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Digital library: Another tool for biopiracy The proposed digital library will offer thousands of pages of traditional Indian knowledge on a platter. But it will also enable private companies to manipulate what is already known and project it as an invention or a novelty More... Kerala's neo-literates lapse into the darkness of illiteracyEleven years ago Chelakkodan Ayesha announced Kerala's total literacy status by reading a verse from the Quran before a thundering crowd. Today she is fumbling over the letters in 'Kerala' and cannot write her own name. What has gone wrong? Why have Kerala's literacy levels plummeted from 95 to 80 per cent? More... Shabana:'I have the right to sell my body - and I will sell it'What does it mean to be a woman in prostitution? What does it mean to sell sex? In a first-person excerpt from 'Unzipped: Women and Men in Prostitution Speak Out', recently published by Point of View, Mumbai, the feisty Shabana, who works the highways on the Karnataka-Maharashtra border, but also distributes condoms in collaboration with two voluntary agencies, opens up to the reader her world of exploitation, survival, empowerment, victimhood and choice. The testimonies of the men and women who speak out in 'Unzipped' chip away at the myth that those in prostitution are eternal victims -- with no power to deal with the situations in which they find themselves. They also tell us that it is not just poverty that forces women into prostitution, but poverty acting in concert with gender. Until we stop marrying young girls off, until we stop burning, harassing and discriminating against young girls in ways big and small, the family will not be a safe place for young girls. The family will be a place to run away from...into the arms of a pimp, a shyster, or even a distant relative who is a gateway to prostitution. More... Genocide garba: Beyond GujaratGujarat, Godhra, genocide, garba and Gandhiji: these alliterative words pop up in the poet's mind in the two months since communal violence in Gujarat began. In this article Dilip Chitre reflects on the sub-texts and painful dissonances these words evoke More... AIDS vaccine trials in India: Ethical questionsThe AIDS vaccine trials in India are one step closer to fruition. Sandhya Srinivasan examines the ethical problems posed by such trials, particularly in developing countries More... Bhopal: The struggle of the gas-affected continuesIn a final disappearing act, Union Carbide has merged with Dow Chemicals, USA. Now, survivors of the world's worst industrial disaster are demanding that Dow take on the pending liabilities of Union Carbide. Seventeen years on, is clean drinking water, economic rehabilitation and health care too much to ask for? More... Building a new world at ParincheIn 1995, the Foundation for Research in Community Health began training semi-literate village women to diagnose and treat common health disorders. Today, Parinche's tais are not just barefoot healthworkers. They're also scripting an ecological, cultural and educational revolution in their villages More... The economics of TBTuberculosis in developing countries is not just a disease requiring effective medical treatment. It is a disease complicated by complex socio-economic problems such as unemployment, poverty and malnourishment. The story of tuberculosis in India is the story of people with no right to food, employment, shelter or healthcare. No wonder the figures for TB haven't changed all that much in the last few years More... Arsenic: Mass poisoning on an unprecedented scaleThe largest mass poisoning of a population in history is now underway in Bangladesh More... Cry, the beloved country: Reflections on the Gujarat massacreIn a candid first-person account of Gujarat after the recent communal riots, Harsh Mander talks of his horror at the brutality that took place in the state, and the shame he experiences at the abdication of duty of his peers in the civil and police administration More... Courts, contempt, and a climate that demands accountabilityPrashant Bhushan, counsel for Arundhati Roy in the contempt of court case in which she was convicted and fined, points out why it is vital to have free discussion and criticism of the role being played by the courts in India More... Kisan ki azadi, or middlemen ki azadi?Budget 2002 will go down in history as the beginning of the end of Indian agriculture More... Heat and dust, struggle and successTravelling through the villages of Gujarat, Huned Contractor finds that women have shrugged off the tradition of centuries to assume the dual roles of wage-earners and housewives. Women who had never travelled outside their villages now speak about their work at international fora. Harijan women who had to sit on the floor now proudly occupy the chair of the deputy sarpanch. It's nothing short of a revolution More... Growth sans developmentPolicymakers never fail to make a connection between the rate of economic growth and the apparent fall in poverty levels in the '90s. But the rhetoric is at variance with reality. The total number of poor has actually increased substantially in the decade following liberalisation More... |
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