A Kingdom of girls tucked away in an Indian village

Karolin Klüppel, a Berlin-based photographer, travelled to the Indian State of Meghalaya to capture one of the world’s rare matrilineal tribes through her photographic lens.

Ayesha Hasan Beenish Javed Rights women debarati mukherjee DW Women talk online Pakistan Global Media Forum violence Germany Soofia says Manasi Gopalakrishnan News roma rajpal Education Child marriage Boko Haram bollywood Abuse fashion marriage bangladesh womentalkonline nepal Afghan women Islamic State women’s rights gender malala India south asia school elections Kashmir girls Afghanistan Deutsche Welle rape latestMawlynnong, a small village tucked away in the Northeastern state of the Meghalaya, bordering Bangladesh, is popularly known as the ‘cleanest village in Asia’. Also touted as the ‘God’s own Garden’ for its mesmerizing scenic beauty, this village is home to the indigenous tribe Khasi.

“I was totally fascinated by this matrilineal tribe in India. Women and girls have a special standing in the Khasi culture. As a woman, you can feel another kind of respect there.” Karolin Klüppel, a Berlin-based photographer, stayed with local families in the village over a period of nine months to create her photo series ‘Mädchenland’ or ‘Kingdom of Girls’. Through her work, Klüppel, gives her viewers an insight into a culture where the women are considered special.

The series is a beautiful and refreshing insight into a country that has lately been making headlines across the world for crimes against women. Klüppel’s photographs capture young and confident girls that enjoy a lot of freedom and safety. The Khasi culture gives its women a lot of freedom and protects their rights. Children carry their mother’s surname and the youngest girl in the family is the heir to wealth and property. Upon marriage, her husband joins the heiress also known as Khaduh, in her marital home. Women that choose to divorce or remain single are not stigmatized in this society.

“I was very impressed by the self-assured appearance of the young girls in the village. I was surprised that they were so open and not at all shy.” Klüppel spent a lot of time with her protagonists and established close connections with the girls. “Some girls really loved to be photographed; it was like a game for them. They often visited me in my room and we spent a lot of time sitting together around the fire or going out for a swim in the river.”

Klüppel’s series captures the girls in their everyday lives, going about their chores, playing or posing for her. Art experte Gabriele Neußer draws out the striking resemblance of Klüppel’s images to motifs in European paintings. “The small child combing her hair in front of the mirror awakes memories of Velasquez “Venus at her Mirror” in the same pose. The girl diving under the surface of water reminds us of John Everet Millias’s ‘Ophelia’, whose literary template of a woman in a patriarchal society, who commits suicide, and was brought to life in Shakespeare’s Hamlet.”

Neußer believes that with these references, Klüppel considers motifs of Far Eastern reality through a culturally Western aesthetic viewpoint, displaying traditional Western patterns of perception and interpretation thereby questioning our acceptance of them.

View the picture gallery here

Lack of proper health care facilities for female sterilization in India

A woman, who underwent sterilization surgery at a government mass sterilisation “camp”, walks to sit in a hospital bed at a district hospital in Bilaspur, in the eastern Indian state of Chhattisgarh, November 13, 2014.
A woman, who underwent sterilization surgery at a government mass sterilisation “camp”, walks to sit in a hospital bed at a district hospital in Bilaspur, in the eastern Indian state of Chhattisgarh, November 13, 2014.

Women in rural India continue to lack access to proper family planning services. This issue came under spotlight with the tragic death of 16 women who were sterilized in a health camp in the northeastern State of Chhattisgarh in November 2014. The doctor who had performed the surgeries confessed in an interview that he had a history of completing 200-300 surgeries a day. It was also reported that women were given no follow up care.

Local governments often push sterilizations by offering a monetary compensation or material incentives in return for women who volunteer themselves for sterilization. Reports have highlighted the fact that women are soft targets for health workers in the country’s patriarchal setup. Indian media has also frequently reported on the inhuman conditions in ‘cattle camps’ where women are coerced to undergo sterilization without proper information. The International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) recently conducted a study and unveiled the deplorable conditions of health facilities in the state of Bihar.

ICRW Regional Director Ravi Varma told WTO that despite the grim reality there has been considerable improvement in the healthcare facilities over the last decade. “There has been an availability of outreach workers who attend to the maternity needs of pregnant mothers in the rural areas and there have been mobile vans connecting women in need of maternity services and connecting them to the public healthcare system.

Varma believes that the system is overwhelmed because of the lack of coordinated planning with the rural family planning centers. “For example at the sub center level of the primary healthcare, if they have to meet certain targets of women undergoing sterilizations, those targets are not based on the realistic assessment on the needs of the rural area. There may be women needing other birth control services rather than sterilization. But since there is a predetermined target, at local level they tend to ignore the data for family planning services,” stated Varma.

The ICRW report’s findings show that “women and community members are seldom educated on what defines quality care in health facilities”. It highlighted critical gaps such as the lack of adequate number of beds and toilets as well as equipment and drugs needed for sterilization services. The ICRW report’s findings further revealed that the hospitals lacked trained doctors and nurses and those on duty were overworked.

The biggest challenge however remains the lack of educational programs, campaigns and awareness efforts. The rural women interviewed during the ICRW study had little knowledge about their rights and entitlements and on what defines quality care at health facilities but if that were to change with increased awareness, both public and private healthcare systems could be made more accountable.

This post was first published here : http://blogs.dw.com/womentalkonline/2015/05/07/lack-of-proper-health-care-facilities-for-female-sterilization-in-india/

Social and feminist commentary through Indian Vintage Art

Royal Existentials is a weekly web-comic series that uses Indian vintage art and imagery as a backdrop for contemporary dialogues. Members of the Mughal family contemplate on conflict, problems of patriarchy and feminism. The miniature paintings tell ironic stories of Queens and Handmaidens who talk about smashing Patriarchy. Roma Rajpal Weiß, WTO Reporter spoke to Aarthi Parthasarathy, the Bengaluru-based author of the series on what inspired her to do the series.

How did you come up with the idea? What inspired you?

I love comics and graphic novels, always have. I spend inordinate amounts of time and money reading them, reading about them. The idea came to me about 3-4 years ago, when I first read David Malki’s webcomic Wondermark, in which he uses Victorian-era illustrations in a quirky style to create hilarious strips. At that time it was just a passing thought, and I didn’t take it forward then, for various reasons, which turned out to be a good thing.

In the last 2-3 years, I’ve spent a lot of time trying to understand things one sees around – various forms of social inequality – issues of race, gender, caste, class, sexuality. The churning seems to have taken this form. In August last year, I was developing the idea of using miniatures, and creating a contrast between the opulent settings and the dialogue on social and political issues. I made one on a whim, named it that night, uploaded it the next morning and announced that it was the first of a series. And then it was a question of just making them every week. It all happened very organically.

What sort of topics do you deal with in your series?

It deals with social inequality, as I mentioned earlier. The first few comics were a reaction to discussions on gender equality and feminism, as that was something I was engaging with at the time. It has since been addressing various issues, like the idea of democracy, representation, privilege, apathy, animal rights etc. These political comics are interspersed with comics on personal, philosophical angst and dilemmas – on the issues of loneliness, free will, right action, the meaning of life etc. Usually, it’s whatever I happen to be thinking about or engaging with that particular week.

Who is your target audience? How has the response been so far?

Well, there’s no target audience as such. I started making them because I liked making them, it was fun for me. Over a few weeks, they got popular with a niche audience, and the response has been great! People have been really supportive of it, there’s been a lot of interesting feedback that’s come our way, and great discussions and conversations around the themes of the comics. That’s been really encouraging and inspiring.

 

Please tell us about some of your female characters in the comics and their struggles with patriarchy.

An interesting aspect of re-appropriating these images as a writer is subverting women’s roles in these paintings. The women are portrayed as submissive, often accessories in these paintings. But in the writing, I make a conscious effort to create strong characters, give them the insights and the punch lines. Their struggles with patriarchy are articulated in a humorous, irony-filled manner – it helps me process current issues and unpack debates.

What are you currently working on?

I’m working on another project, as a writer, collaborating with artist Kaveri Gopalakrishnan on UrbanLore, a web-comic series about stories, conversations and observations on urban life in India. We just launched it last week, you can see it at: http://urbanlorecomics.com/

This post was first published at: http://blogs.dw.com/womentalkonline/2015/08/20/social-and-feminist-commentary-through-indian-vintage-art/

Lack of proper health care facilities for female sterilization in India

Women in rural India continue to lack access to proper family planning services. This issue came under spotlight with the tragic death of 16 women who were sterilized in a health camp in the northeastern State of Chhattisgarh in November 2014. The doctor who had performed the surgeries confessed in an interview that he had a history of completing 200-300 surgeries a day. It was also reported that women were given no follow up care.

Local governments often push sterilizations by offering a monetary compensation or material incentives in return for women who volunteer themselves for sterilization. Reports have highlighted the fact that women are soft targets for health workers in the country’s patriarchal setup. Indian media has also frequently reported on the inhuman conditions in ‘cattle camps’ where women are coerced to undergo sterilization without proper information. The International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) recently conducted a study and unveiled the deplorable conditions of health facilities in the state of Bihar.

ICRW Regional Director Ravi Varma told WTO that despite the grim reality there has been considerable improvement in the healthcare facilities over the last decade. “There has been an availability of outreach workers who attend to the maternity needs of pregnant mothers in the rural areas and there have been mobile vans connecting women in need of maternity services and connecting them to the public healthcare system.”

Varma believes that the system is overwhelmed because of the lack of coordinated planning with the rural family planning centers. “For example at the sub center level of the primary healthcare, if they have to meet certain targets of women undergoing sterilizations, those targets are not based on the realistic assessment on the needs of the rural area. There may be women needing other birth control services rather than sterilization. But since there is a predetermined target, at local level they tend to ignore the data for family planning services,” stated Varma.

The ICRW report’s findings show that “women and community members are seldom educated on what defines quality care in health facilities”. It highlighted critical gaps such as the lack of adequate number of beds and toilets as well as equipment and drugs needed for sterilization services. The ICRW report’s findings further revealed that the hospitals lacked trained doctors and nurses and those on duty were overworked.

The biggest challenge however remains the lack of educational programs, campaigns and awareness efforts. The rural women interviewed during the ICRW study had little knowledge about their rights and entitlements and on what defines quality care at health facilities but if that were to change with increased awareness, both public and private healthcare systems could be made more accountable.

This post was first published here: http://blogs.dw.de/womentalkonline/2015/05/07/lack-of-proper-health-care-facilities-for-female-sterilization-in-india/

A boon for victims? Egalcops

Egalcops has been conceived as an online system where women can lodge complaints against harassment. The founder, Deepanshu Tripathi, believes that women would be more comfortable putting in their complaints online rather than going to a police station in India.

Tell me how you came up with the idea.

I came up with the idea of this website after the reading about several offenses against girls in the news within a short span of time at the end of last year.

As the internet is major source of communication nowadays, I felt the need for a system where girls could lodge their complaint online without visiting the police station and facing rude officials. In addition, I think girls would feel more comfortable making a complaint online rather than reporting directly to police officials about what they had suffered.

Although most of the state police in our country (India) have launched their own portals to lodge a complaint online, people hardly know about them, people do not even remember the portal’s name or internet address. So I made this website to provide a centralized and unique (across the country) online platform for girls to report a crime.

Did your idea have to something with the gang rape in December?

The idea actually struck my mind when I was reading something about the Bollywood actress and director Pooja Bhatt being threatened by obscene calls. I thought, if a public figure like Pooja Bhatt is not treated properly on those help line numbers provided by the government, how can a common girl rely on them? I saw the need to provide an online alternative for these help lines as internet is being used widely in our country.

The gang rape incident on December 16 does not have anything to do with my idea directly, but I can’t deny the fact that this incident created a traumatic environment for few days, which inspired me to do something good for our society.

Tell me how your concept works in reality.

The concept is very easy, you make an online complaint in the website while sitting at your own desk then your complaint will be forwarded to the corresponding local police.

How many complaints have you received so far?

I am getting some positive responses from the people. Most of them are girls who are appreciating me for this endeavor. The site is getting popular gradually, hopefully every girl comes to know about this website and it works.

Who processes the complaint?

Well, my website has not been approved by any government law enforcement bodies yet. You must be aware how tough it is to get your work being approved by a government in India and that too when you are just a 22-year-old common guy with no official contacts. But I am looking for a higher officer for discussion to connect this website with police.

I am also working on developing an automatic system which will forward the complaint to the corresponding police automatically after the user lodges it. For that I need the support of the state governments to connect it with their police.

Visit the website: www.egalcops.com