Democracy & Society

"One Cube" Three, yet one! - is a documentary film by Pramod Dev. Depicting three women who work in export-oriented sectors of India's economy, the film shows how the demands of trade impact upon the personal, familial, social, economic and cultural aspects of the lives of the protagonists.

The repression of NGOs and other civil society groups increases worldwide, which leads to a decline of democratic freedom. This issue should be added to the agenda of national parliaments and multilateral organizations.

For the fourth time, in early November, the Dharamshala International Film Festival (DIFF) brought independent films to the mountains. Chok Tsering and Susanne Schultz report.

Ranjana Kumari, Director of the Centre for Social Research in New Delhi, is a veteran Indian feminist who has been following the International Women’s Conferences since Nairobi in 1985. She just returned from the March 2015 meeting in New York. We talked with her about women’s rights and gender equity in India.

It is election season in India, and there are few places like Uttar Pradesh to get a feel which way the wind is blowingIt is election season in India, and there are few places like Uttar Pradesh to get a feel which way the wind is blowing

In 2013, the India and the South Africa offices of the Heinrich Boll Foundation initiated on a joint learning and exchange project on sexual violence, “Sexualised Violence in National debate: Cross –border observations from India and South Africa”.

After it was sworn in as the ruling party at Delhi’s Legislative Assembly in December, 2013 following a vote brimming with anti-incumbent sentiment and popular disenchantment with corrupt regimes, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has had nothing short of a roller coaster ride. This photo essay offers a few glimpses of its rocky ride through their 49 days in office in the first two months of 2014.

The “rise” of regional political parties seems to be an eternal theme on the Indian political scene. The exponential increase in the number of parties contesting elections, particularly over the past two decades, and the shrinking margins of victory in parliamentary elections are direct results of the emergence of new regional power centers.

Emerged from an anti-corruption movement, the Aam Aadmi Party has made a spectacular entrance into Indian politics and challenged the rules of Indian politics.

In the late spring or the early summer of 2014 India will conduct its sixteenth general election. The battle lines between the two principal, national political parties, the Indian National Congress (INC) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), are now being drawn.