Deepali Gaur Singh

RH Reality Check, Asia

Deepali Gaur Singh is a Bangalore-based (Karnataka, India) academic and media practitioner. She is the author of the book ‘Drugs Production and Trafficking in Afghanistan,’ published by Pentagon Press which focuses on the economy and politics of Afghanistan, in particular, the effects of the narcotics trade on the security and stability of the region as also globally. She has an M.Phil. and Ph.D. on Tajikistan and Afghanistan from the Central Asian Studies Division, School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Deepali is also a filmmaker and photographer. She has been actively engaged with developmental organisations in rural Karnataka, Rajasthan, New Delhi and Orissa documenting social change and developing an archive of alternative images in different media on issues ranging from early childcare and primary education, health, environment to the informal sector workforce. She has also made a film on the situation of immigrants in Germany where she studied at the University of Hanover while on a DAAD scholarship in July 2000. As a freelancer she has researched and written extensively on Afghanistan and the new Central Asian Republics. Many of her writings have been published in Indian national dailies like, the Deccan Herald and in Kabul Press, an Afghanistan-based news and current affairs website. She is the recipient of the NTS-Asia post doctoral Research fellowship, 2009-2010. She is a member of the Cluster for Excellence, Karl Jaspers Centre for Transcultural Studies, University of Heidelberg and has been awarded a post doctoral fellowship by the DFG (German Research Foundation) at the cluster between November 2008 to January 2009 and August 2009 to January 2010.

“A Country of Housemaids”

The Indian government is addressing human trafficking by requiring training for women seeking employment as domestic workers abroad and banning women under 30 from this work in certain countries.

Marrying the Rapist

Women who are raped in India face societal pressure to marry their violators; proposals of marriage are seen by some as atonement for the crime, even when they are offered just before a guilty verdict.

Child Brides and Their Sexual Health

Akha Teej is an auspicious day for Indian weddings, but is also infamous for the mass child marriages that occur on the same day. Young married girls are particularly vulnerable to HIV and other reproductive health concerns.

Yoga or Sex Ed: What Should Youth Be Taught in School?

Editor's note: Today we welcome Deepali Gaur Singh, writing from India. She has experience in childcare, health, and education; she will be covering reproductive health issues on the continent of Asia.


At a time when even children from rural marginal families in one part of India—the southern state of Karnataka—are engaging in information dissemination on HIV with a specific focus on stigma and discrimination, adult policy-makers in five states of the country have rejected the new syllabus introduced by the national government's Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) featuring sex education as a dedicated subject for middle school students. Just as the central government gets credit for taking one of the most proactive steps with regard to both education and children in recent times (by directing all states to include the subject in their curriculum), and with the training of teachers also underway, it's ironic that the resistance to the move has come from just about every quarter possible.