Tag: country

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Satya Rani Chadha: The face of India’s anti-dowry movement

Through the 1980s when dowry deaths were routinely passed off as kitchen accidents, Satya Rani Chadha was the face of the anti-dowry movement.

To a generation of connected, social media-savvy users, Satya Rani Chadha will not be a familiar name. But this was the name that launched the anti-dowry movement in Delhi and across India.

This was the woman who raged against the injustice of her own daughter’s death by burns and spoke for every mother who had ever lost her daughter in a dowry-related death. Continue reading “Satya Rani Chadha: The face of India’s anti-dowry movement”

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Toilets at home will not stop rapes, but can reduce risks

Across India, millions of women and girls either wake up well before dawn or wait until late at night to use the open fields that function as their toilet.

New Delhi: Under cover of a hot night in May in Uttar Pradesh’s Badaun district, two teenage cousins stepped out to do what millions of girls and women do across the country.

‘Answering the call of nature’ is a euphemism that implies some blessed, bucolic state where individuals act on free will when nature ‘calls’.

The reality is considerably more sordid. Across the country, in rural as well as urban India, millions of women and girls either wake up well before dawn or wait until late at night to use the open fields that function as their toilet. Continue reading “Toilets at home will not stop rapes, but can reduce risks”

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Priyanka Gandhi Vadra is a charismatic enigma

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. Continue reading “Priyanka Gandhi Vadra is a charismatic enigma”