Dr Arshad Hussain, professor of Psychiatry, Institute of Mental Health & Neurosciences (IMHANS), Srinagar, has been observing the mental health of the general population in the Valley in a situation of conflict from the early 1990s, when he was just a medical student.
Despite protracted and valiant struggles for women’s rights as workers, the workplace as much as the home remains unequal, unjust and unsafe for the large majority of women. Women the world over work harder and longer on an average than men, yet they are paid a fraction of what men receive.
Punjab has lost one generation to militancy, and the next generation to drugs. I hear this lament over and over again, whenever I travel into Punjab. The drugs problem is one of many faces of a deeply troubled society.
India has transformed spectacularly in innumerable ways in the last two decades. One of the least noted changes is in the way the country — governments, the press and people — respond to drought and food scarcities.
School textbooks in recent decades have frequently become battlegrounds for ideological contestation in India. Most textbook wars are to advance majoritarian perspectives on history and culture.