Ali has accomplishments in several fields. She was the national swimming champion from 1972-1974. She won the Miss India title in 1976 and was runner-up at the Miss International contest in 1977. Ali was also a jockey at the Calcutta Gymkhana in 1979.

Acting career:::

She has acted in several Bollywood films, the notable ones being Junoon (1979) with Shashi Kapoor and Major Saab with Amitabh Bachchan (1998), Bewafaa (2005) and the most recent being Life In A… Metro with Dharmendra in 2007.

She has also acted in a Malayalam film called Big B (2007) with Mammootty. She is associated with Action India, an organisation working to spread AIDS awareness.

Political career:::

She contested the 2004 Lok Sabha elections unsuccessfully from South Kolkata.

In September 2005, she was appointed the chairperson of the Children’s Film Society of India (CFSI)

“The Muslims are not a cause…my country is my cause. I am a human being first. My mother was Roman Catholic, my father is Muslim, I am married to a Sikh and I believe in Vedanta. In our home, we have an altar for gods from all religions and I have taught my children that it does not matter by what name you call him — Allah or Christ – God is God.”

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Sunita Chowdhry was the first woman auto driver in Delhi. After four years of driving on city streets, she is now eligible to be a trainer.

She is training 250 other women to drive autos. And the sessions start from Monday.

40-year-old Maya is among those 250 women. Self-reliance, supplementing the income of a family with two growing children and rising costs are her reasons to choose driving an auto-rickshaw as a career.

“We want to learn how to drive autos. We will also get employment and earn for our children,” she said.

Driving autos in Delhi for four years, Sunita calls her effort a step in empowering the women. A black-belt in karate she says learning basic self-defence will be part of the training.

“Safety is an issue here, women are not safe in this city. During 2010 Commonwealth Games, there will be foreigners here. This will assure safety for them. It will also be a source of livelihood for many women. That’s why I am training these women,” Sunita said.

Sudesh is a graduate from Jammu. She failed to get a secretarial job. Now, as an auto-driver, she is looking to earn at least Rs 500 every day for 8 hours of work.

She says her husband, who has a business, fully backs her decision.

“Work is work. It’s important to be self reliant. Autorickshaw driving is a good profession,” Sudesh said.

Sunita is requesting the government to give free autos to the trainees and also help them get commercial licenses. Passengers clearly see the advantages of riding in vehicles driven by women.

“Women will not be rude or corrupt. They won’t overcharge either. I will definitely prefer women because they are women. You never know how men may misbehave,” said a passenger.

The first women auto driver is now training more women in auto driving and giving them employment opportunities. It seems in the near future only men auto drivers will be a thing of passe.

Source : Women auto driver

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Sushmita sen First Indian Miss universe

In 1994, at the age of eighteen, Sushmita won the title of Miss India beating out Aishwarya Rai who was the runner up. Sen represented India at the Miss Universe Pageant, held in Manila, Philippines. Sushmita won the Miss Universe contest. Now she is well known bollywood actress.

At Miss Universe, Sushmita ranked third overall in the preliminaries, right behind preliminary winner Miss Colombia Carolina Gomez, and Miss Greece Rea Totounzi, who ranked second but won the preliminary swimsuit and evening gown competitions. Sushmita went on to place second, fifth and third in the swimsuit, interview, and evening gown semi-final competitions respectively, placing her in third place behind Miss Colombia and Miss Venezuela Minorka Mercado. All three women went on to be the final three contestants. In the end, the judges placed their votes on Sushmita, making her the first woman from India to become Miss Universe.

Sushmita’s supposed rival at the Miss India pageant, Aishwarya Rai, went on to win the 1994 Miss World contest.

Sushmita was born in a Bengali family to Shubeer Sen, a former Indian Air Force Wing Commander and Subhra Sen, worked as a fashion artist and jewelery designer. She has a brother, Rajeev Sen and a sister, Neelam Sen. She was born St.Theresa’s hospital, Hyderabad, and grew up in New Delhi. She attended school at Air Force Golden Jubilee Institute studying English, and had career plans in journalism. She has been linked romantically to several people. In 2000, she adopted a girl, Renee, as a single mother.

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Dr. Reita Faria Powell (born Bombay, date unknown) was the first Indian woman to win the Miss World title of 1966. After winning the Miss Bombay crown earlier that year, she won the Eve’s Weekly Miss India contest (not to be confused with the Femina Miss India competition won that year by Yasmin Daji.) She was the first Asian to win Miss World.

A simple, very bright and serious medical student, Reita entered Miss Bombay on a whim, and walked away with  Miss World titles with her natural looks, charisma and wit. Despite a hectic years as Miss World, she wanted nothing more than to return to her studies, quietly, and spurn offers of fame and fortune…which was not an easy situation with the press. After her one year tenure, she refused modeling and films and instead concentrated on medical studies. She met David Powell, a fellow student, who took a protective arm over her. The two went for postgraduate studies at Harvard University and moved to Dublin, Ireland, where Reita practiced medicine and David was a Professor of Medicine. They have two daughters in the medical field, Ann Marie and Deirdrie and five grandchildren.

Reita was a judge at Femina Miss India 1998, and has come back to judge the Miss World competition on a few occasions.

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Lalita D. Gupte is Joint Managing Director of ICICI Bank Limited, which is the largest private sector bank in India. She was instrumental in transforming the erstwhile ICICI Limited from a development financial institution into a well-diversified universal bank, which culminated with the merger of ICICI Limited and ICICI Bank Limited. At ICICI Limited Mrs. Gupte was Joint Managing Director and Chief Operating Officer and played a key role in making ICICI the first Indian company and second bank from Asia to list on the New York Stock Exchange. Mrs. Gupte has about three decades of experience in the financial services industry, having started her career with ICICI Limited which later merged with ICICI Bank) in 1971 as a trainee in the Project Appraisal department. She served in different locations and capacities, and had played a pivotal role in the listing of ICICI share in the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) – the first Indian enterprise to be listed in NYSE, and the second Asian Bank to do so.

Her contributions have been widely recognized, and the awards conferred on her include the following:

• The twenty First Century for Banking Finance and Banking award (1997) by Ladies Wing of the Indian Merchants’ Chamber
• The Women Achievers Award (2001) from the Women graduates’ Association.
• Women of the Year Award (2002) by the International Women’s’ Association.

In addition, Mrs. Gupte has been a member / chairperson of various expert groups. She was a member of “The Expert Group on Foreign Exchange Markets in India” formed in November 1994 by the Reserve Bank of India and a member of the Board of Governors of Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai. Mrs. Gupta was Member-Secretary of the “Expert Group on Commercialisation of Infrastructure” formed by the Government of India in 1995. She was also Chairperson of the “Confederation of Indian Industry - National Committee on E-Commerce”.

She is also member of the Board of Directors of Bharat Forge Ltd, Firstsource Solutions Ltd and Kirloskar Brothers Ltd.

Mrs. Gupte has two children and lives in Mumbai. She enjoys spending her free time with her family and friends. Mrs. Gupte holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics and a Master’s degree in Business Management.

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In the past six months, around seven acid attacks have taken place on young women in Delhi and the national capital region, including in the fast-growing suburban towns of Gurgaon and Ghaziabad.

‘It is a sort of revenge by the perpetrator. The root cause of such an extreme step could be deep-seeded hatred for the woman. In most cases, the doer is aware of the consequences of the attack and carries it out in a planned manner,’ said T.P. Jindal, senior psychiatrist at the Indira Gandhi E.S.I. Hospital.

‘The cases of acid attack in Delhi are increasing because it is the easiest way of taking revenge and the damages are always lethal,’ said Jindal. In most cases the man suffers from an inferiority complex and a sense of insecurity, which play a major role in forcing him to take the step.

‘The aggressors suffer from psychopathic tendencies because of which they are not able to listen to their rational mind and control unstable thoughts,’ added Jindal. ‘The men always want everything to be easily available to them.’

In most cases, the man carries out the attack in a well-planned manner. ‘The aggressor watches the movements of the victim for a few days before carrying out the attack. Due to the personality disorders that they suffer from there is little or no sense of fear from the law or punishment,’ said Jindal.

The General Assembly of UNO designated 25 November as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, by resolution 54/134 of 17 December 1999, and invited all concerned to organize activities designated to raise public awareness of the problem.

In spite of the prosperity, globalization and education, we have failed to eliminate the violence against the women. We, the Indians, worship woman as a Goddess, regard her as a mother, love her as a wife and she is most affectionate to us as a daughter but still we commit violence against her. As per the statistics available, every 3rd minute a case of violence against woman is registered in India. Every day 50 cases of dowry related violence are reported and every 29th minute a woman is raped. One can argue that why this is happening? Are not their sufficient laws to prevent such mishappenings? Or the society is not mature enough to deal with such things. There is no need to be surprised. Everything is there. There are laws to prevent violence against woman, there is police to keep a check on these events and there are seminars and symposiums to make recommendation. However, on ground level nothing seems to be working.Above cases are just reflection of violence against woman. There are incidences of unstrapping of women in nandigram and Guwahati but these incidences are not reflective of a developing economy and growing society but a decadent society which is not bothered about human dignity as stated by Dr Ranjana kumari, President of Women power Connect, a NGO in India. She has rightly suggested the observation of a “National Shame Day” every year to raehighlight the atrocities committed against women.There are other social evils also due to which Indian women suffer. I’ll discuss all these in brief.

1. Witchcraft: Several women are killed on pretext of practicing witchcraft. If a child is suffering from a disease in neighborhood, a woman living nearby may be made victim alleging that she is a witchcraft and that particular child is suffering because of her doing. In fact old scores are settled this way. Women are blamed for doing mischief and tortured or killed after sometime. How fair is this justice? A poor helpless woman is killed and no action is taken against the culprits. These cases are more prevalent in tribal area where they make their own rules and police becomes helpless against the mob. Strict action need to be taken in such cases but who will dare to go against the people as they serve as vote bank to politicians.

2. Devdasi: girls in their childhood are made Devdasi’s to serve God in the temple and they have to leave their home and stay in the temple complex. These girls grew up in the shelter of priests in the temple and when they are grown up, most of them are exploited.

3. Sati:This custom is prevalent in India since a long time. Although it is prohibited as per law but still few cases are reported from some parts of the country. When husband dies, woman also has to die as per this customary practices. Some powerful group want to keep this custom alive and draw political advantages out of it. Women are worshiped who cast themselves on the funeral pyres of their husbands.

4. Dowry: This is the worst crime against the woman next to rape. A married girl (bride) is burnt to death or killed or tortured by her in-laws and husband for not providing/giving enough gifts or money to their in-laws by her parents. About 50 cases per day are registered all over India. Only solution to this problem is encouragement to inter-cast marriages or love marriage. Other alternative may be to outcast people from the society.

5. Exploitation at work place and in schools: Though these cases are seldom reported but it is a known fact that women are exploited at their work place and girls suffer as a student in their school. However, it is not applicable to all schools or workplace.

6. Rape: All rape cases are not reported to police but if you consider only reported cases, a woman is raped in India every 29th minute. This shows the gravity of the problem. Laws are not very strict for such type of violence against woman. Few years back, there was a move on government part to award capital punishment in such cases bit it did not materialized. Sad part of the story is that in most of the cases culprits are either close relatives, friends or known persons.

7. Victims of blackmail: New technology has made woman more prone to blackmail. Use of spying camera, mobiles equipped with camera and other cheaply available devices have made it convenient to make MMS clip or video clip and thereafter conversion of these into CD or DVD’s.

8. Sex determination: Ratio of girls child to male has declined as a result of sex determination of a child during pregnancy. If it is found to be a female it is aborted by the parents. Most prosperous states of northern India have developed the practice of aborting female fetuses, once identified in the womb. However, one should never forget that every person in this world enters along with his/her own luck. I know a lady when she was pregnant and after sex determination she came to know that child she is bearing is a female, she made attempts to get it aborted but her husband did not agree to it. At present, that girl holds a very high position in a MNC and her mother never get tired appreciating her in front of all. So please think before committing such a cruel act. You are not knowing about the future of girl child you are attempting to kill.

9. Cyber crime against women: In a recent seminar increase in cyber crime against women was discussed. A police officer informed that 90 cases of cyber crime against women were registered in a small city by the police. Only a small number of cases are reported to police. Few days back police arrested an Engineer of a reputed private firm on charges of blackmailing girls and women with whom he did chat regularly and retrieved information related to contact and photographs and threatened them to put their photographs on net.

Women are being exploited by exposing them physically. Obscene photographs of women are being placed on the net to earn money. The live web cam business is thriving like anything. Thousands of girls are exposing their body to earn money. A survey is needed to know whether these girls are doing it for fun or they are doing it for survival.

10. Throwing acid: The most heinous and severe punishment deserving crime against women is throwing strong acids like sulphuric acid on the face of the girls or women.

11. Other forms of violence against women: Girl child are sold for a petty amount of money and sometimes girls are sold in the name of marriage also. Many of them end up as prostitutes or bar girls. In fact, women in India face double punishment. Not only they are forced to act as sex workers but also subject to police torture time and again as prostitution in India is not legalized. Bar girls also face this problem. Even these ladies catch several diseases and die due to lack of proper health care. Other forms of violence against women include forcing them to flesh trading, honor killing etc. Honor killing is killing females if they revolt against their families/relatives and decide to marry with males of other caste or religion.

It is not only in India that violence is committed against women. There are other countries in South Asia and Gulf countries where women suffer due to atrocities committed against her by male dominated societies. However, India is large country so average appears shocking at first look.

source : Violence against women

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YOU MUST ABSTAIN FROM ALL ALCOHOL. YOU MUST DRINK 10 GLASSES OF WATER EACH DAY

• DAY ONE - All fruits except bananas. Your first day will consist of all the fruits you want. It is strongly suggested that you consume lots of melons on the first day. Especially watermelon and cantaloupe. If you limit your fruit consumption to melons, your chances of losing a lot of weight on the first day are very good.

• DAY TWO - All vegetables. You are encouraged to eat until you are stuffed with all the raw or cooked vegetables of your choice. There is no limit on the amount or type. For your complex carbohydrate, you will start day two with a large boiled potato for breakfast. You may top the potato with one pat of butter.

• DAY THREE - A mixture of fruits and vegetables of your choice. Any amount, any quantity. No bananas yet. No potatoes today.

• DAY FOUR - Bananas and milk. Today you eat as many as eight bananas and drink three glasses of milk. This will be combined with the vegetable soup, which may be eaten in limited quantities.

• DAY FIVE - Today is a feast day. You will eat sprouts and paneer and tomatoes. Eat 280 grams of sprouts and paneer. Combine this with six whole tomatoes. On day five you must increase your water intake by one quart. This is to cleanse your system of the uric acid you will be producing.

• DAY SIX - Sprouts and paneer and vegetables. Today you may eat an unlimited amount of sprouts and paneer and vegetables. Eat to your heart’s content.

• DAY SEVEN - Today your food intake will consist of brown rice, fruit juices and all the vegetables you care to consume.
  Vegetables can be taken in the form of salad if desired. No dressing except malt, white vinegar, squeezed lemon, garlic and herbs. No more than one teaspoon of oil. Do keep way from beans (Lima, Pinto, kidney.) because they tend to be high in calories even though they are very good for you.

Read more at Diet program

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Very large majorities in nearly all nations polled perceive that over the course of their own lifetime women have gained more equality of rights as compared to men. On average 71 percent perceive that women have gained greater equality of rights with 29 percent saying that they have gained much more equality and 42 percent saying say they have a little more equality.

The two exceptions are the Palestinian territories and Nigeria. Among Palestinians a slight majority (51%) says that women’s rights have become less equal, while 41 percent say they have grown more equal. Nigeria is divided with 46 percent perceiving greater equality and 46 percent perceiving less equality.

The countries of the former Soviet Union also have relatively large numbers saying that there has been no real change or that women now have less equality, including 29 percent of Russians, 28 percent of Ukrainians, and 28 percent of Azerbaijanis.

Read more at worldpublicopinion

India is unique in that only 53 percent say that women have gained greater equality, but an additional 14 percent volunteered the response that women now have more rights than men.

There is also considerable variation among countries in the numbers believing women have gained “much more” equality. Majorities in Egypt (57%) and Britain (52%) believe women have gained much more equality. In contrast, only 9 percent of Nigerians and 11 percent of Palestinians have this perception.

Men and women overall differ little on the question of whether women have gained greater equality–72 percent of men and 69 percent of women agree that this has occurred.

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I am married with an Indian and I am an American. His family still does not know about our marriage. We both love each other very much, but the culture difference will not accept this bond. Till now it all feels like dream and I feel mix marriage is also good. Its excited to learn thru my partner about his culture, beliefs, food and clothes…

My friend said, marry someone from a different race or culture as it broadens the mind! Is he wrong? Do culture clashes cause most of the problems in mixed relationships? We can all pull out examples of mixed relationships working (when I mean working, I mean till death do them part) but is it too difficult for cultures that are too different? Expectations of what a man’s or a woman’s role in a marriage is vastly different in different countries, and like it or not families always get involved (can’t live with them, can’t live without them). Is this one of the main reasons for the failures?

Are you married to someone of a different race/culture? Is your relationship working or falling apart? If you are not into such relation still you can give your opinion on this.

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Akhila Srinivasan is currently the Managing Director of Shriram Investments Limited (a part of Rs. 5000 crore Shri Ram Group), is a prominent business woman of India. She is also associated with several social welfare activities and initiatives. She is the recipient of several awards, including Outstanding Women Professional Award (200-01) instituted by the FICCI.

She is also honorary Dutch Consul in India, and is based in Chennai, South India. In addition, she holds the position of State President of the Art of Living Foundation for the state of Tamil Nadu, India.

Being an Indian Administrative Services (IAS) officer was Akhila s most recurrent dream. However, her marriage to qualified chartered accountant H. Srinivasan, soon after her first year of post-graduation changed her life. Her son was born during her second year of marriage. While her husband founded a stock-broking business with his company Bluechip Portfolios Private Limited, she divided her time between tending to her child and preparing for the preliminary IAS examination, during the initial phase of her motherhood. After quite a bit of juggling, she gave up the idea. Instead, she thought she would work on a PhD and foray into the stream of teaching.

One morning in 1986, an unusual ad caught Akhila s eye while she sifted through the newspaper over her morning coffee. The Shriram group had placed the ad, calling on executive trainees. She promptly applied. Shortly thereafter, she attempted the entrance test series, following which she was selected among twelve persons who were short-listed in all; she was one of the few lady executive trainees in the group.

Once she joined Shriram in 1986, she discovered that the organization was charged with a dynamism, which granted immeasurable scope for every person to exercise his talents and realize his potential.

She began her stint as the marketing manager in 1987 subsequent to her executive traineeship. With her expeditions to every nook and corner of the country, sometimes traveling more than a few of her male colleagues, she created a massive public awareness of the Shriram group. She was promoted to the posts of the General Manager of Marketing in 1993 and the President in 1994, before she took Shriram under her wing as the Managing Director in 2000. I always had the satisfaction of contributing to the growth of the company and society. We were able to record this growth immediately and reap the results, Akhila unveils with a smile.

The company s dividend records were sound, its levels of profitability soared and the share it held in the financial services market enlarged even further, bringing in a wide lattice of investors. Nurturing her company s ambitions, Akhila evolved Shriram Investments Limited from a tiny corporate entity to a large empire. One of the star performers of Shriram, she lady captured the Best Executive tag for three consecutive years. Read More

Interview with rediff

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