Linked with Sanlaap India, with Oxfam (India) Trust, New Delhi, and with Terre des Hommes, divers groupes indépendants, also with its India Programme.
She is one of the 1000 women proposed for the Nobel Peace Price 2005.
When a study on sexually abused children took Indrani Sinha (born 1950) to the brothel areas of Kolkata, the lives of the women there shook her to the core. From then on, she and Sanlaap (sanlaap means dialogue), the organization she set up, have been working to eliminate stigma, and to integrate women in prostitution and their children into mainstream society. While the setting up of safe homes and motivating government agencies have been significant victories, Indrani’s greatest triumph is the fulfilling lives that the women in and from Sanlaap’s shelter homes now lead.
She says: “When I started in 1989, I did not have any role models from whom I could learn. Therefore, I learnt from the women in red-light areas through listening to their needs”.
Drawing a parallel with another form of violence, the use of child labor, Indrani says, “Would we advocate that child labor be legalized just because it exists? A form of violence cannot be accepted merely because it is there and has been for centuries; the basis of its existence needs to be challenged”.
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Indrani Sinha – India
She works for Sanlaap.
Indrani Sinha was born in Calcutta (now Kolkata) in West Bengal on 15 March 1950, and grew up in Patna, Bihar. She completed her graduation in English literature from Kolkata’s Jadavpur University. Indrani’s life, as a young woman, was tough: when she was only 17, her father’s retirement meant that she had to manage both her work and studies, and shoulder the financial responsibilities at home.
She was married in 1973, but soon realized that she was in a dysfunctional marriage; nonetheless, she waited for their son to grow up before she left it. She married a friend who respects her work in 1985, and has two daughters now.
Although Indrani’s career began with teaching English, in 1973-76, in a well-known Hindi-medium school in Calcutta, she soon realized that her interest lay in the development sector.
In 1982, she joined Terre des Hommes (see the India Programme), “a network of ten national organizations working for the rights of children and to promote equitable development without racial, religious, political, cultural or gender-based discrimination” (see also on wikipedia), and then moved on to the Oxfam India Trust, where she worked for five years in women’s empowerment.
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