The International Institute of Art, Culture and Democracy is a Bangalore based organisation focused on cultural democracy and begun in May 2008 by an inter-disciplinary group with expertise in design anthropology, new media art, technology and art history. The group shares the common vision and agenda of programmatic advocacy for cultural democracy.
I have been lucky for the grace that brought me to it; I’m working on some ideas for their website.Take a look at
Watching the ‘Satyamev Jayate’ episode on health care makes my life seem uncanny as well.Mental health is one of the most tricky of all areas of human activity.Anyone can be proclaimed as ‘mentally ill’ and its’ one of most fuzzy of areas, you can find yourself ridden of all control over your life; and at the mercy of family without having warranted ‘family’
Comfortable women often use sex abuse as a means of getting rid of competition.It is a way of dehumanising, bestializing and othering their competition.
One is already weary of trying to work through patriarchal structures; to also have to deal with other women who you may have worked with and who think that you’re somehow in their way.( to be contd…)
In the last class we did the following: screened parts of ‘Sister Act’. worked on some dance and movement using music from Asian Dub Foundation,Talveen Singh, State of Bengal and Nusrat .
I get to use the Google Art Project at Vivenkananda School where I am teaching art at a pilot program during the Summer.
I will tell all about the program, but here’s a look at our gallery.
This is some groundwork I have been doing on a project on contemporary Muslim identities, which is a collaborative art project with the Indian Institute of Art, Culture and Democracy, Bangalore.
A glimpse at the history of Islam in the Indian Subcontinent reveals a fraught and battered consciousness, one that seeks both representation and cultural, political and judicial recompense. The partition of the Indian subcontinent has led to a cultural divergence that has led to and manifested itself in a failed republic and a linguistically assertive populace on one hand and a defensive marginalised minority on the other.
an essay I was attempting on the Nuclear Liability Bill-
The issue of nuclear energy in India is crucial given the energy deficit and the necessity of providing electricity to the under-developed and rural areas as a basic amenity. The Bill for nuclear liability is seen as an important milestone in realizing India’s energy goals, and is a step towards realizing the 123 Agreement or the Indo-US Nuclear deal.
The Bill however has various glaring flaws as has been pointed out by critics in the opposition as well as civil society groups; it seeks to benefit the operator and not the supplier in the event of a catastrophe; the victims cannot sue the companies or suppliers since the operator is liable to pay damages…
An essay I’m writing on women’s issues…
India ranks as fourth in the world among countries that are detrimental to the lives of women. Indian social mores are highly limiting when it comes to women’s freedoms and their sense of identity.Women in India find themselves oppressed by the structures of caste,race and religion and find it difficult to negotiate with them in order to live.
Among some of the problems which women face in India are domestic violence, female foeticide, bride burning, dowry, sexual harassment, rape and denial of human and legal rights.Issues of women in India are numerous and teeming but with globalisation and the women’s movement things are likely to get better.
Fro women in India the lack of human rights is a consequence of many factors, from religion to colonialism to the youngness of the nation state.Crimes against women in India are rampant and a lot of them go undocumented or under-examined and legal recourse is rare and extremely hard to come by when sought.
this is a small essay I wrote for an interview at an instructional design Firm called Gapskills, ‘Making sense of Indian politics’
Making sense of Indian politics
Growing up in India is an interesting process for a young woman and one’s decisions are often dependent on the current political mileu of the state.
Indian politics is a complex terrain, hard to understand, but it is of great importance to a thinking individual in India to understand its ways, and India being the world’s largest democracy, understanding and participating in politics is necessary and can construct as well as develop a citizen. Traversing Indian politics is tenuous but not impossible, and is a struggle, given the culture, demographics, poverty, colonialism, and diversity of India as a country and as a new nation state.
The Indian parliament has just introduced a bill that is vying for 33% reservation for women in parliament, and this bill is being contested. The attitudes towards women in religion and Indian culture reflect a deep bias and discrimination, and women in India find it difficult to represent themselves in any vocational or political sphere. The state’s policies towards women reflect this but there have been some landmark changes and legal judgments that seek to and could better the status of women in the country.
One of the main aspect of Indian politics is caste based parochialism which is reflective of the Indian social system of stratifying people into vocational communities and based on a hierarchy of skills. In a democracy this could and has been a deterrent for progress and development.
The rising trend in Indian politics in the post independence decades is of vernacular, local indigenous, and decolonizing nationalistic movements. A lot of these trends are an assertion of pride related to local identity, but have engendered caste and social ostracisation and feudal violence against ‘others’, immigrants and outsiders.
Communalism is a big part of Indian politics because of the history of religious conflict and the diversity of communities. Because of the partition of the country in Pakistan and Bangladesh, and the massive genocides that ensued, the residue of partition still continues and plagues the polity.
The preamble to the Indian constitution states that India is a socialist republic, and the founding writers of the Indian Constitution imagined it to be a class free society. And as a result of this the State has held a tight and focused policy towards internal development in the public sector till the nineties. India has thus benefited from the ideals of socialism, culturally and intellectually. The state’s attitudes towards globalisation and free market capitalism have loosened in the past two decades and globalization has brought with it new opportunities and inroads for growth.
For young people living and in India this is an exciting period of change as well as a challenging time of development and growth.
On New Year ’s Eve Hyderabad really comes alive with revellers on the streets everywhere. A friend and I were out and I got harassed by goons in a car, and owing to the fact that he was African and I was in a short skirt, we were even more targeted. What was more terrifying was that we were in the old city, in Mehdipatanam. We were left holed in his room, because I was afraid to step out. Owing to the fact that everybody in this area with power seems to know everybody else, it’s hard to go unnoticed…
k a u n t e x t 