Sarita Santoshini

An open letter to the Supreme Court changed the way many Indians thought about women’s rights. The rest should be history.
A longform essay.

In India, education under lockdown and a deep digital divide threaten to undo real progress in rural areas, especially for girls.

In India and around the world, community health workers are being rerouted to deal with the pandemic -- with dangerous results.

“Stay at home” is a common refrain as countries announce lockdowns against COVID-19. But that can be practically impossible for society’s most vulnerable. That challenge has played out on a massive scale in India.

One of the casualties of Delhi’s riots is trust: trust that India’s capital is safe for Muslims and Hindus alike, despite historic tensions. Yet even with those doubts, neighbors are helping each other rebuild some sense of security.

The act struck a nerve in a nation where, under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist agenda, secular freedoms, pluralistic principles and Indigenous rights enshrined in the constitution have eroded.

In villages across the country, female volunteer community health workers are helping educate and mobilise to save women's lives.

Odisha government has been pushing for institutionalised system of education for children of tribal communities. But the residential schools are poorly run and ripe for abuse, with many reported deaths and cases of sexual abuse.

Although Rwandan women take up many leadership and economic roles, their reproductive choices are still bound by church and state.

The threat of taps running dry grabs attention. But what happens when water starts to trickle back through? As Chennai breathes a sigh of relief, many highlight the long-term need for more sustainable policies.

Female participation in the workforce is lower in India than almost any other country on Earth, creating a lack of financial freedom. Tackling the underlying societal and cultural reasons behind this absence of women in the workforce may prove to be an uphill battle.

With the highest chore gap in the world, women in India currently spend 352 minutes per day on unpaid work, compared to the 52 minutes that men spend carrying out unpaid tasks.

Many fear that the rise of Hindu nationalism has tied ‘Indianness’ to religion. But being Indian also means taking part – not just on election days, but every day – in the largest democratic experiment on earth.

Women in the state of Assam are indiscriminately affected by a process to identify illegal immigrants.

Survivor's perspectives are key to prevention and rehabilitation efforts, advocates argue. Young women are helping each other heal, while challenging the attitudes that contribute to trafficking in the first place.