Thanks for writing in! You’re right (sic!) on both counts: part of the long term struggle is certainly to change the perspective to ‘women’s rights *are* human rights’, and yes, sometimes it’s the existence of prejudiced political will rather than the absence of it, that causes the most harm.

Thanks too for the support, both online and offline. :)

I think you have two things working against you:

1)The feeling that “women’s rights” come a distant second to “human rights”.

2) the lack of political will (maybe the EXISTENCE of political ill-will regarding the subject: remember the Shah Bano ruling?)

I’m glad you don’t feel the obstacles are overwhelming, as shown by your insistence of “right here right now!” and “if you (the govt) don’t WE will!

Every bit counts! Rock on!

@Divya: You’re right, that the media play a significant role in changing our attitudes and perceptions, but change (unlike charity?), should begin at home. With small steps, but big impact. Though sometimes, people find, that it’s easier to begin elsewhere than at home…

@Mike: I am not jaded (yet), but I am sometimes filled with a mixture of great despair and great optimism, not always one or the other. And I do not believe that the answers all lie with NGOs - I think civil society organisations often falter in their own mandates on accountability and integrity, and we need to be ever-watchful of the language of rights turning into the language of righteousness.

I also believe that the state needs always to be challenged - by the very people it claims to represent, and be for. And I do believe that since state institutions have the widest reach - and the greatest responsibility - we should not allow them to abdicate one and lose the other by withdrawing from engagement. Though I recognise that the nature of that engagement (or dis-engagement) depends on the political context and moment.

Finally, some of the most productive engagement is when civil society organisations and the State partner together - as in some of the work we do - with the courage to hold the mirror up to each other, and themselves.

@Raghunath: Yes, it’s not just about one region or the other, it feels as though families and communities across India have very little value for the girl child. And even less for when she grows up.

@N: Well, just adding my support to the voices that need to be heard, that you’ve been talking about in your posts on female genocide. May those voices grow louder and more powerful.

I must commend you again not only for your thoughtful posts but also on the kind of work you do everyday. I admire that you are not jaded enough to resort to cliches about how corrupt the government is and how futile it might be to sensitize police officers. You do seem to have such a sense of faith in the entrenched institutions of the state. While I do believe that the NGO sector can offer powerful correctives to the practices of the state, I myself am less optimistic about the possibility of systemic and structural transformation within state institutions.

I didn’t say that about virtual versus real networks, you did! [on my facebook many eons ago]

I work in Customer Relations, where I write letters to idiots everyday. Believe me when I say that this is my intellectual fix!!!

I do remember getting into a debate about feminism with a couple of friends in university.

We feel that feminism’s focus should be on women who really need it, i.e abused women, and combating gender based violence!

And I learnt that abuse is not something that ‘happens to other people’ as well.

Its such a vicious and repetitive cycle, and whenever my best friend used to show up with too much concealer in strange places, we all knew that ‘HE’ was at it again.

It does not help that our culture encourages a woman to be subservient to men…

The idea that 50 million women have been ‘lost’ is mind-boggling to me because that number is at leat ten times the population of Singapore.

I feel that efforts to educate Indians about abuse against women should not be limited to some government sponsored message that pays mere lip service.

I find it as horrifying as you do that the MEDIA hosts a talk show and potrays that ‘women don’t need feminism anymore’. ON WOMEN’S DAY…

And it isn’t limited to the news channels alone. One needs to look no further than popular television channels to see abuse [emotional as well as physical] glorified and glamourised in the endless number of popular tele-serials.

There is much that needs to change before women can be truly ‘liberated’. And the MEDIA is the only entity powerful enough to take on the challenge of changing the attitudes of one billion people.

Sincerely,
Div