"Yes, we fight rapists with lathis (sticks). If we find the culprit, we thrash him black and blue so he dare not attempt to do wrong to any girl or a woman again," brags Sampat Devi Pal, founder of the Pink Sari Gang, popularly known as the Gulabi Gang. Rooted in one of the poorest and most populated villages of Bundelkhand in Uttar Pradesh, north India, this all woman group prides in its...
One Future Inspire is a series of interviews with young people across countries, borders, spectrums of work and being. These people share a common quality -- they inspire us. Our aim is to bring their work to the fore with the hope that it might ignite a spark in someone, somewhere. Team One Future interviewed Chintan Modi -- a writer, educator, researcher and teacher trainer based in Mumbai. At present, he consults with the Prajnya...
Here’s to stronger, ambitious, content and empowered women. The Oxford dictionary defines empowerment as “the process of becoming stronger and more confident, especially in controlling one’s life and claiming one’s rights”. While the Indian constitution bestows upon the women six fundamental rights, I believe that in most circumstances, women are not in control of their lives enough to make free-willed and rational choices. A major part of this empowerment is derived from being financially independent. To...
An answer to Indian school Principals’ woes? School leadership is needed to develop learning communities, build the professional capacity of teachers, take advice from parents, engage in collaborative and consultative decision making, resolve conflicts, engage in effective instructional leadership, and attend respectfully, immediately and appropriately to the needs and requests of families with diverse cultural, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds, while delivering to national and international reforms and goals. In a nutshell, school leadership is supposed...
It’s time we disengage and shift our mindsets. Think patriarchy and the first thought in any mind would pivot around its impact on women — whether in peacetime or in conflict. Society is divided according to gender, among other factors.[1] The concerted assertion of male domination eventually went on to create a social system, namely, patriarchy. In a patriarchal system, the males hold primary power, laying their dominance in all spheres — political leadership, economic...
In January 1992, the Earth Summit in Rio formalised the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which articulated a concept called “Common but Differentiated Responsibilities,” or CBDR. Specifically, under Article 3, Paragraph 1, and Article 4, paragraph 1, the comprehensive convention speaks about how all the states in the world have a shared obligation to address environmental destruction, but it denies equal responsibility of all states with respect to protecting the environment. Sitting...
We are in the Anthropocene. The world’s geological age puts us in the heart of what’s called the “Anthropocene”, an era where human activity has been the dominant influence on the climate and the environment. In all of its history, the world is youngest at this moment in terms of its population with the youth alone accounting for 18% of the world’s population. The number of youth between the ages of 15 and 24...