In the workplaces of the times - the call centres of global corporations - Indian expertise is rewarding, but also has significant downsides, says Geeta Seshu.
Part I : The global beck and call service

What is history, and who are its worthy subjects? The Sound and Pictures Archives for Research on Women preserves women's voices from the past and present.

Geeta Seshu recalls the women of 2003, whose lives offered hope for improved rights tomorrow, and also reminded us of the failures we live with today.

Activists within the Muslim community are demanding reforms to tackle questions of personal law such as dowry, divorce and polygamy. Ashima Kaul reports.

March 8 remains a valuable vantage point, a time to take stock and look ahead. In fact, significant events over the past year-and-a-half invite fresh thinking on women's issues. We saw "empowered" women, but also saw new victims, notes Mary E John.

At the receiving end of society's expectations and demands, many women find social work a natural calling. While their engagement of society's deepest problems may begin for very personal reasons, it often transcends these beginnings, and has much larger impacts, writes Puja Awasthi.

Qurratulain Hyder did tremendous justice to her craft by giving a powerful expression to the psychological, emotional and social concerns of women. Humayun Zafar Zaidi writes about the Jnanpith award-winning writer who recently passed away.

Despite a slew of legislative measures to prevent sex determination tests, medical technology continues to be misused, resulting in sex ratios skewed against women. Shoma Chatterji

The Census thinks that prostitutes are not workers, not because they don't work, but because of traditional views that what they do simply should not be counted as work, writes Shoma Chatterji.

The government's move to regulate the retail sale of acid is a welcome one, but for the many hundreds who have been prey to such heinous acts, life continues to be a daily struggle against physical and social odds. Priyanka Nadgir talks to one such survivor.

At a time when the position of women in India and their struggles in society are at the centre of public attention, it seems apt to invoke the legacy of one who was truly the pioneer of women's studies and activism in the country. Shoma A Chatterji pays tribute to Vina Mazumdar.

Does inequality engender crime? S Venkatraman presents a graphical exposition of data from a recent WEF report and the NCRB to unravel the many layers of inequality and violence against women in India.

A glimpse into the lives of women waste-pickers in Pune by Suchismita Pai.

Shoma A. Chatterji brings focus to the issue of bride trafficking, a lesser known but widely prevalent practice in parts of India, through movie Paro.

A severe drought and acute water and electricity shortage is ending self-sufficient agri-livelihoods in the six districts of Madhya Pradesh's Bundelkhand region. Sachin Kumar Jain and Sumika Rajput ring the warning bells.

Even as many pockets of the state, including its capital, battle the ravages of development and consumerism, a couple of villages visited by the author stand as examples of resilient local economies and lifestyles. Aditya Vikram Rametra describes what he saw here.

The recording of the past in terms convenient to the ruling figures is reminiscent of what colonial rulers in India did, says Romila Thapar.

We cannot implement policies for land reforms without a well-functioning land records system. And If we get this platform in place, we can enable all those interested in reform policy with the tools to ensure that their policy dreams get translated into ground realities, says Ramesh Ramanathan.

Why is the struggle for women representatives so much harder at the national level? Is every effort merely a pretense, a concession to the few highly educated and aware women voters that ultimately means nothing to the great majority of others? Vaijayanti Gupta notes yet another opportunity thwarted.

There are four ideas for a Lokpal and a 'Sense of the House' resolution of Parliament itself before the standing committee whic begins work shortly. The battle for Lokpal is far from over, writes Mathew Prasad Idiculla.

Corruption in India has attained humongous proportions despite continual but largely erratic movements since independence to tackle this menace. Shankar Jaganathan ponders on whether the recent betting scandal in cricket could catalyse an effective outcome in the fight against political corruption.

In Attapady block of Kerala's Palakkad district, illicit liquor is taking a heavy toll among the adviasis. Addiction to the brew has led to many deaths and suicides, even as a complacent and complicit administration looks on. M Suchitra reports.

For seven-year-old Sandhya and her siblings, totally dependant on their mother who ekes out a living by making beedis, the state government's relief package, announced nearly 18 months ago, is simply not enough. Many more suffer the same fate. P N Venugopal reports.

Passed in 2005, the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act could have been an effective tool to ensure redress for victims of domestic abuse. But an understaffed implementation body has made it yet another selective and often toothless piece of legislation, finds Puja Awasthi.

Bijayalaxmi Nanda tracks some of the prominent debates surrounding two critical legislations, dealing with gender-biased sex selection and abortion respectively, and points to the commonalities in recommendations made by the apparently contradictory camps.

An innovative project in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka is helping sex workers empower themselves, by training them as paralegal volunteers. A confident community is fighting exploitation, standing up and being counted, reports Ramesh Menon.

The Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill, 2016 introduced in the parliament proposes a ban on commercial surrogacy. Shoma Chatterji finds out if this will help in checking exploitation of women.

As the demands for justice draw embarrassingly close to the PM, the decision to raise the height of the Sardar Sarovar dam is being reviewed. But promises are nothing new, and officials have always known that they can be broken with impunity. Should we expect anything different this time? The India Together editorial.

Once a medical approach is accepted, its use tends to spread across the population and income groups. We therefore need to start preparing for the advance of personalised medicine, writes Sujatha Byravan

Over 230,000 people in hundreds of villages to be displaced, tens of thousands of acres submerged, wildlife and forest lands inundated - the Polavaram project will repeat the great tragedy of displacement and environmental damage that has marked so many other projects in the country. R Uma Maheshwari reports.

Drawing upon the growing incidence of child abandonment in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, Tejaswini Pagadala looks at the phenomenon through a broader lens and explores possible ways, including adoption, to mitigate the evil.

The narrow legal definition of rape, recently reiterated in the Sakshi case, has been criticized by Indian and international women's and children's organizations, who insist that broader interpretations are needed to protect victims, and also to serve justice. Shivkami RaviChandran says we haven't heard the last of this debate.

From biogas to solar cookers and improved cookstoves, from agricultural tools to drudgery reducing technologies, most research and development in appropriate technologies has not been backed-up by appropriate market incentives. In contrast, hi-tech is totally market driven, says Sudhirendar Sharma.

India is unilaterally opening its doors to imports of wheat at a time when several contentious issues remain to be settled in the World Trade Organisation. This deliberate step up will result in serious consequences, and weaken the country's bargaining power, writes Ashok B Sharma.

"Power to the people" will not be ushered in by the microchip or hydrogen battery, but by a redistribution of wealth. Darryl D'Monte fears the celebrated New York Times columnist may be misplacing his faith.

Can we tap into the power of crowds and popular fashion to address persistent poverty? And what would such an effort look like, wonders Gijs Spoor.

The issue of parental authority to resort to corporeal punishment on children is a matter still hotly debated in large sections of our society writes Shankar Jaganathan.

The Age of Consent is a clarion call to implausible action. But maybe that's the point - to urge that we ask why the obviously good outcomes seem so unlikely.

An ongoing study of school textbooks in four states has found stereotypes and biases in Gujarat's textbooks. The Social Studies textbook for standard five has nine stories on mythology masquerading as history. Deepa A reports.

Less than 50 per cent of girl child births are being registered by parents because of gender bias, says former Census Commissioner Jayant Banthia, speaking at a Panchayats and Child Rights convention recently at New Delhi. Nitin Jugran Bahuguna reports.

There is now a quiet but intense debate within some segments of the corporate sector on the crisis in governance due to communalism, says Rajni Bakshi.

It appears that those at the bottom are getting richer - but sadly the maths just doesn't add up. George Monbiot doesn't buy the World Bank's arithmetic.

Kalpana Sharma looks at the implications of the Nisha Sharma episode for our society.

Kalpana Sharma reflects on the occasion of the International Fortnight Protesting Violence Against Women and Girls, being observed from November 25 to December 10.

Kalpana Sharma notes the presence - and absence - of women at the World Social Forum in Mumbai.

If a woman, or a group of women, does well in any sport in India, it is despite the State and the establishment and not because of it. Their achievements therefore are that much greater than of those who are pampered and feted, even for failing continuously, says Kalpana Sharma.

One often hears that the country's large population is at the heart of many of its troubles, but doing the numbers doesn't suggest anything of that sort. Still, in an important way, it does have to do with people. Here's how: some of the people don't think the rest of the people are even people, says Ashwin Mahesh.

The IMF's meeting in Singapore next week is expected to endorse a decision to enhance voting powers for four middle-income countries: China, South Korea, Mexico, and Turkey. For a 184-member body still controlled by seven developed countries, this won't pass for democratisation, says George Monbiot.

We can now celebrate the fact that India is one of the few countries around the world that recognises that domestic violence is a violation of the human rights of women. The law alone is not enough, but it surely strengthens the hand of those who want to establish these rights, says Kalpana Sharma.

The key to understanding information and communication technologies is that their potential for development does not lie in their electronic wizardry, but rather in the information that is communicated by their use, and the subsequent informed actions of citizens. Ashwin Mahesh on the much-touted ICTs.