Paper Presentation Report

Paper presentation on the topic 'women and democracy' invited a great number of interesting entries from which 8 were carefully selected to be presented at Jagriti on 5th March 2020.

In one of the venues of  paper presentation, 4 participants presented their unique and intriguing paper which was judged by Shobha Warrier.

First paper was presented by Gayatri Ahuja on the topic 'Contemporary Global Aspirations of Women Writers'. Gayatri delved into the topic of women's identify through their literary work especially in social media. Her focus was on writings by south asian and north American women and why they choose to write on what they did. The judge remarked that she should perhaps look at women's literature as more than experience sharing in her future work on this paper.

The second paper was Mudita titled 'Who is afraid of secularism?'. Her paper questioned what secularism meant to the majority and minority in India, delving into who considered it 'minority appeasement' and who thought of it as 'tokenistic measure'. She also talked about the protest movement in India today and what it means for women who are participating in them.

The third paper was by Manisha Arya on 'Women's movements in India', wherein she talked about all women's movements ranging from Chipko to anyi arrack and Gulabi gang. Her paper focused on the role of women and their agency in public sphere.

The final paper was presented by Shubhangi Derhgawen on 'Minority women environmental writing',which is a current topic of debate. Her paper was based on arguments by Niladhari Bhattacharya and her argument aimed to separate the women's movements from peasant's movements in order to maintain the agency of the woman and not let their contribution be sidelined.

Alongside,the event was also taking place in the other venue(Language Lab) marked by the presence of Ms. Anindita ghosh as the judge.

The event started with the 1st presenter, Devangana Rathore presenting on a very interesting topic of whether women should fight for their rights as on one hand it is a move towards a good cause but on the other it is not right to get involved in a war.

2nd set of presenters,Anjali Kumar and Nishtha Prasad presented how the role of women in voting and electoral processes is enormous and cannot be neglected.They spread light on the fact that level of female participation in politics is determined by many factors including social factors.Finally ,they concluded by stating that even though many reforms are introduced for women there is a major scope for improvement.

3rd set of presenters,Harshita Kumari and Manya Kakkar presented their views on the #Me too movement which was a very popular movement that gained momentum and the stressed on 'Polarity of Consent'.They also used examples and movies like Lipstick under My Burkha and Parched for better understanding of the content.

A very interesting topic relating to the safety of women while commuting was given weight by our final presenters, Yastika Sharma and Aditi Singh with the relevance of their study that 81% of women agreed that post 9 pm they feel unsafe to travel.

They not only presented very well but also conducted a street survey on 800m long stretch of Bhaskaracharya Marg and Ram Kishore Marg in respect of parameters like cctv,street lights,etc .Along with that 210 girls all over DU were also surveyed by them .

The benefits and disadvantages of the recently introduced Free ridership scheme was also discussed in detail.

The event concluded with the judges making a few remarks on the flow of the paper presentation, importance of having a clear structure in terms of introduction and conclusion and delivering it in a clear manner.

The best award was given to Yastika Sharma ,Aditi Singh , Swastika Ojha, Yastika Sharma,Mudita Kushwaha and special mention was given to Devangana Rathore and Shubhangi Derhgawen.