Projects

Swapna Barman, the first Indian woman to win an Asiad gold in heptathlon, is a star here

The courtyard outside Basana Barman’s house is a flurry of activity. A teenaged boy is atop the corrugated roof plucking mango leaves while a group of women huddle together on the verandah preparing offerings for worship. A table fan buzzes in front of a khaki-clad police constable seated at the gate. “It is going to…

How a few volunteers at Bagdogra airport are helping curb trafficking of Nepalese women

Scroll.in

The women stood out in the crowd on a September evening. Raj Kumar Gurung and Rajesh Singh spotted the three – one clad in a saree and two others in worn-out jeans and T-shirts – looking “totally lost” next to the pay-and-use toilet in front of Bagdogra International Airport. Gurung picked up a conversation with…

Ladybird Writes

NWMI website

Sexual harassment at the workplace can assume a myriad chilling and predatory forms. Siliguri-based Independent journalist Anuradha Sharma describes the decade-long stalking and telephonic abuse that she was subjected to by her senior. I have been very closely following the #metoo conversations going on in social media. One hell of a triggering experience it has…

Small tea maker makes it big in Darjeeling

Nikkei Asian Review

DARJEELING, India — The heavily potholed dirt road winds through pine forests, quiet hamlets and small tea gardens before bending off in front of the factory at Niroula’s Tea Farm. Nearby, two workers pluck tender green tips — just two-leaves-and-a-bud — of tea, balancing wicker-baskets on their heads and themselves on the sloping ground. “Twenty years…

Modi’s strange relationship with the truth

Index on Censorship

(paywalled) First Published September 10, 2018 Other https://doi.org/10.1177/0306422018800406 Article information Article Information Volume: 47 issue: 3, page(s): 74-77 Article first published online: September 10, 2018; Issue published: September 1, 2018 Anuradha Sharma

Startups put safety first for Indian women travelers

Nikkei Asian Review

SILIGURI, India — By the time the Ranchi Kamakhya Express trundled into Siliguri station, running over 10 hours late, it was almost midnight. Siliguri is the nearest train terminal for the Himalayan state of Sikkim, where a group of nine teenage girls from Jharkhand were headed. Despite having already traveled on the train for 24 hours…

Six decades ago, a workers’ uprising changed Darjeeling’s tea gardens. It’s time for change again

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On this day in 1955, workers of the Margaret’s Hope tea garden led a revolt against unfair management practices. Things are not very different today. Six decades after the Margaret’s Hope revolt, the workers on Darjeeling’s tea gardens are still as exploited as ever, earning low wages, with shrinking fringe benefits. | Rupak De Chowdhuri/Reuters…

A year after the Gorkhaland stir, the hills are gripped by a sense of betrayal – and football fever

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One recent day, colourful flags added cheer to the grey, pre-monsoon morning in the West Bengal hill station of Kurseong, 30 km from Darjeeling. With the football World Cup less than a fortnight away, the hills have come alive with the flags of Argentina, Germany and Brazil sticking out of shared cabs, decorating shop fronts…

100 Days of Darjeeling Bandh: People Shouldn’t Be Pawns in GJM Feud

News18.com

The people of Darjeeling hills, the aam janta, must withdraw the strike. I say aam janta because we all know that it is only they—nameless, faceless and leaderless, and yet the engine of the Gorkhaland agitation going on in the hills for over three months now—who can do so. It is they who have pressured…

India’s toilet culture needs a good scrubbing

Nikkei Asian Review

“Toilet ek Prem Katha” does its best to please the powers that be, and it appears to have succeeded. But it is not the story of my village or the many others like it that had come a long way well before Swachh Bharat Mission became a buzzword, and long before Modi came to power.…