Point Blank 7 - Get Involved, Stay Informed

Fan of Rudyard Kipling? Then you should read the hundreds of other stories he wrote

[By Sarah Lonsdale] Sixteen-year-old Rudyard Kipling returned to India after a miserable childhood, and slightly less miserable adolescence in England, to take up the perfect job for a precociously gifted but possibly unemployable son of empire. He w...
Why India’s persecuted tribes are marking their alternative independence day

[By Sarah Gandee] In the minutes before the clock struck midnight on August 14-15 1947, Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India, made a now-hallowed speech to the nation on the eve of its independence: Long years ago, we made a tryst with...
India’s Cow Vigilantes

[By Shashi Tharoor] NEW DELHI – Indian politics continues to amaze and appall. The surge in cow vigilantism – a uniquely Indian phenomenon that has lately begun to flourish under the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government – is no exception. Many ort...
India’s GST promises growth, reform and opportunities

[By Milind Sathye] The passing of the India’s Goods and Services Tax (GST) constitution amendment bill through the Upper House is not only a shot in the arm for the country’s economic growth and a historical reform in its tax system, it also presents...
Gujarati vigilante violence on Dalits sparks protest

[By Mari Marcel Thekaekara | New Internationalist] In India, Dalits are killed over and over again. Every single day. Beaten, tortured, murdered, raped, stripped and paraded naked through the streets of their villages and towns, forced to drink urine...
From Kashmir and Chilcot to Black Lives Matter

[By Mari Marcel Thekaekara| New Internationalist] Mob throws police jeep into river. One cop dead. My first reaction was, another US story about the eruption of violence post-the Black Lives Matter protests. But no. This was the morning’s headlines i...
India’s Jewel in the Crown

|By Shashi Tharoor| NEW DELHI – India’s Solicitor-General, Ranjit Kumar, recently declared that India would not seek the return of the Kohinoor diamond – one of the world’s oldest and most valuable – from the British, to whom India had “gifted” it. T...
Bangalored: Death of a Dream

[By Mari Marcel Thekaekara|New Internationalist] Once upon a time, possibly around two, definitely three decades ago, Bangalore was a charming little town. It was known as the pensioners’ paradise because it was a tiny town with quaint cottages and p...
Kerala – a conflict of cultures?

[By Mari Marcel Thekaekara|New Internationalist] Kerala has long been held up as an example of a model state. India’s most educated piece of paradise. But people who live there, in general, and women who live there in particular, know only too well, ...

Talking Points

Fan of Rudyard Kipling? Then you should read the hundreds of other stories he wrote

Team PB7 September 15, 2016 Leave a comment

[By Sarah Lonsdale] Sixteen-year-old Rudyard Kipling returned to India after a miserable childhood, and slightly less miserable adolescence in England, to take up the perfect job for a precociously gifted ...

Why India’s persecuted tribes are marking their alternative independence day

Team PB7 August 30, 2016 Leave a comment

[By Sarah Gandee] In the minutes before the clock struck midnight on August 14-15 1947, Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India, made a now-hallowed speech to the nation ...

Terrorism in Europe | Credit: armstrongeconomics.com

How to Stop Terrorism in Europe

Team PB7 August 23, 2016 Leave a comment

[By Brahma Chellaney] BERLIN – Europe is under pressure. Integrating asylum-seekers and other migrants – 1.1 million in Germany alone in 2015 – into European society poses a major challenge, ...

Since ancient Greece, the Olympics and bribery have gone hand in hand

Team PB7 August 16, 2016 Leave a comment

[By Nigel Crowther] As a professor of classical studies, I’ve noticed some remarkable differences and similarities between the modern and ancient Olympic Games. The medals, the torch relay and events ...

cow vigilantism is far from extinguished in India | Photo: John Hill / Creative Commons

India’s Cow Vigilantes

Team PB7 August 9, 2016 Leave a comment

[By Shashi Tharoor] NEW DELHI – Indian politics continues to amaze and appall. The surge in cow vigilantism – a uniquely Indian phenomenon that has lately begun to flourish under ...

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LetsTalkChange

Women registered at the Sulabh training centre, Nai Disha,are taught various vocational skills like food processing, tailoring and beauty care apart from imparting them functional literacy.(Credit: Elsa MathewsWFS)

Building A Life Beyond Manual Scavenging

Team PB7 February 28, 2016 Leave a comment

[By Elsa Mathews] Alwar – Sunita Nanda, 30, still remembers the day she was thrown out of the ‘jajman’s’ (patron) house. She recounts the painful encounter, “As a newly married ...

Bundeli Samaj segregating food collected from households

Roti Bank : A lifeline for the poor in Bundelkhand

Team PB7 February 12, 2016 Leave a comment

[By Narendra Kaushik] Mahoba: Every evening as the clock strikes 7 O’clock, Tara Patkar, a journalist who quit the profession in January 2014 to take up public causes, Haji Muttan, ...

$There is very little data on women’s ownership of land and assets even though it is an area that is very significant, particularly because it is inter-twined with many other dimensions of women’s lives. (Credit: Subhrajit Dutta Mallick\WFS)$

The Number Game: Using Data To Enable Women’s Empowerment

Team PB7 September 8, 2015 Leave a comment

[By Amrita Nandy] New Delhi (WFS) – Severe arthritis has left Shanti, 68, nearly disabled. Bent with age, she limps through her days in acute pain, barely being able to ...

Members of the Kishori Mandal in Ranchi district get
together once every week to review their micro-credit accounting and
then discuss issues like eating healthy meals or standing up against child marriage. (Credit: Ajitha MenonWFS)

Teenage Girls Generate Wealth To Secure Health

Team PB7 August 17, 2015 Leave a comment

[By Ajitha Menon] Ranchi (WFS) – ‘Kal Baisakhi’, or Nor’westers, originate in the Chhotanagpur Plateau, in and around areas like Ranchi and Jamshedpur in Jharkhand, in the months of April ...

Tell your story; Join Our Better World’s Good Story Pitch

July 22, 2015 Leave a comment

Are you pursuing social change in India? Point Blank 7 invites you to join Our Better World’s Good Story Pitch to get your story told. Why would you need your ...

Awesome Superheroes Give You the Power

Team PB7 June 29, 2015 Leave a comment

“He really believes he is the Whisperer,” Lisa Sun says of her son, Benjamin. The seven-year-old used to be afraid to speak up. Now, “he is much braver and compassionate”, ...

Skype These Kids to Help Them Read

Team PB7 June 17, 2015 Leave a comment

Yans Ganghadaran wanted to help a community near her home in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. So she offered some literacy lessons. In no time, there were 50 kids were “clambering on ...

Mothers Light Up Indonesia

Team PB7 May 28, 2015 Leave a comment

Thousands of people have been impacted by Nusantara Development Initative’s (NDI) project to empower rural women to become solar lamp entrepreneurs in Indonesia. The Singapore-registered non-profit works closely alongside island communities ...

OROP: Modi govt must know that ‘Acche Din’ will last only with ‘Acche Karm’

August 26, 2015 Leave a comment

[By Col NN Bhatia (Retd)] At 3pm on 23 August 2015, my neighbour Brig IS Lamba, veteran ASC Officer, and I, like many others took the Metro to reach Jantar ...

The philosophy of the Soldier Mountaineer Colonel Narinder Kumar ‘Bull’!

Team PB7 June 4, 2015 Leave a comment

[By Col NN Bhatia | A Preface] The human spirit needs places where nature has not been rearranged by the hand of the man. – Anonymous The Regimental Centre Officers’ Mess ...

All They Wanted Was A Martyrdom Of Valour, Not Of Senseless Tragedy

Team PB7 March 6, 2014 Leave a comment

By Simran Brar The final journey begins for lives lost in vain; the wreath is laid with full guard of honour for Lt. Commander Kapish Muwal and Lt. Manoranjan Kumar ...

Casualties of an alternate war : of suicides and fratricides in the Indian Armed Forces

Team PB7 March 10, 2015 Leave a comment

[By Adfar Shah] “In yet another fratricidal incident, a trooper shot dead his five colleagues before shooting himself with his service weapon in an Army camp in Safapora area of ...

Equality, justice and rights for women have remained Dr V. Rukmini Rao’s (centre) priority ever since she espoused the cause some forty years ago.

She’s Been A True ‘Saheli’ To Rural Women

Team PB7 September 10, 2015 Leave a comment

[By Bhanu Priya Vyas] New Delhi (WFS) – “Back in my Saheli days, we started the process of getting an FIR registered. When a woman would go and complain against ...

Dealing with social issues in a manner akin to a mother’s care

March 2, 2015 Leave a comment

A year back, it started out as an idea to provide Delhi street children with shoes during terrible Delhi winters. Latika Wadhwa, then only 24 and a full time working ...

A mother’s account of continuing education post marriage

March 13, 2015 Leave a comment

[By RamTulsi Yerra] I was in the second year of my undergraduate studies when our engagement was solemnized by the elders of our respective families. I got married 6 months ...

Research scholar and celebrated motivational speaker, Malvika Iyer, is a self-reliant and independent woman, who has overcome her physical disabilities and put her life back together in a manner that is truly inspiring.

‘Stop Judging People With Disability’

Team PB7 May 28, 2015 1 Comment

Delhi (WFS) – As a child she used to roam around the residential colony in Bikaner in Rajasthan, where she lived with her parents and elder sister, climbing trees, playing ...