Both domestic violence (DV) and sexual assault against women (SAAW) in public spaces continue to be significant problems facing Indian society. Moreover, the link between DV and SAAW is also commonly misconstrued. Adding to this confusion is the way in which forms of violence against women (VAW) -battering, rape, molestation and sexual abuse -lacks spatial and contextual analysis. There was nationwide outrage over the Nirbhaya incident of 16 December 2012, which escalated the issue of VAW to the centre stage of political debates. Indeed, the Nirbhaya incident has intensified the need for understanding the spatialities of SAAW in India and propelled the Government of India to pass the Criminal Law (Amendment) Bill, 2013. Using a questionnaire survey supplemented by open-ended interviews, the research aims to understand how social and patriarchal norms allow SAAW to persist. The research narratives reveal that the contours of DV, leading to sexual exploitation of women, often spill over to the public spaces, thereby restricting women's mobility and creating fear of its (re)occurrence. Finally, I urge for reforms to tackle VAW while using Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2013 as an asset for reform.

The horrific gang-rape and the subsequent murder of Nirbyaya (fearless) in December

Domestic violence (DV) against married women is widely prevalent across Bangladesh and this merits nuanced attention. Multifarious factors are believed to perpetuate DV in different socioeconomic contexts within the country. This study aimed to understand the causes and contexts of DV in the Sylhet region (a distinct sub-culture that carries Sylheti identity). This was a qualitative study based on the experiences of 42 victims of DV who sought help from two social welfare organizations, namely 'Women Support Program (WSP)' and 'Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust (BLAST)', both located in Sylhet. Using in-depth interviews, we tried to interact with the victims to retrieve the causes and contexts of DV in Sylhet. Findings revealed that a number of factors led to DV. These causal and contextual factors for DV were dowry practice, illiteracy, cultural approval of wife beating, women's silence, polygyny, socioeconomic dependency of the wife, conflicts related to extra-and premarital affairs, poverty, stigmatization, and drug addiction of the husband. The study concluded that all these factors could be brought under the umbrella of age-old patriarchal cultural values that continue to create the contexts where DV takes place unabated.

Street violence against women (SVAW) in India is highly under researched. This article aims to understand the contextual factors responsible for the occurrence of SVAW in five cities of North-east India: Agartala, Kohima, Imphal, Shillong, and Guwahati. The aftermath of an horrific gang rape and the subsequent death of a 23-year-old woman in a moving bus in New Delhi in December 2012 served as a wake-up call for the Government of India (GOI), augmenting the need to understand the issues of SVAW. On December 23, 2012, the GOI constituted the Justice Verma Committee (JVC) who prepared a 630-page report, submitted to the Prime Minister of India, which identified "failure of governance" as the central cause of SVAW. Based on some of the recommendations of the JVC report, the GOI passed the Criminal Law Amendment Bill, 2013. Drawing upon semi-structured interviews from qualitative research in combination with a questionnaire survey, this research aims to understand the factors that allow SVAW to persist. Using recommendations of the JVC report and the Justice Usha Mehra Commission, the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 2013, as well as research findings, this article is an attempt to inform prevention strategies aimed at escalating the safety of women in public spaces of the study region.All forms of gender-based violence remain pandemicstatistics published by the United Nations Statistic Division (2015) suggest that one in three women worldwide suffer from physical/sexual violence at some point in their lives. SVAW is a pan-cultural phenomenon (Kearl, 2015). A survey conducted by Stop Street Harassment in 2014 reports that in the United States, 65% of women experienced SVAW: 23% were sexually touched, 20% were victims of stalking, and 9% were coerced sexually, though it remains unclear as to whether these women experienced SVAW in a year, or over the course of their lives. On New Year's Eve, in 2 The phrase "street violence against women" instead of "street sexual violence" is used because the research findings showed that women in the study region not only faced sexual assault but were also targeted for their jewelry and other valuables. 3 The rape and murder of the young woman on the evening of April 28, 2016 in Kerala is a stark reminder of the 2012 Nirbhaya incident. 312

The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), launched in February 2006 was renamed in October 02, 2009 as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (henceforth, MGNREGA). It is an anti-poverty flagship programme of the Government of India. The key purpose of MGNREGA is to enhance wage employment in the rural areas by providing at least 100 days of guaranteed employment to every household in a financial year.  The MGNREGA implementation status report for the financial year 2012-2013 unfolds that the programme has already provided employment to 44.9 million households across 28 districts and five union territories. Hence, it is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore the impact of MGNREGA on women beneficiaries. A plethora of research argues that MGNREGA, which promotes inclusive growth, is a vehicle of change, a lifeline for rural women. So far, however, there has been very little discussion about the impact of MGNREGA on women beneficiaries of Assam. This research is an attempt to examine the participation of women in MGNREGA, Assam. It critically looks at the issues, problems and challenges confronted by the women while working at MGNREGA. Written from a feminist perspective on gender, poverty and women’s empowerment, the research seeks to address the problems of the women beneficiaries through their lived experiences. For this, we conducted in-depth interviews with the women beneficiaries in the months of August and September, 2009 in four remote areas namely, Burka, Chandrapur, Barbhang and Muguriya, the first two situated in Kamrup, while the third and the fourth in Barpeta districts of Assam, where the programme of MGNREGA is on-going. The findings of the research suggest measures so that the programme can be made more effective in the long run.