Women achievers of India-1

Thanks, Sharada for your constant support and appreciation.

Regards,

TDU

 

Devaki Jain

Founder of Dawn

Devaki Jain (born in 1933) graduated in Economics from Oxford University and Joined Delhi University as a Lecturer, later senior fellow at the Delhi School of Economics . In 1976 she founded a research centre the Institute of Social Studies Trust, ISST which focussed on issues of poverty and gender, with special interest in “work”.


In 1984, as Director of ISST she convened a meeting of women from the South, one per continent to consider developing a feminist perspective on development from the South – leading to the founding of DAWN, Development Alternatives for a new Era. DAWN is to day a visible actress in the global stage.

She has held Fellowships at various Universities, notably at Harvard and Boston (1984) as a Senior Fulbright Scholar; at Institute of Development Studies , Sussex University as a Visiting Fellow and at the Scandinavian Institute of South Asian Studies in Denmark .

She was one of two women, the other being the Late Bella Abzug, to receive recognition at Beijing 1995, the Bradford Morse award as Founder of DAWN. She received an Honorary Doctorate for her contribution to international development from the University of Westville, Durban Republic of South Africa .

Devaki Jain has written extensively on women and development

 

Sister Nirmala

In steps of Mother Therasa

Sister Nirmala, age 63, is Mother Teresa's successor as Superior General of the Missionaries of Charity. Born in Ranchi in 1934 to a Brahmin soldier who came from Nepal, Nirmala Joshi joined the order at the age of 17, after converting from Hinduism. Her sister, too, embraced Christianity and became a Carmelite nun. After joining the Missionaries of Charity, Sister Nirmala studied law at the insistence of Mother Teresa, who often took her along during her tours abroad. The Mother's confidence in her abilities was evident when she asked Sister Nirmala to open their homes in Panama, New York and Kathmandu.



She is a modest woman, and when she succeeded Mother she quietly said, "Mother Teresa can never be replaced. She is gifted with rare charisma that can never be acquired in one's lifetime." Sister Nirmal is not without her own strengths as well, however. As spiritual adviser Father le Joly said, "In her, Mother found signs of energy, dedication, and charisma." When journalists once asked Mother Teresa what made Sister Nirmala so exceptional, she replied, "She is a Missionary of Charity".

 

Bhairavi Desai

Most New Yorkers probably don't know Desai, but they know her handiwork. In May 1998, the 27-year-old labor activist went head-to-head with the city's combative mayor, organizing one of the biggest 24-hour taxi strikes in New York history to protest city policing of the industry. A history and women's studies graduate from Rutgers, Desai burned with a passion to take up the fight of the cab drivers, some 60 percent of whom, like her, are immigrants from South Asia, many of them working up to 80 hours a week for as little as $18,000 a year without health benefits, or even any certainty that they will be paid.



Desai's family had emigrated from Gujarat to Harrison, N.J., when she was six years old. Her father, who had been a lawyer in India, had trouble finding work and resorted to running a grocery store, and some of Desai's earliest memories were of racist attacks by skinheads. "I remember being chased down the street," she says. "I remember the hostility, and that politicized me." After graduating from Rutgers, she joined New York's Taxi Workers Alliance, where she is now staff coordinator. "I wanted to organize around issues of labor and class," says Desai. "I wanted to organize the immigrants, and it was important for me to go beyond what the AFL-CIO was doing. It was important to focus on life issues and not just the labor."

Desai bridged the ethnic, religious and regional differences among South Asian cab drivers by emphasizing that everyone is subject to the same difficulties. "We speak more than 100 languages," she says, "and yet there is a common language of exploitation that we all know. Because of our common goals, we were able to organize a common front." Now she plans to organize a South Asian Labor Alliance linking workers in the U.S. with those on the subcontinent. "Because our countries are underdeveloped, people are forced to migrate to countries that are often very hostile to them," says Desai. "It is important for us to have solidarity with workers in the Third World. They are not the ones who are stealing the jobs."

( Thanks: Bhairavi Desai's profile published in Time magazine)

 

Aruna Roy

Magsaysay award winner

Aruna Roy, born to Tamil parents and brought up in a totally secular tradition, is one of those who did. Six years (1968-1975) in the IAS were enough to convince her that reality lay elsewhere.


In her words: "Frankly speaking, I was not happy with bureaucratic functioning.... There are times when one knows that the decisions being taken by higher-ups are blatantly wrong, but nothing can be challenged."

Aruna left the IAS to join her husband Bunker Roy's Social Work and Research Centre in Tilonia in Rajasthan: "I had my schooling in grassroots work in Tilonia. Before that, I did not even know what a village was!" In 1990, she moved away from Tilonia to join the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS), an organisation of poor farmers, both men and women.

The MKSS fought for fair wages to workers, and also became centrally involved in the campaign for the Right to Information (RTI). As Aruna describes it, the RTI campaign—later to blossom into a full-fledged movement—was born from an agitation for minimum wages by MKSS in the late '80s.

Sixty per cent of the members of MKSS are women. It is these women and men who provide the breadth of vision that characterises MKSS. For them, as for Aruna, the RTI is not just a campaign for the right to information. It is a campaign that links together all the natural rights of citizenship—to food, to wages, to work, to dignity, and to a life free of violence.

(Thanks to Urvashi Bhutalia, Outlook India)

The presence of women is essential for, according to Aruna, women instinctively understand what it is to be marginalised, and, over time, men in the movement have begun to understand the importance of involving women.

In 2000, when Aruna Roy was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay award, she dedicated it to the 'ordinary' people—both women and men—she works with. Perhaps the most fitting tribute to this intrepid and remarkable activist came from the women of Devdungri, where she has made her home, when her mother, herself a remarkable woman, passed away. The bier was carried by women of all castes, religions, backgrounds. Her pyre was lit—in an important deviation from the Hindu ceremony where only males have this privilege—by all the women in her family, giving Aruna, and her mother, a sense of peace.

 

Dear Padmasowrirajan,

I am glad that you visited this thread, went through the profiles of all women achievers and you have posted all kind words about me. I am doing just a small job of bringing info about these women to ILites and I hope it will be useful to the young ILites particularly, as one ILite based in U.S. has mentioned that since she was born and brought up in U.S. she did not have the opportunity to know about these women and through this thread, she is benefited. Thanks about mentioning my mother. She like the millions of women of yesteryears has raised a big family and enabled us to succeed in our lives.

Regards,

TDU

 

Smt. Indu Jain

Smt. Indu Jain is Chairman of The Times Group. She is a spiritualist, an entrepreneur, an educationalist, a humanist, a patron of art and culture. In her capacity as Chairman of The Times Group, Indu has since infused new energy into the further growth of India’s largest media house. The Times Group publishes India’s largest newspapers, which include The Times of India, The Economic Times and Navbharat Times. In addition, the group enjoys a dominant presence in magazines, events, radio, the Internet and television.


Indu’s eclectic cultural interests, social concerns and spiritual inclinations have brought a whole new dimension to the functioning of a conventional media house. The Times Foundation, which she founded and carefully guides, has garnered international acclaim for its, often pioneering, activities in the field of development. An educationalist, par excellence, she is President of Times Foundation. A humanist to the core, under her direction, The Times Foundation runs – Community Services, Research Foundation and Times Relief Fund for disaster relief’s like floods, cyclones, earthquakes and epidemics.

Her measured commitment to several spiritual and charitable causes is well known and she constantly draws form her deep well of spiritual understanding as she approaches various issues. This strongly humane, and often decidedly spiritual, approach is another dimension she has been instrumental in adding to the mindscape of the media in India.

Indu’s championing of women’s causes is also very well known. She actively supports women’s rights, women’s uplift and the encouragement of entrepreneurship. Indu is founder President of the Ladies wing of FICCI (FLO).

A patron of literature and culture, she is Chairperson of the Bharatiya Jnanpith Foundation, which awards India’s most prestigious literary award, the Jnanpith, and supports endeavours in the field of literature in every major Indian language.

She addressed the United Nations in 2000 at the Millennium World Peace Summit of Religious and Spiritual Leaders, a speech in which she stressed the need for oneness among faiths and went on to chair a special session of the conference. Ms Jain is also the guiding force behind The Oneness Forum, formally launched by the President of India in 2003. The Forum recently awarded the Mahatma-Mahavira Awards to outstanding individuals from all of walks of life and is involved in several activities that seek to bring, and highlight, a sense of Oneness in the world.

Spreading the message of Peace Within First, Indu Jain spear heads a movement to spread the principles of peace globally.

(Thanks to Times Magazine)