I gave birth in the developing world, in South Africa, to be precise. South Africa was in the spotlight recently when a government-commissioned report showed a 20 per cent increase in the number of deaths from pregnancy-related causes between 2005 and 2007 over the previous three-year period. The report said that nearly 40 per cent of these deaths were avoidable.
The Oscar-winning film “Slumdog Millionaire” starts with a shock: Policemen hook the young protagonist Jamil up to a car battery to try to force him to confess to a crime he did not commit. Jamil soon gets a reprieve, as an inspector sits him down and lets him explain how he knew the answers to those million-rupee trivia questions.
Preventable deaths are tragic but they are doubly so when society learns nothing from them for the future. It's even worse when planners are left to guess how many women are even dying of such preventable causes.
The desperate plight of Tamil civilians in northern Sri Lanka is the responsibility of the Colombo government and Tamil Tiger guerrillas alike, says Meenakshi Ganguly.
When 20-year-old Ranibai, from a poor family in Uttarakhand, began hemorrhaging during pregnancy, the path to treatment was not easy. Her family carried her on a charpai down hilly terrains to a health facility, but she bled to death before they got there. No health worker was nearby.
Ads screaming "Girl or Boy?" are banned in India. Major internet search engines Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft have been put on notice to ensure that they do not provide advertising platforms for sex-determining technology. Yet, efforts by prospective parents to ensure that their baby is a boy -- the so called "son-preference" -- remain a serious problem in India.
Under right-wing and left-wing governments alike, India has prided itself on its status as the world’s largest democracy. Civic freedoms, an independent judiciary, and basic political rights for citizens are part of that promise. But in India and far too many other democracies, rights that are arguably even more basic—to be who you are, to live freely in your body, even to call yourself a citizen if society despises you—are a different matter.
Recent unrest in Kashmir has undermined peace prospects between nuclear powers. Meenakshi Ganguly looks at the suffering of Kashmiris caught in a cycle of violence
I gave birth in the developing world, in South Africa, to be precise. South Africa was in the spotlight recently when a government-commissioned report showed a 20 per cent increase in the number of deaths from pregnancy-related causes between 2005 and 2007 over the previous three-year period. The report said that nearly 40 per cent of these deaths were avoidable.
The Oscar-winning film “Slumdog Millionaire” starts with a shock: Policemen hook the young protagonist Jamil up to a car battery to try to force him to confess to a crime he did not commit. Jamil soon gets a reprieve, as an inspector sits him down and lets him explain how he knew the answers to those million-rupee trivia questions.
Preventable deaths are tragic but they are doubly so when society learns nothing from them for the future. It's even worse when planners are left to guess how many women are even dying of such preventable causes.
The desperate plight of Tamil civilians in northern Sri Lanka is the responsibility of the Colombo government and Tamil Tiger guerrillas alike, says Meenakshi Ganguly.
When 20-year-old Ranibai, from a poor family in Uttarakhand, began hemorrhaging during pregnancy, the path to treatment was not easy. Her family carried her on a charpai down hilly terrains to a health facility, but she bled to death before they got there. No health worker was nearby.
Ads screaming "Girl or Boy?" are banned in India. Major internet search engines Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft have been put on notice to ensure that they do not provide advertising platforms for sex-determining technology. Yet, efforts by prospective parents to ensure that their baby is a boy -- the so called "son-preference" -- remain a serious problem in India.
Under right-wing and left-wing governments alike, India has prided itself on its status as the world’s largest democracy. Civic freedoms, an independent judiciary, and basic political rights for citizens are part of that promise. But in India and far too many other democracies, rights that are arguably even more basic—to be who you are, to live freely in your body, even to call yourself a citizen if society despises you—are a different matter.
Recent unrest in Kashmir has undermined peace prospects between nuclear powers. Meenakshi Ganguly looks at the suffering of Kashmiris caught in a cycle of violence
A change of policy towards Burma's military dictatorship is needed to put India on the right side of history, says Meenakshi Ganguly.