Anuradha Kapoor (Swayam Founder)

Some Lesser Known Facts About Anuradha Kapoor 

• Anuradha Kapoor is an Indian women rights activist. She is the founder and director of Swayam, a nonprofit organization working for the rights of and end of violence against women.
• She was born into an affluent family of successful entrepreneurs.

• Before becoming a social activist, she was working as a manager of Seagull Books, a publishing house in Kolkata.

• She met her husband, Naveen Kishore, while working at Seagull Books.

• When she was working at Seagull Books, she came across a lot of creative people and began taking part in discourses on gender issues, which shaped her thoughts. Simultaneously, she also started volunteering herself in social works. She said,
  

  I started working with CINI (Child In Need Institute). I wanted to work for women’s issues. I did stints with Jeebika, Nari Nirjatan Pratirodh Mancha and other NGOs in the city. “

• She realised the issue of violence against women in India while volunteering. At that time, some organizations were counselling women and provided them with legal or other services but were essentially piecemeal efforts. According to her,
  

  I felt that there should be organisations that would offer all these services under one roof.”

• To make the lives of women facing violence better, she established Swayam in Kolkata in 1995. She is the director and committee member of Swayam. The organization started as women shelter but soon started giving direct support services for survivors of violence, working with community groups to create violence-free communities, and conducted public education programmes. Swayam is indulged in advocacy, research, publication, and documentation work on violence against women and other related issues.

  

• Together with Swayam, Anuradha became a key figure of the movement that saw passing of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005, and has since been working to ensure that it is implemented effectively at the state and national levels.

• Anuradha has organized judicial training as a part of Asian Pacific Advisory Forum on Judicial Education on Equality Issues and has trained with the police, corporate houses, educational institutions, NGO’s and CBO’s, in countries including India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh.

• Not only has Swayam dealt with violence cases but they have also handled several high profile rape cases including Phoolbagan rape case in 2000 (a disabled teen girl was raped by a couple of constables) and gangrape of a Bangladeshi woman in Howrah Station in the late 90s.

• Swayam has also joined forces with Eve Ensler’s One Billion Rising programme and has long been fighting for in-camera proceedings for rape victims.

  

• In May 2016, Swayam received the Canadian Council for International Co-operation Award in the Women’s Rights Projects category.

• She is also an Ashoka Fellow (since 1996) and Eisenhower Fellow.

• She contributed to a chapter on Violence against Women in the Civil Society Alternative report to the CEDAW Committee in 2014.

• She has given women rights courses as a guest speaker at Calcutta University and Jadavpur University.

• She has also been a speaker at several international forums by UN agencies and civil society organisations.

• She has also orated at international conferences on human rights, equality, and gender at the University of Connecticut, USA, organized by the UNESCO Chair in 2006, 2008, and 2013.

• In 2020, Anuradha and Ratana Pathak Shah (Indian actor and director) made an appearance at the Karamveer Special of the reality game show Kaun Banega Crorepati, hosted by Amitabh Bachchan.