Habib Siddiqui

Although  gender parity  is headed in the right direction globally, it’s at a sluggish pace, with the World Economic Forum predicting that the gap will not be closed for another 134 years. But as the following infographic based on the organization’s Global Gender Gap 2024  report  shows, the situation varies widely around the world. Iceland  has once been granted first place on the index, having taken pole position for a decade and a half so far. It is the only country to have closed over 90 percent of its gender gap and is followed by Finland, Norway, New Zealand and Sweden. By contrast, Guinea, Iran, Chad, Pakistan and Sudan are considered to be the furthest from what the WEF would consider full gender parity of the 146 countries and territories analyzed. India isn’t close to the top of the ranking either though, placing in rank 129 based on the following metrics: Economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, political em...

  1:03 Israeli troops demolish buildings in West Bank village – video Israel Israeli soldiers have destroyed 11 homes and other structures in an isolated community in the occupied West Bank, leaving 50 people homeless, amid a reported uptick in house demolitions and spiralling violence in the Palestinian territory. Contractors with bulldozers accompanied by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops arrived in Umm al-Kheir, a village mostly home to shepherds, on Wednesday morning and demolished six houses, tent residences, an electricity generator, solar cells and water tanks, according to residents and Israeli activists who documented the proceedings. Agricultural land and fences were also damaged and trees uprooted. The demolition has destroyed about a third of the village’s infrastructure. View image in fullscreen Soldiers stand guard while a bulldozer pulls down a structure at Umm al-Kheir.  Photograph: B’Tselem “We have fought in the Israeli courts for years against this as most ...

  Hindu nationalism, once a fringe ideology in India, is now mainstream. Nobody has done more to advance this cause than Prime Minister Narendra Modi, one of India’s most beloved and polarizing political leaders. And no entity has had more influence on his political philosophy and ambitions than a paramilitary, right-wing group founded nearly a century ago and known as the RSS. "We never imagined that we would get power in such a way," said Ambalal Koshti, 76, who says he first brought Modi into the political wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh in the late 1960s in their home state, Gujarat. Modi was a teenager. Like other young men — and even boys — who joined, he would learn to march in formation, fight, meditate and protect their Hindu homeland. A few decades earlier, while Mahatma Gandhi preached Hindu-Muslim unity, the RSS advocated for transforming India — by force, if necessary — into a Hindu nation. (A former RSS worker would fire three bullets into Gandhi’s chest...

  Indian author Arundhati Roy has said that she is "delighted" to have been awarded this year's PEN Pinter Prize. Set up in memory of playwright Harold Pinter, the award is for writers of "outstanding literary merit" who take an "unflinching" look at the world. The announcement comes weeks after officials in India  approved action  against Roy under anti-terror laws for comments she made 14 years ago. Roy is a Booker Prize-winning author and has written about human rights issues in India as well as war and capitalism globally. English PEN chair Ruth Borthwick praised Roy for telling "urgent stories of injustice with wit and beauty". "While India remains an important focus, she is truly an internationalist thinker, and her powerful voice is not to be silenced," Borthwick said. Roy, 62, is an outspoken writer and activist and  could face prosecution  by the Narendra Modi government for comments she made in 2010 about Kashmir - a contr...

  The campus of Nalnda was inaugurated formally by Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi on 19 th  June (2024) in presence of Ambassadors of many countries like Myanmar, Srilanka, Vietnam, Japan, Korea among others. Most of these countries are the ones where Buddhism was spread by the preachers sent by Emperor Ashok. Initially the idea of reviving Nalanda as a premier global University was floated by the then President A.P.J Abul Kalam in 2006 and later ratified by Bihar Assembly and UPA Government. On the occasion; Modi stated that this University was burnt by foreign invaders in 12 th  Century. He was just parroting the popular perception that Bakhtiyar Khilji, the courtier of Mahmud Ghori had burnt it. This perception is an add-on to the other such ‘social common sense’ that Muslim invaders destroyed the Hindu Temples and spread Islam by force. Incidentally the propagation of these understandings began with the introduction of communal historiography by the British and la...