Social Good Moms India Archives

They called her Braveheart, a name that symbolizes a fighter. People have also called her Fearless and India’s Daughter. Due to Indian law, the real name of a rape victim is withheld from the press. For some reason the name Braveheart seemed to stick.

Months after her tragic, horrifying death Delhi’s Braveheart continues to tear away at Indian society and many Indians’ cry for change. Braveheart’s December 16th gang rape on a moving bus has gained worldwide attention, outrage and grief. Further high-profile rapes such as the recent rape of a Swiss and American tourist have continued to push the not so pretty truth about the status of women in India into the forefront. Meanwhile, India’s tourist industry has been reeling with a 35 % decline in female tourists for the first three months of this year compared with the same period last year (Source: Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry in India). It is evident that foreign women travelers are concerned about the dangers of traveling to a place with such a tarnished reputation for women’s rights and safety.

In a country where a rape is reported every 21 minutes, and gruesome rapes of young children are inundating the news, you would think that it would be enough to push for societal and governmental change. Yet has anything really truly changed for the millions of women in India and around the world who are faced with violence, discrimination, harassment, intimidation, neglect and unworthiness every single day of their lives?

There are moments in life when you are so deeply moved by what one person can do to make a difference in the world that it takes your breath away. This is how I felt when I met Sonal Kapoor, founder of Protsahan, a school for underprivileged girls in the heart of India. Not even thirty years old, Kapoor is already considered one of the most inspiring young social entrepreneurs in the world and after a visit to her beautiful school in the slums of Delhi, it is no doubt that she and her pupils will go far.

Many are aware of the huge inequities and poverty strangling India. Although India has seen rapid economic growth over the last decade, the gap between rich and poor has become even wider and more profound. As migrant families leave their villages in rural India and come to the big cities in search for a better life, the growth of urban slums, many in deplorable conditions, continues to grow at unmanageable rates. In just Delhi alone, there are thousands of them. (The slum population in India is estimated at 62 million people and around 1.7 million residing in Delhi alone. Source: The Hindu). As almost 75,000 migrants come to Delhi alone each year, many of them end up populating the already over-crowded urban slums that can be found all throughout the city, even alongside some of Delhi’s poshest neighborhoods. (Source: The Hindu).

An all to frequent site within the Delhi slums: Garbage and the sacred cow.