Author: Albertina Almeida

Popular Essays, Uncategorized

Love in the time of love-laws

By ALBERTINA ALMEIDA

The potential of love to disrupt the status quo, in the interests of justice, is something that the courts of law, at the trial court level, need to explore, if we are to envision and bring into being an equitable world. This is all the more necessary in times, when laws are being enacted to retain the status quo, which affects the dispensation of justice. It is necessary to take stock of how love is being weaponised to maintain a stereotyping status quo, and to leverage the law and the Constitution to make sure that love becomes a medium to disrupt the conservative and unjust status quo. (more…)

Popular Essays

How India Sees Goa: Reflections in the 60th Year of Goa’s Annexation to India

By ALBERTINA ALMEIDA

Although Goa is politically part of Indian territory, the way the rest of India views Goa and its people, says something about the Indian gaze of Goa. I thought it is important to begin by putting down elements of what the Indian gaze looks like, in a bid to understand the sub-text – something that is sub-consciously internalized by people in other parts of India, perhaps based on how the Indian Corporate State has treated and is treating Goa. (more…)

Popular Essays

So what is this thing called Choice?

By ALBERTINA ALMEIDA

One is often non-plussed by the way the word ‘choice’ is used, be it by Hindu nationalists, by corporate fundamentalists, casteists and sexists. Whether it be in the rhetoric of the anti-farmer laws, or in the ‘Love-Jihad’ law, or Goa’s relationship with the Union of India and the citizenship of Goans in India, the term choice is used in completely different frames. (more…)

Interventions, Webinars

Albertina Almeida: “Homogenisation: Assumptions and Consequences”

Albertina Almeida was one of two speakers at this session organised on 7th December, 2020, on “Homogenisation: Assumptions and Consequences,” which was part of the 16 days of Activism Programme of the Human Rights Advocacy and Research Foundation.

Albertina Almeida takes the mask off the uniform laws, such as some of Goa’s Family Laws and India’s Criminal laws, to show how uniformity of laws has no value per se in and of itself and is a project that glosses over inequalities based on gender and other axis of discrimination.

Errata: Albertina Almeida would like to clarify here that there is a mistake at the start of her talk (which is corrected at the end of the programme). While speaking of the amount of property that can be willed away by parents under the Goan law, she mentions one-third. The correct amount is one half.

Albertina Almeida

Popular Essays

Remembering Dadu Mandrekar

By ALBERTINA ALMEIDA

I met Dadu Mandrekar sometime in the late 80s. It was shortly before Dadu along with a group of Dalits converted to Buddhism. I also remember that, although invited for the conversion ceremony by Dalits to Buddhism, I did not go for it. It stemmed from my limited knowledge then. I thought this is yet one more religion, and, if they are abandoning one religion only to join another, I am not going to be endorsing such an endeavor. I was of course pulled up by Dadu in his characteristic way, and that began a decades-long association that had a lasting impact on me. (more…)

Popular Essays

Coal route: The New SEZ

By ALBERTINA ALMEIDA

As we know SEZs are, by the Government’s definition, supposed to be foreign countries within the country, for the purposes of trade operations and duties and tariffs, with special rules for facilitating foreign direct investment. This means that the Panchayats or Municipalities in whose jurisdiction the areas covered by the SEZs lie cannot take a call with respective to any approvals within those areas. In 2008 Goa awoke to what was called a New Year gift, that SEZs would be scrapped. Rather the SEZ policy would be scrapped to imply that there would be no SEZs. However, SEZ-like set ups continued to exist in Goa. Information Technology Parks and Biotechnology parks continued to be possibilities as the IT Policy and the Biotechnology Policy , which make these possible, as they speak of SEZ like parks, were not scrapped. (more…)

Interventions, Webinars

Albertina Almeida: “Highlights of CBCI Guidelines relating to Sexual Harassment of Children by Clerics and in Church Institutions”

Albertina Almeida participated in a webinar on the occasion of International Girl Child Day (October 11) organised by the Women’s Commission of the Archdiocese of Goa and Daman, where she spoke on “Highlights of CBCI Guidelines relating to Sexual Harassment of Children by Clerics and in Church Institutions”. See the flier below:

Albertina Almeida sexual herrassment