Padmini Swaminathan

Padmini Swaminathan is an Indian feminist economist. She is the current Chairperson of the Centre for Livelihoods at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Hyderabad. She has also served as the Director of the Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS) and held the chair for Regional Studies of the Reserve Bank of India at MIDS until her retirement in 2011.

Quotes

• There will always be a gap between the goals set down and scheme of implementation. Women's groups by now have enough data to know where the policies have gone wrong. The whole question is gathering enough political clout to make a change.
  • On Indian government's conservative approach to teenage sexuality and family planning, from The Unheard Scream: Reproductive Health and Women's Lives in India (2004) by Mohan Rao, p.227

• Our very limited interaction with NGOs active in this field in Tamil Nadu reveal that a large number of abortions take place outside the formal system since very often the state through its family planning outlets tries its own morality on women seeking abortions.
  • On Tamil Nadu government's approach to women's reproduction rights, Borders of Being: Citizenship, Fertility, and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific by Margaret Jolly and Kalpana Ram, p.112