Nearly 70 percent of women with a common type of early-stage breast cancer can undergo hormone therapy alone.
A MAJORITY OF WOMEN with early stages of a common type of breast cancer may safely be able to forego postoperative chemotherapy.

According to a long-awaited study presented Sunday at the American Society of Clinical Oncology, about 70 percent of women with early stages of the most common type of breast cancer can avoid chemotherapy and its debilitating side effects after surgery.

The findings were published in the New England Journal of Medicine and show that patients with an intermediate risk of cancer recurrence, which affects about 65,000 women a year in America, can avoid the post-op treatment and receive only hormone therapy, which has less severe side effects.

The study examined how well a vastly used genetic test assessed cancer risk based on 21 genes linked with breast cancer recurrence. It concluded that using this test to evaluate the risk of recurrence “can spare women unnecessary treatment if the test indicates that chemotherapy is not likely to provide benefit,” lead author Dr. Joseph Sparano said in a press release.

Sparano is the associate director for clinical research at the Albert Einstein Cancer Center and Montefiore Health System and vice chair of the ECOG-ACRIN Cancer Research Group. He said the results of the study, designed and led by the ECOG-ACRIN Cancer Research Group, “give clinicians high-quality data to inform personalized treatment recommendations for women.”

The study examined 10,273 women beginning in 2006 with hormone-receptor-positive, human epidermal growth factor receptor 2-negative, axillary node-negative breast cancer. Participants’ tumors were analyzed using the 21-gene expression tests and given a risk score from zero to 100 for cancer recurrence. Women with scores of zero to 10 (low risk) received only hormone therapy. Women with scores of 26 and above (high risk) were treated with both hormone and chemotherapy. Women with scores between 11 and 25 (intermediate risk) were randomly assigned to receive solely hormone therapy or a mix of the therapies.

At the end of the study, which was the largest of its kind, researchers found the number of women who had survived, developed a recurrence or a second primary cancer was very similar in both the hormone therapy-only group and the chemotherapy group. At five years, the overall survival rate was 98 percent for women who only received hormone therapy and 98.1 percent for women who received both therapies.

Can We Develop a Vaccine for Breast Cancer?

Women with a score of zero to 10 also had very low recurrence rates – 3 percent – with a hormone-only treatment at nine years.

According to the press release, these results suggest that “chemotherapy is not beneficial for most women in the intermediate-risk group,” which was uncertain before the study.

“Before TAILORx, there was uncertainty about the best treatment for women with a mid-range score of 11–25 on the Oncotype DX Breast Recurrence Score test. The trial was designed to address this question and provides a very definitive answer,” Sparano said. “Any woman with early-stage breast cancer age 75 or younger should have the 21-gene expression test and discuss the results with her doctor to guide her decision to the right therapy.”

Only a fifth of women who are working, decide on their own where to spend their earnings, finds the latest round of the NationalFamily Health Survey. A staggering sixty-one percent of working women say that such decisions are made jointly, while 17 percent say that it’s mostly the husband who makes such decisions. This situation appears to be unchanged over the past decade.

On the other hand, the survey finds that roughly two-thirds of women now participate in major household decisions such as women’s health care, major household purchases and visits to their friends and family. In fact, women’s participation rate has seen a marked improvement over the past decade.

In decisions regarding the major household purchase, the percentage of women involved has increased from 53 percent in 2005-06 to 73 percent in 2015-16. In the case of own health care, it has increased from 62 percent to 75 percent, while in the case of visits to friends and family, it has increased to 75 percent, from 61 percent earlier.

Perhaps, this is an outcome of rising incomes of women. The survey finds that the percentage of who earn almost as much as their husbands more than doubling from 20 percent in 2005-06 to 42 percent in 2015-16.

There has also been a marked improvement in a women’s freedom to move around. According to the survey, in 2005-06 only a third of women in the age group of 15-49 were allowed to go alone to the market, health facility and to places outside the village. By comparison, in 2015-16, the same is estimated at 41 percent.

But attitudes towards wife beating have not changed much since 2005-06, nor has there been a change in the percentage of women who say that women can refuse sex to their husband.

On the health side, there has been a marked decline in the use of tobacco across both sexes according to the latest round of the NFHS.

While 10.8 percent of women in the age group of 15-49 used to use tobacco in 2005-06, this has dropped to 6.8 percent in 2015-16. Interestingly, in urban areas, it is lower at 4.4 percent, while in rural areas it is higher at 8.1 percent. For men, the comparable estimates are 57 percent in 2005-06 and 44.5 percent in 2015-16.

In the case of alcohol, the decline is of a much lower magnitude. The percentage of women consuming alcohol has declined from 2.2 percent in 2005-06 to 1.2 percent in 2015-16, while for men the comparable estimates are 31.9 percent and 29.2 percent.

PTI

Mrs. Shobhana Ranade – a calm and composed lady, has dedicated over half a century of her life for the betterment of the downtrodden, particularly women and children.

She has spearheaded the Gandhi National Memorial Society and a national training institute for women at the Aga Khan Palace in Pune in 1979.

Mrs. Ranade was an active volunteer at a time when the Mahatma’s Quit India Movement was gaining ground. She embodies the Gandhian principles and is the quintessential Gandhian. Thoughts of Mahatma Gandhi and Vinoba Bhave influenced her to work for destitute women and underprivileged children.

In 1955, she moved to Assam and started a school ‘Shishu Niketan’ and the first child welfare centre in the oil town of Digboi. She also worked in tribal villages in Nagaland and NEFA (Arunachal Pradesh) for women empowerment. Through the Adim Jaati Seva Sangh, Naga tribal women were given special training in weaving and spinning. She also started a Khadi Bhandar in Kohima. She works and lives fearlessly and that is what she preaches to the children and women of the projects.

As a Trustee of the Kasturba Gandhi National Trust, Mrs. Ranade has dedicated her life and energies to ensure women’s empowerment, development, equality and education.

She also worked for the overall development of the children, especially orphans, underprivileged and street children.

The Trust’s State office located at Saswad, in Purandar Taluka in Pune is set up over a sprawling area of 11 acres; of which 6 acres is used for farming and 5 acres to conduct various activities of the Ashram. The Balgriha currently takes care of over 40 young, deprived girls by providing them shelter, food and education to enable them to live a happy and meaningful life.

Mrs. Ranade has emphasized on empowerment and emancipation of women. Women are empowered through the Ashram’s bakery unit, farming, and vegetation. Besides, they are also trained in over 20 village industrial trades and vocational skills viz. tailoring, flour making, preparing food items, jewellery, and many more.

Towards children’s upliftment and development, Mrs. Ranade directs her Organisation on various programs and initiatives for the welfare and upliftment of the street children. The Hermann Gmeiner Social Centre situated at Shivajinagar, Pune, provides education, nutritional food, healthcare, counseling and rehabilitation to the street kids. Around 60 children, who were unclean, undisciplined, prone to malnutrition and various addictions are taught basic personal hygiene and are each provided with a set of toiletries and a locker to keep their belongings.

The SOS Children’s Villages Balgram is yet another noble endeavor set up to provide the orphans and the destitute children their right to a family. Mrs. Ranade has been instrumental in establishing the SOS Children’s Villages in Maharashtra. It runs on rights-based principle, rather than need-based ideas, providing a sense of protection and security, emotional support and love through family care, warmth and affection. At the SOS Village Balgram, a mother is given the responsibility to take care of the overall development of a group of 10 children.

It is worth noting that some of these women leave and sacrifice their family responsibilities to take care of the abandoned and destitute.

In Maharashtra, there are three SOS villages – Pune, Latur and Alibaug. The first Balsadan was started at Vinobaji’s ancestral village — Gagode in Raigad, Maharashtra.

It is commendable to see the unstinting welfare and developmental work done by Mrs. Shobhana Ranade. A transformational leader and a firebrand social worker indeed, Mrs. Ranade personally mentors every sevika right from the time of selection. She visits them in remote villages, stays with them and with emotional support and frequent discussions guides them to solve the various issues in line with Gandhian philosophies. She has worked with Vinobaji as a Convenor of Stree Jagaran at Pavnar and also as the Chairman of the ‘Bhoodan”Gram Dan’ board of Maharashtra.

Awards and Honours Mrs. Ranade has numerous awards and accolades to her credit, the most recent and notable being the Padma Bhushan for Social Work in 2011. Others include National Award for Child Welfare Services (1983); the Ahilyabai Holkar Award for Women and Child Development by the Government of Maharashtra (2001); the Gandhi Sanmaan Award by the Government of Madhya Pradesh; Rajiv Gandhi Manav Seva Award by the Ministry of Women and Child Development, Government of India (2007) .

Activists in Ireland are calling for the country’s new pro-choice law to be named after Savita Halappanavar, a 31-year-old Indian dentist whose death in 2012 galvanised the ‘Yes’ campaign and who became the face of the movement ahead of Friday’s historic referendum.

As a result of the nearly 70-30 decision, the 8th amendment of Ireland’s Constitution will be repealed and replaced with an “enabling provision for the regulation of termination of pregnancy”.

Leading Ireland-based campaigners said they will support a move to have the new law named after Savita, whose Karnataka-based father, Andanappa Yalagi, has called for it to be referred to as “Savita’s Law”. Yalagi told the Irish Times: “We have one last request, that the new law, that it is called ‘Savita’s Law’. It should be named for her.”

Together For Yes, an umbrella group representing pro-repeal organisations, said at a news conference in Dublin that it would support naming the new law after Savita.

The government did not immediately comment on this demand.

The group also called on the government to start immediately working on legislation.

“We’ve got justice,” says Savita Halappanavar’s father after Ireland votes to repeal abortion ban

Abortion referendum: Ireland on brink of history as ‘No’ campaign concedes defeat

Orla O’Connor, chair of the campaign, said: “The people have spoken. We were here to repeal the 8th (amendment) and we did.”

Moving tributes were paid at a memorial to Halappanavar in Dublin after the referendum resulted in a resounding “Yes” vote, reflecting major changes in the Catholic country that until recently resisted reforms such as same-sex marriage.

Eulogies to Savita included messages such as: “Sorry we were too late. But we are here now, we didn’t forget you”, and “I’m so deeply sorry you had to suffer. You have changed our history and our destiny.”

Halappanavar, who moved to Ireland with her husband Praveen, died of sepsis in Galway in 2012 after being denied an abortion during a protracted miscarriage. Irish law imposed a near-total ban on abortion, forcing thousands to fly to Britain and other countries to terminate pregnancies, because the eighth amendment to Ireland’s Constitution, introduced in 1983, “acknowledges the right to life of the unborn”.

Prime Minster Leo Varadkar, whose election in June 2017 was also hailed as a sign of major social change in Ireland, called the Yes vote a “quiet revolution”.Ireland on voted overwhelmingly to overturn the abortion ban by 66.4 per cent to 33.6 per cent, according to a media report.

A referendum held resulted in a landslide win for the repeal side. Currently, abortion is only allowed when a woman’s life is at risk, but not in cases of rape, incest or fatal foetal abnormality.

The Eighth Amendment, which grants an equal right to life to the mother and unborn will be replaced.

One of the key cases influencing the debate on abortion in Ireland was that of Indian dentist Savita Halappanavar, who died of sepsis in a hospital in Galway after being denied an abortion during a protracted miscarriage in 2012.

Her husband Praveen had told her inquest she requested a termination but was refused because the baby’s heart was still beating. A midwife manager at Galway University Hospital confirmed that she told Halappanavar that a termination could not be carried out because Ireland was a “Catholic country”. The inquest into her death returned a verdict of medical misadventure.

People celebrate the result of the referendum on liberalizing abortion law, in Dublin, Ireland, May 26, 2018. (REUTERS)
Her death had triggered a massive debate in the country over the issue of life-saving abortions and resulted in a new law that allows abortions under extreme circumstances. The Irish Parliament voted to legalise abortion in cases of medical emergencies as well as the risk of suicide in July, 2013.

With a win for the Yes vote, the existing article of the Constitution which was inserted in 1983 – and the 1992 additions – will be replaced with this text: “Provision may be made by law for the regulation of termination of pregnancy”, the report said.

The Catholic church had strongly opposed repealing the amendment and Irish bishops warned in a joint statement, “We believe that the deletion or amendment of this article can have no other effect than to expose unborn children to greater risk and that it would not bring about any benefit for the life or health of women in Ireland.

PTI

It’s 10 am. Shanno Sidiqui has sent her three children to school and completed all household chores. The 30-year-old knows what she has to do next. She pulls out mounds of threads piled on the porch of her small three-roomed brick house and gets to work. In the next four hours, she will spin out 50 kilograms of these threads or katran (extra threads snipped off saris) into colourful yarn. Each kilogram of this woven rope will fetch her Rs 80/ at the local market, four times the sum she has paid to buy katran of the same weight.

“These are discarded thread from looms. They are of no use to the weavers. But for me, these unwanted threads have changed my life. I have been able to send my children to a private English medium school and also been able to build my own house,” said Sidiqui.

Start of a new story

Sidiqui is not the only one. Many marginalised women in Jamgaon, a small village in Uttar Pradesh, 74 kilometers from Varanasi, are weaving a new story in their lives. Threads (katran), which become superfluous once a sari is woven and considered worthless by weavers, are helping women from economically and socially backward communities pull their families out of poverty.

While economic empowerment has been the primary focus, the women have also quietly managed to weave communal harmony through this process. Traditionally, an art practiced by the Muslims, women from this community showed great heart by sharing their skills with women from all castes and communities and enabling them to boost their incomes.

It all began five years ago when Sidiqui was looking for ways to augment the family income. Keeping the home fires burning with the income earned by her husband Kalim Sidiqui was becoming difficult. Her husband worked on a powerloom in Varanasi. He managed to weave three saris in the 12 hours he worked every day. For this he received a paltry amount of Rs 375. “I could work for 12 hours continuously only if there was electricity. Power cuts were very common. So actually it would mean working for more than 12 hours. My income was dependent on the number of saris I could weave in those 12 hours,” pointed out Kalim.

Considering the hours of work and the distance from his home, Kalim had to rent a room close to his place of work. Although this was a strain on his finances, Kalim had no choice. He was also unable to visit his family as often as he wanted. On occasions when he came home, Sidiqui could see the long hours and hard work was beginning to tell on Kalim’s health.

Collectives empowering women

So, in 2012, when Sidiqui, mother of two small children and pregnant with her third, heard that being a member of a self-help group (SHG) could facilitate thrift and credit, she jumped at the idea.

“Sidiqui had studied till Class 5 and understood the importance of saving. When we were helping women form self-help groups in Jamgaon in Sonbhadra district, Sidiqui was among the first to become member. She also persuaded other women from her community and neighbourhood to join. Once the first SHG in Jamgaon was formed, it set the ball rolling for other women. They overcame their hesitation and came forward,” recalled Ram Naresh, field officer, Rajiv Gandhi Mahila Vikas Pariyojana (RGMVP), a not-for-profit working for women’s empowerment and poverty alleviation. The RGMVP is working in 51 districts in the state and has so far mobilized over 1,500,000 women, facilitating the formation of over 132,000 SHGs.

In Jamgaon, during the SHG meetings, women were also given information by the organisation about various livelihood options available to improve their financial status. They were encouraged to become economically independent by taking loans from their SHGs to start income generating activities. Sidiqui, who had learnt the art of turning katran into yarn before marriage from her maternal uncles employed in this business, decided to try her hand at it. She took a loan of Rs 5,000 from her SHG and bought 50 kgs of katran. Since converting the katran into rope initially required deft hands, Sidiqui didn’t need to invest in any loom. By intertwining the threads between two wooden rods, she used her hands to twist it into rope.

The business has helped Shanno Sidiqui and her husband and transformed their lives. Pic: Swapna Majumdar

So profitable did this turn out to be that within six months, Sidiqui was able to repay the loan. Buoyed by her success, Sidiqui asked her husband to leave his job and join her so that they could roll out a greater volume of rope. “This way we could be together and also earn more. He agreed and has been working with me for the past five years. Now, we buy 1500 kgs of katran every month. But had it not been for the SHG, I could not have started my business or even dreamt of a better life,” said Sidiqui.

It was not just Kalim who realised the worth of the business. Neighbour Farzana Khan, a member of another SHG formed with RGMVP help, saw the change in Sidiqui’s life and decided to follow in her footsteps. “I saw her transformation and was inspired. So, I asked her to teach me so that I could also give my family a better quality of life,” said Khan.

Once she learnt the ropes, Khan began getting good returns. When she realised that she could double her profits, Khan took a loan of Rs 10,000 from her SHG so that she could buy greater quantities of katran. Khan’s husband, then working as a daily wager having been laid off from the loom in Varanasi, joined his wife. So good has been the income that he hasn’t needed to look for another job.

Weaving communal harmony

Sidiqui initially taught her extended family and neighbours, all belonging to her community. When Hindu women from the SHGs expressed their desire to learn and earn, she had no qualms in teaching them too.

Rita Devi and Bindu Devi are among the 20 women who have learnt this trade so far. For Rita, this additional source of income has helped her to provide her three children better nutrition. “Both my husband and I are daily wagers. But our earnings are not enough to feed my children good food. But now I can afford to give them a better life as I have the skills to earn more,” said the 28-year-old Rita.

The income from weaving has pulled Rita Devi and Bindu Devi out of poverty. Pic: Swapna Majumdar

Unlike Rita, who is uneducated, Bindu Devi, 30, studied till Class 5. But she never got the opportunity to put her education to use. She and her husband are also daily wage labourers, so when the SHG was formed, it proved to be more than a boon for her. Not only did Bindu get elected as its treasurer, being one of the few educated women in her SHG, but she also learnt the art of making rope. Bindu, who has been weaving since the last three months, is able to twist three kgs of rope in a day. “I have five children and my husband has been ill for some time. Had it not been for this extra income, I don’t know what I would have done,” she said.

Winds of change

Sidiqui knows how tough it can be, having been through a similar experience. So, she is now outsourcing some of the initial work to 10 other women. Depending on the quantity of katran they are able to twist into ropes, she pays these women a minimum sum of Rs 50 daily.

Last year, Sidiqui’s entrepreneurial feats won her an award from the government’s Aajeevika programme under the National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM), a flagship initiative of the Ministry of Rural Development, for empowerment and promotion of livelihoods of poor rural women.

By weaving wealth out of waste, women in Jamgaon have shown that they can become game changers.

Online abuse is leaving Indian women feeling vulnerable and not empowered.

Among the top 20 countries in internet usage worldwide, India has the highest yearly growth rate of internet users. Easy access to the internet has enabled many people, especially women and other marginalised groups, to overcome traditional barriers and participate in the public sphere.

However, the violence women face in these virtual spaces has in many ways left them feeling vulnerable, not empowered. More so, if one identifies themselves as a woman from a minority religious, racial or ethnic background, a woman with disabilities, or a lesbian, bisexual or transgender individual. Online violence against women – that is, violence directed at women by virtue of their gender – violates their human rights and is thus an impediment to the attainment of gender equality.

Amnesty International India recently launched a campaign to address the issue of online violence faced by women in the country. It has been interviewing women who express their opinions online, documenting their experiences of being active on social media platforms and the violence they regularly face online.

At an event organised in New Delhi on April 24 as part of this campaign, Rana Ayyub, an award-winning writer and journalist, shared how she had received rape and death threats on platforms like Twitter and how, more often than not, her complaints to the platform fell on deaf ears.

“I have reported so many profiles on Twitter, but the platform seems oblivious to all these. In addition to the hate and abuse, there are fourteen fake profiles in my name and with my picture. I have reported those profiles, but they continue to exist, because, apparently, they are not against Twitter’s policies, or so I have been told.”

Kiruba Munusamy, an advocate in the Supreme Court of India, has also been very vocal about the intersectionality of abuse and violence online. “While the abuse and violence faced online is gendered, it gets even worse when the abuser finds out that the person posting her picture or opinion belongs to a ‘lower caste’. Comments on a short dress turn into comments on a woman belonging to a lower caste wearing them”, she told the audience at the event. Despite being a practising lawyer at the Supreme Court, Munusamy was advised by some officials not to take forward a case of online abuse that she faced on Facebook, and most of the comments received on her profile were deleted without her consent. Student activists like Shehla Rashid and celebrities like Swara Bhaskar have also faced an increased wave of abusive tweets and online abuse because they are vocal about issues they feel strongly about.

In 2017, Amnesty International polled 4,000 women in eight countries, including the UK and the US, and found that nearly 76 percent of women who had experienced abuse or harassment on a social media platform changed how they used the platform. Around two-thirds of women who experienced abuse or harassment on social media platforms said that they felt a sense of powerlessness after experiencing online abuse. Forty-one percent of women said that on at least one occasion, these online experiences made them feel their physical safety was threatened.

The situation is not very different in India. Kavita Krishnan, Politburo member of the CPI(ML) and Secretary of the All India Progressive Women’s Association, who has been on the receiving end of rape threats and misogyny, says that online violence needs to be taken seriously and it often has the potential to spill into physical abuse and violence. “Online abuse and it not being taken seriously emboldens people to verbally assault you. People have come up to me and told me I am of a bad character after fake news spread online of me questioning the potency of the PM and asking him to prove he is not impotent by sleeping with me.”

Abuse against women on Twitter and other platforms can also include “doxxing” which involves revealing personal information or identifying documents or details about someone, on an online platform, without their consent. In April this year, Rana Ayyub’s address and phone number, and an obscene video with her face morphed on it were shared online in response to a tweet that came from a fake account using her name. She feared for her safety and that of her family and filed a criminal complaint.

Women from academic circles are not spared of online vitriol, especially if their writings are not in conformity with the ideology of the abusers. Audrey Truschke, historian and author of the book, Aurangzeb, The Man and the Myth, told Amnesty International India “I mostly post about Mughal history, especially Aurangzeb. I also post about modern Indian culture and politics. I am regularly attacked, using sexist language, on the basis of my perceived race (white/Caucasian), and on the basis of my perceived religion (Christianity – sometimes specifically Catholicism or Evangelicalism – Judaism, and atheism). I stopped reporting sexist tweets to Twitter because they never did anything about it. Following Twitter’s change in policy about hate speech late last year, I again began reporting the worst of the sexist tweets, and, occasionally, Twitter does something about it.”

India already has laws that – while flawed – can be used to deal with online abuse. What needs attention is a better implementation of the same. This implementation needs to be coupled with non-legal measures to address the structural inequalities which stem in part from patriarchal notions of morality, lying at the heart of the online abuse faced by women. A starting point to address this gender-based abuse on online platforms can be asking these platforms to start following their own guidelines on “abuse and hateful conduct”, which, as research has shown, are flouted by the platforms themselves!

f you’ve already splurged on fine jewelry or flowers for mom this Mother’s Day, you may want to consider adding another gift. Don’t worry, this one doesn’t have to cost you a dime, and it’s sure to make her light up with joy — especially if she’s got young kids to care for and/or is balancing both work and motherhood.

New survey data from the mom matchmaking app Peanut shows that what most moms are really hoping for this Mother’s Day is either a “break from the mama routine” (35 percent) or a “cool experience: spa, etc.” Twenty-six percent are asking for “a good night’s sleep” while only five percent would like a physical gift.

MOM IS ALWAYS ON THE CLOCK — SHE NEEDS A BREAK

The findings, which Peanut users can find in the app’s Pages feature, are based on the responses to the question Peanut posed to its more than 300,000 members two weeks ago, Michelle Kennedy, CEO and cofounder of Peanut tells NBC News BETTER, adding that the results aren’t exactly shocking.

“As mothers we’re always ‘on,’” notes Kennedy. “Even when it comes to Mother’s Day, we’re thinking about our mother-in-laws, our own mothers [and] making sure everyone enjoys the day, but it’s meant to be a day about us. After all the juggling, it’s no surprise we need some down time.”

DON’T BOOK MOM A SPA, JUST BOOK HER A BED

Also not surprised is Eirene Heidelberger, parenting expert and founder of GIT mom.

“Ask any mom and we’ll all tell you that we are sleep deprived and that a good night sleep is the holy grail of motherhood,” says Heidelberger. “Send the kids to grandma and grandpa’s house for a sleepover or, if that’s not an option, let mom sleep in another room so Daddy has to deal with all the middle of the night intruders. There’s also the time-tested and mom-approved uninterrupted breakfast in bed. Don’t forget to let mom savor the meal you’ve lovingly prepared for her.”

Sa’iyda Shabazz, a writer and the single mother of a five-year-old boy says that all she truly wants this Mother’s Day is “uninterrupted 18 hours of sleep.” Aurora Satler, author of “The Ultimate New Mom’s Cookbook” would be delighted by as little as an extra 30 minutes of snoozing. “Getting a chance to get a half-an-hour more or an hour more [sleep] is like booking a spa for many overtired and overworked moms (myself included),” she says.

BEAUTIFUL STUFF TAKES UP SPACE, WHILE EXPERIENCES ARE INTANGIBLY BEAUTIFUL

The close runner-up to the desire for some serious R&R, Peanut found, is a cool experience, which makes sense as so many of us are tackling clutter and figuring out what to do with all the stuff we’re getting rid of post-spring cleaning.

Every year I ask for a garden weekend of pulling weeds, raking, and planting. That’s my ideal gift: us all working together to create beauty.

Every year I ask for a garden weekend of pulling weeds, raking, and planting. That’s my ideal gift: us all working together to create beauty.
“For me, an experience is something that doesn’t take up space or require maintenance,” says Shabazz, with Salter humorously adds: “flowers: one more thing to keep alive.”

Tam Francis, an author and the mother of teenagers indicates that she actually would like some flowers — but not the kind you pick up in a store or order online. “Every year I ask for a garden weekend of pulling weeds, raking, and planting,” says Francis. “That’s my ideal gift: us all working together to create beauty.”

RESEARCH SHOWS YOU’RE ON THE RIGHT TRACK WITH YOUR GIFTS

Interestingly, we’re seeing this desire for experience reflected in the retail space. RetailMeNot’s shopping and trends expert Sara Skirboll notes that 50 percent of mothers who want a gift for Mother’s Day would like a nice dinner, while around one in four would like to receive flowers (26 percent) or a gift card (26 percent).

“This is one of the first Mother’s Day I’ve seen in years where our data on what mom wants is actually matching up with what mom is receiving,” Skirboll says. “Historically, families will gift mom things that she doesn’t need or want, and this year we’re seeing that her wish list is matching up to what people are buying. The overarching theme here is that mom wants to feel special and pampered with no strings attached.”

Additionally, in a survey that polled 1,135 adults, the rebate Web site TopCashback.com found that spending time together is the number one Mother’s Day gift this year, voted for by 55 percent of those consulted.

CLEAN THE HOUSE

Desired experiences certainly vary, but there’s one perhaps all mothers can agree on not wanting this Mother’s Day: cleaning. Time for the rest of the family to take charge and get to work.

“For many years raising four kids, I always smiled and appreciated the pasta ‘pearl’ necklaces and clay handprints, but the one thing I always loved most (and received) on Mother’s Day, was cleaning,” says Poppy Spencer, a certified counselor and relationship expert. “It was my day to enlist four pairs of hands to clean the basement or garage or rooms; even organize photo albums (a real treat) from the stacks of shoeboxes awaiting proper assembly. The de-cluttering is a wonderful way to start the summer.”

CO-PARENTS NEED TO ALSO GET ON BOARD WITH THIS TASK, AND IF ABLE, HIRE A MAID FOR THE DAY

“Take the money you would have spent on a piece of jewelry or some other trinket and hire a house cleaner instead,” advises Stephanie Seferian, founder of MamaMinimalist.com and the Sustainable Minimalists Podcast. “Give your wife something priceless which, of course, is free time.”

YOUR GIFT WILL LIKELY STILL BE ADORED

None of these findings or comments means that your physical gift (if you purchased or made one) won’t be deeply appreciated. Many moms have a towering wish list of items they’d like. Take my own mother, for example. For a month I’ve had a day of delicious eateries and spa activities planned for Mother’s Day, all planned as a surprise. After booking the mani/pedis and making the restaurant reservations, I went ahead and asked her what she really wanted, figuring she’d affirm all my thoughtful investments.

Armed with an undergraduate degree in engineering, an MBA from IIM-Calcutta and the unstinted support of her tiger mom, Malini Parmar spent her 20s and early 30s climbing the “greasy corporate ladder”, as she calls it. Eighteen-hour workdays and travel four days a week were all par for the course at the IT major she worked in, compensated for by a salary that allowed her to spend on whatever she wanted, whether it was parties or a holiday to Peru. When she hit her mid-30s, she decided she was not married.

“I knew, even when I was 26, that adoption was how I wanted to build a family though I had no thoughts about marriage then,” says Parmar, at the office of Stonesoup, the waste management startup in Bengaluru she founded after quitting her lucrative job in IT. The 45-year-old is now a single mother of two girls she adopted from Odisha, who tell her “she is the best”. Parmar says she has always been dating and continues to do so, but when a proposal crops up, she weighs whether she would be happier single and married.

In Delhi, 29-year-old Kanika Tekriwal, too, is hard at work smashing multiple stereotypes. Her Marwari family expected Tekriwal to follow convention by getting married and having children. But they had not reckoned with the ambitions of Tekriwal who, at the age of 16, was using the business acumen usually associated with her community to launch her own aviation enterprise. “With a 20-hour workday, I don’t have the time or inclination for a relationship,” says the founder of Jetsetgo, India’s largest private plane charter platform with 24 aircraft exclusively on its platform and access to another 80 from various sources.

Rewriting The Playbook
In a country obsessed with marriage, the single woman had long been considered an anomaly. If she was below a certain age, the family’s collective energies would be devoted to getting her married. If she was older, a divorcee or a widow, she would be slighted, particularly during religious ceremonies where she would be considered inauspicious. “People tend to consider single women as incomplete or of dubious character,” says Binita Parikh, a 44-year-old communications professional based in Ahmedabad, who is currently working on a book on single (or independent, as she calls) working women in cities.

But this is 2018, and there is an increasing cohort of single, working women in our cities, who are unwilling to let their lives be dictated by norms set generations ago and have been liberated by the salaries they earn. Data illustrates the rise of the single Indian woman. In 2001, there were 51.2 million single women in theIn 2001, there were 51.2 million single women in the country. By 2011, this had leapt to 71.4 million, according to census figures. A Newsweek cover story back in the 1970s spoke of being single in the US: “…singlehood has emerged as an intensely ritualised — and newly respectable — style of American life. It is finally becoming possible to be both single and whole.” While that might take a while in India, the foundation is being laid.

Travel blogger Shivya Nath, who quit her full-time corporate job to see the world and now earns her living by writing about it in her blog, explains why she doesn’t want to get married. “I think it’s so important to question archaic traditions, and think about why we are doing what we are doing and if it is worth our money and time. It’s incredibly liberating to be an independent woman, who is responsible for herself financially and doesn’t need to rely on anyone else to make her choices,” says the 29-yearold, who has explored Guatemala and Ethiopia, among a host of countries. “The battle to fight patriarchal mindsets in India is a tough one, but every woman must be encouraged to fight it till she find her own bliss.”

Even for those women who want to get married, they do not view it as a race. “Sometimes, due to the external environment, you are under a lot of pressure to just get married. But with time you realise that if you have waited this long, you can wait a little moreand do it when you are happy about it,” says Mamta Sawhney, a 38-year-old Delhi resident, who is the vice-president of an NBFC startup. “I’ve seen so many marriages falling apart. So the notion that all people are happy after marriage is not correct either.”

For designer Ritu Ganguli, it is the freedom that comes with singlehood that she prizes above everything else. “You get to take your own calls. If I want to do something, I can just drop everything and do it, which is important for me as an artist,” says the 35-year-old. The Bengaluru resident, who graduated in languages and philosophy, experimented quite a bit with her career, punctuating it with breaks to study design. “My decisions do not hinge on anyone else,” says Ganguli, who plans to do a PhD in design.

Sumaa Tekur, a spiritual healer with her own firm, Golden Swan Healing, couldn’t agree more. “I love my single status. I try not to take it for granted. It’s amazing to be free but also responsible for oneself,” says the 39-yearold. Her only grouse? That marketers don’t seem to make products for households of one. “I don’t like to buy family packs of everything!”

Rise of a Consumer Class
Marketers are not entirely blind to this turning tide. According to a report from management consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG) , there are perceptible shifts in India’s social structure and these changes could catalyse the emergence of a large number of single women, with their own incomes and spending plans. “From 2001 through 2011, the average age at marriage rose from 22.6 to 28 for men and from 18.3 to 22.2 for women,” the report points out. “During that period, the number of single women over the age of 20 increased by 40%. So far, this remains largely a big-city phenomenon, but it has started percolating down to tier-2 cities.”
Abheek Singhi, BCG’s managing director, reckons that the purchasing power has also grown significantly in the last few years. “Women, especially single, are now influencing purchase decisions in typically male-centric markets such as automobiles and real estate,” he says.

As this market evolves, it could take some cues from China, where companies and marketers are tailoring strategies and campaigns to target a burgeoning market for single women — across categories such as fashion and apparel and personal care. While the Indian market may be some way away from reaching this size (Singhi reckons that despite the rise in the number of single women, the number of those who are working remains low), a foundation has been laid for more companies to target this emerging demographic.

According to Pinakiranjan Mishra, national leader, retail and consumer products, EY, the growing heft of women, including those who are single, can be seen in women-centric launches, the latest being the rollout of Jane Walker, the female version of Diageo’s iconic logo Johnnie Walker. “Even across categories such as footwear and apparel, the gender mix is changing and women consumers added will outnumber men,” he contends. Single urban women, with grow ing independence and incomes, could be a key target market for these products. “Women have traditionally been a neglected market, the arrival of free-spending single women will compel companies to change this outlook,” he adds.

The power of half a billion
Women at Work: Engaging, retaining and nurturing women in the workforce is now not just a diversity agenda, but a deep business imperative. It is not just women who need this, but India needs its women to participate more vigorously for the economy to grow to the full potential.

ET

With the majority of rapes committed by someone known to the victim, the new law could drive offenders to murder to avoid detection

India’s government approved the death penalty for convicted rapists of girls under the age of 12, amid a groundswell of public outrage following the gang-rape and murder of an eight-year-old Muslim girl in Jammu and Kashmir state.

The shocking case involved a girl from the Bakarwal nomadic tribe, who was out grazing her horses when she was abducted, drugged and murdered after a week of torture and repeated rape. It led to a nationwide outcry for swifter justice.

However, the hastily issued executive order is facing criticism from activists and politicians, who say the death penalty, usually meted out for severe crimes in India, will not be a deterrent to child rapists without an overhaul of the criminal justice system.

“I am afraid this [executive order] has very little credibility because what is required is certainty of punishment,” the leader of Communist Party of India (Marxist), Brinda Karat, told reporters.

According to the National Crime Records Bureau data from 2016, in 94.6% of cases, the perpetrator is known to the victim – usually a brother, father or someone from the family’s social circle. Reporting rape in India’s patriarchal family structure is often fraught with victim shaming and further alienation.

Child rights activists fear the introduction of the death penalty will make families more likely to cover up sexual crimes, and that rapists might kill their victims to avoid detection.

Critics are also concerned that the order, which was approved by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cabinet on Saturday, makes no mention of boys. In a country where male children often grow up in an atmosphere that discourages them from showing vulnerability, experts say such a discriminatory legal provision will fail boys who have been sexually assaulted.

Unlike the current Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (Pocso) 2012, which is gender-neutral and defines any person under 18 as a child, the new ordinance will stop boys who have been sexually abused from seeking the same justice accorded to a girl of their age, says gay rights activist Harish Iyer.

“I principally stand against the death penalty. This discriminatory legislation implies what boys are taught growing up – that they have to be the protector and not the protected. Children are vulnerable to sexual assault, irrespective of gender,” Iyer said.

A nationwide survey of crimes against children conducted by the ministry of women and child development in 2007 found that half of India’s children had been sexually abused.

Iyer said the new executive order was a shortcut for an overhaul of a criminal justice system that often discriminates against the poor. “This is sexism of a different nature, it favours one gender. What about protection of intersex children? Unless the crime is female foeticide, which is specifically gender-oriented, this is a shortcut for real measures.”

A man beats an effigy of one of the rapists at a protest against three rapes of girls, in Ahmedabad, India.
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A man beats an effigy of one of the rapists at a protest against three rapes of girls, in Ahmedabad, India.

He said the government should prioritise fast-track courts, child-friendly police stations, and a national registry of sex offenders. The new law proposes stricter punishment for convicted rapists of children under 16 years of age. Its definition of the victims and proposed age limit has triggered a debate about categorising victims of the same crime.

“What’s the explanation for death penalty for ‘gang rape of children below 12 years’? The state is a man. Why else would the reproductive age of a girl be the determining factor for the kind of punishment meted out to the rapists?” journalist Kota Neelima wrote in a Facebook post.

In 2016 India recorded an alarmingly low conviction rate (18.9%) for crimes against women. In that year, of all the child rape cases that came before the courts under the Pocso, less than 3% ended in convictions.

An issue of such a grave nature should have had a public discourse with participation from civil society stakeholders. By its nature, an executive order can be announced by the president of India on recommendation from the federal cabinet and does not require consultation.

After the gang rape of in Delhi in 2012, India introduced and launched fast-track courts, but the measures have not deterred violent sexual crimes.

In addition, homelessness and poverty increase the vulnerability of children to sexual predators as parents have to leave them on their own to go to work, making them easy targets.

In an election year, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) wants to be seen as proactive in taking strong steps to make India safer for women. However, it is implementation, the real challenge in India, that will determine its true intention.

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India has been labelled the worst place to be a woman. But how is this possible in a country that prides itself on being the world’s largest democracy?

In an ashram perched high on a hill above the noisy city of Guwahati in north-east India is a small exhibit commemorating the life of India’s most famous son. Alongside an uncomfortable-looking divan where Mahatma Gandhi once slept is a display reminding visitors of something the man himself said in 1921: “Of all the evils for which man has made himself responsible, none is so degrading, so shocking or so brutal as his abuse of the better half of humanity; the female sex (not the weaker sex).”

One evening two weeks ago, just a few miles downhill, a young student left a bar and was set upon by a gang of at least 18 men. They dragged her into the road by her hair, tried to rip off her clothes and smiled at the cameras that filmed it all. It was around 9.30pm on one of Guwahati’s busiest streets – a chaotic three-lane thoroughfare soundtracked by constantly beeping horns and chugging tuk-tuks. But for at least 20 minutes, no one called the police. They easily could have. Many of those present had phones: they were using them to film the scene as the men yanked up the girl’s vest and tugged at her bra and groped her breasts as she begged for help from passing cars. We know this because a cameraman from the local TV channel was there too, capturing the attack for his viewers’ enjoyment. The woman was abused for 45 minutes before the police arrived.

Within half an hour, clips were broadcast on Assam’s NewsLive channel. Watching across town, Sheetal Sharma and Bitopi Dutta were horrified. “I was fuming like anything. There was this horrible, brutal assault being shown on screen – and the most disturbing thing was, the blame was being put on the woman, who, the report emphasised, was drunk,” says Sharma, a 29-year-old feminist activist from the North-East Network, a women’s rights organisation in Guwahati. “The way it was filmed, the camera was panning up and down her body, focusing on her breasts, her thighs,” says Dutta, her 22-year-old colleague.

When the police eventually turned up, they took away the woman, who is 20 or 21 (oddly, Guwahati police claimed not to know exactly). While NewsLive re-played pixellated footage of her attack throughout the night, she was questioned and given a medical examination. No attempt was made to arrest the men whose faces could clearly be seen laughing and jeering on camera. Soon afterwards, the editor-in-chief of NewsLive (who has since resigned) remarked on Twitter that “prostitutes form a major chunk of girls who visit bars and night clubs”.

It was only a few days later, when the clip had gone viral and had been picked up by the national channels in Delhi, that the police were shamed into action. By then, Guwahati residents had taken matters into their own hands, producing an enormous banner that they strung up alongside one of the city’s arterial roads featuring screen grabs of the main suspects. Six days after the attack, the chief minister of Assam, the state where Guwahati is located, ordered the police to arrest a dozen key suspects. He met the victim and promised her 50,000 rupees (£580) compensation.

The damage was already irreversible. Most Indians know full well how tough life as a woman can be in the world’s biggest democracy, even 46 years after Indira Gandhi made history as the country’s first female prime minister in 1966. But here, caught on camera, was proof. And in Assam – a state long romanticised as the most female-friendly corner of the country, largely thanks to the matrilineal Khasi tribe in Meghalaya. The nation was outraged.

“We have a woman president, we’ve had a woman prime minister. Yet in 2012, one of the greatest tragedies in our country is that women are on their own when it comes to their own safety,” said a female newsreader on NDTV. She went on to outline another incident in India last week: a group of village elders in Baghpat, Uttar Pradesh, central India, who banned women from carrying mobile phones, choosing their own husbands or leaving the house unaccompanied or with their heads uncovered. “The story is the same,” said the news anchor. “No respect for women. No respect for our culture. And as far as the law is concerned: who cares?”

There is currently no special law in India against sexual assault or harassment, and only vaginal penetration by a penis counts as rape. Those who molested the woman in Guwahati would be booked for “insulting or outraging the modesty of a woman” or “intruding upon her privacy”. The maximum punishment is a year’s imprisonment, or a fine, or both.

As a columnist in the national Hindustan Times said of the attack: “This is a story of a dangerous decline in Indians and India itself, of not just failing morality but disintegrating public governance when it comes to women.” Samar Halarnkar added: “Men abuse women in every society, but few males do it with as much impunity, violence and regularity as the Indian male.”

Halarnkar then offered as proof a survey that caused indignation in India last month: a poll of 370 gender specialists around the world that voted India the worst place to be a woman out of all the G20 countries. It stung – especially as Saudi Arabia was at the second-worst. But the experts were resolute in their choice. “In India, women and girls continue to be sold as chattels, married off as young as 10, burned alive as a result of dowry-related disputes and young girls exploited and abused as domestic slave labour,” said Gulshun Rehman, health programme development adviser at Save the Children UK, who was one of those polled.

Look at some statistics and suddenly the survey isn’t so surprising. Sure, India might not be the worst place to be a woman on the planet – its rape record isn’t nearly as bad as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, for instance, where more than 400,000 women are raped each year, and female genital mutilation is not widespread, as it is in Somalia. But 45% of Indian girls are married before the age of 18, according to the International Centre for Research on Women (2010); 56,000 maternal deaths were recorded in 2010 (UN Population Fund) and research from Unicef in 2012 found that 52% of adolescent girls (and 57% of adolescent boys) think it is justifiable for a man to beat his wife. Plus crimes against women are on the increase: according to the National Crime Records Bureau in India, there was a 7.1% hike in recorded crimes against women between 2010 and 2011 (when there were 228,650 in total). The biggest leap was in cases under the “dowry prohibition act” (up 27.7%), of kidnapping and abduction (up 19.4% year on year) and rape (up 9.2%).

A preference for sons and fear of having to pay a dowry has resulted in 12 million girls being aborted over the past three decades,

A glance at the Indian media reveals the range of abuse suffered by the nation’s women on a daily basis. Today it was reported that a woman had been stripped and had her head shaved by villagers near Udaipur as punishment for an extramarital affair. Villagers stoned the police when they came to the rescue. In Uttar Pradesh, a woman alleged she was gang raped at a police station – she claimed she was set on by officers after being lured to the Kushinagar station with the promise of a job.

Last Wednesday, a man in Indore was arrested for keeping his wife’s genitals locked. Sohanlal Chouhan, 38, “drilled holes” on her body and, before he went to work each day, would insert a small lock, tucking the keys under his socks. Earlier this month, children were discovered near Bhopal playing with a female foetus they had mistaken for a doll in a bin. In the southern state of Karnataka, a dentist was arrested after his wife accused him of forcing her to drink his urine because she refused to meet dowry demands.

In June, a father beheaded his 20-year-old daughter with a sword in a village in Rajasthan, western India, parading her bleeding head around as a warning to other young women who might fall in love with a lower-caste boy.

This July, the state government in Delhi was summoned to the national high court after failing to amend an outdated law that exempts women (and turban-wearing Sikh men) from wearing helmets on motorcycles – an exemption campaigners argue is indicative of the lack of respect for female life.

But the story that outraged most women in India last week was an interview given to the Indian Express by Mamta Sharma, chairwoman of the National Commission of Women (NCW), a government body tasked with protecting and promoting the interests of Indian women. Asked by the reporter if there should be a dress code for women “to ensure their safety”, Sharma allegedly replied: “After 64 years of freedom, it is not right to give blanket directions … and say don’t wear this or don’t wear that. Be comfortable, but at the same time, be careful about how you dress … Aping the west blindly is eroding our culture and causing such crimes to happen.”

She added: “Westernisation has afflicted our cities the worst. There are no values left. In places like Delhi there is no culture of giving up seats for women. It is unfortunate that while the west is learning from our culture, we are giving ourselves up completely to western ways.”

Her remarks caused a storm. As Sagarika Ghose put it in the online magazine First Post: “It’s not just about blindly aping the west, Ms Sharma. It’s also about the vacuum in the law, lack of security at leisure spots, lack of gender justice, lack of fear of the law, police and judicial apathy and the complete lack of awareness that men and women have the right to enjoy exactly the same kind of leisure activities.”

The Guardian asked Sharma for an interview to clarify her remarks but our requests were ignored.

Maini Mahanta, the editor of the Assamese women’s magazine Nandini (“Daughter”), believes the NCW chair’s remarks are indicative of what she calls the “Taliban-plus” mentality that is creeping into Indian society. “In this part of the world, it’s worse than the Taliban,” she insists in her Guwahati office. “At least the Taliban are open about what they like and dislike. Here, society is so hypocritical. We worship female goddesses and yet fail to protect women from these crimes and then blame them too.”

Women in Bawana, Delhi
Indian women, such as these three in Bawana, on the outskirts of Delhi, frequently come under pressure to abort female foetuses. Photograph: Gethin Chamberlain
Mahanta explains how traditions still cast women as helpless victims rather than free-thinking individuals in control of their own destiny. Girls still tie Raksha bandhan or “safety ties” around their brothers’ wrists as a symbol of their duty to protect them, she says. She complains, too, about the Manu Sanghita, an ancient Indian book that she claims preaches: “When a girl is young, she is guided by her father; when she is older, she is guided by her husband; when she is very old, she is guided by her son.” She despairs of the cult of the “good girl, who is taught to walk slowly ‘like an elephant’ and not laugh too loud”.

Even in Mumbai, India’s most cosmopolitan city, women have been arrested and accused of being prostitutes when drinking in the city’s bars.

Sheetal Sharma and Bitopi Dutta, the young feminists from the North East Network, complain that modern women are divided into “bad” and “good” according to what they wear, whether they go out after dark and whether they drink alcohol. “We are seeing a rise of moral policing, which blames those women who are not seen as being ‘good’,” says Sharma. “So if they are abused in a pub, for example, it’s OK – they have to learn their lesson,” adds Dutta, 22, who grumbles that young women such as herself cannot now hold hands with a boyfriend in a Guwahati park, let alone kiss, without getting into trouble with the moral police, if not the real police.

Many women agree the response from the Guwahati authorities shows they are blind to the root cause: a society that does not truly respect women. Instead, a knee-jerk reaction was taken to force all bars and off-licences to shut by 9.30pm. Club Mint, the bar outside which the young woman was molested, had its licence revoked. Parents were urged to keep a close eye on their daughters.

Zabeen Ahmed, the 50-year-old librarian at Cotton College in Guwahati, tells how she was out for an evening walk not long ago when she was stopped by the police. “They asked me what I was doing out at that at that time – it was 10.30pm or so – and they asked me where my husband was.”

The fact that India has a female president – Pratibha Patil – and Sonia Gandhi in control of the ruling Congress party means very little, insists Monisha Behal, “chairperson” of the North East Network. “In the UK, you have had Margaret Thatcher – if you are being harassed by a hoodlum in the street there, do ask: ‘How can this be when we have had a woman prime minister?'” she says.

Every Indian woman the Guardian spoke to for this article agreed that harassment was part of their everyday lives. Mahanta revealed that she always carries chilli powder in her handbag if she ever has to take public transport and needed to throw it in the face of anyone with wandering hands. Deepika Patar, 24, a journalist at the Seven Sisters newspaper in Assam, says city buses were notorious for gropers. “If women are standing up because there are no seats, men often press up against them, or touch their breasts or bottom,” she explains.

In June, an anonymous Delhi woman wrote a powerful blog post detailing what happened when she dared not to travel in the “ladies carriage” of Delhi’s modern metro. After asking a man not to stand too close to her, things turned nasty. Another man intervened and told the first to back off, but soon the two were having a bloody fight in the train carriage. Rather than break up the brawl, the other passengers turned on the woman, shouting: “This is all your fault. You started this fight. This is all because you came into this coach!” and “You women always do this. You started this fight!” and “Why are you even here? Go to the women’s coach.”

Speaking under condition of anonymity, the 35-year-old blogger says she had experienced sexual harassment “tonnes of times”. “I hate to use the word, but I’m afraid it has become ‘normal’,” she says. “Like if you’re in a lift, men will press up against you or grab you or make a comment about your appearance. It’s because of this that I stopped travelling by buses and started travelling by auto rickshaws, and eventually got a car myself – to avoid this ordeal. When the metro was launched I loved it – it’s an improvement in public transport, very well maintained, you feel safe. Then this happened and I was blamed.”

By Thursday last week, the Guwahati molestation case had become even murkier. Police had arrested and charged 12 men with “outraging the public decency of a woman”, and on Friday they charged journalist Gaurav Jyoti Neog of NewsLive with instigating the attack he filmed. Neog denies orchestrating the attack or taking any part in it, apart from filming it “so that the perpetrators can be nabbed”. But police have forced him to give a voice sample, which has been sent to a forensic laboratory for analysis, to compare with the footage. The verdict is out on that case, but one thing is clear: 91 years after Gandhi urged Indian men to treat their women with respect, the lesson has yet to be learned.