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Lawyers Collective, Women’s Rights Initiative, prepared a draft law—The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act (PWDVA)—in consultation with women’s groups from across the country to ensure emergency relief to women facing domestic violence. This law was passed by the Indian Parliament in 2005 and was brought in force by the government on 26 October 2006. Conflict in the Shared Household takes stock of the progress made towards achieving the objectives of the PWDVA during the first decade of its implementation. It examines the nature of structural inequality that perpetuates and condones domestic violence as a lesser ‘wrong’ and traces the history of the fight against domestic violence in India, focusing on legislative developments and themes relating to state accountability in terms of providing a supportive framework. The essays discuss critical issues such as right to residence, marital rape, rights of cohabitees or relationship in the nature of marriage, secular nature of the PWDVA, and its harmonious existence with personal law and criminal law. The volume also covers areas where the PWDVA has been successful in providing protection alongside challenges yet to be overcome, such as the response mechanisms and budgetary constraints in its implementation.

Contents: Foreword by Prabha Sridevan. I. Causes and Consequences: 1. Unscrambling the Images: Conflict in the Shared Household/Indira Jaising. 2. Some Thoughts on Domestic Violence: Using Violence to Regulate a Patriarchal Family/Uma Chakravarti. 3. Mapping Legislative Changes/Asmita Basu. II. Critical Issues: 4. ‘But … Where Will I Live?’: Domestic Violence and the Right to Reside/Pinki Mathur Anurag. 5. Of ‘Keeps’ and ‘Concubines’: Rights of Cohabitees under Domestic Violence Act/Brototi Dutta. 6. Marital Rape As Domestic Violence: A Case for Criminalizing Marital Rape/Ajita Sharma. 7. Towards Uniformity of Rights: Muslim Personal Law, the Domestic Violence Act, and the Harmonization of Family Law in India/Saptarshi Mandal. III. Expectations from the Law and Its Enforcement: 8. Analysing Orders Granted under the PWDVA, 2005/Aparna Chandra. 9. Long Road to Justice: Implementation of the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act (2005) in Haryana/Monica Sakhrani, Trupti Jhaveri Panchal, Radhika Chakraborty, and Manisha Kande. 10. Nature of Services Available to Women Survivors: One Stop Crisis Centres—Review and Recommendations/Padma Bhate-Deosthali and Sangeeta Rege. 11. Changing Contours of Fiscal Policy and Budgets to Address Violence against Women: An Analysis of Two States/Kanika Kaul. Index.