Aninda Sidhana and Dr. Indu Prakash Singh on Homelessness, Feminism, and Human Dignity

Aninda Sidhana and Dr. Indu Prakash Singh on Homelessness, Feminism, and Human Dignity

How do Aninda Sidhana and Dr. Indu Prakash Singh connect homelessness, feminism, mental health, and human dignity in India?

Aninda Sidhana is a mental health professional, feminist advocate, ISDRC Geneva Next Generation Leader, and co-creator of The Listening Commons. Her work brings together mental health, gender, dignity, and human rights, with a particular focus on people and communities facing stigma, exclusion, and systemic invisibility.

Dr. Indu Prakash Singh is an Indian sociologist, human rights defender, feminist writer, and longtime advocate for people experiencing homelessness. Through research, rights-based advocacy, participatory action, and field documentation, he has advanced the rights of “CityMakers” — reframing people experiencing homelessness not as outsiders to urban life, but as people who help build and sustain our cities.

In this conversation, Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Aninda Sidhana, and Dr. Indu Prakash Singh explore the intersections of homelessness, feminism, mental health, women’s safety, and human dignity in India. They discuss shelters, rights-based advocacy, psychiatric stigma, participatory approaches, social exclusion, and the need to recognize people pushed to society’s margins as full human beings with rights, agency, and belonging.

At its heart, the conversation asks a fundamental question: What would our cities and institutions look like if dignity — rather than visibility, status, or privilege — determined whose lives matter?