Evescape

COVID-19 impact social life & learning of CHILDREN By Percy Cardozo The COVID-19 outbreak was like a bolt out of the blue, stopping the world in its tracks. Cutting across all boundaries - natural or man-made, it has struck us silently at lightning speeds, causing unusual disruption to our daily routines. Never in recorded history has the world experienced such a catastrophe simultaneously affecting almost all regions of the world. The pandemic is primarily a health crisis but is it also having shattering consequences on every aspect of our living. The insidious virus has forced countries across the world to use lockdown as a preventive measure for the safety of its citizens.   Countries have rightly resorted to lock down as a preventive measure, nevertheless, suddenly it has thrown children's social life and learning out of gear. According to UNESCO, as of April 2020, 1.5 billion young people worldwide are out of school because of the pandemic. In India, almost 1.4 millio...

Crafting face masks  for a cause With public health experts recommending people wear cloth face coverings while venturing out in public places or even inside homes, especially those in clusters, given that the Novel Corona Virus (Covid19) is in for a long haul -- wearing of reusable cloth face masks will be the new normal. Even as experts are warning to leave the surgical N-95 masks for health workers on the front lines of the health crisis, there seems to be already an increased demand for face coverings. As experts are now urging folks to opt for homemade face masks, a teenager in Fatorda is on a mission -- helping with the fight against Corona Virus by creating face masks. "Actually I wanted to do my bit towards the cause of helping out in the world health crisis when my mother urged me to create face masks for the use of family members after the Prime Minister Narendra Modi appealed to all citizens to start wearing face covers. That's when I decided to work...

Leading the Swedish way I met Annika Skogar, a young political science student from Lund, Sweden in the January of 2013. Lund, she informed me, is situated in the south of  Sweden, some 40 minutes away from Copenhagen, the capital city of Denmark. She worked for the student's magazine at Lund University and was also involved in Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. She was in Goa on a scholarship from the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA) and was researching on women issues, gender equality in politics and engaged in meeting politicians, activists, government officials and other stakeholders since the summer of 2012. This was when she came across Evescape (the women's magazine I had launched that year) and wanted to meet me. That was also the year when the BJP led Goa Government under chief minister Manohar Parrikar had launched the Laadli Laxmi scheme, as a response to the skewed male-female ratio. Evescape believed that a solution to the...

The power of our mother language Soumya, a student of class two of a government primary school at Borda, near Margao is carefully reading out a small note written in Marathi. The seven year old hails from Karnataka and lives in Gogol with her parents and siblings. Her father works as a daily wage painter. She says she can speak Kannada but can read Marathi. She is preparing to give a talk on the importance of mother language at an event conducted by an NGO in the school premises to observe International Mother Language Day. As I look on to the child with interest (I am invited by the organizers as a guest of honor), her teacher tells me -- Soumya is bright student! In another corner, a group of little children are preparing to enact a skit and sing a song in thethi, a dialect sounding like Bhojpuri. Their teacher tells me that this group of students belong to a district in Bihar. There are more students as well -- natives of Maharashtra, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, ...

Affirmative Action on Gender Equity  is the Most Urgent Task  Since the March of 2017, I have been deligently working on creating a document encapsulating all that I’ve learned while running campaigns to garner women support in politics. Among other things the document aims to chart practical measures to chip away at the barriers that keep women away. It underlines the need to promote parity in the party's internal structures, include equal representation at party events and conferences, appoint women and men equally to party decision-making positions, provide women members with a platform to voice their questions and place these issues onto the policy agenda at the highest levels of party leadership.  Additionally, this document which can serve as a manual, aims to build discussion platforms to allow women to create networks with other women leaders and their supporters. The challenge is two-fold: 1. sustain our own engagement with the political process on ba...

INDIA WOMEN'S CAUCUS (IWC) A pan India movement led by women to remind the country to keep its promise of more egalitarian lives as promised in the Constitution is underway in India, with its roots in Goa.  Is it outlandish for women to be allowed to have a voice in the government they support with their taxes? Why is then that despite all women's movements, which have had as their general goal -- women's political inclusion, are women still not sharing proportional political power? How does it matter? Its simply that research after research have pointed out that, when women engage in politics, they put important but otherwise neglected issues on the table which have a significant trickle-down effect, benefiting women from all walks of life. That women's interests would best be served by a politically gender-balanced government. Undeniably, it needs a strong political will to support women overcome obstacles that hinder their contribution to national deve...

A call to accelerate GENDER PARITY      A round-table of women, community groups and stakeholders will discuss the topic of gender imbalance in decision making bodies on October 20, 2018 at the Margao Residency Hall, Goa.  W hile the conversation on sexism and sexual harassment is expanding in India with the #MeToo campaign challenging the status quo, it is even more evident how little is done to position issues affecting womens' rights as political priorities. This is critical. Despite governmental claims that adequate resources are spent to reach women -- women from community levels to state to country continue to be struck by challenges. There is an urgent need to rapidly change the quality of women’s daily lives. Too few women at the top means we are all losing out   Providing an environment for changing women’s lives cannot be achieved unless it is considered within a human rights context. And the job of women rights' advocacy groups is...