How Not To Be A Superwoman: A Handbook For Women To Survive The Patriarchy (2024)
In How Not to Be a Superwoman, Nilanjana Bhowmick explores the immense pressure women face to excel in every role—as mothers, career women, partners and friends—and the toll this pursuit takes on their mental health and happiness. Her compelling work unveils the raw, real stories of diverse women who have broken free from the relentless cycle of perfectionism, and offers insightful, practical advice on achieving balance and joy that comes from embracing one’s true self. Through a feminist lens, she confronts and rejects society’s unrealistic expectations while advocating for a life of fulfilment, self-compassion and genuine empowerment. This is a must-read for women seeking to liberate themselves from the exhausting superwoman ideal and embrace a more self-loving, balanced way of living.
Lies Our Mothers Told Us: The Indian Woman’s Burden (2022)
Savitribai Phule, Mahasweta Devi, Amrita Pritam, Medha Patkar, Kamla Bhasin, and countless others have, since the nineteenth century, fought for and won equal rights for Indian women in a variety of areas—universal suffrage, inheritance and property rights, equal remuneration, prevention of sexual harassment at the workplace, and others. Pioneering feminists believed that due to these hard-won rights, their daughters and granddaughters would have the opportunity to have rewarding careers, participate in the social and political growth of the country, gain economic independence, and become equal partners in their marriages. On paper, it would appear that the lot of Indian women in the twenty-first century has vastly improved but, in reality, the demands of capitalism and the persistence of patriarchal attitudes have meant that they continue to lead lives that are hard and unequal, especially when compared to their male counterparts.
Indian women are among the most overworked in the world—they spend on average 299 minutes on housework and 134 minutes on caregiving per day, shouldering 82 per cent of domestic duties. They are burdened with work from such a young age that many are forced to drop out of schools, leave the labour force, and give up dreams of financial independence. For those who have the privilege of choosing to have a career, the only way they can make this viable is by doing the ‘double shift’: women are expected to do most of the housework, childcare, and caregiving, whether they have jobs or not.
While these problems apply to all women across the country, those in India’s middle class face an altogether unique challenge because middle-class families have mastered the art of simulating an environment of empowerment in their homes. Lies Our Mothers Told Us: The Indian Woman’s Burdentakes a close look at the gender inequality that forms the bedrock of India’s middle class—this forces women try and be ‘superwomen’ while ignoring the deleterious effects on their mental and physical health. Using available data and anecdotal evidence from the real lives of Indian women across the country, journalist Nilanjana Bhowmick asks if, in our patriarchal society, the assertion that ‘women can have it all’ comes at too high a price.

India’s heatwaves require urgent climate action
A couple of years ago Noor Jehan was working at a construction site as a mason’s helper when she got a phone call. Her husband – a rickshaw puller – had fainted while ferrying a man in his vehicle, succumbing to the sweltering sun and an empty stomach. This was not a one off. ‘Throughout summer, he keeps fainting,’ she says. ‘Someone calls from his phone then we go and get him.’India – home to 1.4 billion people – has been getting hotter every year and the poor have been bearing the brunt.
India is outraged at a young doctor’s rape and murder. We have been here too often
With a rape occurring every 16 minutes, violence is one of the biggest deterrents to women working in India. On the eve of India’s independence day, 14 August, tens of thousands of women took to the streets across the eastern Indian state of West Bengal in a “reclaim the night” march, after the brutal rape and murder of a trainee doctor in Kolkata. But we have been here before – too many times. Most notably in 2012, when we protested at the murder of a young paramedic in Delhi.
India Hates Its Women. The Witch Hunt Against Smriti Singh Is Yet Another Reminder
Another Reminder Smriti Singh’s husband, Captain Anshuman Singh, died in a fire accident at the Siachen Glacier in July 2023, as he pulled off a brave effort to rescue his fellow personnel. Anshuman and Smriti had been married for just five months, but had an eight-year courtship before tying the knot.
India is no longer pretending to care about corruption
It was a simple remedy which caused uproar across the nation. To tackle corruption, why not remove criminal penalties for giving bribes? That was what Kaushik Basu, then the Indian government’s chief economic adviser, suggested in 2011, causing an uproar across the country. Basu was talking about petty bribes, also known as harassment bribes. Public officials in India often expect these merely for delivering services that citizens are legally entitled to.
View from India: Politicians using women
India will soon be going to the polls to elect a new government, and women are set to play an important role in bringing whoever wins to power. A recent report by the State Bank of India stated that of the 680 million people who will vote in the 2024 elections, 49 per cent will be women. And that by 2029, there will be more female than male voters in India. Politicians and parties are working hard to court the female electorate, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
A few years ago I was traveling in remote Uttar Pradesh, in the north of India. I stayed the night in a village at the border with Madhya Pradesh and I was introduced to a man who gave me a tour and answered all my queries. Everyone in the village referred to him as the ‘headman’, but it was only when I was leaving the next morning that I saw a huge billboard with the picture of a demure woman, hands folded in greeting. Below the picture was her name and then her designation.
Finally, equal abortion rights for India’s unmarried women
Finally, equal abortion rights for India’s unmarried women. The taboo around sex outside of marriage means it can be hard to access safe pregnancy termination. But a recent court ruling could help to change things, writes Nilanjana Bhowmick. On 30 September 2022, India’s top court voided a rule that differentiated between married and unmarried women and their rights to a safe abortion.
Nilanjana Bhowmick’s thoughts on the long shadow of caste. This year, Google decided to celebrate Dalit History Month by scheduling a talk in April by US-based Dalit rights activist and founder of Equality Labs, Thenmozhi Soundararajan. But, when the moment came, the tech giant pulled the plug. The reason?
Old Indian homes from the country’s colonial past – often raved about in style glossies – usually have elegant, long, spiralling iron stairs at the back. These were meant for the sweepers or the waste pickers, mostly from the lower castes (the dalits or so-called ‘untouchables’), to use to collect waste.
A 31-year-old Muslim woman, Bijoli Bano ekes out a living as a domestic worker in the satellite town of Noida in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, while her husband works as a driver.
Nilanjana Bhowmick on the persecution of dissent in India. On 25 June, social activist Teesta Setalvad, a critic of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was arrested. A Reuters report revealed that the police had accused her of tutoring witnesses, forging paperwork and fabricating evidence in cases pertaining to the 2002 Gujarat riots.
View from India | New Internationalist
Nilanjana Bhowmick on the routine communal violence that is a state-sponsored blot on India’s democracy. Communal violence is rarely out of the headlines in India. In the period 11-20 April, which coincided with two major Hindu festivals – Ram Navami and Hanuman Jayanti – there were clashes between Hindus and Muslims in several states. These days, Hindu hardliners treat major festivals as a spur to bait Muslims.
Laughter has become a risky business, observes Nilajana Bhowmick. Comedian Kunal Kamra is routinely accused of promoting ‘anti-national’ sentiment. In January 2021, stand-up comedian Munawar Faruqui was arrested just as he was about to start a gig at a café in Indore, in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, where the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is in power.
A couple of years ago I went to renew my driving licence. Walking through the sprawling government office, as far as my eyes could see, there were only men. Something clicked in my mind; I couldn’t unsee it. Afterwards, I kept noticing how men dominate public spaces – markets, parks, government offices. They loiter, they hang out in clusters on sidewalks, they crowd public transport.
Why Indian outrage over Black Lives Matter rings hollow
Anti-blackness is still a galvanizing force in India, writes Nilanjana Bhowmick. In 2017, when a 19-year-old went missing from home in Greater Noida, a suburb of the Indian capital, locals raided the house of five Nigerian students living a few doors away, accusing them of being cannibals who had eaten the youth.
In mid-April, as the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic took a deadly turn in India, many middle-class people found themselves confronted with a problem they didn’t know existed – loved ones dying from a lack of oxygen as state-of-the-art private hospitals ran out of supplies.
As I watched my father’s oxygen levels drop, I was feeling a roiling despair. I scanned desperately the list in my hands – all crossed out. None of the hospitals I had called had a bed. As for my attempts to arrange for an oxygen cylinder – the prices I was quoted were unbelievable, ranging from $1,000-$1,500.
Women experiencing abuse from their partners need more than a helpline, writes Nilanjana Bhowmick. The woman sounded nervous on the phone. The helpline counsellor who took her call asked her to make some excuse and come out to meet her. It would be difficult, the woman replied; it was, after all, in the middle of a Covid-19 lockdown and her husband was home. She had sneaked onto the terrace to put through a quick call to the helpline.
Women farmers at work in their vegetable plots near Kullu town, Himachal Pradesh, India. As India staggers on under the Covid-19 pandemic, the fallout for working people has been devastating. Between April and June last year the economy underwent a massive unplanned contraction of 23 per cent.
View from India: Women are still being short-changed
Nilanjana Bhowmick reports on the myths that still exist around women and money across the world. A childhood memory forever engraved in my mind is that of my mother, handing over her salary to my father each month – and him handing her back a ‘stipend’. It was the 1970s, and my mother had bagged an enviable government job as a police officer, yet she could not apparently be trusted to spend her own cash.

We need a new way to swear … one that doesn’t demean the women of India
I was shocked. Scrolling through my Twitter feed, I stopped at an exchange between a women’s rights activist I know and a troll in which the activist, someone who often talked to me about the gendered nature of our cuss words responded using maa-behen ki gaali (misogynistic abuse). My mind went round and round, trying to decipher if this was hypocrisy or an unconscious expression of rage.
We don’t need discount vouchers for International Women’s Day. We need equal rights
Brands wanting to “appreciate” women are offering discounts on clothes and makeup, and celebrities are urging women to use the day to pamper themselves. In India, International Women’s Day has been captured by commerce. “No amount of discounts or offers are enough to appreciate women. However, here’s our little effort in making them feel ultra-special … up to 50% off all our products until Women’s Day,” read yet another of many such messages in my inbox last week.
‘Like many men of my generation, I wanted to be a more present father than my own had been.” As I read the first sentence of another article about fathers staying at home, I thought about how we glorify men (or how men want to be glorified) for selflessly deigning to set their careers aside, which is usually seen as being “for” their spouse, and getting away with doing the bare minimum.
Why Christmas (and Diwali, Hanukkah and Eid) are cancelled in my household
I am on a journey of unlearning – saying no to overwork and extra caregiving expected of me because of my gender
India’s food crisis has many ingredients
India’s government is drafting a food security bill, but there are other areas it must address if it is to halt rising hunger levels
The women of India’s Barefoot College bring light to remote villages
Being trained as solar-power engineers enables women from rural India and Africa to introduce electricity in isolated areas

For villages divided between India and Pakistan, a map drawn long ago still causes daily struggles
Along India’s international border with Pakistan, seven hamlets on the Ravi River rely on scattered lifelines for survival: a floating bridge that has to be dismantled for four months every year during monsoon season, a lone boat in the monsoons, a couple of empathetic boatmen. Around 3,500 people live in the cluster of seven villages known as Makaura Pattan, which include Tur, Lasian, Rajpur Cheba, Bharial, Kajli, Mammi Chak Ranga, and Kukar.
As wildfires increase in Himalayan pine forests, can restoring oaks help?
Wildfires have become more common there as climate change-caused drought makes the pine tree-filled forests more flammable. Photograph by Marji Lang, LightRocket/Getty ImagesPlease be respectful of copyright. Unauthorized use is prohibited. EnvironmentPlanet PossibleHeavy logging during the British colonial era and replanting with a single species—fast-growing pine—weakened forest health.
How India’s second wave became the worst COVID-19 surge in the world
The sudden spike in cases has brought the nation’s healthcare system to its knees. There are no hospital beds, no oxygen, no medicines. And then there are the variants.
Will COVID-19 inspire the world to provide poor people with clean water?
“You have come from Mumbai to teach us about handwashing?”The villagers couldn’t stop laughing at Yusuf Kabir. He works at UNICEF’s Mumbai office, in a division with an apt acronym—WASH, for water, sanitation, and hygiene—and he was on a tour of the Latur district, some 250 miles east of Mumbai, to advocate hand hygiene as a safeguard of health.
Millions of women volunteers form India’s frontline COVID response
Vijayalakshmi Sharma rang the doorbell of an apartment in a sprawling housing complex in Noida, a satellite city of New Delhi that has been designated a COVID-19 red zone. As she waited for someone to answer the door, she tightened her dupatta, a traditional long scarf,around her head, and adjusted her surgical mask. She tapped the register in her hand a tad impatiently. She was only on the sixth floor and it was already 1 p.m. She had another 17 floors to cover that day.
‘They treat us like stray dogs’: Migrant workers flee India’s cities
Along the Barabanki highway outside Lucknow—the capital of India’s largest state, Uttar Pradesh—a spring morning finds two men asleep under a tree, limbs askew. One of them lies on a worn-out black throw with colorful stripes; the other sleeps on a discarded white gunny sack, near bicycles with duffel bags attached. Another three men sleep a short distance away in similar makeshift arrangements. Their clothes and hair are gritty, the dirt and sweat from their journey coating their skin.
Indian doctors protest herbal treatments being touted for COVID-19
Health workers from the Ministry of AYUSH hand out Ayurvedic medicine to people gathered to give swab samples for Covid-19 testing at John Hall, on May 7, 2020, in Gurugram, India.
How India is scrambling to secure medical oxygen and save lives
In a recent video post on Twitter, Dr. Gautam Singh, a cardiologist who runs the private Sri Ram Singh Hospital in east Delhi, lost his composure as he pleaded for help: “We have young patients who will die in a matter of two hours… Please send oxygen to us,” he begged on camera, clasping his hands together. “We need oxygen for our patients.”Similar urgent appeals have been issued by several state-run hospitals.
In New Delhi, burning season makes the air even more dangerous. Can anything be done?
It’s that time of year again. The time when, in the Indian capital of New Delhi, we shutter doors and windows to the grey-orange gloom and switch on our air purifiers, resigned to the deathly annual smog hanging over us, just like it has for years. Cars, coal-fired power plants, and cookstoves keep New Delhi reliably near the top of the list of the world’s most polluted cities.
How women in India demanded—and are getting—safer streets
Since a horrifying assault shocked the nation, women there have pressed for more protection from harassment and abuse in public spaces.

Meet the militant monk spreading Islamophobia in India
[Yogi] Adityanath reportedly promised people a Muslim-free India, if the Hindus forgot their caste and class bias and voted on the basis of religion for the BJP.
Opinion | India’s crackdown at college campuses is a threat to Democracy
A university inquiry found the organizers guilty of unauthorized demonstration and of raising “anti-India” slogans, as alleged by the ABVP.
India’s feminists need to address why so many Indian Women Are Killing Themselves
There is a need for Indian women to be made aware of the accepted forms of oppression that patriarchy imposes on them at home.
Opinion | As India’s Muslims are lynched, Modi keeps silent
On June 23, three days before India celebrated Eid, 15-year-old Junaid Khan was stabbed to death by a group of men aboard a train.
Opinion | Why is Modi playing down the deaths of children in an Indian Hospital
Modi’s cursory reference to a possibly preventable tragedy in a state-run hospital, which he equated to the randomness of natural disasters, is astounding.
Opinion | India’s highest court casts a vote for privacy
Last week, India’s top court unanimously ruled that privacy is a fundamental right for the country’s 1.3 billion people


How a Remote Himalayan District Achieved an Extraordinary COVID-19 Vaccination Rate
On the day he was scheduled for a COVID-19 vaccination, 77-year-old Jaikishan Ram wrapped himself in a well-worn wool jacket, cap, and sweater to prepare for the three-hour trek down the mountain. To access the main road from his home high in the Himalayan mountains of the Indian state of Uttarakhand, Ram had to first climb down a mile of steep, unpaved, sloping path. From there, it was another 90 minutes on the main road to the village of Padampuri.
‘I Cannot Be Intimidated. I Cannot Be Bought.’ The Women Leading India’s Farmers’ Protests
Kiranjit Kaur, far left, came to the Tikri protest site from Talwandi, Punjab, on Feb. 23 with a group of 20 women, including her mother-in-law and children. “It is important for all women to come here and mark their presence in this movement. I have two daughters, and I want them to grow up into the strong women they see here.”The message to women was clear: Go back home.
A doctor in Delhi’s Guru Tegh Bahadur hospital sent an urgent plea via Whatsapp to a colleague. She had just finished her shift at the COVID-19 ward in the hospital, where her mother was also undergoing treatment. A patient was in critical condition when she finished her shift. If he died, she asked, could his body be sent to the mortuary immediately? It was an unusual request, she admitted, but these are unusual times.
India’s Community Health Workers Say Government Is Failing to Protect Them From COVID-19
Lakshmi Kuril woke up feeling unwell on April 27. A community healthcare worker in India’s western state of Maharashtra, Kuril, 35, had a pre-existing heart condition and the increased work and stress of fighting the COVID-19 surge that is ravaging India meant she often felt exhausted and lightheaded. But she didn’t let it stop her.
Why Are So Many Girls in India Not Getting an Education?
Neha Lal wipes her eyes with the back of her hand carefully. The strong odor of the dried, brittle red chillies are making her eyes water as she grounds them into a paste with onions, garlic, cumin and coriander on a grinding stone that’s almost equal to her weight. Later, she chops okra to fry in oil along with the ground spice. The pan is bigger than her and she has to keep a grip on the ladle with both her hands to stir the curry.
How Women Have Changed India Through Political Protests
Nusra Ara had only just fallen asleep when the phone rang. It was 10 a.m. on Tuesday and though she had returned home seven hours earlier, she stayed up cooking, cleaning, packing lunch boxes and then dropping her daughter to school. When she picked up the call, a fellow protester’s voice rang out in panic and made her sit up.
Why This Indian State Is Witnessing the Country’s Most Violent Anti Citizenship-Law Protests
On Wednesday, cries of “kagaz nahin dikhayenge” (we wont show papers), “Tanasahi nahin chalegi” (we won’t allow dictatorship) rang out at the iconic India Gate in Delhi as protesters took a pledge to defend the constitution and continue to oppose Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s new citizenship law. Thousands of Indians brought in the New Year on Tuesday night with protests all over the country. Social media buzzed with protest notes and invitations to demonstrations at midnight.
Delhi Gang Rape Convict Blames Victim for Brutal Attack
One of the group of men convicted for raping and murdering a 23-year-old medical student on a bus in New Delhi in late 2012 has suggested the brutal assault was to teach the young woman a lesson for being out late at night with a male friend and blamed her for fighting back when she was attacked. The victim and a male friend were on their her way home after watching a movie on December 16, 2012, when they accepted a lift from a private bus carrying five adult men and a 17-year old boy.
Woman Looks to Sue Uber in the U.S. Over Alleged New Delhi Rape
An Indian woman who was allegedly raped by an Uber taxi driver is considering the possibility of taking the tech firm to court in the U.S., according to British daily The Guardian. Authorities in the Indian capital banned the taxi service in December, when the woman accused Uber driver Shiv Kumar Yadav, 32, of attacking her. Yadav pleaded not guilty to charges of rape, kidnapping and criminal intimidation.
Political Turmoil Sparks Fresh Violence
The Bangladeshi capital Dhaka was hit by fresh violence on Thursday morning, with anti-government protestors torching at least two vehicles a day after an opposition politician was shot and injured in what was reported to be a botched assassination attempt.
Pope Francis Urges Pursuit of Truth for Second Asia Tour
Pope Francis arrived in Sri Lanka on Tuesday, calling for the “pursuit of truth” as he began the first papal visit to the country since the end of a bitter and long-running civil conflict in 2009.
Why Dinanath Batra Hates Wendy Doniger’s Book
Penguin Books India has agreed to recall and pulp all copies in India of The Hindus: An Alternative History by U.S. scholar Wendy Doniger, raising concerns over freedom of expression in the world’s largest democracy. The move by one of India’s major book publishers is a settlement with members of the Hindu group Shiksha Bachao Andolan, which has filed civil and criminal cases over the work.
Pakistan Failing to Protect Religious Minorities, Report Finds
The persecution of religious minorities in Pakistan has reached “critical levels” after intensifying in recent years, according to a new report which says government efforts to address the problem often “lack effective organization, funding or implementation.”The assessment by Minority Rights Group International (MRG), a London-based NGO, notes how, in a country dominated by Sunni Muslims, discrimination against non-Sunnis has “emboldened extremist groups,” fanning the spread of hate speech.
The goats scatter, seeking out foliage to nibble across the rocky terrain of Ladakh, an inhospitable part of India’s Jammu and Kashmir state hard on the Himalayan mountains. Two ethnic Changpa goatherds greet a trio of outside visitors with a friendly juleh—hello in Ladakhi. Their hands busily circling Buddhist prayer beads, they listen as 38-year-old Babar Afzal asks questions, takes notes and explains the Pashmina Goat Project he established in 2012.
Nobel Co-Winner Kailash Satyarthi on Winning the Peace Prize
Kailash Satyarthi, a relatively unknown child rights activist from India, is sharing this year’s Nobel Peace Prize with Malala Yousafzai, a teen campaigner from Pakistan who was shot in the head by the Taliban while going to school in 2012. The reclusive Satyarthi, admittedly nowhere near as famous as his co-recipient, is, however, a messiah for India’s close to 50 million child workers.
Architect Alok Shetty Is Building Hope In India
Bangalore’s LRDE slum lies next to one of the southern Indian city’s sprawling technology parks. Home to some 2,000 people, most of whom live in makeshift dwellings fashioned out of tarpaulin and plastic sheets, it is routinely flooded during the annual monsoon season, with heavy rains turning inundated homes into breeding grounds for diseases like malaria and typhoid. But thanks to 28-year-old architect Alok Shetty change is coming to LRDE.
India Is Home to More Poor People Than Anywhere Else on Earth
One third of the world’s 1.2 billion poorest people live in India, according to the latest Millennium Development Goals report by the U.N.India only managed to reduce its poverty rate (the ratio of the number of people who fall below the poverty line and a country’s total population) from 49.4% in 1994 to 42% in 2005 and 32.7% in 2010. By contrast, regional rival China brought it down from 60% in 1990 to an impressive 16% in 2005 and just 12% in 2010.
New Delhi’s Extravagance in Funding Million-Dollar Statue Annoys India
India’s new budget is courting controversy after $33 million was earmarked for a statue of national icon Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, but only $25 million for women’s safety and $16.5 million for the education of young girls. The iron-and-bronze structure, to be erected in new Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state of Gujarat, will stand at 182 m tall — twice New York’s Statue of Liberty — and so become the new tallest statue in the world.
More Children Are Going to School in India but Learning Less
The fifth-grade boys and girls at school in Sultanpur — a village about 40 km from the Indian capital, New Delhi — are laboring over their lessons on a Friday morning. Eleven-year-old Kiran alternates between chewing her pencil and copying the English text that was the morning’s task. She writes down the sentences, arduously capitalizing the first letter of every word. The children have not yet grasped the basics of English grammar, the teacher explains.
Sexual Violence: Shocking Video Shows How Nonchalant Indians Are
Two weeks ago, India woke up to the gruesome image of two teenage girls who had been raped and left hanging from a mango tree in rural Uttar Pradesh. This shocking act was just the latest in a series of outrages, since the Dec. 16, 2012, murder and gang rape of a student in New Delhi, that have sparked nationwide angst and given India worldwide notoriety for sexual violence. But with rape and assault taking center stage once again, how many Indians would actually try to help a woman being attacked?
Pakistan: Militants Strike Karachi Airport Again, No Fatalities
Militants ambushed the campus of a training academy belonging to Pakistan’s Airport Security Force (ASF) on Tuesday afternoon and exchanged fire with security forces. No one is believed to have died in the attack, although local media is reporting several wounded. Pakistan’s Geo TV says the situation is now under control and security forces are conducting a door-to-door search of the area to apprehend the assailants.
Karachi Airport Eyewitness Describes ‘Pure Chaos’ of Taliban Attacks
Taliban gunmen besieged Karachi airport on Sunday, killing at least 23 people. Kamal Faridi, a 29-year-old Information Technology entrepreneur based in Karachi, was traveling to Germany via Dubai on Sunday night and got caught in the melee. Faridi had checked in for his Emirates flight around 11pm on Sunday, and was waiting in the lounge for the boarding announcement. “Suddenly we heard some gun shots, which we thought were fireworks,” Faridi told TIME.
India Gets New State on Heels of New Government
After a five-decade-long campaign, India’s newest state of Telangana finally came into being on Sunday. “India gets a new state! We welcome Telangana as our 29th state. Telangana will add strength to our development journey in the coming years,” India’s new Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted, adding the new state will get full support from New Delhi.
Indian Elections Climax in Varanasi With Modi and Kejriwal Face off
The city of Varanasi on Monday morning was no different from election day in other cities. Children played cricket on deserted streets, shops were closed. Too many political party volunteers rode pillion on single motorbikes crisscrossing the city, shouting out loud greetings to passersby. There was a strong presence of security forces (more than 45,000 were deployed across the city to watch over the voting).
If festivals like Diwali, Holi or the spectacular Kumbh Mela draw tourists to India, why shouldn’t its vast, sprawling legislative election? With 814 million eligible voters, it’s the biggest democratic show on earth — and with that in mind, tourists from as far afield as the U.S., the U.K., France and Australia have signed up for package tours that include visiting public rallies and meeting party officials.
Youth Vote Key In India’s Marathon Elections
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India Elections: Non-Resident Indians Go Home to Help in Polls
For months, braving India’s hot summer, Maya Vishwakarma crisscrossed the dusty roads of Hoshangabad, her hometown in Madhya Pradesh, central India. As a candidate of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), she patiently went from door to door asking for people’s votes. But apart from her platform, there was something separating Vishwakarma from other candidates — and that’s her expatriate status.
Sri Lanka’s Tamils Are Still Facing Torture and Sexual Attacks
A damning new report alleges that Sri Lanka’s security forces continue to persecute the country’s Tamils minority five years after the ending of the country’s bloody civil war.
Afghan Medical Tourism in India
With healthcare in their own country in a parlous state, Afghans who can afford it go overseas for treatmentJamshed walks out of the gates of the Kasturba Niketan Colony—a gated community in South Delhi’s Lajpat Nagar area, populated mostly by Afghan medical tourists like him. He passes an Afghan grocery store, and heads onto the street outside, glancing at Afghan pharmacies and advertisements for rented accommodation written in Dari, one of Afghanistan‘s two official languages.
Kathputli Colony of Street Performers to be Demolished
Planners have decreed that the famed Kathputli Colony in India’s capital, New Delhi, is to make way for luxury flats and shopsThe roads that lead to it are unpaved, dirty and narrow. The houses are rudimentary and sparse. The meandering alleys, slippery and narrow, are almost a hazard to navigate with an overbearing smell sewage and wood smoke. And yet this is where the magic happens.
India’s Rate of Infant Mortality Is Disturbingly High in New Delhi
The Indian capital comes off badly in a new report on infant mortalityIndia’s capital, N -mortality rate, ew Delhi, has a disturbingly high infantmortality rate, according to a new report released by the NGO Save the Children. The rate of 30 deaths per 1,000 births in Delhi compares unfavorably with cities like Mumbai (20) and Chennai (15). Early mortality is a particular concern. In Delhi, of all children dying before their first birthday, 64% died within the first 28 days of birth.
The Indian capital is starting to make polluted nightmares like Beijing or Shanghai look like havens of clean air and vitalityDuring the winter, many Delhi homes wake up to the comforting sound, and aroma, of ginger being ground in a mortar and pestle. The city’s favorite winter concoction of ginger and cardamom boiled with milk, sugar, black pepper and tealeaves isn’t just to ward off the cold but also a traditional remedy for boosting health.
Nido Taniam And Racism in India
An influx of migrants from India’s ethnically distinct northeast has sparked racial tension, and now deadly violence, in big cities like DelhiNido Taniam was a young man from Arunachal Pradesh in northeastern India. The son of a state legislator, Taniam was like 20-year-olds anywhere, with his trendy haircut and love of music. Last Friday, he stopped at a shop in a market in Delhi, to ask for directions. The shopkeeper and his friends made fun of Taniam’s hair and clothes and a brawl began.
Gay Sex Remains Crime in India
India’s Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected petitions from the government and gay rights activists to review an earlier decision that recriminalized gay sex in the country. In December last year, the court overturned a historic 2009 Delhi High Court judgment decriminalizing homosexuality. It said that only Parliament could change section 377, an archaic law that bans gay sex as unnatural. The Congress party-led government in New Delhi has been urged by activists to scrap section 377.
Adult Literacy: India is World’s Worst Performer
India has 287 million illiterate adults, the largest population globally and 37% of the world total, says a report by United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). India’s literacy rate increased by 15% between 1991 and 2006, however subsequent population growth had meant the total number of illiterate people has remained roughly the same. India devotes around 10.5% of its total government expenditure on education.
Indian Village Court Orders Gang Rape of Woman
A 20-year-old woman is lying in critical condition in hospital in the Indian state of West Bengal after she was allegedly gang-raped by at least a dozen men on the orders of a “salishi sabha” — a traditional village tribunal — in the state’s Birbhum district. The villagers convened the makeshift tribunal after spotting the young woman with a lover. They tied them to a tree and fined the couple 50,000 rupees (around $800).
India: Rahul Gandhi to Lead Congress Election Campaign
Rahul Gandhi, the vice president of India’s ruling Congress party and scion of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, will not run as Congress’s Prime Ministerial candidate for elections in 2014. The announcement Thursday comes as something of a surprise; Gandhi will still lead the party’s 2014 troubled election campaign. The decision to not announce a prime ministerial candidate reportedly was the wish of Sonia Gandhi, Congress chief and Gandhi’s mother.
Video Asks Indian Women To Speak Out Against Sexual Abuse
“The more you talk, the less it will happen” says powerful short film ‘Bol’A recent video by a 28-year-old Mumbai-based filmmaker Pooja Batura Pathak, aptly titled Bol or “speak up” urges Indian women to break their silence and stop the cycle of sexual violence against them. The 12-minute-long video captures the stages of sexual abuse an Indian woman goes through during her lifetime — from child abuse to work place harassment to marital rape — in a neat string of strong visuals.
India: U.S. Diplomat Couple in Facebook Furore
Indian media has been giving wide play to derogatory comments by a U.S. diplomat couple on Indian life and culture, exacerbating already strained relations between the two countries in the wake of the Devyani Khobragade affair. The Times of India identified the couple as Wayne May, who headed the security team at the U.S. embassy in Delhi, and his wife Alicia Muller, who worked, ironically, as a community liaison officer.
Devyani Khobragade Scandal: Why Indians Are So Angry
If it’s a simple case of a poor maid being mistreated by her diplomat employer, why are so many Indians so angry over the Devyani Khobragade affair? The Indian government has slammed the arrest in New York City of one of its middle-ranking diplomats as being contrary to the Vienna Convention, and characterized the U.S. prosecutor’s explanation as “rhetorical” and an act of “interference.”Deputy consul-general Devyani Khobragade, 39, was arrested on Dec.
Indian Diplomat Row: Devyani Khobragade Arrest to Be Reviewed
State Department stresses importance of “mutually respectful” relations with India even as Indian government metes out retaliatory penalties on U.S. diplomatsU.S. authorities have invoked a “spirit of partnership and cooperation” and pledged to review the procedures that were followed in the arrest of Indian deputy consul general Devyani Khobragade, after the diplomat’s detention sparked a furious reaction in her home country.
India’s Supreme Court Ruling on Homosexuality Incites Outrage
A controversial Supreme Court ruling on Wednesday morning that reinstated an archaic colonial law criminalizing homosexuality incited outrage among activists and gay rights supporters in India. Hundreds gathered at Jantar Mantar, New Delhi’s popular protest hub, to protest the ruling. A truly mixed crowd, many of the protesters were not from the LGBT community. They came in hordes from universities and colleges to champion civil liberties.
India’s Supreme Court Reinstates Ban on Homosexuality
In a huge blow to gay rights in the world’s largest democracy, India’s top court on Tuesday reinstated an archaic law that makes gay sex a criminal offense on grounds that it can only be dismissed by lawmakers in government. In a surprise move, India’s top court on Wednesday reversed a landmark judgment by a lower court decriminalizing homosexuality in the country. The court said that the law regarding homosexuality could only be changed by the government.
India’s Aam Aadmi Party Tackles Corruption
Elections for New Delhi’s legislative assembly take place on Dec. 4 and the Aam Aadmi Party is gaining momentum with populist policies. But can it govern? Snaking across the streets of Janakpuri in West Delhi, a fleet of auto-rickshaws — the daily transport of millions of middle class Indians — blares feisty anti-corruption slogans while the passengers brandish symbolic brooms out of doors and windows. The rowdy cavalcade is the perfect visual expression of India’s newest political movement.
Nepal’s Election May Not Lift Country’s Permanent Sense of Crisis
For the second time in five years, Nepal goes to the polls to vote for a new government that many hope will end the political stalemate that has kept the former Himalayan kingdom in gridlock since 2008. The signs, though, point to more of the same dysfunction of the past five years.
India To Tendulkar: Thanks For The Memories
The website selling tickets for Sachin Tendulkar’s last test match at the Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai recorded more than 19 million hits within its first hour of ticket sales — and only 5,000 tickets were available to the public. That’s the kind of pulling power the world’s greatest cricketer has. The anticipation surrounding Tendulkar’s retirement — from a 24-year career in which he has scored more than 34,000 runs – reached fever pitch in India on Thursday.
Google India-Pakistan Search Ad
Six decades have passed since the partition of India and Pakistan separated millions, but the memory of it is still excruciating for many on both sides of the borderDespite the tensions between the governments of India and Pakistan, this commercial, released by Google India on Wednesday, makes the point that the personal connections between Indians and Pakistanis run deep.
Everything You Need to Know About Sachin Tendulkar
On the eve of his retirement, here’s how to ease your way through a conversation about the greatest cricketer and sportsman to have ever livedHe is the Greatest. Sportsman. Ever. Cricket legend Tendulkar has broken all the records there are to break and done so beautifully. He has scored over 34,000 runs in a career spanning more than two decades, during which he has consistently brought his A-game, having never once been dropped from his country’s Test side (it’s most elite cricket team).
India’s Storm Preparedness | TIME.com
Supertyphoon Haiyan may have killed as many as 10,000 people in the central Philippines. A storm of near strength, Cyclone Phailin, hit India’s east coast last month and was expected to cause massive death and destruction. It didn’t. About 50 people died, and while nearly a quarter-million houses and over 860,000 hectares of cropland were destroyed, the damage amounted to about $150 million.
India Announces Austerity Measures to Contain Fiscal Deficit
India Announces Austerity Measures to Contain Fiscal Deficit India’s finance ministry on Wednesday announced a ban on five-star venues for government meetings; foreign locations for conferences, exhibitions and seminars; and executive class airline tickets for officials.
India: Minorities, Christians, Muslims, Can Now Fully Adopt Children
India’s top court ruled this week that non-Hindu minority communities, including Muslims and Christians, can now adopt children with full rights as natural parents. A bizarre quirk in the Indian law — aimed at reconciling the various beliefs and practices of different communities — had meant that only Hindus (and breakaway religious communities like Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs) were previously allowed to properly adopt minors.
Bangladesh Unrest: Why It’s Happening
Two general strikes in two weeks and hundreds dead so far this year. Just what is going on? Two opposition-enforced 60-hour general strikes in the last two weeks have paralyzed life and destabilized the economy of this South Asian nation of 150 million people. The estimated annual average cost of general strikes, or hartals as they are called in Bangladesh, is between 3 percent and 4 percent of the country’s $110 billion gross domestic product (GDP) reports the Daily Star.
India Races To Space With a Mission to Mars
India aims to join an elite group of nations to reach the Red Planet, and at a fraction of the costIndia launched its first unmanned mission to Mars on Tuesday as it tries to join a select group of countries that have managed to land spacecraft on the Red Planet.
Three Dead, Many Wounded in Fresh Communal Violence in India
Clashes return to north Indian area that saw bloody sectarian rioting last monthThree Muslim youths were shot dead on Wednesday night and many more wounded in a communal flare up in the Muzaffarnagar district of the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, PTI reported. Muzaffarnagar was hit by sectarian riots last month, which left over 60 people dead, mostly Muslims. Thousands fled their villages in the aftermath of the riots and are living in relief camps.
Why an Onion Crisis Brings Tears to Indian Eyes
Onions are a staple of Indian cuisine, but at the moment not many Indians can afford them. The price of onions has more than quadrupled in the last few months and now stands at 100 rupees ($1.65) a kilo — an implausibly large sum for the average shopper. What’s worse, the hike has come in the middle of festival season, which lasts through October and November and is marked by feasts and special meals.
Mapping India’s Most Dangerous Neighborhoods For Women
Widespread protests have gripped India after recent violent gang rapes, but little has changed to quell the pervasive fear. Outraged at the constant stream of atrocities against women in the country, four citizens are taking to the Internet to provide a different sounding board for women’s safety.
Now Sample India’s Famous Street Food Without Worrying About ‘Delhi Belly’
Travelers to India’s capital could find upset stomachs a thing of the past if a new drive to improve food hygiene succeedsFor travelers to the Indian capital, who have been warned off its street food owing to the fears of poor hygiene, there’s good news.
Indian Headmistress Charged With Murder Over School Lunch Tragedy
Husband also faces murder charges in case that saw deaths of 23 children after contaminated food was servedThe Indian police on Monday formally charged a school headmistress and her husband with murder over the Bihar Mid Day Meal tragedy. The trial is set to begin at the end of this week. In July, twenty-three school children between the ages 4 and 12 in the eastern Indian state of Bihar died after eating a pesticide-contaminated school lunch.
India Arrests Crew of Arms-Laden U.S. Ship
Vessel intercepted with ammunition and assault rifles on boardIndian authorities on Friday arrested all 35 crew members of an American ship that entered Indian waters illegally last week carrying 31 assault rifles and around 5,000 rounds of ammunition. The MV Seaman Guard Ohio is owned by US-based firm AdvanFort, which specializes in protecting merchant shipping from pirates. The vessel was intercepted on Saturday by coast guards east of Tuticorin in Tamil Nadu, southern India.
Report: Almost 14 Million Indians Live Like Slaves
India has the largest number of people in the world who are living in conditions of slavery caused by poverty, handed-down social customs and weak enforcement of anti-slavery laws, according to a new first-ever global slavery index. The study, published Thursday by the Australia-based rights group Walk Free Foundation, found 14 million Indians living in slavery-like conditions, and almost 30 million people globally.
Stan Lee’s Newest Superhero Is Indian
Comic-book legend’s newest superhero Chakra the Invincible to debut in South Asia on Nov. 30Legendary American comic creator Stan Lee’s newest superhero is an Indian boy from Mumbai, who creates a body suit that fires up the mystic chakras of his body and invests him with supernatural powers to fight evil. “Chakra – The Invincible” will debut in South Asia on Nov. 30 on Cartoon Network.
India Snubs U.N. on Child-Bride Resolution
Country with world’s largest number of underage marriages fails to sign document calling for end to the practiceIndia has failed to sign a U.N.-led resolution that calls for the elimination of early marriage. The first of its kind, the proposal, initiated by the U.N. Human Rights Council and supported by 107 countries, calls for the ending of child marriage to become part of the global development agenda after 2015.
Cyclone Phailin Hits India with Minimal Casualties
Cyclone Phailin, which tore into India’s eastern coast on Saturday evening, has left behind a trail of destruction, but no major human life loss. The Associated Press reported on Sunday evening that response workers have counted a total of 17 casualties, a small number compared to the last storm of its size to hit the country. “Our teams are out in both Odisha and Andhra Pradesh for rescue and relief operations.
Indian Widows Face Life of Begging and Destitution
Losing a husband in India forces many women into a life of begging and destitution, and despite the country’s development little is being done to change thingsThe verandah of the Bihari temple, in Radhakund, a few kilometers away from the Hindu temple town of Vrindavan, comes alive with chants and grateful ululations at 11 o’clock every morning as widows in white saris eat free meals of lentils and rice.
Viral Video Satirizes Attitude Towards Rape In india
A parody video, satirizing the idea that women are to blame for rape, has gone viral in India. With over half a million hits in just three days, the video, by a comedy group, All India Bakchods, features Bollywood actress Kalki Koechlin sarcastically “explaining” to women that rape is their fault.
India Asserts Support For Afghanistan During And After US Drawdown
India reasserted late yesterday that terror attacks against its people in Afghanistan will not dissuade it from supporting the war-torn nation during its period of transition next year when US forces are scheduled to drawdown and called for sustained action to root out the “syndicate of terrorism” by terror and extremist groups like the Taliban, Al Qaeda and Lashkar-e-Taiba.
Clashes in Dhaka After Court Hands Down Death Sentence to Islamist Leader
Protests have erupted in Dhaka in the wake of the death sentence imposed on Abdul Quader Molla — a top leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami, Bangladesh’s main Islamist party — who was found guilty of rape and mass murder during the 1971 war of independence with Pakistan. After the court verdict on Wednesday, supporters of Molla threw stones at the police, barricaded roads and exploded crude bombs on the streets on the Bangladeshi capital. One man was killed when he was struck by a stone.
Trust in the System Takes Another Hit After Indian Vaccine Mix-Up
Share Read Later NARINDER NANU / AFP / Getty Images A Sikh boy receives polio-vaccination drops from a medical volunteer during an immunization drive outside the Golden Temple in Amritsar, India, on Feb. 24, 2013 A government committee in the Indian state of West Bengal will submit its report Tuesday on a medical error that saw the wrong vaccine administered to more than a hundred children under the age of 5. More than half of the children — who were vaccinated at a camp being held at a…
Death Sentences Handed Down in India’s Delhi Gang Rape Case
Sentence hailed as a deterrent for rapists, but women’s groups say much still needs to be doneAn Indian court on Friday sentenced four men to death in the Delhi gang rape case. The men raped and killed a paramedic intern in India‘s capital last December, in a crime that shocked the world with its brutality. “We are very happy,” said the father’s victim after the judgment.
Delhi Gang-Rape Case: Court Finds Four Guilty
After eight months of legal proceedings in the Delhi gang-rape case, an Indian court on Tuesday afternoon found four men guilty of rape, murder and destruction of evidence. Six males, on the night of Dec. 16 last year, brutally raped and killed a paramedic intern on a moving bus. Of the six, one was a minor and handed a three-year sentence by India’s juvenile justice board last month. Another accused, Ram Singh, hung himself while in police custody in March this year.
Landowners Welcome India’s New Compensation Laws But Businesses Cautious
It took six years of feasibility studies and seven hours of debate, but the upper house of the Indian Parliament yesterday finally passed a pivotal land bill, providing farmers and owners with greater rights over their land and fairer compensation to those whose land is being acquired in the name of urban or infrastructural development.
Fears Stoked for Future of Women in Afghanistan After Indian Author Killed
On Wednesday night, the Afghan Taliban killed 49-year-old Indian author Sushmita Banerjee outside her home in Paktika province. Banerjee was known for a popular memoir that chronicled her turbulent life as the wife of an Afghan in Kabul under the Taliban regime. According to the police, Taliban militants tied up her family members and took Banerjee out and shot her. The Taliban have denied responsibility.
Kashmir Separatists Enraged by Zubin Mehta Peace Concert
World renowned, India-born conductor to perform on Saturday but militant leaders have called for shutdowns and warned local people to stay away from the eventOn Saturday, a peace concert led by internationally acclaimed, India-born conductor Zubin Mehta will bring music and a message of goodwill to the strife-ravaged population of India-administered Kashmir.
In India, Hundreds March on Parliament to Demand End to Child Labor
More than 300 citizens and representatives of national and international civil society groups walked to India’s parliament Thursday to demand an immediate halt to child labor. Their aim was to deliver a petition of one million signatures — collected via avaaz.org — to lawmakers, hoping to spur them into passing anti-child labor legislation that has been pending since last May.
India’s Newest State Is Born out of Political Calculation, not Cultural Identity
In the 1950s, India’s States Reorganization Commission, established by then prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, suggested that administration would be easier if the country could be divided into states based on languages (of which India has well over 400).
In Bihar, a Village Struggles to Come to Terms With School Deaths
The Navsrijit Primary School, at the heart of the hamlet of Dharmasati Gandaman in east India’s Bihar state, stands desolate. The cricket pitch, once buzzing with children, is today a cemetery. Small makeshift mounds dot the ground — the graves of 17 of the children who died here after eating a contaminated school lunch.
After Much Heartbreak, Some Good News at Last for Bangladesh
All the grief coming out of Bangladesh in the wake of April’s Rana Plaza collapse has obscured one piece of good news. The World Bank quietly announced back in June that the country reduced the number of people living in poverty from 63 million in 2000 to 47 million in 2010. This sharp decline means Bangladesh will reach its first U.N.-established Millennium Development Goal, that of poverty reduction, two years ahead of the 2015 deadline.
India: High Demand for Gold Putting Pressure on Economy
Nine years ago, I visited Alappuzha, a small town in Kerala in South India. In the middle of this quaint seaside resort, with its small, mostly one- or two-storied buildings and unhurried pace of life, were a number of enormous gold stores totally at odds with the sleepy surrounds.
Pilgrim Season and Ill-Preparedness Contribute to India’s Flood Tragedy
Rescue operations in the devastating Uttarakhand floods, which killed at least 822 people and displaced tens of thousands in the northern Indian state, ended on Friday after 11 days. But with thousands of people — most of them pilgrims paying seasonal visits to the state’s many temples and shrines — still stranded, and some 3,000 still missing, the disaster is far from over.
Devastating North India Floods Likely Worsened by Tourist Boom
The rains came to Mussoorie, a hill town in Uttarakhand, in northern India, last Friday, June 14. Rushing mud and water stopped the town in its tracks, leaving swaths without power. Over the weekend, trains were canceled, the busy Dehradun-Delhi road was closed, and frequent landslides led to hours-long traffic jams on the narrow mountain streets. “We haven’t seen such violent rain in a while,” says Rupa Devi, a local.
India Is Now the Unofficial Home of the Vintage Italian Scooter
If you’ve heard of Lambretta or Vespa scooters, chances are they conjure up on-the-road scenes from vintage movies, or images of British mods of the 1960s sitting astride these cultish Italian machines in two-tone suits as they vie with leather-clad rockers for control of the highways. But today, the real home of these stylish marques — which are to scooter lovers what Triumph or Harley-Davidson are to motorcycle fanatics — lies a long way from the design capitals of Europe.
India’s Ruling Coalition Grants Itself a Good Report Card
A renascent and inclusive economy, better governance, better distribution of welfare programs and improved relations with neighbors — these, claims India’s ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA) coalition, are the four cornerstone achievements of the past nine years. Its 92-page report for the period, released Wednesday evening, is an unabashed attempt to sell the Congress-led coalition to the electorate before the country goes to the polls next year.
Report: There are 3000 Child Soldiers in India
Last year, suspected insurgents in Northeast India Manipur abducted three teenage boys. Despite a missing persons complaint and a police search, they were never found. In Manipur, as well as several other Indian states, it is not uncommon for children to be kidnapped by insurgent groups to become child soldiers. Indeed, around the same time as the boys went missing, five teenage girls laid down arms in front of police in the eastern Indian state of Orissa, a stronghold of Maoist rebels.
Indian Prisoner’s Death in Pakistani Jail Stirs Nationalist Furies
Sarabjit Singh, an Indian prisoner on death row in a Pakistani jail since 1991, died on Thursday morning following severe head injuries inflicted by six fellow inmates at Lahore’s Kot Lakhpat jail.
The Hanging of Afzal Guru: How an Execution Is Roiling Kashmir
On the morning of Feb. 9, India-administered Kashmir woke up to deserted streets. There were no newspapers to be bought that Saturday morning — no television, no Internet. Streets throughout the valley had been taken over by Indian security forces before dawn broke, setting up barricades and a strict edict for all residents to stay indoors. Locals who ventured out to look for breakfast essentials like bread and milk were sent back home.
At Gunpoint: India Tackles an Upsurge in Illegal Arms
Print Share In a small tent, in a village about 60 miles outside the capital, Salim is putting the finishing touches on his gun. Despite the bright sun outside, the shelter is dark and Salim, who uses only one name, has to bend close to see the homemade pistol he’s been working on for the last hour.
India’s Golden Girls: How Sports and the Olympics Can Uplift Women
Print Share After winning her bronze medal at the London Olympics, Saina Nehwal’s homecoming attracted the sort of fervor usually reserved for India’s tournament-winning cricket teams. Hundreds of fans turned up at the airport despite it being late in the night.
India Looks to Solar Electricity to Power Remote Villages
Print Share Meerwada has long hewed to the sun’s schedule. The village of 400 in central India’s Madhya Pradesh state lies 70 km from the nearest town, and until last year it was not supplied with power. Daily chores were completed between sunrise and sunset, or else by the light of polluting kerosene lamps.
Gender and Athletics: India’s Own Caster Semenya
Santhi Soundarajan has a message for Caster Semenya, the South African track star whose gender has sparked an international athletics row: “She should not abandon the fight.” Soundarajan lost her 2006 Asian Games silver medal in the 800 m after failing a gender test. “I come from a small village and had no one to fight for me,” Soundarajan said in an interview with TIME on Aug. 29.

The Largest Kitchen in Delhi That Never Closes
A community-operated free kitchen, housed within the Gurudwara Bangla Sahib – a historic Sikh house of worship in central Delhi – runs 24/7, 365 days a year and feeds over 35,000 people every day. Loved by over 40s It’s a November afternoon in the heart of India’s capital. The winter sun is strong but pleasant. The Gurudwara Bangla Sahib – a tourist hotspot – is teeming with visitors.
Afghan Food in Delhi: Alleyway Bakeries, Cakes and Kebabs
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees says approximately 14,000 Afghans are living in New Delhi; most of them are refugees. Here’s how Afghan food has made its mark in the Indian capital and where to try it.
The Mystery of Delhi’s Iron Pillar, the Wishing Pillar That Refuses To Rust
The Iron Pillar, housed in the same complex as one of Delhi’s most famous monuments, the Qutub Minar, dates back to AD 402 and has continued to capture the imagination of scientists since the early 1900s, owing to its resistance to rust.

Why BJP is seeing red over a Kolkata puja pandal (Hint: Farmers’ agitation)
The organisers of the Puja have already received a legal notice for “allegedly hurting religious sentiments” (Photo credit: PTI) News Bengal BJP took umbrage at a Durga Puja pandal in Kolkata for using shoes They said it was offensive and would hurt the religious sentiments of many This year’s art installation dedicated to the ongoing farmers’ agitation Narrative Communal Pujas in Bengal use current events as themes BJP has been targeting Durga Puja in Bengal for decades This year’s theme of…
Priyanka Gandhi back in news for Lakhimpur Kheri optics, but not in UP politics
Can Priyanka Gandhi turn around the fortunes of her party in Uttar Pradesh?
Pandora, Panama, Pegasus: Mind your Ps and Qs, only onions make Indians cry
Panama, Pandora means not much to most Indians – at least not as much as say the rising prices of onions, which makes every politician worth their salt jittery – because when onion prices skyrocket, Indians get angry, very angry. India in this case, of course, mean the Indian Middle Class, the behemoth that is known to move and react slowly despite having the wherewithal to do so.

Nilanjana Bhowmick’s father’s oxygen levels steadily fell after he tested positive for COVID-19. She searched for a hospital bed in and around Delhi but health services, overwhelmed by India’s second wave, had none. “He has made it through. But if his condition had worsened, I don’t know what we could have done.” See more stories on Insider’s business page. My heart ran cold as the doctor sent us a message on WhatsApp about my father’s deteriorating condition.
Twitter said it would defend “freedom of expression” as Indian authorities requested bans. But activists and journalists were subject to temporary bans and limitations of their accounts. One said Twitter “could stand up to the president of their country but were getting bullied here.” Visit the Business section of Insider for more stories. Twitter is in a predicament in India.
Mass gatherings such as the farmers’ protests didn’t become the superspreader events experts feared. COVID cases have steadily fallen, raising hopes the country is close to achieving herd immunity. One expert says misinformation may have been an “accidental game changer” at encouraging mingling. Visit the Business section of Insider for more stories.

I Was a Victim of Sexual Harassment in India, Today I Rejoice
NEW DELHI—I didn’t even know I was holding my breath until my phone screen flashed the message “Priya Ramani is acquitted.” And then my Twitter timeline exploded with happiness, tears and hope—from women I know, women I don’t know. But today we were bound by an elation that felt deeply personal in a country where women are used to daily defeats and disappointments.
Father Beheads Daughter in One of The Most Dangerous Places for Women
In India, women continue to be killed for daring to assert their sexual freedom or their freedom to choose their own partners. The video of a father holding the severed head of his daughter as he nonchalantly walks down the street has sent shockwaves around India on Thursday, a mere four days before International Women’s Day.
India Unleashes World’s Fastest Rollout But It’s Taking a ‘Crazy’ Risk on Homegrown Vaccine
NEW DELHI—As of 5 p.m. on Jan. 19, the fourth day of its COVID-19 vaccine rollout, India had inoculated a total of 631, 417 people.

Yes, the weather is getting worse – but we’re not suffering equally. Here’s what we can do
You’ve probably heard of the income gap — that vast wage difference between the haves and have-nots. Well, there’s also a climate gap. Here’s an example: In August 2017, Hurricane Harvey made landfall in Texas, and much of Houston, one of America’s most racially diverse cities, was submerged underwater. In the months that followed, the city’s poorest neighborhoods were the slowest to recuperate.

India’s coronavirus pandemic is leading to many more deaths from TB
The covid-19 pandemic has collided with the ongoing tuberculosis epidemic, leaving many without adequate medical care and stuck at home, where they could pass an infection on to others.
India about to overtake the US with highest covid-19 caseload globally
India is on track to overtake the US as the country with the highest number of coronavirus cases worldwide. With more than 5.56 million recorded cases, India set a new record with 97,859 daily cases on 16 September.
Covid-19 lockdown means 115 million Indian children risk malnutrition
Children eating lunch in Madkheda, India, in 2015Saurabh Das/AP/ShutterstockA staggering 115 million children in India are at risk of malnutrition, as the world’s largest school lunch programme has been disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic. When India went under a strict lockdown on 24 March to reduce the spread of the virus, 12-year-old Kavi’s life changed.

Why Are We Still Not Talking About Grief?
“Give me three months and I will fix you,” were the first words of a top psychiatrist on our first meeting. The next 40 minutes were a one-way sermon on how to stop wallowing and get going. Neither of us uttered the word grief during these sessions — despite the fact that the session was, almost in its entirety, riddled with my angst over the sudden death of two parent-figures. I don’t think I spoke about anything else.

India’s New Laws Hurt Women Most of All
On the evening of Dec. 16, 2019, a group of conservative, middle-aged Muslim women in hijabs and burqas began a peaceful sit-in at Shaheen Bagh—a Muslim-majority, working-class neighborhood in South Delhi—blocking a major road that connects the Indian capital to its suburbs. A few days earlier, on Dec. 12, the Indian government had passed a law that fast-tracked citizenship for non-Muslim refugees from Bangladesh, Afghanistan, and Pakistan who moved to India before 2015.

Bookkeeper of nature’s services
Two little words sum up the philosophy of environment economist Pavan Sukhdev. Value nature, says this year’s winner of the prestigious Tyler Prize, often described as the “Nobel Prize for Environment”, which was announced today. The former banker’s environmental activism has been marked by transformative ideas combining economics, policy and a personal passion for sustainable development to make people, businesses and governments understand the worth of nature.

Bookmark This! 40 Years And Counting, The Story Of Seagull Books
December 6, 1992. It is the hour after the demolition of the Babri Mosque. Naveen Kishore, the founder of Seagull Books (then in its 10th year), was preoccupied with designing a stage for an Indian music concert featuring Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia on the flute and Ustad Zakir Hussain on the tabla, when he heard a rumour that some people had apparently rushed on to a train from Pune to Bombay, wanting to cut off Hussain’s hands.

Shaheen Bagh, Delhi: These women cross a key milestone
The women are an antithesis to Narendra Modi and his ministers, their hatred, their misogyny, their disrespect for the Indian Constitution and their IslamophobiaShaheen Bagh is a practical, congested working class neighbourhood in South Delhi, a popular haunt for bargain shoppers owing to rows of factory outlet shops on both sides of the main road. The local population is mostly middle-class, a bunch of people who go about their daily business of living and surviving from one day to another.
Sadaf Jafar, a woman who would not be silenced
On December 19, Sadaf Jafar, a well-known social and political activist in Lucknow and a teacher, was protesting against the National Register of Citizens and Citizenship Act in a Lucknow neighborhoodSadaf JafarOn December 19, Sadaf Jafar, a well-known social and political activist in Lucknow and a teacher, was protesting against the National Register of Citizens and Citizenship (Amendment) Act in a Lucknow neighborhood.
‘Cut-money’ not confined to Bengal, it is a pan-Indian reality
While BJP has launched a campaign against ‘cut-money’ in West Bengal, it could easily have launched it in Uttar Pradesh or in any of the many states that have BJP governments in the saddle. Across the state of Uttar Pradesh – ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) – poor people have to pay to qualify for welfare schemes.
Geeta Luthra and her team, who are representing MJ Akbar in his defamation case against Priya Ramani, reportedly mocked Ghazala Wahab when she testified against Akbar and detailed the harassment she faced at his hands. Ironically, during the early days of the trial, Luthra had protested against murmurs or laughs that erupted when Akbar made his statement.

10 Years Of Right To Education: A Progress Report
After a decade since the Right to Education Act was passed, experts from the field assess its key achievements and shortcomings. “Come back soon, Ammi!” a teary-eyed Arhaan implored his mother, when she dropped him to school in April last year. It was his first day in Lucknow’s Blue Bells School. When Uzma Khan picked him up afterwards, he was beaming,…

My mother, one of India’s first women cops, often tells me, “You are lucky. Things were harder when we were young.”I am not sure if I am lucky at all. At best, I find myself hanging in the middle of nowhere. My mother’s generation at least had the hope of a change. And I am supposed to be the change. But am I? So much has changed in India since my mother stepped out to work.
The lanes became narrower and filthier toward Kainthi village’s Harijan Basti. Harijan, a term coined by Mahatma Gandhi to refer to the untouchables or lower castes, also known as Dalits, and basti meaning a colony.
The unpaved road leads to a haphazard colony of mostly makeshift and a few pucca houses in Mauranipur, in Jhansi district in Uttar Pradesh’s Bundelkhand region. The lanes are narrow, the sewers are blocked with fallen leaves and sludgy water. Cows masticate nonchalantly on a sliver of ground visible from between two houses.
I stood there struggling to make myself fit in the tin-box. The two feet by feet (barely), windowless container was one of the over 90 million toilets India claims to have built under Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the past five years.
India Nilanjana Bhowmick Dec 25, 2019 18:58:41 IST Deepak Kabir was reportedly assaulted by half a dozen police officers who hit him with batons and rifle butts for trying to speak up for the arrested protesters. The 48-year-old had reached the Hazratganj Police station in Lucknow at 10 am on 20 December to find out about Jafar and other missing protesters. However, the police detained him and allegedly assaulted him.

May 23 Will Not Be a Defining Moment in the History of Secular India
Exit polls on Sunday evening predicted a second landslide win for the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, renewing a question that was asked repeatedly over the past few weeks: whether India can handle another five years of Modi. Here’s the short answer. Yes, it can. There’s a long answer too. While he used it as a poll plank, Modi’s first mandate was never supposed to be about development or the country’s economy.
Not a Martyr: Dim the Halo Around Rape
On April 24, the Indian Supreme Court said rape victims, whether dead or alive, have dignity and cannot be “named or shamed”. The court was ruling on whether the identity of rape victims should be disclosed, following the brutal rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl in Kathua in Jammu and Kashmir, that has roiled the country in the past few weeks. The victim, right from the beginning, had been identified in the media by her name. According to the Supreme Court, that is problematic.
Mr Narendra Modi, Where Is Najeeb?
It’s been four years since a young, underprivileged Muslim student disappeared from a residential university in India, reportedly after a squabble with some right-wing students. His story had faded from public memory. We don’t talk about Najeeb Ahmed anymore. But the fresh state-sponsored crackdown on Indian universities and police brutality on student protests over the past few days is reason enough for us to start asking about Najeeb again.
Militant Hinduism and the Reincarnation of Hanuman
Hanuman 2.0 is not benign. The smile on his face has been replaced with strong frown lines. He radiates mean energy against a black and saffron background.

India’s embarrassing North Korean connection
New Delhi, India – Hong Yong-il is the North Korean embassy’s new first secretary to India and has been in the country for just a month. He lives on the first floor of a two-storey house in a tree-lined lane in Delhi’s busy Lajpat Nagar. The apartment is huge but nondescript, sparsely furnished; a modest affair as compared with many other diplomatic residences in the Indian capital.
After Nepal, Indian surrogacy clinics move to Cambodia
As India bans foreign surrogacy, clinics look towards Cambodia, but what will it mean for the rights of surrogates?
‘Nobel for environment’: India’s Pavan Sukhdev wins Tyler Prize
Sukhdev wins the prestigious prize for ‘revolutionising how decision-makers would come to view the natural world’.

Women Interrupted: The Politics of Patriarchy
The Politics of Patriarchy: Ep 14 : WINGS: Safe Cities on Apple Podcasts
In 2005, the Jagori Women’s Resource Centre in Delhi began to develop a multi-stakeholder research and organizing project for women to evaluate their cities for safety, map the results, and use the data to call publicly for change. As of 2020, the project, now based in Haryana, India, and known as Safetipin, has spread to Latin America, Africa, and much of the Asia-Pacific region. Their reports can be found at safetipin.com.
The Politics of Patriarchy on Apple Podcasts
A podcast by and for women in the era of COVID. The pandemic has exposed our vulnerabities and inequalities. Especially in India. Every week I will bring you a different story of women interrupted and women rising. Tune in and join the conversation every FRIDAY.
The Politics of Pandemic on Apple Podcasts
A podcast by and for women in the era of COVID. The pandemic has exposed our vulnerabities and inequalities. Especially in India. Every week I will bring you a different story of women interrupted and women rising. I will also bring you stories from women reporters all over the world reporting on women’s issues. Tune in and join the conversation every FRIDAY. Our motto is to entertain and educate. A podcast by and for women in the era of COVID.
Women Interrupted – The Politics of Patriarchy
Deconstructing the Period debate with Kavita KrishnanThe period debate is back in India after food delivery company Zomato announced it will offer period leave to menstruating employees. While the initiative was welcomed by many women, it was also criticized by others as being anti-feminist.
they can keep their social distance, but it’s hard to practice both methods of warding off the disease at the same time.

Late into the silence of the night, I woke up from my vigil, confused, disoriented. The tree outside the hospital room was swaying unmindfully, against the window of the glassed-up cold, sparse room. For days our small group—my husband, my mother in law and I—had gathered around my father-in-law, who lay on the narrow hospital cot staring at the window, half the man he once was, numbed by morphine. The tree outside his window had fascinated him.
BOOK EXCERPTS & REVIEWS
Women’s Day Reading: “You are like a son to me”
Savitribai Phule, Mahasweta Devi, Amrita Pritam, Medha Patkar, Kamla Bhasin, and countless others have, since the nineteenth century, fought for and won equal rights for Indian women in a variety of areas—universal suffrage, inheritance and property rights, equal remuneration, prevention of sexual harassment at the workplace, and others.
Escaping The Superwoman’s Cape: Review of How Not To Be A Superwoman By Nilanjana Bhowmick
“Women don’t need to be perfect—they just need to relax and cut themselves some slack. In fact, a lot of slack.”In the age of “girlbosses”, “bossladies”, and “sheroes”, Nilanjana Bhowmick eloquently captures what many women have felt but may not have articulated—that it is not only okay but better not to have it all.
The Indian Women Vloggers Making Visible the Invisible Drudgery of Housework
‘I am pregnant’— the title of the YouTube video screamed in all caps. As I press play, the screen fills with the face of a rosy cheeked young woman in a nightie. She is schoolgirl pretty. Face flushed, she rambles on for long minutes before announcing the good news. Tina, the host of the channel, is a housewife based in a village in West Bengal.
‘Lies our mothers told us: The Indian woman’s burden’ book review
At first glance Nilanjana Bhowmick’s book, Lies Our Mother Told Us, may well remind you of the celebrated American text, The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan. The resemblance, however, ends at women. Bhowmick’s text deals specifically with the problems ailing the Indian woman across class, caste and even age, and, in parts, it is bound to make the Indian man sit up too and take notice.
The Indian Woman’s Burden by Nilanjana Bhowmick
Lies Our Mothers Told Us: The Indian Woman’s Burden by Nilanjana Bhowmick looks at the gender inequality that forms the bedrock of India’s middle class. An excerpt:In 2011, I lived in a rented house in Noida. One night, there was furious knocking on my door. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and hobbled to the door. A woman was standing there—I didn’t know her. She looked scared and confused.
Women working the invisible double shift
A feeling of guilt washes over me the moment I sit down to write. Especially when I am at home. It seems to me that that the kitchen has tentacles, that I cannot afford to take my eyes off the household and that, if I do, things are going to fall apart. For a large part of my adult life, I have struggled with the feeling that writing is not real work. I am convinced that what I am doing must appear like non-work to most people.
The book peeks into the middle-class Indian women and their lives ingrained in the duality of tradition and modernity. Read an excerpt from the book here. HighlightsThe book is comprised of data and anecdotal evidence from the real lives of Indian women across the country. The book has been published by Aleph Book Company. As a journalist for more than twenty-one years, Bhowmick has won three international awards.
This book takes a close look at the gender inequality that forms the bedrock of India’s middle class
The book “Lies Our Mothers Told Us: The Indian Woman’s Burden” by Nilanjana Bhowmick details that the demands of capitalism and the persistence of patriarchal attitudes in the twenty-first century have meant that Indian women continue to lead lives that are hard and unequal, especially when compared to their male counterparts.
A new book examines why India’s urban upper middle-class women continue to live hard, unequal lives
While we lived with my grandmother, and even when we moved to a nearby apartment, my mother never had to cook or worry about the well-being of either my sister or me. My grandmother’s domestic worker came by every morning to clean the room in which we had just slept. We would have our breakfast at our apartment and our mother would give us packed lunches. My father dropped us off at school and then my parents left for their workplaces.
Book Excerpt: Why Are Women Missing From Public Spaces?
In early 2019, I had gone to register my car papers at the motor vehicles office in Noida. As I stood waiting for a man to photocopy my documents, I became aware of the stares of people around me. This was, of course, nothing I was not used to, but these stares were slightly different, more uncomfortable, more in my face. I looked up and looked around slowly—all I could see were men, men, and more men.
Social media supermoms are adding to the mothers’ guilt. ‘Having it all’ is a con
Being a borderline millennial mom, I have had to beat this too. The constant attack by supermoms on social media about the right way to bring up children is more exhausting than the tirade that our generation had to put up with from our families and friends. I wanted to be the mother who drew smiley faces on their child’s sandwich with ketchup or cut them into cute teddy shapes. These reels and videos heap perfection pressure on mothers, and double and triple their mother guilt.
Why ‘superwoman’ title is a trap laid to enslave women
In this extract from her new book, the award-winning journalist looks at how women, in a bid to strive to be the ultimate superwomen, take on more than they can handle, often sacrificing their own needs for the sake of others. Man or woman, this is one piece you should read today. When women have to choose between caregiving and a career, they are expected to choose the former, not just in our country but worldwide.
Women must learn to say ‘no’ to live longer, happier, and healthier, says a new book
In the rigmarole of providing caregiving to all and sundry, women forget to care about themselves, and in not saying no to the world, they keep saying no to themselves. Saying no is the first step to self-care and for most women, self-care is akin to a luxury or indulgence.