Girl Up Neev

"For me hearing my baba say “Mera bahadur baccha” was one of the highlights of our relationship. As a child, having my loved ones around was all that really mattered to me. I didn’t ponder about the materialistic things. To be a child is a warm and nurturing feeling. When I was 7, my ‘one and only’, my baba passed away, I felt like my world crumbled, My childhood with him was like a reservoir of love and happiness. Irrespective of everything around, he gave me love as I’d never known or felt.  A year before that I had lost my younger sister Raheen and that just increased the love and attachment I shared with baba. He always said, “My daughters are my everything” and he spent all his time just showing it to us through his actions. Two days before his death he told me that he’s coming home and I should wait for him. The jolly little child that I was, I was beaming with excitement. All I would do the whole day was keep singing “Mere baba aagaye, mere baba aagaye!” But the next I saw ...

  RECALL JUNE 12: CHILD LABOUR    Child labour, work that deprives children of their childhood, potential, dignity, and that is destructive to their physical and mental growth. However, children or adolescents who contribute to work that does not affect their health and personal development or interfere with their schooling is not considered as child labour. An example of the same can be when a child is helping his/her parents at home.  Children who discontinue school due to family indebtedness or are expelled from the school are more prone to child labour. Girls from socially disadvantaged groups are at a higher risk of being forced into child labour. For India, child labour has long term adverse effects. The economy of a country will only prosper when the country will have an educated workforce, skills, technology and the younger generation will be a part of human capital in the future. If child labour to a huge extent continues then there will be a trade-off with ...

Walking into any menswear  section of shops, one will find shades of pink in striped shirts. Similarly, women too storm the workforce in grey and blue color outfits to fulfil their career aspirations. This revolution makes everyone claim “ pink is the new blue !” Pink is the new blue can be portrayed in two ways, of which one is to show women’s dominance in today’s world compared to the past when they didn’t have the will of their own. The other being the stereotypic definition of gender, based on colors pink and blue. When people find a woman working at a construction site or driving a taxi that too at late-night shifts, one might comment “Pink is the new blue”. But if they discover a man performing household chores or looking after his children, would we ever spot them exclaiming “Blue is the new pink”? It’s highly uncertain! The point is the elimination of the belief that men are supposed to mend cars, and women are supposed to do household chores and look after their...

“Life is not a bed of roses, there are thorns too”. “One must learn to adjust in order to be happy”. “This is life, everything is not going to happen according to you”. Women have been taught these things for ages. They are expected to adjust to every situation. Indeed, life is a continuous process of adjustment but there is a difference between adjusting and remaining silent against all the wrong one is facing. I have loved watching daily soaps or as others would likely call it ‘typical saas-bahu drama’. I always thought they were just mere scripts being enacted by the characters on screen for entertainment. However, now as I observe the women around me it is heart-breaking to see what each one is going through. Those episodes were not just the dramatic representation of the characters in the script but also the sad reality which is not easily perceptible. Women have always been victims of unfair practices since olden times. Though we have come a long way, certain things remain un...

Porn & the Society: A detailed argument on the impact of the porn industry on relationships, society, and gender roles A team of researchers looked at 50 of the most popular porn films—the ones purchased and rented  most often. Out of the 304 scenes that the movie contained; 88% contained physical violence; 49%  contained verbal aggression; 95% of the victims (almost all of them women) either were neutral to  the abuse or appeared to respond with pleasure in porn videos. This shocking statistic says a lot  more about the mindset and mentality of the consumers as well as the producers.  Pornography is labelled as “enemy of the family”. It Is said that the human body is a temple and porn  is its unparalleled desecrator. It is linked to violent tendencies.  Studies have shown that repeated exposure to pornography causes a desire for more abnormal  violence such as rape. This affects not only their lives but also the lives of people around them. I...

ECONOMIC INEQUALITY “As long as poverty, injustice and gross inequality persist in our world, none of us can truly rest.”: Nelson Mandela Economic inequality is the unequal distribution of income and opportunity between different groups in society.  For instance, the 20:20 ratio compares how much richer the top 20% of people are, compared to the bottom 20%. Common examples: 50/10 ratio – describes inequality between the middle and the bottom of the income distribution. 90/10 – describes inequality between the top and the bottom. The most commonly used inequality measures are the Gini coefficient (based on the Lorenz curve) and the percentile or share ratios. These measures try to capture the overall dispersion of income; however, they tend to place different levels of importance on the bottom, middle and top end of the distribution. Education, at all levels, enhancing skills, and training policies can be used alongside social assistance programs to help people out of poverty and to...

  ECONOMIC INEQUALITY The first time I visited Mumbai was back in 2011, being an eight year old it was natural for me to see and experience certain things for the very first time in my life. The first time I had a vada pav, ate paani puri and not gol gappa, saw the beauty of Taj Hotel, went to a beach, saw sky-high buildings accessorized with the scorn slums. I couldn’t help asking my mother why this paragon of city, has been blotted with the stain of these slums, how a place which I ostensibly took as the city of the richest, could be the home of such filthy tramps. My mother explained how these tramps are the hands who maintain the glint of these tall glass buildings, who knead the dough for their cakes, who give their labour so that the rich can travel in their shiny wagons while they never hesitate to call them ‘tramps’.  It was then that I realised that the city of the richest was also the city of India’s largest slum and that India itself was the house of some of the ric...