar panels, the Supreme Court had in April 2021 ordered that the wires be placed underground over an area of 80,000 sq km in Rajasthan and Gujarat where these birds are found. The government had…

For all their stirring speeches while passing the women’s reservation bill in Parliament in September last year—454 for, two against—political parties across the board have gone back to their usual stinginess in fielding women candidates. Nobody knows when the women’s reservation bill will kick in. A long process must be completed first: A census, followed by redrawing constituencies and how many representatives each gets, based on population. Until that happens, proof of intent can be found in the number of women candidates contesting in 2024. The picture is dismal. Of the 1,625 candidates contesting in the first phase, only 134,…

For the first nine decades of her life, Prabhavati Bhagwati had focused on bringing up her daughters and being a supportive wife. Even after his retirement as chief justice of India, her husband, P.N. Bhagwati had remained busy and active and she had remained busy and active along with him. Then at 91, newly widowed, she was suddenly at a loose end. The daughters were established in their careers – the eldest, Parul is a doctor in the US, her second, Pallavi, a leading corporate lawyer and her youngest, Sonali, an interior designer. There was so much time and so…

She left him because, she said, he and his family were torturing her for dowry. Five years later, the husband has gone to court asking for ‘restitution of conjugal rights’. In court the judge noted the woman wasn’t wearing sindoor, which is the ‘religious duty of a married woman’. Go back to your husband, he ordered. This isn’t the plot of a lurid potboiler. These are proceedings in a family court in Indore this past week where principal judge N.P. Singh noted: “She has forsaken her husband. She is not wearing the sindoor.” What of the woman’s complaint about dowry…