Two little girls were sitting on a crochet table cloth spread under a tree in the garden. A woman was sitting on a green wooden bench nearby, multitasking as she talked on a cell phone and kept an eye on the girls simultaneously. Sitting some 50 meters away from them, I could hear the woman titter. The person on the other end of the phone was probably cracking jokes. The sound of her laughter put an inadvertent smile on my face.

‘Woman’- what does this word signify? There seems to be an old definition and a new definition. Let’s take a look at both. The old one refers to a woman as the symbol of dignity, respect, a homemaker, some one who is dependent; and the modern definition includes words like independent, attractive, bold, equal etc. But do these definitions actually describe

It’s been a very bad year indeed for women in India. As the world settles into the New Year, India’s daughters are mourning the death of their “braveheart Nirbhaya,” the 23-year-old who was brutally raped and has now succumbed to her injuries.  This is symptomatic of the agony, pain, humiliation and wretchedness that Indian women suffered in 2012.

As a journalist you often read and write about crime and a point comes when writing the number of dead becomes a routine and you do not feel the loss anymore. In fact you do not find it interesting enough or you do not even consider it a story worth mentioning, if the number of casualties were too low or if the violence was not too brutal. But also there comes a time when words fail you, something so horrendous happens that it does not just touch you; rather it shakes you

On 16 December 2012 six men abused and raped a female student in New Delhi. Their victim is now dead. The unbelievable brutality of the attack has unleashed a nation-wide debate. But that’s not enough. Now, after the death of the 23-year-old student, the young, urban middle class in particular is out on the streets. Many are demanding the death penalty for the six imprisoned rapists, one of whom is a minor. And many are also urging the state to finally do something to better protect women. India’s urban middle class views the state as void of ideas, deeply corrupt and unable to act – as a way for those in power to enrich themselves. 

There is a lot common between Pakistan and India, after all the two nations have hundreds of years of shared history. But while partition of British India in 1947 gave India and Pakistan separate identities, 65 years later, the two nations are still striving to achieve a major goal: the protection of their women citizens from rape.

While activists in Pakistan mourned the recent killing of nurses carrying out a polio vaccination programme, the gang-rape of a 23-year-old medical student in a Delhi bus on December 16 has shaken the Indian nation and touched what the International Herald Tribune called the “deepest chord of discontent”.

Yet another gang rape – this time in a bus in the Indian capital – has revived the debate in India as to whether the country is safe for women. What makes the debate all the more urgent is the fact that this heinous crime is similar in nature to several others in the last few months without any stern punishment of the offenders.

Before debating further on the safety of women in Delhi, or making comparisons with crime statistics in the city’s past,