'India has continued to make very little headway in improving the status of human development within the country, moving up only five notches on the United Nation’s recently released Human Development Index (HDI), a ranked list that measures various dimensions of human well-being. According to the report, which was published on Monday, India placed at 130 out of a list of over 180 countries and continues to remain in the ‘medium human development category’— a group of countries that includes Botswana (Rank 106), Iraq (Rank 121), and Cambodia (Rank 143)...
'The judgment of the Supreme Court in the Raj Bala case deals a near fatal blow to the health of the Indian democracy. In essence, the court has held that those who have no formal education, those who have no “functioning toilet” and those who are in rural indebtedness cannot contest an election for the position of sarpanch. The judgment effectively disenfranchises – and it recognises this – 68% of Scheduled Caste women, 41% of Scheduled Caste men and over 50% of all women in Haryana from contesting a panchayat election.
;Forget cuss words, now even the images of Indian goddesses have failed to make the cut in front of the Indian censor board. In the soon-to-be-released film Angry Indian Goddesses, amongst the 17 cuts that the Indian censor board wanted filmmakers to make, was the blurring of the images of two Indian goddesses -- a picture of Lakshmi in the credits, and later in the movie, a picture of Kali. Movie producer Gaurav Dhingra said that he had failed to make the cut in front of the revising committee.
'Prominent Sunni Muslim leader Kanthapuram Aboobacker Musliyar Saturday said gender equality was “against Islam”. Addressing a Sunni students’ camp in Kozhikode, the orthodox Sunni leader said, “Where has man-woman equality taken place? It is not going to happen. Gender equality is against Islam, society and human kindness.” “The world is controlled by men. Women have strength in other areas… They can deliver babies. Only women can nurture babies. Her duty is to rear children and feed the husband,’’ Musliyar said...'
'Track legend P T Usha has shot off a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi protesting against the decision of School Games Federation of India to organise the athletic events for boys and girls separately. In her letter, Usha cited the SGFI calendar, showing that athletic events for boys and girls will be held separately in the second week of January 2016 and fourth week of December this year in Nasik and Pune respectively. SGFI is the national apex body for organising various sports and games among all Indian schools.
'On Tuesday, AAP party workers protested outside the MLA's house with regard to his sexist remarks against Alka Lamba. Bharatiya Janata Party lawmaker, O P Sharma was suspended from the Delhi assembly for making derogatory and sexist remarks about Aam Aadmi Party MLA, Alka Lamba on Tuesday. The Hindustan Times quotes the MLA's remarks as "Ye toh Raat Bhar ghumne wali”.
'Reacting to Aamir Khan's statement about intolerance, BJP MLA Satish Mahana from Kanpur, in Uttar Pradesh suggested that perhaps Aamir's wife Kiran Rao wanted to be strip-searched in an airport in America, reported NavBharat Times. Perhaps, Mahana was referring to the incidents where people are strip-searched in airports to check if anyone is hiding any illegal substances.
'The age old practice of shunning menstruating women from temples has been placed effectively under the scanner now by a 20 year old Facebook campaigner named Nikita Azad. Support for her is snowballing into a massive drive. Her campaign ‘#HappyToBleed’ was started in response to a priest of Sabarimala temple in Kerala who said that they will allow women to enter the temple, only after a machine is invented to detect which of them are menstruating. “There will be a day when a machine is invented to scan if it is the 'right time' (not menstruating) for a woman to enter the temple.”
'Liberal, rebellious and progressive to the core, Ismat Chughtai (1915-1991), enfant terrible of Urdu literature, fought parochialism all her life. She led from the front and lived by her own principles. One of her daughters was married to a Hindu while the other was married to a Parsi. She didn't consume beef, not because of the Hindutva diktat, but to respect the sentiments of her Hindu grandson. And when she died she was cremated at Chandanwadi because she had willed so.
'Human resource development (HRD) minister Smriti Irani on Friday found herself in a spot when her remarks that women in the country are not told what to wear, whom to meet and where to go, drew voices of dissent from an audience she was addressing. "In India I don't think any woman is dictated what to wear, how to wear, whom to meet, when to meet....I am of the opinion I don't think anybody is dictated here, you are not told," she said while interacting with New Yorkbased journalist Tina Brown at an event in New Delhi...'
