Young and Restless India » Women’s Issues

Young Indian Men Shaving Off Mustaches

Raj — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 19:33:39 +0000

According to Washington Post article “New generation of men in India shaving off mustaches“ a survey found that 72 percent of the women who responded in Mumbai and 83 percent of those surveyed in the southern city of Chennai said they were more likely to want to kiss a cleanshaven man. The numbers were similar in New Delhi, India’s capital, and in the eastern city of Kolkata, often seen as a center of tradition.

The number of women rejecting facial hair appeared to surprise many Indian cultural commentators. Indian women’s magazines have printed letters to the editor saying how happy they are that the great Indian mustache may be trimmed, a sentiment that many young women here say they agree with. “The mustache represents all the aspects of old India — the corruption, the baddie cop in an old film, the government job for life — that the young generation want to leave behind,” said Richard McCallum a pogonologist, or student of facial hair. “Besides, no one wants to look like their parents.”

Khadi- New Fashion Statement

Raj — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 02:14:07 +0000

Sabyasachi Mukherjee is a young, hip, Bengali designer is insisting that khadi can be a great fashion statement. Khadi, which is simple homespun weave championed by Gandhi in the 1930s to boost the rural economy and give India a sense of nationalist pride during the fight for independence, is refined, sophisticated, eco-friendly and comfortable, and has too long been regarded as the poor man’s fabric. Read more about it in BBC.com article titled “Indian designer champions homespun“.

According to Mukherjee, to wear Khadi is a sign of being well-dressed and cultured. At the same time it should help India’s rural craftsmen and women to share in the country’s growing wealth and economy. According to the article, he has dressed superstar Aishwarya Rai in homespun for two films currently in production – Ravana and Guzaarish – and the actress Vidya Balan in Paa which is due to be released in November. The nostalgia may be part of the style, but Mukherjee is very much in the new wave of Indian designers – a graduate of India’s National Institute of Technology and recipient of the Femina British Council/Times of India prize.

Fashion writers have labelled him “intellectual”, but he describes himself as a modern, practical and a socially aware businessman. It’s vital to him that the rural poor share India’s growing economy – a Gandhian concept and one that puts India right at the centre of being Indian.

His surprise hit earlier this year was the chhotu sari – the sari worn for hundreds of generations by women in the tribal areas that are woven to calf length for freedom of movement. It was, he decided, the perfect metropolitan sari for young women – long enough to give them the flowing shape, but short enough to differentiate them from their mothers and to allow them to show off their ankles and shoes.

Girl’s School Reshapes Rural India

Raj — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 00:18:04 +0000

Krishna Chaudhry, 16 year old girl is inspiring her classmates to seek independence through education in rural Uttar Pradesh. She has been an inspiration for her classmates by challenging them to refuel This is reported in Voice of America article titled “Girl’s School in Uttar Pradesh Reshapes Rural India”.

This is a great demonstration that empowering rural girls is an effective way of bringing positive change to rural India. “I ask them to go to school and make their own destiny,” Krishna says in the article. “I try explaining to them that if they don’t go to school the society will suppress them. I tell them to stand for their own rights and make your own career and not to leave everything in the hands of the fate,” she adds. As for Krishna’s personal inspiration – “that one is easy,” she says, she looks toward women world leaders like US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Teach for India – NGO with a Mission

Raj — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 02:31:40 +0000

Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State for US, currently visiting India joined with Aamir Khan in a conference on Education at St. Xavier’s college at Mumbai. They found a common ground in challenging bright youths to take care of millions of Indian citizens that falling behind.

Outlook India’s recent article titled “Teaching for India” gives following statistics:

The average literacy rate hovers around 60% in India (for women, the number is much lower)
World Bank statistics show that fewer than 40% of adolescents in India attend secondary school.
According to a recent study, 15 out of every 100 Indian kids will never go to school. And among the 85 kids who do, 50% of them will drop out before the 5th grade.

The Outlook article characterizes this as an educational crisis, where almost 40% of the population is under 15 years of age, these trends are troubling, and can prove disastrous over the long-term if they are left unchecked. The article notes that this educational crisis is exacerbated by severe gender and caste disparities and can impede India’s ambition of Global power.

As Hillary Clinton challenged, the educated youth can volunteer to help spread the literacy in India. Recently launched Teach for India which is modeled after successful Teach for America program will place outstanding college graduates and young professionals as teachers in India’s low-income schools for two years. The aim is to narrow the educational gap and expand the educational opportunities available to thousands of underprivileged children. This is exciting because Gen YRI can take a leadership role in solving one of the major stumbling block India is facing in its march towards prosperity.

Empowering Rural Women to bring Electricity to Villages.

Raj — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 00:19:32 +0000

In India, 220,000 villages lack electricity. Development organizations like the Barefoot College have focused on empowering women to help these rural villages. Solar projects which brings solar-powered lights is run by the Barefoot College in Tilonia, founded by Bunker Roy in 1972 to help make Indian villagers become self-sufficient, with an emphasis on using women’s skills. The college (www.barefootcollege.org) has now reached out to more than 125,000 people in 160 villages over an area of 500 square miles, addressing such problems as sanitation and safe drinking water by building toilets and underground reservoirs, where rainwater is harvested and stored. It has also focused attention on rural unemployment, income generation and waste recycling.

A key priority is the education of girls, normally taboo in rural Rajasthan. Furthermore, the college trains girls and boys from other Indian states to work together, discover their own skills or acquire new ones, and set themselves up with forms of income generation. Over the years, these women solar engineers have not only gained acceptance in the community but earned respect as trainers of women from other Indian states and from Afghanistan, Bhutan, Ghana, Syria and Uganda.