Citizens Report

Investigations

LetsTalkChange

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

[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 ...

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The need to decriminalise attempted suicide in India

[By Renjini Rajagopalan] India needs to go through with eliminating section 309 of its penal code, punishing attempted suicide, as announced by the government at the end of 2014. The criminalisation ...

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Girls Gang Up Against Early Marriage

[By Tarannum] Siddharth Nagar (WFS) – Whereas she appears to be like any regular village girl from the vast countryside of Uttar Pradesh, quiet, unassuming and hardworking, Uma Kumari has ...

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Building A Life Beyond Manual Scavenging

[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 ...

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Rights

Rape, marriage, and rights

A marriage contract shouldn’t be a license to rape ones wife, yet in many parts of the world today it remains effectively that. Far from being new, these developments form ...

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They Stopped to Listen to Street Kids

|Our Better World| Surrounded by poverty, a group of engineering students in Mumbai decide to meet a few of the thousands of street children in their city, to learn about ...

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Being a transsexual is just a part of this New Zealand politician’s identity

Wellington (Women’s Feature Service) – A true force of nature – that’s how Georgina Beyer is popularly known in her country, New Zealand. Having braved criticism, discrimination and stereotypes to ...

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Overcoming India’s Official Homophobia

[By Shashi Tharoor] NEW DELHI – Sixty-six years after adopting one of the world’s most liberal constitutions, India is being convulsed by a searing debate over a colonial-era provision in ...

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Military Affairs

Doongar Singh – A Pakistani Brigadier Looks Back to an Indian JCO

|By Brigadier Mehboob Qadir (R)| It was mid 1972. We had just arrived in Ranchi from Agra, badly shaken and bruised, after a fateful train journey, during which we lost ...

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

[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 ...

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Repealing AFSPA – Is that the need of the hour?

By Riti Sinha 55 years ago, in the face of rising political dissent in the North-east, India decided to add to its laws, the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA). ...

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AFSPA in Kashmir: A Battle of Perceptions

[By Adfar Shah] Tripura’s Manik Sarkar government’s decision on revoking AFSPA recently was much hailed in public and intellectual circles. However, the ripple effect as expected was the fresh revival ...

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WomenWrite

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

[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 ...

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The Box Office Goes Pink

[By Surekha Kadapa-Bose|WFS] Mumbai  – Is the face of the male-dominated Hindi film industry finally undergoing a much-needed change? If one looks at the hits of the year it certainly ...

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Celebrating the Spirit of Women Entrepreneurship

It's time to celebrate the spirit of women entrepreneurship and the fact that more women are taking the plunge despite the cultural biases.

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Celebrating Womanhood: A feminist’s view

After years of campaigning for women’s rights we may have achieved only a primary consideration for ourselves at all levels. But when are we going to raise the bar and say we want to be equal competitors? The purpose of women’s day should one day upgrade itself to a “celebration of man-woman equality”.

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