Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Why should Sita be called Ram's wife, how about Ram being called Sita's husband
We may think that poverty leads to more trouble for women, but according to statistics percentage of female-headed families among below poverty line are 4 more times more compared to average female-headed families. So it not just financial status of a family that is deciding the social status and independence of Women. We have women reservation bills pending for statutory bodies, will these bills help? If just sending few women to power is going help, then problem should have been solved already, as Indira Gandhi (the most dynamic Prime Minister India ever had) ruled India for 15 years, Bangladesh having ladies as both prime minister and opposition leader, most of the South Asian countries were ruled by Women. But all this didn't give women in these countries equal status to women. So woman empowerment needs to happen at a mass scale, by providing education and employment opportunities. If we can’t provide compulsory education to entire population of India, it can at least be provided to the 50%(women) of it.
India stands in the top list in case of Women trafficking, where lakhs of women are forced in to flesh trade, which makes their life hell forever. Forcing them to live in dangerous conditions, without any help, either from government or Women rights organizations. At least I have never seen any women Right Organizations showing apathy for their fellow women who are suffering in this Trafficking. Best solution for this may be to give legal status and identification to them which will stop exploitation from others.
Sexual discrimination has diminished, but still we see it in abundance, like purdah system being prevalent in parts of the country. When Shabana Azmi speaks about kids text books teaching that “Father earns for family, Mother cooks for family” we may not take it seriously, but these sort of small things creates preconceptions which can grow stronger.
India is always thought to be a land where women are worshipped, but when we look back into history it just stinks with practices like Sati, Devadasi, Purdah Systems and this list continues. But at the same time we have unending list of Women who achieved great strides here. Better education and opportunities for women can get us to better society and may be somebody won’t need to change their surname after marriage.
Friday, January 8, 2010
Where is this Going?
September 2009 was the start for the chaos and anarchy in Andhra Pradesh (AP), the month in which then Chief Minister of AP YSR died in an helicopter crash. Largest budget state in India landed in to series of unfortunate events most of them man-made actually leader-made. This is perfect example of, what happens to a country or state, when there is no strong leader. After YSR died, there was a shameless race for CM's post and ultimately, a no leader becoming CM of AP, like the way we have our Prime minister, who can easily be remote controlled by High Command.
This leadership vacuum created an opportunity for every failed leader (all those who were kept aside by YSR) to try to grab a slice of public money, thus hunger strikes were started by leaders to divide the state and another group who were trying to keep AP united, both sides have their own vested interests. One will even be forced to think that all the drama can be run by other group who didn't get a chance to grab the power in state, by creating chaos and confusion, they may try to prove that current leadership is not capable. Trying to prove something which is obvious.
Outrageously enough the so called dynamic leader ChandraBabu Naidu is silent over all this and he doesn't have a stand even when the state is burning. And funnily enough politically inexperienced Chiranjeevi took an U-turn on the state bifurcation issue. Its completely out of my logic, to think about why was central government so much interested in announcing the state split and now repenting on it. I will only be forced to think that, may be center is to trying to weaken the local parties, so that they can get to 2 party system (defacto) at the center level.
Now when everything was cooling down, one of the local news channel telecasted about a capital house's conspiracy in YSR's death, resulting in wide spread riots all over Andhra. There was no reason for this to be telecasted NOW, except if somebody conspiring to create more problems, as this was a very old news on the source website. I sincerely hope that this is not true, as, if this is true, it will prove that Indian democracy is at stake. All we can pray is that, this is just a rumor and are views of people interested in conspiracy theories. All these events are making business houses going away from AP, Telugu people are shooting on their own feet. Its better to have a strong leader even if he is bad instead of being led by no leader.
With all these events happening there is only one person suffering "COMMON MAN"