A Kondareddy woman Hyderabad: Is development skewing the girl child sex ratio in the state? Well, the final census data to be officially released on Friday reveals that in a few mandals untouched by development , the girl child is safe, thanks to the egalitarian tribal societies that accord equal status to men and women. Kunavaram mandal in Khammam where 85% of the population comprises tribals recorded the highest girl child sex ratio in the state with 1,126 girls per 1,000 boys, which activists hailed as a rare victory in the battle against rising female foeticide and infanticide, that has... 

    Man, woman: crucial ratio! New Delhi: Haryana has turned out to have the worst male-female ratio among all states while Kerala fares the best. According to the 2011 Census, the number of females per 1000 males in Haryana in 2011 stands at 879 followed by Jammu and Kashmir (889 female) and Punjab (895 females). The other two worst-performing states in terms of skewed sex ration are Uttar Pradesh (912 females) and Bihar (918 females). Five top performing states in terms of sex ratio were Kerala (1,084 females), Tamil Nadu (996), Andhra Pradesh (993), Chhattisgarh (991), Odisha (979). The... 

    Women police for women! Patna: Each of 823 regular police stations in Bihar and 100-odd government railway police (GRP) stations will soon have an exclusive desk to register complaints related to women. IG (CID-weaker sections) Arvind Pandey has directed all SPs, including those of the GRP, to set up the women’s desk within a fortnight. The direction has been issued to facilitate the implementation of recent changes in the criminal laws at the centre, following the hue and cry over the recent Delhi gang rape case. Pursuant to the amendment, all SPs (superintendents of police) in Bihar... 

Stop violence: or else! Parsa Bazar, Bihar: how traumatic a rape can be for a woman may be gauged by this incident – a hurt so strong she stopped caring for her life, property and future. Others may be less daring or vindictive but the levels of pain and humiliation remain the same. According to reports, a middle-aged widow, who was allegedly raped by a fellow villager, locked him up and set her house on fire and thereby killed him. The police said the incident took place at Switha village under Parsa Bazar police station on the outskirts of Patna at around 1 am on Tuesday when a drunk Bhola... 

  By Abhishek Choudhary Dulari Devi: and her wall painting “I can’t make much sense of this book, except that it has one of my paintings!” Dulari Devi told me in her understated but an occasionally proud voice, passing me her copy of Wendy Doniger’s The Hindus: An Alternative History, as we sat in her small, colourful verandah in Ranti village in Bihar’s Madhubani district. A few days before I met her in mid-February, Devi had returned home from a trip to Delhi after attending an exhibition on the Mithila art, that showcased some of her paintings. She explained to me her... 

Ask, ask, ??: way of a child! Mothers are bombarded with around 300 questions from their children on a daily basis, with girls the most inquisitive lot, a new UK study has found. Researchers found that mothers are the most quizzed people in the UK, and on subjects far and wide, they are asked more questions every hour than a primary school teacher as well as doctors and nurses. The study of 1,000 mothers discovered girls aged four are the most curious, asking an incredible 390 questions per day – averaging a question every 1 minute 56 seconds of their waking day, a media report said. From... 

  Holi colours: and women in white! Vridavan: Breaking the shackles of tradition, hundreds of widows played Holi with gulal and flowers in the land of Lord Krishna. Around 800 widows participated in the festivities in ashrams of Vrindavan in four-day Holi celebrations that began on Sunday. As part of Holi celebrations, traditional ‘Raas-Leela’ dance and other programmes have also been organised. Widows celebrate Holi festival with flower petals at a ashram in Vrindavan near Mathura. “Vrindavan Holi is an effort to free widows from the shackles of age-old tradition. Not only will the... 

    Karate kick for the molester! The Bihar government has decided to train one million schoolgirls in karate so that they can use the martial art to protect themselves from sexual harassment, an official said on Friday. “Martial art training (karate) will be given to 10 lakh schoolgirls in 20,000 middle schools across the state,” Rahul Singh, the director of the Bihar Education Project Council, said. The programme will be undertaken as part of the National Programme of Education for Girls at Elementary Level, and reach 10 lakh girls by 2014. “At present, 1,500 girl... 

  Making of Sikki New Delhi: Sikki craft, the theme of Bihar tableau in this year’s Republic Day programme in New Delhi, has brought under focus the traditional craft women of Mithila region of the state, who has been practising the art for long. The tableau displayed artisans from Bihar making products made of sikki, a golden coloured grass grown in the wet and marshy areas around rivers and ponds in Madhubani, Darbhanga, Sitamarhi and other North Bihar districts. In Mithila and other parts of Bihar, palm and other leaves are also used as material to be woven into vessels for daily... 

  Ratnakar Tripathy The way I grew up and the kind of people I have come to know through choice or inheritance, the very word ‘rape’ was avoidable. As for the act, one thought rapes happen in some kind of netherworld that never dare come into contact with my universe. Way back in my teens, there was some hushed up gossip about a distant family member inflicting himself on a pretty worker in the village, I knew quite well. The matter was suppressed. But I do remember the woman wilting away with indignity after the incident and her stuttering husband’s face too, who lost all affection...