Worse, women’s interest in pursuing a sense of self outside the home is heavily taxed. Sixty per cent of Indian women are not allowed to travel alone outside their villages or neighborhoods, even to the market or a health clinic. Nearly each one of us has experienced some form of sexual violence. Fifty-three per cent of us are anaemic. Despite increasing educational attainment, women have far less access to jobs, technology, property or communication devices—the oil of twenty-first-century independence.
