Ira Trivedi is the bestselling author of What Would You Do to Save the World?, The Great Indian Love Story and There Is No Love on Wall Street. Her latest book and first work of non-fiction is India in Love: Marriage and Sexuality in the 21st century, a landmark book on India’s new social revolution…
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Two girls hanging from a tree in India: gang raped, murdered. On the internet, images of the teenaged cousins from Uttar Pradesh in the country’s north have gone viral in recent weeks. The images, which contravene India’s media laws about identifying the victims of rape, have caused international outrage. But just as concerning is the…
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Collecting clean water in India will soon become an easier process as the WaterWheel is set to be made available to citizens of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Gujarat states. The 50 litre rolling plastic drum manufactured by US social venture Wello will mainly help women – who traditionally collect water for their families – navigate…
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(Image via Flickr) Four men have been convicted in New Delhi over the gang rape and murder of a 23 year old physiotherapy student onboard a moving bus in December last year. The victim was viciously assaulted by the group for an hour before being thrown from the bus along with a male friend she…
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As bizarre as it may sound, it turns out that being well-educated and financially sound works against women in countries like India and China. It seems to have become a mammoth task for urban, well-qualified and highly paid Chinese women to find suitable life partners. According to official statistics, one third of such women in…
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‘India: The Story You Never Wanted to Hear’ was posted by Michaela Cross (using the username RoseChasm) on CNN iReport, and describes the sexual harassment she experienced when studying abroad in India. Since it was first posted on the website (on the 18th of this month) it has received over a million page views and…
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According to the Thomson Reuters Foundation survey, India is the 4th most dangerous place in the world for women to live in. From January 2002 to October 2010, 153 acid attack cases were reported in the Indian print media, while 174 judicial cases were reported for the year 2000. Of course these figures are believed…
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In Gujarat, India, 3000 women came together earlier this year with one very big aim. The women crowded under a makeshift tarp in the heat and the dust to listen to 24-year-old Artika give her first ever public speech. Why were so many women so keen to hear her speak? I’ll give you a hint:…
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When I first hear about the Gulabi Gang in India, my initial feeling was exultation. Being from an Indian background myself, I’m used to the inherent and pervasive issues of sexism and misogyny that seep through almost every aspect of Indian culture. I had never before seen Indian women taking action against sexism though –…
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Yesterday, I sat and watched a kingfisher on the banks of a creek. When I first spotted the chocolate brown and blue bird, I didn’t know what it was. I wondered whether it was a kingfisher, and instinctively leapt up to check the Internet. But I couldn’t, because there is no Internet where I am….
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Following the brutal torture and rape of a five year old girl in New Delhi barely a week ago, three six year old girls have been attacked, one murdered, in separate incidences in India. The body of one girl, found bleeding last Thursday in the eastern state of Jharkhand, had been bound by…
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In a response to the December 2012 gang rape of a medical student in India, which sparked huge protests and a call to the Indian government to address the growing issue of sexual assault and violence against women in the nation, three engineering students from SRM University in Chennai have come up with what they…
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My Mum used to tell stories at bedtime, and one of my favourites was Upside Down World. Visitors to this realm would sip donuts through straws and slide backwards up slippery dips; the laws of our universe were reversed. In The Age this week, Amrit Dhillon explores a society that sounds like a real Upside…
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Katherine Boo’s book, Behind the Beautiful Forevers, is a devastating and important investigation of slum life in India. Stylistically, it’s near perfect: the writing is erudite, informative, intimate, and accessible. It is narrative non-fiction in the best possible sense: it reads like a novel, but avoids the trap of over-interpretation. Boo expertly balances an objective…
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