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July 16 · Issue #16 · View online
Science and Culture Stories Curated by Journalist Dinsa Sachan
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Namaskaar!
Recently, I had a coffee date with journalist Priyanka Borpujari. Borpujari has been an independent journalist for more than a decade. She has reported on varied issues of human rights – and everything in between – from across India, and most recently, El Salvador and Indonesia. She was the first Indian woman to win the prestigious IWMF Elizabeth Neuffer Fellowship in 2012, and has gone on to win several other fellowships. Home for Borpujari is on the road, but she also enjoys a “couch potato day” watching movies on Sundays. A lover of train trips and tall trees, Borpujari’s journalism has been published in The Guardian, The Hindu, Al Jazeera, Scroll, Pacific Standard, TRT World, and several others. She is also the founder of The Kali Writes Project, which is aimed at a cathartic process through healing, and has conducted such workshops among Muslim girls in a far-flung suburb of Mumbai, women in Cape Town, staff workers at an NGO, and male inmates at the local jail in Rochester, NY.
In this week’s Nucleus Mag, Borpujari handpicks the finest human rights stories – by her and others.
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Borpujari during a recent reporting trip to Indonesia. Photo credit: PB
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In Indonesia, female clerics seek recognition and rights for women
I am especially proud of this story, as I got the chance to witness a beautiful process of Muslim women claiming their right to their religious erudition and asserting gender rights from the Islamic texts. In the midst of all the conservative assumptions of women observing a certain faith, it felt refreshing to contribute to an alternative narrative, and one that’s quite strong in this southeast Asian country.
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Panic button: how can safety apps for women curb sexual assaults in India?
After the December 2012 rape in New Delhi, there were a slew of mobile phone-based apps, with the good intention of ensuring women’s safety. But then, did women effectively use these? Apps like these undermined every woman’s intrinsic way of staying safe, while such tools did not further the conversation of prevention of crimes.
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Making cities safer with public transport
On a similar vein as the one above, I notice how there is a perception that radio cab services make it safer for women. However, there is a huge cost variable to using them, leaving out a larger section of women who cannot afford them. Perhaps it is time that we re-invest in the idea of public transport and ensure a democratic vision of public spaces?
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A sweeping victory
It was heartwarming to join in a celebration at a Mumbai slum, when some of its residents who work as contract sanitation workers won a 10-year Supreme Court case, which directed the municipal corporation of Mumbai to recognise them as permanent workers, and thus give them corresponding benefits. In this story, I delved deeper into the working conditions of such workers who are crucial for the city’s sanitation, and their long battle for justice.
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Finding the American dream in El Salvador
The rhetoric about migrants is often that they strip the local populace of jobs. But, what happens to the lives of the families of these migrants back home? In the heightened conversation in the US against migrants from Central and South America, I had the humbling opportunity to listen to the aspirations and dreams of those who choose to stay, while a loved one is far away.
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Samrat follows the trail of the mighty Brahmaputra
In this brilliant work of narrative and explanatory journalism, Samrat details the vast river like never before in journalism. Given the havoc of floods every year in Assam, a story like this conveys what we ought to know best: do not mess with the elements.
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Heat of the Moment
This is a fascinating multi-media project that looks at the impact of climate change in the US. A beautifully designed website, with piercing essays, podcasts, illuminating graphics and maps, this is perhaps one way to inch forward conversations we ought to be having, towards hoping that journalism will change the way we callously perceive climate change.
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The reductive seduction of other people’s problems
The headline says it all. And then the first part of the essay, turning the tables around, puts into perspective how the West views the “developing world”, which cascades into development projects - and even journalism - turning to be one that is stripped of respect for indigenous intelligence.
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The Counted: tracking people killed by police in the United States
This is another stellar collaborative work, involving readers, in recording and thus honouring those who fall prey to race profile and brutality in the hands of the police in the US. It would be a dream to create something similar towards remembering those who were killed by religious hate crimes in India.
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Why it matters who females choose to have sex with
In this fascinating interview with Richard O Prum of Yale University, one understand better the dating and mating patterns of birds, and it reveals something we know too often, but ignore too often: women have their way to call the shots, and yes, feminism is thriving in the animal kingdom too!
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I started sending out Nucleus Mag late last year. Earlier this year, I was trying to look for ways to improve the newsletter and make it more valuable to readers. So, I wrote a journalistic piece about it for Writer’s Digest. It just went live! The story features advice from top journalists and writers, including Ann Friedman who curates the wildly popular The Ann Friedman Weekly.
If you plan to send out your own newsletter or e-mag, it might work as a handy guide. Do you have any ideas for improving Nucleus Mag? I’m all ears! ♥ Did you enjoy reading this issue of Nucleus Mag? Please share it on (1) Twitter (2) Facebook, or (3) via a quick e-mail. (Thank you!)
Until next week,
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