Neha Singh

Neha Singh (born 1982) is a female Indian theatre maker, author and campaigner who encourages women to ignore harassment and reclaim the public space.[1]

Neha Singh started the Why loiter? movement in 2014, after reading the book 'Why loiter?' written by three Mumbai based feminists, Shilpa Phadke, Sameera Khan and Shilpa Ranade. The movement is in its fourth year now and Neha, along with other participants have explored and experimented with various forms on loitering.

Neha is the editor-in-chief of the blog www.whyloiter.blogspot.com, which documents and collects stories of the loitering group as well as stories sent in by various women across the world about their own experiences of public spaces.

She was named on the BBC's annual list of #100women who have made a positive impact on the world in 2016.[2]

The campaign involves encouraging women to report instances of sexual harassment and rape against men in authority.[1]

Neha Singh started writing for children in 2011 and her first book "The Wednesday Bazaar" was released in 2014. Since then she has written seven books for children and has been featured in an anthology.

She has written eight books and two anthologies for children and young adults. “The Wednesday Bazaar” (2013) and “Bela misses her train” (2017) for Karadi Tales, “Moongphali” (2017) for Rupa Publishers, “I need to pee” (2018) for Penguin Random House India, “Its playtime” (2018) and “Kuchh gadbad hai” (2019) and “On the metro”(2020) for Pratham Books and “Is it the same for you?” (2019) for Seagull Books, India. Neha has contributed stories to The Hindu Young World Anthology (2019) and “Thank God its Caturday”, a Westland Publication (2020). She also writes poems, fiction and non-fiction in Hindi for children and young adults that feature regularly in children’s magazines “Cycle”, “Pluto” and “Chakmak”. Her poems and stories have been turned into posters, bookmarks and poetry cards for children.

Neha’s books have been nominated for several Indian and international awards like Jarul Book Awards, Neev Literary Awards, Comicon India Awards, Peekabook Awards and her book “I need to pee” won a commendation at the South Asia Book Awards 2019 in the U.S.A. She has travelled to various literary festivals across India with her books, like the Kalaghoda Arts festival, Mumbai, The Hindu Lit of Live, Chennai, Kolkata Literary festival, Jaipur Literature Festival, Jaipur, Kitaabo children’s literature festival, Jodhpur, Bookaroo children’s literature festivals in Jaipur and Srinagar, Peekabook children’s literary festival, Mumbai, Neev literary festival, Bangalore etc. Neha is also a theatre practitioner and acts, writes, directs and produces plays. She has her own theatre company called “Rahi theatre” and has produced, written and directed two plays “Dohri Zindagi” and “Jhalkari” that have toured across the country and have had 75 shows. She has written plays like “Island” for Manav Kaul’s company, “Gittu Bittu” for Rasika Agashe and Md. Zeeshan Ayub, “walk like a woman” for The Asia Foundation and “The magnificient madness of Mastipur” for Australian director Mr. Peter Williams and Balinese shadow puppeteer Mr. Made Sidea. Neha has written and directed four short films. “A handful of sky” won a special mention at the “Mumbai Dimensions” competition in the 10th MAMI film festival. Her second film “Paperplanes” was in the competition section at the International Film Festival of India, Goa in 2011, her third film “My parents don’t fit” was produced by Anat films and her fourth film “Chitrangada 2020” was a part of the theatre film theatre festival organised by theatre director producer Mr. Atul Kumar and garnered rave reviews. Her current projects involve two feature films that are in pre production with Humaara Movies where she is involved as a screenplay writer. Her non fiction podcast show “Akeli awaara azaad” with Culture Machine has been shortlisted by Spotify. She is also working as a writer director on two concepts for children’s web shows with Mukesh Chhabra.

Neha runs a women’s rights campaign called “Why loiter?” that aims at reclaiming public spaces for women by loitering in them. She was chosen as “One of hundred most influential women in the world” in 2016 by BBC for her work. She blogs about the campaign at whyloiter.blogspot.com.