Deepali Gaur Singh is a Bangalore-based (Karnataka, India) academic and media practitioner. She is the author of the book ‘Drugs Production and Trafficking in Afghanistan,’ published by Pentagon Press which focuses on the economy and politics of Afghanistan, in particular, the effects of the narcotics trade on the security and stability of the region as also globally. She has an M.Phil. and Ph.D. on Tajikistan and Afghanistan from the Central Asian Studies Division, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Deepali is also a filmmaker and photographer. She has been actively engaged with developmental organisations in rural Karnataka, Rajasthan, New Delhi and Orissa documenting social change and developing an archive of alternative images in different media on issues ranging from early childcare and primary education, health, environment to the informal sector workforce. She has also made a film on the situation of immigrants in Germany where she studied at the University of Hanover while on a DAAD scholarship in July 2000. As a freelancer she has researched and written extensively on Afghanistan and the new Central Asian Republics. Many of her writings have been published in Indian national dailies like, the Deccan Herald and in Kabul Press, an Afghanistan-based news and current affairs website. She is the recipient of the NTS-Asia post doctoral Research fellowship, 2009-2010. She is a member of the Cluster for Excellence, Karl Jaspers Centre for Transcultural Studies, University of Heidelberg and has been awarded a post doctoral fellowship by the DFG (German Research Foundation) at the cluster between November 2008 to January 2009 and August 2009 to January 2010.
India is a country of contrasts in not just the multiplicity of religions and faiths but also cultural contexts. So while in one part of the country a law is formulated to safeguard the rights of women in live-in relationships in another part of the country women are facing physical assaults for being dressed in “western attire.”
While pregnant women’s lack of access to basic medical facilities in India is entrenched, social attitudes around the accepted role of women as childbearers worsen maternal health in the country.
Removing the stigma accorded to live-in relationships takes into account the plight of women who have been tricked into marriage into socially ambiguous, sexually exploitative relationships.
While honor killings elicit attention as a primordial custom, the fact is that this form of violence is part of a much larger problem that transcends cultures and religions.
While being sensitive towards the demands on women with regard to parenting, the new law does little to promote the notion of child-rearing as a shared responsibility.
In response to terrorist attacks in Mumbai, more power will be vested in state machinery to be better prepared for a similar crisis in the future. That very same power can be used to exploit women.
Rather than targeting the most at-risk populations, ideological provisions in PEPFAR marginalize sex workers and all women. The next administration can take the ideology out.
Stories in a new anthology on HIV in India swing from touching to tortured, poignant to pragmatic, as the writers expose the lives of the real people behind the stereotypes of sex workers, the police, homosexuals, transgenders and most of all, positive persons.
Sixty percent of the under-five deaths in India occur in just five states. An Indian child’s chance of celebrating the fifth birthday clearly depends on the state or community it is born into.
A woman carrying a fetus with high chance of deformation was denied an abortion in India. The country’s response highlights the complexity of writing abortion law in a country plagued by sex-selective abortions.
