Wednesday, October 24, 2012

A one day debate on NRI Marriages



We at the Centre for Women’s Studies in collaboration with the Centre for the Study of Indian Diaspora and and  the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs, organized a One Day Debate on NRI Marriages on 6 October 2012.In just six months, the National Commission for Women (NCW) has registered 350 complaints, that is almost two cases every day. 


Expressing concern over the rising incidence of fraudulent marriages of Indian girls with non-resident Indian (NRI) men, a Parliamentary Standing Committee has recommended that the government enact a comprehensive legislation or suitably amend existing laws for the protection of women against malicious NRI marriages. As of now there is no clear cut policy to deal with this issue.A large number of  academicians, experts, students, NGO’s, and Lawyers came at one forum to  deliberate on this issue.



To me violence is  of various forms and the most overt forms of violence is often explored- such as domestic violence, trafficking but we seem to ignore the  other kinds of structured violence. A new form of  violence against women id the  NRI marriages, where women are dumped soon. Our social system, which seeks or aims only to dispose a girl, through marriage. There is a  proverb, ‘Bringing up a girl is like watering a plant in the neighbour’s garden’. Therefore families seek for getting their daughters married as soon as possible. Women are not economically dependent, and hence when they get NRI grooms, families gets excited. Feels like getting a jackpot in hand. They don’t look into the realities of grooms- as in what they do, whatever they claim is that true and other such important questions.  Eventually after marriage they abandoned them or even if they take them, exploit them. Referred to as , Honeymoon’brides or Holiday brides, this is one of the  major issues in our country.

 



Sunday, October 14, 2012

Infancy and Childhood




Yesterday,  as I was cleaning my cupboard, I started looking at old photos. Now a days with digital cameras we just go on clicking photos but never have time to go back to them. Yet,, the modern technology is good fro it preserves the photos. I had maintained albums long time back and many of them had got torn and destroyed with the passage of time. However, I found few black and white photos of my infancy and child hood and I scanned them to preserve them for posterity. My children can look at them and see how their mom was when she was an infant.



Wednesday, October 10, 2012

A Lovely poem

 Today my kids have grown up but I always remember with fondness the times when they were growing up . Managing a career and home for women is such an uphill task and one woman can rise up in her career only if she has enough support at home which I was very lucky to have.

One of my favorite poem for ever is the following which I want to share .