Bansari

South Asia’s Rivals Are Weaponizing Water for Geopolitical Gain As climate change and geopolitical tensions converge, South Asia’s fragile hydro-politics could be entering a dangerous new era of conflict.

As the recent tensions between India and Pakistan as well as broader trends in China’s hydro-politics show, water is becoming increasingly weaponized in the context of South Asia’s geopolitical rivalries, Bansari Kamdar writes.

Not Your Wife An essay on unlearning, reimagining, and coming home to a new kind of marriage

Read: zahrahaider.substack.com/p/not-your-w...

“In South Asian culture, marriage is less a choice and more a graduation,” writes Zahra Haider, in her tender essay on navigating marriage in South Asia and the need to reimagine it.

In South Asia, Women Will Bear the Brunt of Trump’s Tariffs Women are the backbone of South Asia’s massive textile industry. Trump’s trade war could result in significant job losses and wage cuts for them.

With across-the-board tariffs, South Asian countries could face increased costs borne by garment-makers and a possible decline in US consumer demand.

As @bansari.bsky.social writes, that will affect female workers disproportionately.

In South Asia, Women Will Bear the Brunt of Trump’s Tariffs Women are the backbone of South Asia’s massive textile industry. Trump’s trade war could result in significant job losses and wage cuts for them.

I write for @wpr.bsky.social on why millions of women who rely on garment jobs in countries like Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and India could be among the primary casualties in Trump's trade war: www.worldpoliticsreview.com/south-asia-w...

These jobs have played a crucial role in educating and empowering the women, improving their financial independence, and benefiting their health and that of their children.

If you own T-shirts from H&M and Zara, or shoes from Nike, chances are at least some of them were made in textile factories in South Asia, where labor is cheap - and predominantly female.

Feminist Silences in the Face of Israel's Genocide Against the Palestinian People: A Call for Decolonial Praxis Against Complicity Click on the article title to read more.

4. This Gender, Work and Organization piece critiques the silence within feminist scholarship regarding the ongoing genocide in Gaza, arguing that this silence actively legitimizes oppression and contradicts feminism's commitment to justice and solidarity.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

How Women Spend Their Time This week in BehanVox: a history of ASHA workers' uniforms, why India has shunned 'Santosh', and a glimpse into Japan's missing post offices.

3. BehanBox’s revived newsletters are quickly becoming my favorite.

Their latest one on ASHA workers is a must-read, along with their look into what time-use surveys capture and where they fall short.

behanbox.substack.com/p/how-women-...

Three decades of global progress, Namibia’s representation goals, and more: All the important updates about women in politics from March #WomenLead (Issue 160): Your monthly round-up on women in politics

2. Akshi Chawla’s Women Lead, a monthly round-up on women in politics, continues to go strong at Issue 160.

Definitely a must have subscription if you're tracking gender and representation in global politics.

womenlead.substack.com/p/three-deca...

It's not a fucking microaggression! Or some thoughts on marketing books with right-wing talking points

Interesting reads so far this month:

1. Sara Ahmed, the queen of feminist killjoys, in her latest Substack reflects on microaggressions and how power is reproduced by making some forms of violence and harm seem small and subjective.

feministkilljoys.substack.com/p/its-not-a-...

Chart 4 looks at stark economic disparities globally and the significant differences in GDP per capita by country in 2023.

#30DayChartChallenge

migration flows A Flourish data visualization by Bansari Kamdar

Already running behind on the #30DayChartChallenge but here's a chart for Day 3's circular theme.

It shows the global movement of forcibly displaced people. More than 1 in every 67 people on Earth have been forced to flee, according to UNHCR.

Check it out: public.flourish.studio/visualisatio...

For Day 2 of the #30DayChartChallenge, here's a grid of slope charts that use India's 2019 and 2024 Time Use Surveys to show the change in how men and women spend their day.

Unsurprisingly, Indian women spent 20% of their day on unpaid work, men spent just 2.6%.

Pie chart on women’s representation in Indian parliament and cabinet

Starting this year's #30DayChartChallenge with this quick pie chart on women's political representation.

In India, women make up less than a fifth of the Parliament and an even smaller fraction of the Cabinet, lagging behind global peers when it comes to representation.

📚Best history book I’ve read this month: White Malice by Susan Williams.

Williams meticulously documents the role played by the CIA in undermining African independence movts from the murder of Congo’s first PM Lumumba to the coup which overthrew Nkrumah’s government in Ghana.

Unsurprisingly, Indian women continue to do a big chunk of the unpaid work in the household, including unpaid domestic services and caregiving, while men lag.

Built a quick graphic on the factsheet released last week by MoSPI on the 2024 time use data:

Husband jailed for raping wife freed because marital rape not a crime in India A 40 year-old man was previously convicted of rape and culpable homicide after a trial found his wife, a. minor, died of injuries suffered during forced intercourse

The husband raped his wife, a minor, so violently that she died.

Criminalize marital rape.
www.independent.co.uk/asia/india/i...

📌 Finally got around to building a website for my reporting portfolio.

48 hours of hyperfocus later: bansarikamdar.com

Say hello and let me know what you think

A beautiful essay by Paromita Vohra on the how patriarchy feeds the fantasy of masculinity to Indian men and what current discourses fail to address.

Notes how our emotional segregation is reflected in the gender segregation of our films. (Thappad v. Animal)

www.hindustantimes.com/cities/mumba...

it is a serious thing

just to be alive
on this fresh morning
in the broken world.

— Mary Oliver, from Invitation 🌻

Pomegranates

Pink guavas

Winter morning walk to the fruit market

I can't stand it when people say "the first Western journalist to report from". Who cares? What is it supposed to mean? That their reporting will be somehow better than the local journalists already there? Puts me in mind of colonisers "discovering" other people's countries.

In the past 5 days:
—Amnesty International concludes Israel is committing genocide
—CEO of largest US health insurance company killed
—Martial law declared in South Korea, fails in hours
—French government collapses
—Assad regime collapses

Weeks where decades happen…

A picture of an excerpt of a letter by John Steinbeck to John P. McKnight. Steinbeck says: “What can I say about journalism? It has the greatest virtue & the greatest evil. It is the first thing the dictator controls. It is the mother of literature and the perpetrator of crap. In many cases it is the only history we have and yet is the tool of the worst men. But over a long period of time and because it is the product of so many men, it is perhaps the purest thing we have. Honesty has a way of creeping in even when it was not intended.”

“Honesty has a way of creeping in even when it is not intended”

- John Steinbeck in a letter to John P. McKnight on #journalism

Found this a while ago on @lettersofnote.com.

Jim Lehrer’s Rules of Journalism

Audiobook cover of ADHD is Awesome by Penn and Kim Holderness

2. ADHD is Awesome

A compassionate look at what it’s like to live with an ADHD brain and what it’s like to love and support someone who has been diagnosed with it.

Also, the many side quests from the attempts at renaming the condition to its ode to cargo pants are hilarious.

Cover of the audiobook of Men Who Hate Women by Laura Bates

#booksky Books I read in Nov:

1. Men Who Hate Women
What do Elliot Rodger, pick-up artists and the “your body, my choice” men have in common?

Bates goes undercover in the “manosphere” and uncovers how it grooms and radicalizes vulnerable men and encourages extreme acts of violence against women.

My Life As a Homeless Man in America An extraordinary firsthand account.

Patrick Fealey, former award-winning reporter and arts critic for outlets including The Boston Globe and Reuters, writes a harrowing firsthand account of homelessness in America.

If you read only one thing this month, let it be this: www.esquire.com/news-politic...

Hello, Bluesky! Let me know who all I should follow.

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