Some shit is going down in India about rape and the treatment of women. PBS Newshour covered it yesterday:

The fury across India has been building for nearly two weeks, since the 23-year-old medical student was gang-raped and then thrown from [a] bus in New Delhi.

Sexual assaults are rife in India, especially in New Delhi, where, on average, there’s a rape reported every 18 hours. But, this time, the extreme brutality of the crime ignited outrage that turned violent with street battles between protesters and police. The protests have continued this week, amid growing accusations police and other officials are dismissive of sex crimes.

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Meanwhile, another tragedy, mourners gathered yesterday in Punjab state for the funeral of a 17-year-old girl who reported being gang-raped in November. She killed herself Wednesday after saying she’d been humiliated by police.

NPR South Asia correspondant Julie McCarthy also talks about how poorly the Indian government has been handling this.

AP report on social issues and TV in India:

Shining light on inequities like the rampant abortion of female fetuses, caste discrimination and the slaying of brides in dowry disputes, actor Aamir Khan has reached an estimated one-third of the country with a new TV talk show that tackles persistent flaws of modern India that many of its citizens would prefer to ignore.

“Satyamev Jayate”, or “Truth Alone Prevails,” is a clever blend of hard news and raw emotional appeal — part 60 Minutes, part Oprah. Its influence has even prodded the notoriously lethargic government machinery into action, though it’s too soon to know what policy changes may be in the works.

The issue the article spends the most time on is the abortion of female fetuses, which is a disgustingly enormous problem in India. Even just using an ultrasound machine to determine the sex of a fetus has been illegal since 1994. It hasn’t helped.

Natalia Jimenez of msnbc.com wrote a nice piece for MSNBC’s PhotoBlog on Homai Vyarawalla, who is considered to be India’s first female photojournalist. The old photos accompanying it are quite good. Read it; love it.

Chaya Babu of the AP with a story that’s great but then also terrible in that it happened at all:

Hundreds of Indian girls whose names mean “unwanted” in Hindi chose new names Saturday for a fresh start in life.

A central Indian district held a renaming ceremony it hopes will give the girls new dignity and help fight widespread gender discrimination that gives India a skewed gender ratio, with far more boys than girls.

And then there’s this, which is just frightening:

Such ratios are the result of abortions of female fetuses, or just sheer neglect leading to a higher death rate among girls. The problem is so serious in India that hospitals are legally banned from revealing the gender of an unborn fetus in order to prevent sex-selective abortions, though evidence suggests the information gets out.