The Delhi Diaries

It has almost been three decades since the 73rd Constitutional Amendment Act 1992 was passed, which granted 33% reservation for women in Panchayati Raj institutions ( PRI). The move was heralded as “ a watershed in the history of state initiative on political empowerment of rural women”. [1] The rationale for these reservations was to give women a platform to directly participate in decision-making in local self-government from which they historically have been denied. However, as Sudha Pai noted, participation of women in these institutions does not exist in the abstract but is heavily interwoven with ideological and cultural factors where social inequality and oppression are reflected and maintained. [2] In this short article I will argue that reservations for women have not gone far enough to empower women once they enter in to these positions. I will demonstrate that the lack of support for these women in the form of training and education in a strongly patriarchal socie...

This is the first year of the YIF programme where sexual harassment training and workshops are mandatory. Considering myself to be as woke a feminist as they come, I thought that I was well aware of the sexual harassment and consent terminology and didn’t think that there was anything else I could learn. So what is the point of having these sessions? Led by Dr Madhavi Menon, all students were briefed on the Ashoka sexual harassment policy; what constitutes as sexual harassment, how to make a complaint to the Committee on Sexual Harassment (or 'CASH' for short), what the procedure would be and what the penalties are if a student is found guilty. She kick-started the session with a short video from AIB which challenged some of the pre-conceived ideas of courting/stalking and other themes that are propagated in Bollywood films. The batch was then divided in to groups and each watched a series of short films, produced by Ashoka students which mimicked real-life scenarios of incid...