SHAKTI: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Women’s Empowerment in India

The year 2001 was declared as the Year of Empowerment of Women by the Government of India and was also marked by the compilation of the National Policy of the Empowerment of Women (NPEW). This anthology, which is an outcome of a national seminar, seeks to find out ways in which such well-intended policies may be fruitfully employed. It achieves this by focussing on the present problems, available alternatives, possible solutions and the nascent beginnings of empowerment that are already evident.

Very often, issues of empowerment lose steam because they invariably disempower the other. This volume definitely avoids this pitfall. Moreover, academic discourses on issues related to women’s empowerment are often grounded in the specifics of disciplines; so much so, the obvious overlapping is either ignored or subsumed. This compendium attempts a holistic approach that spans across disciplines. The resulting spectrum is so vast that it includes the differing viewpoints of fine arts, literature, management, law, canon studies and social sciences in its range. From the interstices of these convergences, the collection seeks to forge lasting links of empowerment, which would be inherent in every individual and glow as an everlasting “Shakti.”

Ranjana Harish is the Head of the Department of English, School of Languages, Gujarat University and Director of the James Reaney Center for Canadian Studies. She had her education at Universities of Gujarat, Ottawa and California. She has been a Shastri Indo-Canadian Fellow to the Universities of Carleton, York, Western Ontario and Calgary. Her areas of special interest are gender studies and Indian and Canadian literatures. She has offered courses, guided research and published extensively in these areas.

V. Bharathi Harishankar is a Principal Project Officer of a web-based rural education project at IIT, Madras and a guest faculty in English at University of Madras. She was a Visiting Scholar at the Universities of NSW, Monash and Western Australia and at AIATSIS, Canberra. Her research interests include comparative postcolonial fiction, Indian poetics, diaspora studies and translation. She has published both nationally and internationally in these areas.