This year, The Caravan hosted the second annual edition of The Bridge: Conversations on Gender Empowerment, at the Shangri La hotel in Delhi. The event featured prominent figures from a variety of professional fields. The topic ranged from women’s rights, everyday assumptions about gender and how to best promote equality. Speakers, including Swara Bhaskar, Gurmehar Kaur, Shehla Rashid, Naina Lal Kidwai, Laxmi Narayan Tripathi, Brinda Karat, Mantasha Binti Rashid, Sumukhi Suresh, Ananya Birla and Shailaja Chandra, talked about a variety of topics, such as Bollywood’s representation problem, the dearth of women in politics and how to make it easier to combat sexual harassment and report assault. Invariably, the conversations were political. Swara Bhaskar criticised the ruling party for making it difficult for activists to engage in dissent, while Renuka Chowdhury…
