-Express News Service For a country making strides as an emerging economic power, gender inequality remains an area where it compares poorly with the rest of the world. India is placed 129th among 146 countries in terms of GII, or gender inequality index, far behind neighbouring Sri Lanka at 74 and lagging most other countries in the region. Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan are ranked 112, 113 and 115 in terms of this...
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Holding government to account by Wajahat Habibullah
As the Right to Information Act (RTI) celebrated the sixth year of its coming, there has been much heated discussion, often emotional, of the benefits that it has brought and also the challenges with which it has confronted government. This debate came to a head with the prime minister’s inaugural address to the Annual Convention of the Central Information Commission on October 14. It is accepted in all circles that the...
More »Haryana IFS officer decides to marry outside caste, family faces threats by Varinder Bhatia
The family of an Indian Foreign Service (IFS) officer has received threats and faced protests from her caste group and a section of the village panchayat in Haryana’s Bhiwani district for her decision to marry outside her caste. Neelam Sharma, who is currently posted at the Indian mission in Moscow, is set to marry IAS officer Kuldeep Yadav in Delhi on November 8. Yadav, whom Sharma met during training, is currently...
More »The harsh realities of tribal women by Ramya Kannan
Against the backdrop of what has been happening in central India over the past few months, Putting Women First possibly has several lessons to offer to policymakers. Situated in Gadchiroli, the image of which in the public mind is that of a “naxal-infested, backward tribal district”, the book provides an insight into what moves the sinews of that community. Rani Bang, the primary author of the book, along with her husband...
More »1984 and the violence of memory by Ravinder Kaur
We must not allow the pain and suffering of the Sikh victims to be transformed into a political instrument to mute calls for justice for the ‘other' victims of similarly orchestrated massacres. More than a quarter century on, not much remains of ‘1984' — shorthand for one of the largest pogroms in India's postcolonial history when thousands of Sikhs were massacred in retribution for Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's assassination — in...
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