Barkha Dutt: belief

Transcript context

…Would you agree with the common impression that, overall, in India, women have it better in the South than in the North? If so, what would you infer about underlying structural causes of misogyny in India? I would agree with that. The reasons for that are manifold. Some relate to the fact that there are some societies, for example, in the southern state of Kerala, that are matriarchal, where the very organization of society is the home itself, but it all keeps coming back to home. That settles a lot of your other affiliated freedoms. There is the organization of many of these societies as matriarchal. The literacy and education rates are higher. Local units of governance have, in fact, performed better. We saw this even in the COVID management across the board in the South. I think a combination of culture and governance, the fact that there’s been more investment on healthcare, on reproductive rights — all of this has led to, I would say, the South being a better place for women than the North. I say this as a woman who actually lives and has grown up in North India. How much of that difference between the North and the South do you think stems from Islam, which is, of course, more prevalent in the North?…

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