In Search of Answers: Indian Women's Voices from Manushi [2 ed.]

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CH OF ANSWERS Indian Women's Voices From Manushi

a selection from thefirst five years ofManushi edited by

Madhu Kishwar Ruth Vanita

HORIZON INDIA BOOKS Digitized by

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In Setuch of Answers was first published by bd Books Ltd., Londo~ in 1984

Second revised edition published by Horizon India Books, New Delhi, 1991. C The Manushi Trust, Cl/202.Lajpat Nagar, New Delhi-110024 Telephone: 6839158

ISBN 81-8.5487-00-6 '

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All rights reserved. No part of the book may be reproduced or utilised in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage or retrieval system without pernussion in writing from the publisher. Published by Mamta Saran for Horizon India Books, P.O. Box 3224, New Delhi-110013 (telephone 697589). Phototypeset by Phoenix Computer Centre and printed at Chaman Offset Printets, Delhi.

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PREFACE

This second revised edition of In Search of Answers is in response to a continuing demand for the book, both in India and abroad, despite its being out of print for several years. The contents remain substantially the same as the first edition though there are some deletions and alterations of an editorial nature. We realise that many of the events would perhaps be viewed differently by us today, and many articles might tum out subStantially different if they were rewritten now. We have deliberately decided not to alter what was written then, for it reflects the mood and perce~ons of the early days when a new ferment around women's issues had just begun. We hope to follow this volume with more such selections from M11nushi, reflecting different facets of women's lives, struggles and aspirations. The love, concern, generosity and hard work of so many people has kept Mllnushi alive and growing over these years that we could fill pages just listing their names. We take this occasion to express our thanks for their continuing support. The help has come in many ways-in day to day work like mailing, subscriptions, cataloguing, proof reading, translation, in the contribution of artwork and photographs, in enrolling of subsaiptions and publidsing the n,.agazine, in providing free legal · aid and ad vice, as well as in many more ways than can be listed here.

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CONTENTS .

1. INTRODUCTION

Indian Women-The Continuing Struggle

1

MAOHU KISHWAR

2. WOMEN'S LIVES Family Life of Agricultural Labourers and Small Farmers in Punjab

50

BERNY HOROWITZ, MAOHU KISHWAR

80

Drought - Women the Worst Victims MANUSHI EDITORIAL

Women and Water Shortage in Tamil Nadu

94

PRABHA RANI

Porter Women in Pune

104

SULABHA BRAHME

115

Coal Mine Womer} Workers in Bihar A SURVEY REPORT

3. WOMEN'S STRUGGLES

Women in the Bodhgaya Land Struggle

121

MANIMALA

The Chipko Movement Part I - Women's Non-Violent Power

149

SUNOERLAL BAHUGUNA

153

Part II - Community Opposes Activists GOPA JOSHI

158

Organising Landless Women in Maharashtra MIRA SAVARA, SUJATHA GOfHOSKAR

4. FAMILY VIOLENCE

173

Letters Written at Death's Door •

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All For Love - Of Money TAVLEFN SINGH

178

Women Against Dowry A MANUSHI REPORT

Is it a Husband's Right to Kill?

184

ALFIE

'1t's Only a Family Affair!''

186

KIRANSINGH

191

Denial of Fundamental Rights to Women MAOHU KISHWAR

5. CASTE, CLASS AND POUCE VIOLENCE

Caste-Hindus Attack Dalits in Maharashtra

204

VIBHUTI PA'l'EL

Mass Rape in Bihar by Police

206

DARRYL D'MONTE

A Case of Police Harassment

208

VIMLA FAROOQI

211

Sangharsh Vahini's Struggle in Agra REPORT BY AGRA JAN SANGHARSH SAHYOG SAMJTI

216

Three Brave Women of Tamil Nadu K. MANOHARAN

219

Why Can't We Report to Each Other? MANUSHI EDl'IORIAL

6. L'b'l"l'EltS TO MANUSHI

227

7. ABOUT MANUSHI An Introduction

240

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We Shall Re examine Everything

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To all those women of Indui, some known, but mostly unknown, whose lives have been devoted to the struggle for freedom and dignity

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1. INTRODUCTION Indian Women-The Continuing Struggle A very large part of the thinking, writing and efforts to change the conditions of life of Indian women is confined to a narrow stratum of urban, educated middle class women. In Mtinushi, we have made a concerted effort to look at more than this small group of women, not because their struggles and achievements are unimportant in themselves, but because their struggles and achievements have dominated social and political thinking while the reality of the lives of the vast majority of Indian women has been largely ignored. Despite the fragmentary efforts made during the last few years, the task of collecting information about the life conditions of poor women, especially those living in villages, has hardly begun. M1111ushi is only a small part of that effort. Vast differences distinguish the lives of women in different parts of the country and within different caste, clas.c. 11.:ligious and ethnic groups. It is therefore very difficult to makP. generalisations and put together comprehensive descriptions of the life and struggles of Indian women. This collection of articles from Mtinushi can offer no more than glimpses of the vast, complex and unplumbed reality of the day-to-day struggles of millions of ordinary women in India, as well as of some of the few intense moments of organised struggle that managed to get known outside the local area·affected. An overwhelming number of people in India, about 80%, live in rural areas. Most of India's women are from small peasant and landless clgricultural labourer households. Therefore, if we wish to talk of the continuing struggle of Indian women, we have to pay attention to the everyday life of these women. Their most basic struggle revolves around trying to get enough to eat for their families and for themselves, and procuring the most basic necessities of life such as food, fuel and water. Hovering precipitously on the brink of survival, the struggle is made even more grim because, as women, they have very little control over the conditions and products of their labour. They also have little say in deciding who gets how much of the family's meagre resources.

The Nature of Household Work One common element in the life of rural women throughout the country is that the responsibility of running the household and caring for the Digitized by

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children falls almost exclusively on her shoulders, whether she is the . main eamer in the family or plays a supportive role. She usually has to take on sole responsibility for the drudgery of household labour and care of the children, even when she works long hours in the family fields as part of a small subsistence landholding household, or performs backbreaking agricultural work as a landless labourer, or, as a bibal peasant woman, looks after most of the cultivating operations as weil as the gathering anq marketing activities. · . Household work/ in rural India involves hours and hours of toil in · order to accomplish tlte barest minimum without the work ever reaching an end. Very inadeqµate ineans are av~ilable for the woman to prepare and process food, to 'd ean and maintain the living quarters, and care for. the children. First of all, the vast majority of the hundreds of thou~ds of Indian villages have no source of clean, potable water. In inany villages in large areas of India, whatever quality of water may be available, it always requires long hours of arduous work for the woman to bring it to her house. Often she can manage to carry only very inadequate quantities-walking miles to a stra1m, well or pond for a few pots of polluted water. This job is seldom, if ever, performed by men. · The inadequate quantity and the unhygienic quality of water adds another burden on the family's struggle for survival. It is estimated that 80% of all ilnesM?S in third world countries are linked to the oonsumption of polluted water. The infant mortality rate in India is among the highest in the world. In at least 80% of these infant deaths, diarrhoea plays a major contributory role. Diarrhoea, which is frequently fatal to those children already weakened by malnutrition, is chiefly caused by using contaminated water. The tragedy of the high child mortality rate that haunts these oppressed families results in a much heavier burden of childbearing for the women, because if it is expected that several children will die in their early years, then women mu~t bP.ar mc1ny more in order to ensure that at least a couple of them sul"Vive. The frequent illnesses of children and adults also add enormously to the woman's family responsibilities; she herself is frequently ill but cannot get the necessary health care. The maternal mortality rate in India is also among the highest in the world. Pregnant women are forced to keep working often up to thP. moment of childbirth, because survival tasks have to.be carried on without a day's break. Fuel gathering is another task that consumes a great deal of the strength of rural women, and one in which men hardly ever participate. For example, in the hill regions of Uttar,khand, wfiich have witnessed mindless deforestation in recent decades by government and by private contractors, a woman often has to spend eight or ten hours climbing rocky mountains in search of dry shrubs and scrub wood to use as fuel which is becoming more and more scarce. A recent study in Gujarat shows how

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the landless rural poor women in this area spend four or five hours every day SNrching for whatever little they can find as fuel and fodder. There

are no forests nearby. Rich farmers do not allow the landless poor to pick up the crop leftovers they onc:e used as fuel and fodder. Over the years, the task of fuel and fodder collection has become more : and more onerous for·women, as the government has appropriated the entire forest wealth of the country. The forest policy, devised by the colonial rulers in the nineteenth c:entury; vested oomplete charge of most forest wealth in the hands of the State. Sinc:e independence, ·the government has assumed even more sweeping powers, thereby making the forest policy increasingly oppressive for the rural poor. The government has encouraged the exploitation of forest wealth for c:ommerdal purposes, leading to massive deforestation as well as a severe curtailment of people's rights over onc:e c:ommw,ally owned forests. Thus, one of the basic necessities of life which women have to procure for the survival of the family has become acutely scarce. In many parts of India, another little noticed way in which women c:ontribute to the family's subsistenc:e is by growing vegetables on a small plot of land around the house. These are mainly for the family's c:onsumptton·but are often sold or bartered in the village or local markets. Sometimes this little extra inrome is essential for the family's survival. · Similarly, if the family can afford it, raising poultry or small animals such as goats is usually the woman's responsibility. In times of food scarcity or drought, another constant activity of rural poor women is intensified. They scavenge over the countryside for whatever is available-roots or wild plants, leaves and other parts of certain trees, and c:ertain kinds of grass which they try to make edible. This is often a key factor in determining whether or not the family survives these aises; Ordinarily even the subsistenc:e of poor landless families often, in part, c:omes from women gleaning from the fields whatever they are allowed to pick up of the leftovers of the harvest, for both the family's food and fuel. Thus the nature of domestic work in India differs radically from that in the indusbialised, wealthier countries. It involves spending much of the day outside the house, procuring basic necessities of everyday life. Women perform several other economic tasks within the house which, strictly speaking, are more than housework. For example, apart from cooking, women do almost all the basic food processing at home. Grain or pulses to be consumed have to be hand-cleaned, little pebbles or pieces of dirt hand-sifted, or painstakingly removed, one by one, before the cooking of'every meal. Many women have to pound the paddy or grind the wheat by hand two or three days a week in order to make it consu- . mable. The paddy first has to be boiled and dried in the sun before it is husked. To husk 20 pounds of paddy, two women can easily spend Digitized by

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two to three hours, and it takes much longer if a woman has to do it alone. Hand-grinding of wheat or corn is equally labour and time consuming. The spices, if the family can afford to use any, are usually ground fresh each day before every meal. Thus cooking even the most simple and basic foods used common!y in the diet of ordinary families is very exhausting. The smokychulhas on which women have to cook are inefficient and wasteful of fuel. They require constant vigilance and effort if they are to be kept going with the dry twigs, wood, cow dung or other waste material available. Washing clothes and utensils also takes up a lot of a woman's time and energy. A woman usually has to carry the dirty clothes to wherever water is available-frequently a polluted tank, pond or stream. There she sits at the edge of the water, sometimes under a blazing sun, sometimes in cold winter, beating the dirt out of the clothes by slapping them on a stone slab; many women cannot afford washing soap for clothes. Utensils, too, have to be rubbed by hand, using ashes or plain earth to saub them clean. The little girls in the family often help the mother. Men almost never help with any of these tasks. Another women's task is the upkeep of the dwelling place, usually a thatched or mud hut. It requires routine sweeping and cleaning, with nothing more than a handleless, rough straw broom, necessitating moving from area to area in a squatting posture. These kudui houses need regular, weekly, minor repairs and plastering with cow dung in order to prevent them from falling apart. This involves hours of collecting dung, mixing it with the right kind of mud and straw, making a paste of the right ron.sistency and plastering it dexterously on walls and floors with nothing more than the women's own hands, a basket and vessel as implements. A United Nations report in 1980 came to the conclusion that women perform nearly two-thirds of the work hours in the world. Similarly, several micro level studies in India sho\v that woman's working day is much longer than man's. A three-year field study, conducted in some villages of .Kamataka, with the aim of discovering rural energy consumption patterr,s, showed that the labour of women and children together contributes almost 70% of the total human energy spent in doing all the work in villages. Most of this energy was spent not on inromegenerating activities but on survival tasks-gathering firewood, fetching water, and cooking. This particular survey did not take into account other domestic work such as sweeping.. washing clothes, cleaning utensils, and childcare, even though these tasks too consume a great deal of energy. Most of women's energy is expended on daily life-supporting tasks, which have to be performed regardless of the season. In comparison, men perform more seasonal types of energy-expending jobs, such as ploughing, which usually takes place at only two periods in the year, and in some areas only one.

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Women's labour is so devalued that even while performing tasks which are crucial for the survival of the family, they are not provided with access to even the simplest technological aids. Usually the only tools a woman has are her two bare hands, some sort of a basket for carrying headloads, a stone for grinding, a heavy mortar for pounding, and a few very simple utensils for cooking. Thus women's jobs are characteristically those which are intensely labour-consuming.

Women's Deprivation within the Family Discrimination does not stop at the fact that most women, especially among the ?,>Or, are made to take on a much heavier work burden than are men. They also eat much 1~ than do the men of their own families. Very little information has been collected on this crucial aspect of discrimination against women within the family. The little research data that are available confirm the general impressionistic accounts that food allocation in the family is very heavily biased in favour of men. The study in a Punjab village, which is inclyded in this collection, found that women's average consumption of calories was only two-thirds that of men. This, despite the fact that almost all the women during the time period covered by the Sl1rvey were performing more than 15 hours hard labour every day, including fieldwork. In comparison, men's workday seemed to be much shorter and of a more sedentary nature. -In rural Kamataka too, a study to measure inequalities in food distribution within the family revealed that women consumed one-third fewer calories than did men, while their labour contribution was more than double that of men, when some household tasks were included in the calculation of energy expenditure. This discrimination is one of the contributory factors to the higher mortality rate among women. It increases women's vulnerability to a wide range of illnesses, especially when, as is usual, it is combined with the severe neglect of women's health care by the family. The heavy work burden, several unwanted pregnancies at short intervals, stillbirths, miscarriages, infant deaths, lack of sufficient food are responsible for the very poor health of most Indian women. The endless demands on women's time often make it impossible for a woman to have a few days of rest when she is sick, exhausted and run-down. In most families, as long as the woman keeps dragging herself along and doing most of the tasks expected of her, nobody bothers to get for her the little health care that may be available. Only when she collapses and cannot work any more may the family think of taking her to the local health centre or hospital. Even then, many families are unwilling to undertake the necessary expenditure and trouble, because women are considered to be easily expendable. While traveliing in rural areas, I have often come across

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women who a>ntinue to perform a full 15 hour workday even when seriously ill. There was an·agricultural labourer in Punjab who said that she had been bleeding profusely after she had been sterilised a year ago, but she oould not stop working for a day. There was also a poor peasant woman in a Bihar village whose uterus had been hanging between her legs for the last six years, ever since she had developed a>mplications during the birth ~f her last child. All these years, she has kept to her strenuous routin~r not only doing all the agricultural and household work, but also regularly walking miles to the forest to a>llect fuel for the family. . As one woman activist from rural Rajasthan put it, in the village hierarchy a woman's life is in many ways valued at less than an animal's. The logic is simple; it takes money to replace an animal, whereas to replace a woman is not only easy but under certain circumstances even remunerative. Thus not only men take precedence over women, but often even animals. No wonder, then, that when a social work organisation in that area tried to start a hospitat for women, there was a great deal of resistance and hostility. The village men could not see why so much fus., should be made over women; they insisted that what they really needed was a hospital for their farm animals! The famous story lst of a few paise, totalling up to Rs 9 a month. When questioned, most men and several women said that grinding grain was one way a woman muld be useful to the family. The long workday for most of these women begins at 4 a.m. yet the work they do is not considered useful because it is women's work and brings in no cash income. 'The near total disinheritance of women front all forms of inmmegeneiating property and exclusion from wage labour makes for a situation wherein women can be made to feel that they are a burden on the family, however great their labour mnbibution. As such, their lives are mnsidered .easily expendable. The culture of dowrv is deeply rooted in this ethos.

Men's A11ilmces tind Women's Isolation The primary source of power of men of rich and middle-peasant castes is derived from alliances between male members of the immediate and extended kin group, based on.the mntrol of land and other economic ~ Women have no firm foothold, no leverage at the most primary

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base of power, the family_and the kin group. Thus a major reason for their inability to establish some.independence and some measure of equality within the families of the upper and middle peasant a1Ste groups is that they have no · way of forming alliana!S and independent associations at the village level, either within the family, the extended kin group, or with other villages or groups of village women. They are power!~ to do this either for self-protection as individual women against their own maltreatment, or in order to organise collective bargaining power for women. While for men marriage means extended alliances, for women it losing whatever little foothold they had in the natal family. These alliana!S extend even beyond ~e village level, through which male members of powerful and influential families come to be virtual rulers in villages. The powerful male members of different factions act as de facto ptmduzyllts in villages. These informal bodies are really decisive in settling day-to-day affairs of the village. Disputes relating to marriage and the family are decided by con,.munity elders, constituting a sort of biradliri ptmcluzytlt. Here, again, women are not allowed even nominal participation. Activists from different rural areas report that in certain areas women are heavily fined if they so much as open their mouths in such meetings. It is this systen, of power relations, rooted in the ~ily and in the kin group, that is at the heart of the near total political powerlessness of women at the village level. That is one of the reasons why the token representation of women in village ptmclu,yt,ts promoted by the government, has had no effect in lei n,s of getting crumbs of power for women at the village level. As the rich and middle peasants assume the position of the new rural elite, acquiring a position of hegemony, their traditions and sodal norms begin to be imitated by the other rural groups who are ~nomically, socially and politically dependent on them. One of the first things to be . imitated is the greater and more systematic subjugation of women characteristic of these peasant castes. This is evident in the acceptance of the ideal of the seclusion of women and their withdrawal from income-generating work by the other village groups. A significant symptom of the advancing devaluation of women is the spread and iriaatse of dowry. Despite decades of propaganda by political parties, social welfare groups and women's organisations, dowry demands keep increasing and spreading to groups among whom previously it was either a relatively minor consideration or did not exist at all. Several studies have shown how dowry has become a more widespread phenomenon, even among those communities where bride price was the common practice until recently. For example, in the Uttarakhand hill regions, and among several communities in the south, dowry was unknown not very long ago; at present, very few marriages

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are solemnised without dowry in many of these rommunities. Even among the so-called lower castes and classes, which had hardly any tradition of dowry, relatively substantial amounts of dowry have become increasingly important as a prerequisite for marriage. A key result of the devaluation of women's lives is the geographical spread of higher mortality rates for women as compared to men in most areas of the country. This phenomenon, indicated in the census reports as a low sex ratio for women, was once primarily a special characteristic of the north Indian plains, but it has spread to almost all of south India as well, where,until a few decades ago, the sex ratio was slightly in favour of women. The emergence of a deficit of females in south India coincides with-the consolidation of local control by upper and middle peasant castes in most areas. It is P'Y assumption that it is the hegemony of these castes' culture that has led to a corresponding lowering in women's survival chances. Several communities in the south, which.until not very long ago were matrilineal and matrilocal, have been rapidly giving way to patrilineal and partrilocal family structures, with increasing male dominance and concomitant female isolation and dependence.

Peasant Family-the Heart of the Afatter It is often assumed that the urban situation aeates the norm for the rural areas, but in reality it is the family structure of the dominant peasant castes and their forms of property organisation that act as the norm in India. The practices of the upper and middle-peasant caste groups maintain a social and cultural hegemony among most urban groups in India. Most urban centres in India are like islands intimately influenced by the vast ocean of the countryside. A large proportion of the urban population still has deep family and economic roots in rural areas. A very big section of the industrial working class in India comes from lower and middle peasant families, and most of them try to keep a foothold in their villages by various means. Especially in north 1ndian cities, a large proportion of the.mban working-class men are migrants who leave theii families behind in villages. Most marriage alliances continue to be settled in villages, strictly within caste and religious boundaries. This aspect of live contact with the villages is sharply brought out by the fact that even when men from, say, Jat peasant families in Punjab, migrate to such distant places as England and Canada, they usually return to their villages to find brides from their own regions and caste groups. Among the urban-educated elite too.. many bureaucrats, army and police officers come from rich peasant families who can afford to send their sons for higher education to big cities: Many of the Marwari industrialists who control most of the big business houses in India, have also retained their village and kinship roots both in matters of i11tet1wl family structure and of control over business. At the top, most of the business houses Digitized by

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function like huge, joint family enterprises with the family patriarch at the head- and his various sons and close male kin amtrolling key managerial positions. Most social groups in urban areas thus remain directly or indirectly enmeshed in the hegemonic culture and family structure characteristic of the upper and middle peasant castes. Women's social position in urban areas, induding among the formally educated elite groups, is a reflection of the deeprooted norms set in the villages of India~,This culture of women's oppression is not just a hangover from a traditional past, but as much. the product of very modem economic and political developments of the last century or more.

Beneoolent Aspects of Family Life .

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This introduction focuses on those significant aspects of family life in India that encourage the oppresmon of womenr and its limited focus does not permit other signifkant family experiences to be encompassed. I am fully aware that this analysis is based on an oversimplified view of family life. There are numerous positive aspects to family life and important variations of family structure in India which I have alm~t a>mpletely ignored. Family life has provided so many of us with a rare kind of warmth, affection, caring and an unforgettable experience of unadculatP.d giving and receiving. · . My analysis focuses on the power relations that are built into the family structure to show that oppression is not always attributable to lack of love, care or gqness in people. All of these exist in abunclance in family life in India. Even while the dominant form of family structure cpncentrates immense unchecked power in the hands of men, every man does not necessarily abuse that power. For example, the tradition of the benevolent patriarch who looks after the interests of every member of the family with care and justice remains as prevalent and real as the tradition of the self-effacing and nurturing mother figure. Even dominant and authoritarian male family members may at the same time often be loving and caring fathers, brothers, and sons. While women's freedom and rights may be severely restricted within the pevailing family structwe, there is also a strong tradition of armrding ce1 lain forms of respect and veneration to women, especially as mothers. Since, for the present, the family is the only SOUJ'a! of social and emotional support available to most women in India, it occupies ·a very cattral place in their lives and they pour all their life and energy into working for ·· its well-being. While doing so they sometimes attain mnsiderable prestige and influence within the family. Dependence and restrictions are often found coexisting with an unusual kind of veneration and caring for women. However, ·the key problem of women within the family is that if they are badly treated they are unable to offer eff~ve resistana. Digitized by

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because of their dependence and vulnerability. Few alternative sources of support are available to most women in India outside their family. There is nowhere else they can go for help if they suffer abuse and neglect. Moreover, in real life it is not easy to draw a neat dividing line between the oppressors and the oppressed. It is not always men who beat or maltreat women. Very often women suffer cruel treatment at the hands of other women, for example, a daughter-in-law at the hands of a motherin-law or a sister-in-law. Yet when a woman maltreats another woman, she does not enhance her own power as a woman, she enhances the total power of men as a group within the patriarchal family. Women can get power only as agents of domination and oppression within the male dominated family structure. The woman who a>mes to gain the upper hand is usually one who has the backing and the appioval of the powei ful men. This tussle among women plays a crucial role in most families.

Runil Labour and Women Unlike the family structure among the peasant landowning castes, among the landless poor the family is relatively less restrictive for wom~n. One of the key reasons for this is that the landless agricultural labourer woman, however much she is exploited, is at least recognised as a wage earner, as someone who contributes to the upkeep of the family by her earnings. These women earn a vital portion of the family ina>me despite the increasingly shrinking job opportunities available to them. However, this one advantage is more often than not offset by other disabilities imposed on them both because they are poor and because they are women. As a result, the struggle for survival (?f these wome·n is especially grim. They do the most menial, exhausting jobs in agriculture but are paid far lower wages than are men. This, despite the existence of the Equal Remuneration Act and other laws which stipulate equal pay for equal work. For instance, in most traditional paddy cultivating areas of India, transplanting paddy is mainly, often exclusively, done by women. This task demands a great deal of physical endurance, skill and years of experience. It involves dexterous movements and careful judgement. It is usually done under a blazing sun, the workers bending double while standing in muddy water. The water also abounds with insects and parasites whose bites cause serious ailments. The woman is frequently attacked by leeches which attach themselves to her legs and suck her blood. On the other hand, relatively much lighter tasks performed by men, such as spraying pesticides with a hand-regulated machine, are considered skilled jobs and are therefore much better paid. It has been estimated that in India, among agricultural labourers, women are generally paid 40 to 60% of the male wage, while they perform much more labour-intensive tasks than do men. According to the Report Digitized by

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of the government's Rural labour Inquiry, 1974-75, the disparity between the daily earnings of men and women belonging to.agricultural labourer households increased by approximately 50% between 1964-65 and 1974-75. The grading of certain jobs as 'skilled' and therefore better pai~ is based neither on the amount of work done nor its tediousness, nor the time consumed, nor the productive value, but merely on the assumption that jobs performed by women are, by virtue of that fact alone, low value jobs. Follovling every slight technological advance, however, even the few low paid jobs that women are permitted to perform in the fields are being increasingly denied to them. For instance, a study in a western Uttar Pradesh village points out that women have been eased out of jobs, as tubewell irrigation replaces manual irrigation. Earlier, when water had to be collected in little ditches near the field, from where it was carried and distributed in the fields via a bucket system, women were very active. Now that diesel pumps have been installed and are sending water directly to the fields, women are not allowed access to the new irrigation technology, such as operating the tubewells. As this simple technology came in, field irrigation began to be considered a skilled job and therefore became better paid. As it became less labour-intensive and better paying, it passed on to nwm. Similarly, in subsistence agrirulture, where manuring involves colleding headloads of cow-dung, converting it into fertiliser and making numerous trips with headloads to the fields, and sprinkling it there by hand, it is mainly women from peasant households who do this job. But as soon as the family can afford chemical fertiliser and insecticide, such jobs as spraying these on the fields with machines become reserved exclusively for men, usually hired labour. Women labourers are considered unfit for the job even though it requires no special skills. Grinding corn or wheat or pounding rice by hand once gave employment to millions of women in the rural areas. But with the roming of simple, indigenously produced rice and flour mills, most women have been deprived of this occupation. Furthermore, whatever new employment is created as a result of such mechanisation hardly ever benefits women. If anything, it systematically excludes them. It is unheard of for a woman to operate a wheat or corn-grinding machine, even though the task is simple. It would be even more rare for a woman to be given a job in the local industrial units or workshops where these machines and implements are manufactured or repaired. All that remains for these women to do once the grinding process is mechanised is to sit outside the flour mills and handpick little pieces of grit from the wheat or corn before it is ground. This is a far more peripheral task and involves only a tiny number of women compared to those who were employed to grind flour on a grinding stone or husk rice by hand-pounding. Digitized by

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Traditio1tally women did a major part of harvesting and almost all of the threshing, but as soon as mechanical harvester or thresher machines are introduced, women immediately lose those jobs to men. Similarly, with the introduction of herbicides, women lose employment in weeding. Examples can be multiplied. This is not to suggest, however, that handgrinding and hand-threshing are great boons for women, or·that they should be preserved if women are to have employment-that would be foolish romanticising of drudgery. The point of such examples is to show that while women are being increasingly displaced from their traditional occupations at a more rapid rate than are men they have not been allowed access to the new sources of employment. The 1901 census records 525 women per 1,000 men in the country's workforce. By 1971, this figure had declined to 210 women per 1,000 men in the labour force. Thus women are being pushed further and further into destitution. Every introduction of even low level technology in rural areas has had a disastrous impact on women's employment opportunities; the least improvement applied to any part of agricultural production immediately throws women out of work, and men begin to perform the same tasks with the new tools at much higher wages. As a result, areas such as Punjab, wester11 Uttar Pradesh, and Haryana, which have undergone substantial advancement i.-i agriculture and have seen increased production owing to the introduction of improved technology, chemical fertilisers and irrigation facilities, stand out as areas with relatively much lower _labour participation of women in agriculture compared to more 'backward' areas practicing subsistence agriculture. In Punjab, for example, studies have confirmed that landless poor women do not get more than 45 to 60 days of paid employment per year. For the rest of the year, they have to eke out a living from more and more peripheral jobs such as gleaning after the cotton and wheat harvests, collecting fodder, cleaning the animal sheds, collecting and carrying cattle dung, and tending the landlord's animals. In areas of Punjab and western Uttar Pradesh, where large numbers of poor, tribal migrant men come in search of $eaSOnal employment, even the littl~ field labour available to local landless women is steadily diminishing. The exclusion of women from access to technology begins at an even more basic level than is often acknowledged. For instance, in most subsistence economies women perform most of the agrirultural tasks, such as manuring the fields, sowing, harvesting, threshing, processing, storing, and marketing. The only agricultural labour performed by men is ploughing, which is ritually taboo to women; which effectively keeps women dependent on men. There is no evidence to support the contention that women are physically incapable of using the plough. Even 12 to 18-year-old boys can be seen ploughing, while a strong-bodied woman is not allowed to do so, even though she performs much more arduous

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and physically strenuous tasks, such as routinely bringing enormous headloads of firewood and bamboo from the distant forests. That the ritual taboo has very little to do with considerations of st1ength is borne. out b)'l the fact that in many areas women are not only forbidden to operate the plough, but even to touch it. If a woman violates the touch ban she may be heavily fined by the village council which amsists of men alone. Women's lack of control over the basic tools of production at this level provide the basis on which relatively advanced technology romes ·to play a further devastating role. If women have been forbidden to touch such a simple tool as the plough, it-is unlikely that when tractors come to be used, women will easily be given the right to operate them. Similarly, in artisan families, women perform all the supportive and essential preparatory tasks, but are denied control over simple technology. For example, women in a potter household frequently perform all the time-consuming jobs of finding the right kind of earth, making a paste of the right consistency, baking the pots in the kiln, and so on. Operating the potter's wheel, however, which is the symbol of power and skill, is almost exclusively a male monopoly. So.also, a recent study of handloom weaver households in Mehasana district, Gujarat, pointed out that for every male member working on the loom, 15 additional per.sons are required to keep it going; these persons are usually the wou,en and children of the family. Thus every active handloom is always backed up by a woman worker. The activity of the women supports the weaving but they are not separately or independently paid for their work; their labour is not taken into consideration when weaving costs are calculated. Women rarely operate a loom by themselves. Thus, not only are women denied access to the key skill at the housel,old production level but the men come to be seen and acknowledged as the 'craftsmen'; the family labour supplied by women is rendered invisible. They remain dependent on and subservient to the male as the breadwinner, even though they are putting in as much or more labour. This exclusion from basic technology is evident in women's lack of control over even elementary forms of transport. In many tribal villages, where gathering of forest produce and collecting of firewood from the forest constitutes an important part of the subsistence economy, it is common to see women carrying enormous headloads of wood. Men go to the forest much less often, but when they do, they hardly ever carry wood on their heads. Instead, they frequently transport it on a bullock cart which is never driven by women, almost as though it, too, were tabooed. If women do not have access to such simple traditional laboursaving devices, ,it may well be understood that when wood or grain begins to be transported in trucks or tempos, women are unlikely to be allowed use of these means of transport. Why go so far as truck driving?

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In family farms, where vegetables are grown for sale in nearby towns, it is mmmonly noticed that when the produa! for sale is small enough in quantity to be carried in a basket on the head, it is usually the woman who trudges with it to sell. When the quantity of produce is more substantial, however, the man transports it on a bicycle or a bicycledriven cart, or will even take a tempo to mark'et. So also, a study of fisherwomen in Kerala showed how women are increasingly losing their small business to men. Traditionally, fishvending was predominantly a woman's occcupation. She would carry basketloads of fish pn her head to nearby villages, door to door. When it came to supplying the more remunerative city and export markets, however, men took over the whole business. In a much sho, ter time men can carry much larger quantities of fish on trucks and other motorised transport which women can never hope to use. Even for vending door to door, while women ·go on foot and have literally to run for miles instead of walking so that the fish does not get stale in the heat, men -are able to outstrip then, because they carry fish on bicycles. Thus, even while women vendors are compelled to work much harder, they get lower returns for their labour.

Women Migrants . With this discrimination as a base, women cannot possibly fare any better when they migrate in search of employment at times when agriailtural wage work is not available to them, or when a poor peasant family loses its land or the woman is deserted or thrown out of the house by her husband. If these women seek work in mines, the only job available to them is that of a raA molie-again, carrying headloads. Not only is this the lowest paid job, involving hard labour, but there is no scope for any improvement or job prospects. Once a rem, always a raA, If she seeks work in a brick kiln she faa!S an equally rigid a>D"pa• tn,entalisation of work on the basis of sex. Women are usually allowed to perforn1 only the unskilled job of carrying headloads. They have no access to the more skilled and relatively better paid jobs, such as moulding, shaping, and baking briclcs. At construction sites another common refuge for migrant labourer women, they are allowed only to carry headloads of earth, mortar or bricks frou, one plaa! to another. All skilled jobs, such as those of masons and carpenters, are effectively dosed to women despite there being no laws sanctioning such exclusion. The majority ol women in India work in the UllOJKanised sector; less than 6% of women workers are found in t~e organised sector. Almost all work sites in the unorganised sector are characterised by mnditions of virtual bondage, where less than minimum wages are paid, there is no employment guarantee and workers work from day to day on a daily wage while the few minimally existing safety and labour laws are flouted with impunity.

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This is how a tribal woman describes the recruitment processes and .work rondftions in her area. In a protest letter to the ministry of labour, she says: "The months of August and September are particularly pathetic for the impoverished tribal peasantry. The women often do not have clothes to cover their bodies. In the villages it is much harder for them to earn cash inrome for buying the simplest of saris and other such necessities. They lose theit mental balance due to hunger and starvation. At such times, recruiting agents are sent to villages. The agents get in touch with anti-social elements,usually young ~en, in the village. These men are provided with liquor, food, and other bribes. These village men in tum entice young tribal women to accept bonded conditions of labour. The munshis offer money· advances to the parents of young Adivasi women. Each tribal woman is booked under a woman agent for a dlulon of Rs 100 or 150. Thus they lose the right to work for any other employer, and cannot refuse to work for the brick kiln which has originally booked them. In this way they are rendered absolutely dependent and helpless to resist their exploitation. In the brick kilns they are mainly given the job of carrying headloads of unbaked and baked bricks, for which they are usually paid less than the minimum wage. Even out of this meagre amount a part of their payment is held back by the owners saying they would get it as a lump sum during the monsoon when the workers go home. However, this money is seldom given to them. All they get at the time of leaving is a sari and railway fare. These women are seldom allowed to step out of the worksites without armed guards following them. The huts provided to them are worse than pigsties. They have to live dose to the blazing hot brick kilns even during the peak of the summer months. They work seven days a week, twelve to fourteen hours a day. There are no rest days, no holidays. There is no provision for dean drinking water at these worksites. There is also no provision for latrines and urinals, so women have to squat in the open space round the worksites to relieve themselves. If they are injured while working, even first-aid treatment is not provided, let alone any other medical facilities. These women are routinely subjected to various forms of sexual exploitation ranging from rape, to being forced to pay sexual bribes for small favours, to living as mistresses of owners or supervisors. Many of the experienced women are also made to act as recruiting agents for other women." From this account it is dear why these women are unable to seek any redress despite the existence of progressive-sounding laws. It is not because they do not understand or are unaware of their exploitation, or · do not resent it. A very common attitude, even among progressive political activists when they confront people living under such brutal exploitation is that these people lack awareness of their rights as human beings, that what they need is 'enlightenment' or consciousness raising.

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But that seldom works in and of itself. If tbe1e women-feel compelled to endure such humiliating and opp.essive mnditions of work, it· is because they have no option. There is nowheft to go back to, because what forced them to leave their homes in the first place is poverty and destitution, and disaimination against them as women. In most ways, · . . the conditions in the villages that _they left are wocse than at their wm·ksites. l lere, at least, they are able to eat two meals a day and maybe save a little bit to send home. In recent years, a lot jof sincere and well-meaning efforts have been made to identify some of the brick kilns, stone quarries and other worksites where men and women are illegally held as bonded labour, in to get them released. Most of thrse effmts, however, come to naught, ~use as soon as one lot of bonded labour is released, many more impoverished people are waiting to fill their place. In most cases, the very same people who have been released &om bonded labour will be back in no time working for other, equally inhuman, exploitel s. Women form a very large part of the destitute migrant labour force. While many of them have to migrate beQ11se they have no land or employment in the village, or during a drought year because of aop failure, women also have to migrate for nmons other than thas:e purely of 'class'. Talce the case of Jasmani Sundi from a bibal village in Bihar. Her parental family consisted of three brottet:s and a married sister. One brother left the village because he fN. 11 .d a better paid job in the dty. Jasmani looked after the family fields with the help of another brother; however, this brother·dedded to mortgage the family land because he needed money, and he did so without asking Jasmani or leaving a pm tion of land as her share. He could do this leause among tMse tribals, women do not have full property rights. Land is inherited only by male heirs in the male line. Jasmani was thus left without any means to support herself in the village, so she migrated to a nearby industrial town and began to work as a TUA. Here she met Saluka ~ and they began to live together as husband and wife. After a while he brought her to his village whe~ he had some family land. She had saved a little money . from her earnings in the dty, and all this wa.4; used to repair the husband's house and to buy seed. However, within no time he began to maltreat her, beating her up, threatening. to bring another wife, and telling her to leave 'his' house and fields. She insists she will leave only if he returns all her savings which he took from her in order to repair his house. There seems to be no chance of his doing this, however, and therefore Jasmani says that if he continues to beat her, she will have no option butitO go and work as a headloader in a mine or a brick kiln. Since women's relationship to land is so precarious, their rights in land so minimal, and employment opportunities for women in villages so abysmally scarce, it is difficult for them to keep a foothold if their

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family should maltn!at thin, and, therefore, far more difficult.for them to resist exploitation at workplami. As a .resul\, women among the poor bear the brunt of destitution and starvation. As in many other counbies, including those in tr West, the poorest households among the poorest sections of society are- lhose headed by a woman. Contrary to the popular staeotype of a household as a unit headed by a man, in a lmge percentage of households in lndia,-partirularly among the very poor, women are the sole breadwinners. A number of small surveys have indicated that the prevalence of such households ranges from 20'1> to SM, of all those in the a>untry, the proportion inaeasing with acuteness of poverty. But since the planners are so obsessed with the 'man the breadwinner and woman the housekeeper' myth derived from the experience of-their own class, they tend to function with the idea that to provide a man with a job is to provide for the whole family, and the woman need not be lleated as an unemployed person. Thus, wherever new eo,ployment opportunities are being aea~ in the organised industrial sector; women· are either totally ignored or are present in small numbers at the very bottom rung, u~HiaJly in peripheral jobs as casual Jabour without rights or benefits. What is more alarming, they are being inaeasingly J'llshed out of the few jobs they had in modem organised industry. The .three main sources of employment in the organised sector are factories, mines, and plantations. Between 1951 and 1971 woo,en's share of total employment in factories declined by more than 20'1>. For instance, in 1944 out of a total of 28'J,OOO workers employed by the jute mills. 38!>57 were women-almost 14'1> of the total labour force. In 1972 only 6,642 women were left in the whole jute industry and these are being steadily eliminated. When a woman worker retires, instead of a new woman being recruited in her plaa!, the job pas_c:es to a man. Between 1951 and 1971 women's sl\ao! of employment in mines declined from 21.l'l> to 11.K, that is, by47.4'1>. The heaviest decline has been·in ma) mines. Women once formed a large ooo,ponent of the labour force in coal mines. In 1919 women mmprised 38.1 'l> of the oolliery labour force. For every 10 men en,ployed undergaound, there wae women doing the same kind of work. While total employment in coal mines i11ueased, very slightly, from 352 lakhs (one lakh = 100,000) in 1951 to 3.82 lakhs in 19'71,·there was further decline hom 15.7'1> to 5.2'1> in women's share of this employ~ent. Recently, the coal mines management has s ~ a spedal 'voluntary retirement' scheme for women, whereby a woman worker can retire at any age and recommend a male relative for reauitment to her job. This passing on of]obs to men, however, seldom means that women can then sit at home and be supported by men. Several studies have. shown that giving jobs to men does not ensure that the whole family gets fed and looked after. Men tend to spend a large proportion of their •.

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' ina>me on drinking, smoking, and other forms of personal consumption. They may also leave one wife and marry another, the first woman thus being forced to feed and take care of the children by herself. The portion of men's earnings which reaches the wife and children is often insufficient for their upkeep. As a result, even in a large number of families technically headed by men, women often have to undertake major responsibility for feeding and supporting the family by doing miserable peripheral jobs such as rolling bidis, and scavenging in street garbage for rags, used paper, and other bits of rubbish which can be sold, recycled, or used by the poor. In a mineral-rich disbict like Singhbhum which produces about 701> of India's mine~ wealt~ and is littered with all kinds of mines· giving employment !f>;thousands, it is very mmmon to see destitute women along the railway lines, picking up half-burnt roal dropped by railway engines; they then wash it and try to eke out a living by selling it for a few paise. In the hear\ of Delhi, wives of workers in one of the oldest and largest textile mills of north India do miserable piece-rate jobs, earning about a couple of rupees a day for long hours of work. Many of these women seem desperate for employment, but the textile mills where their husbands work do not employ a single woman worker in the factory. A study of a partirular scheduled castf! community in the area where India's largest public sector steel plant was construcled brings out the special aspect of women's destitution very dearly. Bdore the steel plant was established, the Baoris in this area were engaged in rultivation and in coal mining. Baori women were always economically active. However, nationalisation of tN' coal mines led to large scale displacement of 8aoris froo1 mining jobs. Further, since urbanisation around the steel plant led to steep rise in land prices, speculators used a combination of force and fraud to alienate Baoris from their land. Some of the families who were directly displaced from their land by the steel plant were given jobs in the plant, but it was men who got these jobs. Most of the Baori men were unable to compete sucCESSfully with men of privileged communities f~r jobs in the organised sector. Moreover, the reauitment policy systematically excluded the local Baoris, giving paeference to men from outside, especially upper caste men. The low level manual jobs available in the urban sector, such as truckloading and rickshaw pulling, were all that Baoris could lay some claim to, and these jobs too were taken by men. Indusbiclisation and urbanisation have opened basically two channels of et11ployment to Baori women-domestic service and prostitution. Prostitution amongst the Baoris is uncommon in remote villages. It became entrenched only after the construction of the steel plant and the subsequent urbanisation of the area. The majority of prostitutes belong to other communities but have migrated into this~ and are linked

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in some way with Baori or Modti households. All the women were pushed into the trade by financial pressures. Some were forced into it by parents 9r husbands. Most of them help their families with their earnings. Many women are sole supporters of families. The surver showed that women domestic servants work extremely long hours for very low wages, and that women as a group. are not even marginal beneficiaries of urban facilities. For instance, not a single female child covered by the survey was attending school.

· Urban f;ducated Middle Class Women Even though for an overwhelming majority of Indian women life is characterised by unending drudgery and powerlessness, and even while they have been fadng steady eoonomic and political marginalisation, there is a very sttong belief among the ideologically powerful urban elite that Indian won,en won the battle of equality long ago, and have made steady progtess in the last few decades, especially after natiQ.nal ·independence. This myth has primarily grown out of some visible improvements in the life of women from the urban educated middle class and elite families over the last century or so. This articulate section is strongly influenced by the idea that all social disabiliti~ concerning women were rea,oved after independence by maldng changes in the law, by enshrining the principle of equality and non-discrimination on the basis of sex as a fundamental right in the Indian Constitution and by allowing upper caste and class women access to education and employment in professions. Many of the legal, political, and educational rights that. Western women achieved only after decades of struggle (some of which are still being fought for in some Weste11, countries) were atxIUired by women in India without the same kind of long drawn and bitter struggle. As early as the 1930s, the leaders of the national movement, at the historic Karachi.session of the Indian National Congress, pledged themselves to ·ensure that in independent India women would have equal political rights. Annie Besant and Sarojini Naidu were elected to the presidency of the Indian ·National Congress in 1917 and 1926 respectively. These elections were an expression of the commitment of the national movement to the principle of women's equality in all 51;>heres. Thus, not ~'nly did women atxIUire the right to vote, without serious resistance, but also the right to hold almost any position; including the highest political office in the country, without a bitter struggle. Without any strong opposition, the constitutional and political equality of women was accepted as one of the founding principles of national life. Within a few years of independence from colonial rule, with the passing of the Special Marriage Act of 1954, and the Hindu Marriage Act of 1955, marriage and divorce laws were substantially amended. The \

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Hindu Succession Act of 1955 provided, at least in theory, for near equal inheritance rights for a large section of Indian women. In principle, at least, womel' came to aQ]Uire the right to seek divorce, to demand the rustody of children and to inherit parental properfy', almost equally with men. Abortion was legalised and made available on demand in 1971 without women so much as having to fight for it, although more as a population oontrol measure than a women's rights issue. .Very few fields of education and professional employment are legally· or visibly barred to women, even while the gap in the male and female literacy rates has been amsistently widening over the last several decades. Women constitute more than tw~thirds of the total illiterates in India. According to the 1981 census, only about 25" of women are literate. It needs to be emphasised that the govemment~efined criteria of literacy do not extend even as far as ensuring basic skills in reading and writing. There ·~ been a much slower rate of increase in the number of girls per 100 boys at the school final examination level but a much faster haC'tease at the university stage, particularly in the higher levels of education, than at the primary and secondary stages. Contrary to the experience of women in many Wester,, counbies, the admission of women to Indian universities came with relative ease. Calcutta University ~utltted women to appear for the Entrance and BA degree examination . as early as 1877 and 1878 respectively. Admission to engineering and technology courses was opened to women in 1948, soon after Independence. However, a relatively very narrow stratum of the people gain admittance to higher education institutions. Thus the only women. who are gaining substantial ground in education are those from within the narrow elite that holds key positions of power. There has been no obvious discrimination against women in professions in mattets of pay and other facilities. Every time a woman finds her way into what are usually considered male citadels or into ·elite professions, she usually does so with much fanfare and general acclaim. The first few women police officet s, judges, film makers, parliamentarians, far ftoot facing visible discrimination, have been given distinct enoouragement. The press, too, has given a great deal of sympathetic coverage to such women, projecting them as role models, creating a feeling that there is little a woman cannot do, no position she cannot reach, provided she has the ability and the will power. Women's presence in such fields as medicine, law, science, administration, though mostly confined to big cities, has given the idea of equality a certain visibility, though within most of these professions the numbers of women remain very low. This ability to easily absorb and even to accord positions of honour and prestige to small sections of women from ·elite groups is nothing new. It is rooted in a long historical tradition. Most of the sodal refo1m movements at different points in ~dian history have strengthened Digitized by

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this tradition. It is notew01thy that muc:h of the legislation to provide women equal economic and political opportunities came as much through_the organising efforts of men as through the initiative and efforts of women leaders from elite families. There is a fairly powerful tradition of men actively espousing the women's cause in India. This is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, women's issues do not usually meet with hostility and contenlpt; and cue accepted as issues of general sodal concern. On the other, it tends to inhibit women's own initiative and thinking in impmtant ways, and often leads to o~ei n,uch dependence on male approval, with a mnsequent raising of issues within parameters defined and found a~able by male political leaders. During the movement for national independence, the struggle ·for women's equality and dignity was seen by leaders like Gandhi as an integral part of the struggle for political freedom. Gan.dhi' s a>ntribution in bringing about a certain social and moral legitimacy for the cause of women's freedoul remains unsurpassed even today, though some aspects of his philosophy have distinctly a>nservative ovet tones. He helped aeate a mndudve atmosphere for women's partidpation in the national movement. At its best, however active partidpation of women was by and large restricted to educated wban middle class women who emerged as an extren,ely articulate group within the freedom movement. Even though women as a group never came to alllUire any real power at dedsionmaking levels, their presence set the trend of pabonised entry and rit11al absorption of a few won,en at almost all levels of the political machinery. Even during the earlier social reform movements which swept different parts of the country during the nineteenth century,' the women's question came to be one of the c:Entral questions on the agenda of social reform through the initiative of leading male reformen. The struggle for women's education, too, came to be initiated apd led by men. Many of the first women's schools, mlleges, hostels, protection and rescue homes, and widow's homes were founded by men who devoted their lives to this cause, often in the face Qf severe opposition and social·ostracism. Though these various sodal reform movements saw the emergence of several outstanding women's leaders and women's organisations and institutions, the movement for women's rights during the nineteenth century was not primarily led by women. · Both the nineteenth century social reform movements and the national movement have left a powerful legacy that has helped create a particular moral atmosphere wherein women's equality is professed and widely acknowledged as a desirable social ideal by the whole gamut of political leadership. Even those who are avowed conservatives are unlikely publicly to oppose women's rights or to defend discriminatory treatment .Digitized by

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of women, even though in reality this amounts tc- no more than pious plati.t udes, since the soda) structure reJYM1iJ1S heavily weighted against women. Brutal oppression and powerlessness of women coexist with a pevailing ethos of acmrding social respect and honour to certain kinds of women -women mostly from elite families in the role of social service v..uk,, s, teachers, reformers, talented artiSts, and mother figures. Power, ~ g , ~ music, wealth, are all embodied in Hinduism as goddesses. Yet while even today Saraswati is worshipped a, the goddess of learning, most families still DSider education of women a wasteful affair. Thus, • while most women are denied the minimal opportunity for acquiring basic education, a learned and talented woman with high status in any field is likely to be aauded sperial respect and deference. Such a woman, living in·a big dty; may violate many social llOl'IDS with impunity. For instance, she may n!D'tain unmarried and even be respected for it She may work with men, may freely move about alone without facing the Jdnct of social censure. that most \w~aen live in fear of, in day-to-day life. Even if slurs an, cast on her cha,-cler, she is likely to find as many defendet s as detractors. The mntinued fascination exerdaed on the popular imagination by Mirabai, the famous sixteenth century saint-poet of India, is symbolic of the dual aspects _o f reverence and repression latent in the Indian bB'lition. Mirabai ~ to a royal family of Mewar and was married at an early age, much against her wishes. However, she refused to mould lwss.Jf in the amfining role of a wife and daughter-in-law. The sixteenth century IMti 11\0vement of social and religious refo.u, provided Mirabal, as it did many other women of that period, with a way of defying and stepping out of the oppressive social obligations imposed upon women of her caste and dass.. Jor this, she had to face tn!mendous persecution at the hands of her husband's family, including attempts to poison and kill her. Yet, until today she is reu,embered as part of popular follclore, not only for her beautiful poetry,but as much for her ability to resist and challenge the tyrannical power of her opptessive lamily. Many such women emerged during the nineteenth century social refoint movements as well as during the national movement Even today, a few women &om among the urban educated elite groups find relatively easy entry into dtadels of male power and piestige. It is this increasing visibility of a small number of highly artirulate,

English-educated women, mostly fron, upper castes and dasses in big dties, that lends credibility to the myth of ~ and advancen,ent of women in India. Despite their small number, they exert such powerful · ideological influence that for decades their achievement,; came to obscure the fact that even within the middlf' ~ss most women, de$pite education, rm,ain powerless and vulnerable. . The discovery, therefore, in the late 1970s, that large numbers of

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supposedly privileged-women~ among the urban educated middle . class were being brutally maltnated and even murdered by their inlaws, were being beated as virtual hostages for extracting more dowry from their parents; and wae helpless to resist such brutality, often seeking escape in suicide, aune as a severe jolt to the complacent self-view of the urban educated middle dass. Only something as gruesome .as the charred bodies of thousands of young woa,en being carried out of their husbands' homes forced many of us to realise the utter helplessness of most women, even among the relatively privileged sections of society. We have.slowly been formd to acknowledge, though so far very halflwrtedly, that the presnd family structure is so weighted against women that their very survival too often depends on the whims and arbitray decisions of those in the family who exercise power. Often, even if a woman has the pote,tial and the motivation, the family can effectively prevent her from becoming independent. Convasely, if the family is well placed and well educated, and if the men of the family choose to exercise their power and influence in favour of the women members of the family, or at least do not hinder them, such women usually find everything smooth sailing. Most w ~ who have managed to ~eh positions of power in sodal and political life or even in the professions are usually thO&e who found enmqngement and support from ·their families. It is no exagg,e1 ation to say that in India it is relatively far easier for a reasonably talented woman to become a minister, or to reach other such offices of power when she mmes from an influential and well-connected family which is ~pathetic to her and :mmurages her, than it is for an ordinary woman to acquire the right to exercise an effective say in village or community politics. The most active resistance to empowerment of women at the g,assroots level comes primarily froa, their own family and kin gi0u.p. Even among the urban middle dass, the power exercised by the family structure and the kin gi0up over the lives ·of women has been and is a far more potent weapon in keeping women oppressed and powerless than discriminatory laws. Neither formal education nor the ability to earn an independent income has brought about the expected changes in the lives of urban educated women. Their education is usually tailon!d to the requirements of the marriage market. Even those few women who eam a substantial income seldom are able to participate in real a>ntrol over their own or their family's income. Most of them.have to go through arranged marriages and there is evidence that the dowries given for well-educated and earning women are often m~re exorbitant than for less educated or illiterate women; this is partly because parents have to seek even 'better qualified' husbands for their eciucated, qualified' daughters. The formal education and a job with a regular income do not nP.CeSsarily enhance a woman's status in the family. 1

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In fact, she may have to be doubly subservient in order to prove that working outside the house and bringing in an independent ina>me have. not a>11 upted her or Cc.11,sed her to deviate from the 'womanly' path. Even · such highly educated and well-employed women as doctors, a>llege lecturers, teachers, oftet, have to hand their entire salary over to their husbands or mothers-in-law and are then given a small amount for daily expenditure. Moreover, most women, however well-educated they may be, are not allowed to decide for themselves whether or not they want to work outside the house for a salary; this decision usually rests with the male head of the household. As a result, most educated women take or leave their jobs aca>rding to whether their husbands expect then, to supplement the family income or wish them to stay at home. As among the rich peasant castes in rural India, keeping women away fron, paid ea,ployment is generally a>nsidered to be a mark of high social status, even among large sections of the urban educated clas1e&. Except for a handful of women in elite professions, by and large, most urban educated middle dass women remain a>nfined to lower grade professions, for Pxample, as nurses, secretaries, typists, receptionists, and primary school teachers. In these professions they remain at the lowest rungs where they cannot influence decision-making and where avenues of promotion scarcely exist.

Urban Women's Struggles Quite out of popor tion to our numeriau signifi~ we. as small gawpa of women from urban ·educated middle and upper middle dass families, are relatively very successful in getting our voices heard, especially wha\ we organise in order to protest. Most middle dass women who amr.e into the foreftont of organised political activity usually do so with the help or ena>uragement of their relatively well-mnnected families. 1bat is an important reason why the government and the police us1,aJly take an armmmodationist attitude towards middle dass women's protest activity. From the mid-1970s onwards, small women'a groups have been emerging in big metropolitan cenhes, and more recently even in smaller towns and cities. These groups are very heterogeneous in nature: Some are groupings of women most of whom are active in different trade unions, left organisations, civil liberties groups and students groups. Others are women's wings of political parties or of left~riented social action organisations, or are informal groupings within one of them. Many women's groups have been set up or sponson!d by foreign funding agencies and church organisations. There are also a few independent women's groups which do not owe allegiance to any political party or funding organisation. By and large, the activity of these groups has centred around cases of atrocities committed on women, often picked

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up fioo, newspaper reports, and leading to protest actions. In many cases women in distress approach such groups who try to help them in whatever way possible. The help proffered ranges from protest demonstrations to providing legal and medical a:d, putting social pressure on the family concerned, and finding the woman employment or housing. Many groups function as disrussion groups, holding seminars, rultural programmes, workshops, and preparing poster exhibitions or slide shows. The one issue that seems to have emerged as a common rallying point for urban based groups across the country is dowry murder and other brutal forms of maltreatment of women by their in-laws, who often wish to extract more money from the woman's parents, and sometimes wish to arrange a second marriage for the man so as to secure a second dowry. The history of the agitation against dowry murder shows the vital role played by the availability and spread of information in any movement. Many of us today seem to be under the impression that dowry murders are a new phenomenon. People often wonder alud whether dowry murders ever took place· in the past, or · whether they were simply not repo1 ted in the papers. H we examine the newspapers of some years ago, we will see _that even then they did carry three-line reports of women's deaths by accidental burning, and families ·of such wonien still recall those deaths which were never investigated or treated as murder cases. · It was only in 1977-78 that the actions against dowry murders were initiated, when the Mahila Dakshata Samiti began to investigate and follow up some of these cases. In early 1978 they published a report on the cases they had followed up, in which they revealed that many deaths that were being passed off suicides or accidents were, in fact, murders. '1'l¥! report was widely publicised in the press which gradually woke up to the fact that it was helping to hush up these murders by neglecting independent investigation of them, or reporting on then, in any detail. For years, blindly and dutifully, the press had reproduced on the third page of newspapers three-line news items based on police bulletins: '1iousewife died accidentally of burns when stove burst while she was cooking,'' or, ''A young married woman ~tted suicide by setting herself on fire. The police have registered a case of suicide.'' Such is the power c-l the printed word that the public accepted these reports as factual representations of reality, never suspecting the invisible hc,1,ors behind many of them. . The Mahila Dakshata Samiti report seems to have helped sensitise some sections of journalists ·w ho began to give systematic coverage to any protest actions which sought to bring the truth to light. Gradually, some journalists also began to do some investigative reporting on such cases instead of relying wholly on police bulletins (though a large number

as

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of these uninvestigated bulletins on 'saiddes' and 'accidents' continue to appear daily). Newspaper publidty given to every small and big protest action sparked off a powerful chain reaction. The message began to be spread far and wide that what were being passed off as suicides or accidental deaths of young women could well be murders. It also became apparent that it is possible to protest and to mobilise the weight of social opinion against the perpetrators of such aimes. Partly as a result of this spreading awareness created by the press, people in many small towns throughout the country have begun independently to investigate and protest when young women die under what appear to be 'suspicious circumstances'. The very fact that neighbours or girls' families now notice that the circumstances are 'suspicious' is largely owing to the role played by the press in aletting people. The coverage given by the press to such small actions by local residents helped spread the fire further. To keep quiet and suffer in silence began to be mnsidered less and less respectable with every sympathetic press report of protest. This is how even 'respectable' middle class women and men began to mme out on the st1 eets and make public issues of what had so far been considered the private affairs of the family. Very many urban women reported murdered for more dowry have been.from middle and lower middle class families; most of them were independent salary earners. A few of them were in highly placed jobs. What is it that makes such a woman so vulnerable, so helpless to resist maltreatment? One after another, details of each dowry death added more horror to the picture of the nightmarish existence that women lead within many middle class, respectable homes. The final act of lighting a match was usually preceded by months or years of torture, beatings, and maltreatment. Most of the narents were aware that this was occurring. Some even knew their daughters were being threatened. Many of the women had several times come to their parents' houses in desperation before they were murdered or driven to suicide. Each time, the woman was given some adjustment form!-11a, advised to be patient, and sent back after some kind of patch-up reconciliation. In almost all of these cases, after the woman's death, even when there was enough cirrumstantial evidence for a prima fade case, the police actively connived with the murdering family to destroy the evidence. In many cases, diffirult though it may be to comprehend, even the dying declaration of the woman was dismissed or was not.recorded, despite her insistence. The police would often refuse to register a case and would try to dissuade the woman's parents from doing so. This made it incredibly easy for tthe murderers to get away with such crimes.. Few have ever been arrested and only recently have there been a couple of cases of conviction that are now under appeal. The apathetic attitude

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of the administrative machinery, the police and the law courts toward, cases of violence on women acted as an incentive for more families to try out the same method. When the press first began to focus public attention on these brutal murders, it seemed that there was an aa:eleration in the number of dowry murders because more men seemed to have become aware that this was an easy way of getting·rid of their wives and getting away with it There are other important reasons for the quick spread of the antidowry murder agitation. In the pos~-emergency period, there was a general feeling of mistrust among the middle class towards the

government machinery, espMBIJy the police, because of the blatant way they had been used as repressive forces during the emergency. Even politically active sections of the urban middle and upper dass had not been ~pared. Therefore, exposure to the way the police and government machinery were conniving to shield aiminals against women brought about a further disillusionment and an impetus to protest The anti~owry demonstrations usually begin at the husband's houae. The organisers do not usually number more than thirty to fifty wonren. But within no time, their numbers swell as people from the neighbourhood spontaneously join them. Increasingly, too, the•families and neighbours of the won,en victims are beginning to organise their own demonstrations, often without the help of any outside mganisation& The demonstrators proceed fron, the husband's house to the local polim station to protest against the role of the polim. . As the news of such actions spread, within a short time this pattei:, of anti~owry morc1,a began to be reported from many more dties all over the country. The morc1,a and demonstrations have helped to bring out many more significant facts. Gradually, people have a>n,e to · . acknowledge that the phenomenon of dowry and dowry-related deaths was not confined to north India as it was previously believed to be. Moreover, it has established its grip even among the poorer sections of the population. Dowry is no longer confined primarily to the middle classes or the propertied castes. Such murders are being routinely reported fron, all parts of India, from very varied sbata of Indian sodiety, as women's and other o,ganisations in different dties begin to investigate these deaths. So much publidty has been given to this issue that over the last few years dowry and dowry deaths have been psojected as the single most important issue for Indian women. There are several reasons for this. The agitations against dowry murders have emanated from big dties and are initiated almost always by educated and influential women from upper and middle class families. It is, therefore, very easy for such actions to become big media events. The press has played an extrenaely sympathetic role in projecting and spreading the agitations; even small ·

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protest actions in big dties by .a group of forty or fifty women often receive prominent a>verage in most national and regional newspapets and magazines.1be fact that such gruesome atrocities are taking place in 'respectable' middle class homes gives the issue: special weight as far as its media value is concerned. Nevertheless, even though the anti-dowry agitation has put the question of dowry and maltreatment of women on the national agenda, there is absolutely no evidence that dowry practices are deaeasing or that women are being less maltreated. Whatever information we have ben able to gather indicates that the practice of dowry is becoming more widespread in all strata of Indian society. Thus, the systea,atic a>verage of dowry deaths and protest •ctions against them has given to this issue a certain legitimacy which many other important issues have not acxiwred. Undoubtedly, something needs very urgently to be done to prevent many more thousands of women from being burnt to death in this horrifying fashion. However, very few people in India are either aware or concerned about several other common and devastating causes of the deaths of millions of women in India every year, from tetanus and other infections developed during childbirth because there is no clean water, because rusty dirty knives or stones are often used to cut the umbilical.cord because nothing better is available· in most villages, and that few women and infants are immunised against tetanus even though this is an inexpensive way to prevent millions of deaths. Thus, one cannot escape the fact that the sensationalised acts of violence and horror, especially as they touch the lives of the articulate urban middle class, receive much more attention than some of the everyday aspects of neglect and oppression that affect the survival of millions of women. Another issue that is sporadically taken up by urban groups is that of sexual violence on women-ranging from harassment on the streets, in public places and on public transport, to molestation and rape. In some big dties, a few cases of rape of women from poorer classes of the urban population have sparked off protests. However, it is police rape that has attracted most attention. Reports in later sections of this book describe some cases in detail. In urban areas, the arrest of innocent women from the poorer sections, and their rape in police custody, are fairly common events, though they do not often come to light. The famous case of the rape of Rameeza Bee in 1976 in a Hyderabad police station was one of the first to receive national attention in the last decade. For months a spate of political protests, anti-police and antigovernment agitations rocked the state of Andhra Pradesh. This agitation was the combination of a wrathful community bursting out in anti-police action as well as more organised protests by various political parties ·and civil liberties groups with some participation and follow-up action by Digitized by

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women's organisations. Similarly the Belchi, Beldiha, Pipra, and Parasbigha gang rapes and murders also provoked widespread protests, not so much from women's groups as from various political parties and civil liberties organisations. Only in 1980 a protest letter by four law professors, two men and two women, against a court judgement acquitting two policemen of the rape in police custody of Mathura, a 14 year old labourer, biggered off protest actions by women's groups and organisations in the big cities. Mathura's case became a rallying point for demanding changes in rape law. A few other such cases have been sporadically picked up by women's groups for protest. By and large, however, civil liberties groups and demoqatic rights organisations have been as active, if not more active, as women's groups on issues relating to police rape and atrocities on women, especially in small towns and rural areas. Many of the reports of sexual atrocities on women from remote areas sent to Mtmushi have come from male political activists who have helped organise resistance and protests against them. It is also noteworthy that men have generally been present and even active in organising anti-dowry demonstrations. Despite the consistent anti-police protest actions by urban middle_dass women's organisations and groups in the course of anti-dowry and anti-rape actions, we in big cities have seldom had to fa~ government repression or polire brutality as a result. Even in a ronfrontation the police have seldom, if ever, treated us the way they do rural or urban poor women. The widespread newspaper publicity given even to our small and insignificant actions acts as an important restraining factor for the police. Since many of the urban women activists come from fairly wellconnected families, those in power tend to give something like kid glove treatment to urban educated middle class women's protest actions, including those from the women's•wings of left parties. The enormous publicity given to anti-dowry agitations in big cities has created the impression in the minds of the literate public that there is an all-India movement. So far, however, the agitation has been ronfined to large cities and big towns; it does not seem even to have touched the villages. Its impact is, therefore, likely to be limited, at least for the present. Despite the increased awareness of women's issues in the last few years, it would be foolish to pretend that those overall economic and political forces rendering milliqns of women powerless and destitute aQ? anywhere near being arrested. If anything, the devastation is going on more ferociously, and the basic survival issues and needs of millions of women have yet to become important social priori ties.

Rural Women's Struggles Only by placing women's struggles in the context of the hegemonic role

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played by rural power relations and family structures am we understand and evaluate the relative significance of urban and rural women's struggles. ·It is as difficult to genmaJise about rural women's stl'llggles in India as it is about their lives, because there is very little information about ways in which rural women, both collectively and individually, have attempted to resist their oppresmon. To begin wi~ there are very few examples of organised and sustained struggles by rural poor women. One can only generalise on the basis of the few out of the small number of organised struggles that have become known outside the local areas. By and large, only the activities of urban-based groups get noticed and projected in a more mnsistent way, berause these groups have more easy aca!SS to the mass media. The very few rural struggles that find their way into the regional or national piess or are documented by NMerdlers, are us1:aally those where some urban activists have been present as organisers, catalysts, or sympathisers. After the lull following Independence, women's struggles entered a new phase, together with a revived interest, in the 1970s, in women's issues. During this phase, the first sparks of prolest and organisation sem, to have mme from the most oppressed sections of the rural population. Since some of these rural struggles are discussed at length in this boo~ I will discuss only some of their common fee.hues. Only in sireas and among groups where women play an active role in economic production have women taken the first steps to challenge and resist their oppression, both within the family and outside. The rural women who have been involved in struggles usuall,y belong to the ~· · tribal groups, the so-called low castes, and the landless poor. These are also the groups relatively less influenced by the dominant cul~ of the upper .a nd middle peasant families. These women have almost ~ever been joined by women from better-off peasant: families. The marginal peasant: women have, in some cases, joined struggles along with .the landless poor, especially where the families of the former are dependent on wage labour for some part of the year. Most of the sb uggles seem to have been triggered off around basic survival issues of the rural poor, and begin wJth the organisation of the men and women around economic issues. Sau-city and restrictions on use of fuel, water, forest rights, and demands for minimum wages and implementation of Food for Work programmes, especially during times of distress, have been the starting points of many rural·struggles. Once women are galvanised in large numbers during the murse of these struggles, they inevitably raise specific issues concerning their own oppressi.on and powerlessness. A turning point in women's mobilisation and participation is usually triggered off when sex11al violence or exploitation by the rural rich men and the issue of women's dignity Digitized by

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become important issues or when issues of everyday oppression in the family, such as wife-beating or .-1.. , are taken up as a focus of struggle.. This happened, for example, in the course of the struggle of the landless poor, in Shahada ttduk, Dhulia disbict, Maharashtra, and in the Bodhgaya struggle in Bihar. Since most women are so overburdened with work and are kept away even from everyday decision-making processes within the community, in times of struggle too they find it very difficult to participate equally at the decision-making level or to keep women's organisations alive for any length of time. The few known instances of women's struggles show that the level of women's involvement in general class struggles is often deterauned by whether or not special efforts are made to encourage their involvement. The account of the Bodhgaya land struggle reveals this aspect most sharply. It has rarely been acknowledged that, in areas where political activists and leaders qf movements are indifferent or hostile to the need for raising spetjfic women's issues, these issues seldom come to the fore on the women's own impetus. Even in situations where women have not been actively organis«i, · it often happens that when either the armed police or hired hoodlums of the rural rich come to raid, torture, and kill, women are left behind with the children and the old people to bear the brunt of the repression, while adult men run into the forests or go into hiding. Thus, during such a>nflicts large numbers of those massd.aed are usually w011,en. Gang rapes and sexual outrages on rural poor women by the police or the rural rich have become integral features of the repression following struggle. In some 01ses, women who are victims of such atrocities may even have to face social ostracism from their own community for having been 'defiled'. Some of these women's struggles have left an inspiring legacy and tri~ seriously to challenge the power relations in the rural areas. Because of the heavy odds against them, however, they have remained sporadic and shortlived. Firstly, rural poor women, too overburdened with work and domestic responsibilities, marginalised by the 'modernising' economy and politics, with little power even within their own community, find it difficult to sustain their struggles.and organisations for any length of time. They find it difficult·even to take part in political programmes except at crucial stages of the movement when additional &t,ength is desperately needed. Only in cases where there are sympathetic full-time political activists from outside does the organisational framework systematically include women. Secondly, women often face enormous resistance from their own men if they undertake organisational tasks. Finally, just as these stn1ggles and women's organisations begin to raise their heads, they are brutally crushed by the rural _elite. Yet, miraculously enough, sporadic outbursts continue to erupt all over the country. Digitized by

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1nese rural struggles that usually begin by challenging the economic and social exploitation by rich pgsas,ts or other economic exploiters, within no time inevitably COOK! into mnfrontation with the repressive machinery of the State which steps in to potttt the interests of the exploiters by crushing the struggle. Thus the major reason for the limited effectiveness of the rural struggles is the increasing strength of the rural oppressors-the rich peasants and their allies, the police and the govei1,mental bureaucracy. The middle and rich peasant castes and dasses have been acquiring more and more political clout in the last few decades. The local administration, including the police, is usually in the grip of this group. They have managed to acquire political power in several states through regional, peasant-based political parties. By organising themselves into factions and alliances they have become like local rulers or petty chieftains who contest among themselves for power in the villages. One important source of their power is their ability to use force and violence against the poor with little fear of intervention by the State. Their ability to employ or dismiss at will, to humiliate, to abuse, to rape, is enough to keep the rural poor and even the women of their own dass in a perpetual state of fear. The slightest sign of resistance by the poor is usually met by systematic violence peipetrated by hired musdemen always at their beck and call. They are also inaeasingly acquiring control over more sophisticated weapons such as rifles and other firearms, along with their lathis and diindtzs, so that the battle between the rural rich and the rural poor is becoming even more unequal. If the struggles assume the form of a more serious challenge, the police and the other paramilitary forces of the State are ever ready to intervene on their behalf, ostensibly in the name of keeping 'law and order'. Over the years, the repressive machinery of the State has been immensely enlarged and strengthened. One of the largest areas of government expenditure is the mnsistently growing investment in the police, the various paramilitary forces, and the army. They have been provided with sophisticated weapons and means of mmmunication and special training for one of their primary tasks-to defeat the struggles of the poor. They enjoy near unlimited powers to murder, torture, maim, loot, rape, extort bribes and terrorise. It would be difficult to find instances of the rural poor having been offered any real protection and support by the government machinery in their struggle against the powerful groups in the villages. In fact, the sight of a government or police jeep entering a village, especially during phases of struggle, sends people fleeing into forests and fields in order to escape encountering them. Experience has taught then, that a police jeep can mean only more torture and trouble for the poor, especially women.

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Another important ONda~ to power relations in favour of women is that hardly any organised challenges to the emnomic and · political power of the dominant peasant caste men have been initiated by women of their own families. In contrast, rural poor women have posed sporadic but impottant challenges both to the power of rich peasants and to the men of their own families. Women front the dominant peasa1't castes have not so far been involved in any sb uggles for their rights, despite the fad that they have no share in most of the privileges of their caste and class. The inn easing power of men in their community has rendered these women more

powerless, so that they live exbeately dependent and .precarious lives. Yet no political force in the muntry has considered it worthwhile to address itself to the mCteased dependence and powerlessness of these women. So far, this key group of women has remained absolutely outside the purview of wamen's sta uggles,even when there have hem D.e is a key aspect of their dependence and powerlessness, and helps build the basis for keeping wrmen economiailly subservient within the family. Effective land rights are the only means to give poor peasant women a firm foothold to fight for their rights in rural sodety. 12. One reason why many women feel indequate in dealing with the outside world is that they cannot read or write; they are looked upon as igtaorant and stupid. Consequently, many of them have little tonfidence in their own understanding of the world. Acquisition of functional literacy can thus become an impot lant tool both for the more effective handling of day-to-day affairs and for trying to defend themselves against those in power over then•.

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13. Literacy alone, however, will not enable women to gain access to most better paid jobs unla simultaneous efforts are made to break dow:tt the prejudices against women learning to handle technology. This has. to begin with women· gaining aeme an important priority. We have to analyse why those who have power remain so callous towards the need to spread basic education as a means of enabling people to have greater mntrol over their own lives. They have remained obsessed ~th .using the educational system to produce a. tiny elite who COJ,aer much of the society's wealth and power. If we go even further, we will discover that the government seems to be putting an enormous proportion of its economic resources, effort, and will power into ensuring the continuing power of this tiny elite by strei,gthening its repressive machinery, buying more and more weapons, and increasing its police and l;l\ilitary forces. Thus if we mnfine our concern to bridging the male and female literacy gap without at the same time working for basic social changes we will ' Digitized by

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only end up quarrelling over the aumbs. 16. Along with all these other tasks, there has to be a total and consistent struggle aganinst the ideology of subservience and the varied ways in which it has been woven into the very fabric of our life. We have to see the struggle against oppressive cultural values as an essential part· of a political struggle to challenge the current power relations between men and women. So far the atteu,pts made to challenge the oppressive cultural stereotypes of women have focused mainly on the portrayal of women in modem mass media such as advertisements, radio, television, films, and textbooks. But the culture of women's subservience in India, especially in villages, does not draw its primary sustenance from these new sources of ideological mntrol. We must identify and begin with those common underlying cultural sources of discrimination against women on which the moder11 forms of mass media draw in order to reinforce the existing prejudices. The pervasive popular cultural ideal of womanhood has become a death trap for too many of us. It is woman as a selfless giver, someone who gives and gives endlessly, gracefully, smilingly, whatever the demand, however unreasonable and however harmful to herself. She gives not just love, affection, and ungrudging service but also, if need be, her health and ultimately her life at the altar of duty to her husband, children, and the rest of her family. Sita, Savitri, Anusuya, and various other mythological heroines are used as the archetypes of such a woman, and women them-selves are deeply influenced by this cultural ideal. 'Those of us who wish to combat or reject these ideals have, however, been largely ineffective because we tend to do so from a totally 'Western, modernist' standpoint. The tendency is to make people feel · that they are backward and stupid to hold values that need to be rejected outright. We must learn to begin with more respect for traditions which people hold dear. We have to make the effort to develop an understanding of why these images of Indian women have such power over the minds and hearts of women themselves. We need to begin ·to separate the devastating aspects from the points of strength within the cultural traditions, and start using the strengths to transform the traditions. For instance, the ideal of the self-effacing woman who gives so bountifully to her family is attractive to women not because most Indian women are masochists but because most human 'beings do aspire to live lives which go beyond individual self--seeking and narrow calculations about returning favour for favour. The urge to submerge one's own narrow interests in the larger interests of the family, the kin, and community is not in itself to be condemned, provided there is real reciprocity in giving and receiving. The ideal becomes a death trap for women when they are beaten into being beasts of burden, when they

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are denied all sense of self-worth, when doing for others assumes the form of slavery. A woman's supreme virtue is supposed to reside in total and unquestioning obedience, even to the most outrageous of her husband's whims, however she may be harmed as a mnsequence. This ideology of slavery and mntempt for women in the family is a more important part than even beatings or bullets in keeping women oppressed. Gandhi was one of the few people able to make a aeative use of our powerful cultural traditions. He was able to inspire people to perform difficult contemporary tasks, using age-old symbols. For most mode. 1,ists, for example, Sita represents the hallmark of women's subservience. But Gandhi's Sita is not the self-effacing, fire-ordeal-facing Sita. C..andhi's Sita is a woman who will not let her husband touch her if he approaches her in a disrespectful way, nor dared the mighty Ravana ravish Sita against her will though she stayed a captive in his kingdom for many years. She also becomes a symbol of Swadeshi. She is a woman who will not dress up in order to appear att1active and be a sex object. Similarly he saw Mirabai, the leading bhalcti poet, as a symbol of Satyagraha. He held her up as one who had the courage to reject the role of wife and mother, and to remain undaunted by the persecution she had to suffer at the hands of her husband and his powerful family. By sheer dint of her ~oral courage and dete. n,ination to continue on her chosen path in defiance of all social norms, she was able to convert her husband into a devotee. Our cultural traditions have tremendous potential within them to combat reactionary and anti-women ideas, if we can identify their points of strength and use them creatively. The rejection of the harmful is then made much easier than attempts to overthrow traditions totally or to attack them arrogantly from outside, as most of us Westernised medemists tend to do, since we have been completely alienated from our own rulture and the people who hold it dca:-. W~ must realise that if we fail to acknowledge and help reinvigorate the deeply humane portions of our heritage, none of our other efforts are likely to succeed. ,

Mulhu Kishwar

•

I would like to thank my friend Bulbul, who luis tilso been tin exceptionally supportive friend of Manushi, for the help I received in clllrifying many of the ideas in the Introduction. Our discussions wer mtiny yt1US have been a very important source of learning and understanding 1111d kept~ continually amzre of how little we know and how much there is to lelirn.

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2. WOMEN'S LIVES Family Life of Agricultural Labourers and Small Farmers in Punjab BERNY HOROWITZ AND MAOHU Klsl-lWAR This study is an attempt to document some significant aspects of women's t;ves within the families of agricultural labourers and small farmers in .a Punjab village. A basic assumption is that the lives of the people in a community cannot be mrrectly understood without finding out how both the labour contributions and the benefits of production are distributed among its members. Traditional eamomic indicators, such as average household incon,e, per capita inmme, and per capita food mnsumption, all fail to tell us who actually gets how much of what. The family as a unit of eamomic and political organisation has not been ·adequately looked at to explain the following: 1. How are ea>nomic resoUJ'a!S distributed within the family and with what consequences? 2. Which family members have acquired grea~ decision-making powers over ~ers? 3. Who, within the family, contributes how much to family income? 4. What is the labour mntribution of each family member? 5. l,re the contributions of the family members commensurate with the benefits he or she derives from membership in it? The focus of the present enquiry is on the extent to which certain types of families may be so structured that they are 1~ likely to meet the needs of female than of male members. Though the emphasis is on the conflicting interests within the family due to gender differences, the picture is invariably more complex in actual family situations. In certain ways, being a member of a family in most societies is the only source of support and protection available to most women, though in many other ways the family structure is also a key element in ensuring their unequal position in society. In trying to explore some a ~ of the consequences of being a female in a rural Punjabi family, one aspect that stands out quite clearly is that old or young, daughter, mother or mother-in-law, healthy or sick, from a landlord's family or a landless labourer's, much of a woman's life patter,, will be dete111tlned by her gender, primarily to her own disadvantage. In recent years, a remgnition has begun to

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emerge of the existence of severe systematic disaimination agai1\St women throughout India, and especially in the north-west, where women's position tends to be rela\ively worse than in the south and in tribal anes (see Report of the Committee on the Status of Women in India, 1975).

Puwer of Rural India Any enquiry into the condition of women in Indian families requires attention to rural India, where about four out of every five people live, and where most of the urban population still has deep roots. The traditions of rural India still exercise a powerful influence over family life, even in urban centres, establishing the norms and expectations for individual functioning within the family structure. The two main groups directly engaged in agriculture on the north Indian plains are peasant landowning cultivators and landless agricultural labourers. In Punjab the peasant cultivators are overwhelmingly Jat Sikhs. The indigenous, landless, agricultural labourers are largely from the scheduled. castes. In many Sikh villages, the main groups of landless labourers are known as Mazhbis, Ramdasias and Valmikis. In this village, almost all of them were Mazhbi Oower caste) Sikhs. The Jats are one of the most important of what can be called the middle-peasant castes, those that have inaeasingly come to mntrol political, economic and social life at the village level, and are now extending their influence at district, state, and, in recent years, even the national level. In Punjab, the Jat lando~ are almost all Sikhs. This religious difference distinguishes them from other Hindu Jat groups in the country in many important ways, because in the national, political arena, they, as Sikhs, become a minority. However, in family organisation and landholding patterns, they share many characteristics with other peasant cultivator groups. The hegemonic influence of the middle-peasant castes in rural north India has established. their family patterns as the standard which most other groups seem to have adopted or are increasingly adopting. Some of the essential characteristics of this family structure are: the lower labour participation rates of women in agricultural field labour,· restrictions on women's participation in decision-making, as well as on their movements outside the home; high value placed on sons and discrimination against daughters; burdensome dowry payments; land ownership passed on by one generation of males to the next; shift of women from parental homes to husbands' homes after marriage; accentuation of the subservient position of women as the sole toilers in all areas of domestic work, whose main purpose in life is to bear sons. Women are traditionally supposed to remain under some male authority throughout their lives, first that

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of the father, then that of the husband and his family, lastly that of the son. They are kept, as much as possible, isolated from outsiders, not just within the walls of the house but within the women's section of the household. All these characteristics may today seem obvious and universal for most of rural India, but it is important to understand that there have been large sections of India's population that practised very different forms of family organisation and landholding patterns, for ~xample, the tribal communities and many other groups in the south and north-east, especially the matrilineal groups. Over the years, the influence of the middle-peasant cultivator groups seems to be taking such hold that their forms of landholding and family organisation are being increasingly adopted by most other groups and are becoming synonymous with the 'Indian' family structure and social norms, especially as they apply to women. Agricultural labourers in most of Punjab, under the hegemonic influence of the Jat landowners, with some modifications necessitated by their landlessness and dependence on wage-labour, try to follow patterns similar to those of the Jats in their treatment of women within the family. Thus, information about the position of women in these two types of families may provide some insights into many aspects of the condition of women in the overwhelming majority of families, especially in north India, but also in many other parts of the country, as the middlepeasant castes are gaining increasing dominance a11 ·over rural India.

Choice of a Village Rural Punjab, because of its advanced state of agriculture, is of great importance for an understanding of the condition of women in India. It is important to find out how the economic development resulting in increased income for many rural families has affected the relative position of women. The village chosen for this survey has a number of characteristics that make it an appropriate choice for this exploratory effort. 1. The village is solidly set in the countryside, fairly distant from a major urban centre or rail junction. 2. It carries on an advanced form of high-yielding agriculture that . makes it not only representative, but also relatively prosperous. The main crops are wheat and cotton. Cotton growing for the commercial market followed the introduction of canal irrigation during the British period. Thus this area was able to produce three crops a year much earlier than most other parts of the country. Unlike many other areas in Punjab, it still relies chiefly on canal irrigation. Tubewell irrigation is not as common as elsewhere because the subsoil water is very deep.

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Wuld afford lump sum buying. In one partirular family, the woman had not received her wa~ for the last seven days, yet they a>Uld still manage their food requirements. Yet another seemed to be sufficiently well off to buy wheat once a year during the harvest season. They also bought gh« once every month. There is also a ft!SUlar giving 8ml taking of food loans between these families, helping each other tide·

over difficult days.

Excluded from Allwnmgeous Employment Our data on all the vari011& forms of agricultural employment available to women agricultural labourers is somewhat ina>mplete, being most acrurate with regard to wage labour days in the field and less accurate as to inrome fron, such ocaipations as rotton gleaning and C()}lecting fodder and fuel. The most advantageous job available to agricultural labourers is to be attached as peiD'lanel\t labourer to a partiailar landlord. The amount received by permanent labourers varies a great deal, depending in great part on the age, skill and strength of the labourer. In our sample the variation in cash wages ranged from Rs 1,360 to 2,500 a year. Most permanent workers report earnings slightly less than Rs 2,000 a year. Payment in kind is also made. For example, a man who got Rs 1,980 a year got one meal a day for 135 days, three meals a day for another 30 days, and tea for a total of 270 days. Another permanent labourer got Rs 2,500 plus4.8 quintaJ (one quintal = approximately 100 lbs) grain &om the landlord. . Women are a>mpletely excluded from employment as permanent labourers. Even among casual labourers, the women in our sample reported that they were able to obtain much less employment than the men. Cotton picldng was the period of maximum female employment in field wage labour. They got employment somewhere within the range of 40-60 days in the season, and reported earning between Rs 300 and Rs 400. One 55-year-old woman, who spent thirteen and a half hours a day in the field, earned only Rs 120 for the season. Most of the women got only a glass of tea a day apart from their cash wage while picking cotton; five also got a meal for the day.

a

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Some women also manage a little bit -of work during the wheat harvest. But no regular work for wages is available to any of them all t}_te year round. Many of them end up doing jobs such as tending the landlord's cattle, bringing fodder for his livestock and doing other odd jobs for the landlord's family. Even though regular wage employment is not available to .these women the year round, many eke out a living for the family by getting the landlord's pernusmon to gather front the fields what otherwise would go to waste. This pe,n1ission probably requires the family to perform some service for the landlord in return. The most mmmon jobs are picking up left over wheat grain from the fields after the harvest has been taken away, taking out left over a>tton from what has been dumped as fodder, and cutting and selling grass as fodder. This means working for much longer hours in miserable jobs for Jl\eagre wages. But, however peripheral this may seem to the total economy, the ina>me these women get &om each little job a>nstitutes an important part of the family inmme and helps support it. These are the facts the interviewer gathered about the life of a 45-yearold woman agricultural labourer. Her husband is a drunkard and earns very little (about Rs 415 in cash a year). She has three daughters, one of whom is married. One son is studying in class eight. This woman's earnings are the mainstay of the family. She said they have to live a hard Tllble 4 AVERAGE 00 AGE, HFJGHI', WEIGHT, AND DAILY CALORIC JNI'AICE OP AND WOMEN ACRJCUL'nJRAL I.ABaJRERS AND nmIR HUSBANDS

Agt

Jat small landowners

Agricultural labourers

Tobu

Height (M) F M

Weight (Kg) F M

Q,lo, a

per dlly M

F

M

41.5 (13)

36.5 (15)

112 (14)

159 (15)

62.3 (14)

52.5 (15)

3,102 (13)

2,165 (14)•

38.8 (12)

37.9 (14)

167.8 158.1 (12) (14)

52.4 (12}

45.9 (14)

3,122 (12)

2,173 (14)

43.2 (25)

37.2• (29)

170.1 (26)

57.7 (26)

49.3 (29)

3,112 (25)

2,169 (28)

158.6 (29)

F

•ane of 2 /at women in one household W4S tnlJtlY for most of the dJly until ewning. We were therefore not able to calculslte her a,loric intake but were able to obtain dlzta on her age, height and weight. Fjgures in parentheses llTe the number of persons in the Sllmple on which the average (X) values are a,lculllted. ·

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life all through the y~ she gets work in the fields for only two months. The rest of the year she goes around trying to get whatever odd jobs are available, sometimes cutting grass and selling it, sometimes grazing other people's cattle. · In the rainy season, when no work is possible, they borrow money from the landlords and later work for them during the mtton IM?9Sl>n. This is not very profitable, because if the cotton aop is not good they do not earn enough during the season to pay off the loans they took earlier. At the same time they are bound to work for those landlords as they had given them the loans when they needed them. They are not free to work on other people's land until they pay-off these loans. On the evening of the interview,~ told the interviewer that she muld mlled very little mtton that day as it was not fully grown. But she was not able to work in a better field because she had borrowed money from the landlord whose field she was now working. Not much more muld be observed and discussed beatuse the woman left for the field very early in the morning, came back very late, and was too tired to talk more. The greater prosperity and increasing agricultural production and activity in the village does not seem to have increased women's employment opportunities for wage labour in the fields. Other information available indicates shrinking employment opportunities in Punjab in agricultural labour for women. More work is clearly needed to understand what effect the more intensive agriculture now practised in Punjab has had on women's employment.

How Food is Diuided in the Family The romparative food intake of males and females has rarely been studied. This food consumption survey was carried out during one of the periods of heaviest field labour, the cotton picking season. This is the time when most women are much more involved in field labour than at other times, combining field labour with domestic work in a working day of more than 15 hours. Despite the heavy energy expenditure required for such activities, the women's average consumption was 2,169 calories, approximately two-thirds of the 3,112 calories consumed by the men. During this period, among both small Jat landowners and agricultural labourers, the men consume ·about 1,000 calories per day more than the women. A comparison of the caloric ronsumption of Jats with agricultural labourers indicates they are at approximately the same level (Table 4). Though the minimum quantity of food required for healthy functioning is still in dispute (see V.M. Dandekar, ''On Measurement of Undemutrition," in Economic and Political Weekly, 6 February, 1982), the average calorie consumption for these women would certainly be

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Wmmitting suicide when they realise that their ~nts have to suffer so much in order to marry them off. This happens more among educated girls, who begin to feel that their very existence is a crime. Usually the expenditure on dowry is far less in a particular form of marriage called 'chtuldiir dllbut whereby the younger brother of the dead man is given to the widowed wife in a second marriage. This is fairly prevalent in rural Punjab. (see, for example, Rajinder Singh Bedi's novel

FJc Clulddar Maili Sa). Women's Long Working lJay Women's activities were centred on a c:ontinuous round of domestic and/or field labour. Their working day was much longer than that of the men of the household. The survey was carried out during the a>tton picking sea!IOn, a time when most women from both agricultural labourer and Jat landowning households were heavily involved in field labour. ~ong the 13 agricultural labourer women who went to the fields to pick a>tton (only one 80-year-old blind agricultural labourer woman did not go), the average length of the workday was 15.5 hours. On an average, they spent almost 6 hours a day on domestic work. Typically, they got up at 4 or 5 a.m., did cooking, deaning and other ho1,sehold work until about 8 a.m., reached the fields by 9 a.m. and pidced . cotton till about 6 p.m . In the evening, they returned home between 6 and 7 p.m., and then spent the next few hours till 9 or 10 p.m. doing housework. The average 10 hour workday in the fields includes time that they took in going to and mming back from the field. Though it is likely that women agricultural labourers' workday remains very long even when they do not go to the fields, the information we gathered was insufficiently detailed to demonstrate this. Despite increase in production there are fewer jobs for women. Oearly, however, women agricultural labourers are available for work whenever employment is availal?le. This is true even for older women who are not in a good state of health. Even a SS-year-old woman in rather poor health had to continue to work in the fields. She reported working 16112 hours a day-13 in the fields, and 3112 doing domestic work. But work in the fields is not available for much of the year, even though these women and their families need this extra income. The women got 40,to 60 days of work per year in the fields during the cotton picking season. This is the period when they obtain the bulk of their employment. A few women are also able to get some days' work during wheat harvesting. Otherwise, a number of these women try to do Digitized. by

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whatever small jobs they can g~, such as gleaning tl:te cotton by hand, grazing and tending their cattle, rollecting fodder and g, ass, and collecting fuel. Weeding, which is often a woman's job in some other parts of India, ~ to be done ~y male labourers in this village. On the whole, the amount of work available to female agricultural labourers is very little compared to that available to men. Of the 14 Jat women, 10 went to the fields for an avetage of almost 9 hours a day (8.7 hours). The total workday for these 10 women came to over 15 hours, which indudes 6.5 hours of housework. Even on nonfieldwork days, information for 13 of the 14 women indicates that they work almost 15 hours a day (14.8 hours). An important difference observed between the households of the Jats and of the agrirultural labourers was that the male members of the agrirultural labourer families seem to help the women much more with domestic tasks, ·compared to Jat men. For example, our (nterviewer observed one male agrirultural labourer who had recently been operated on for a stomach problem and was homebound, who, though unable to take up any hard wor~ looked after the buffalo and helped in domestic work also, sometimes in rooking and other 1cuchll jobs, like making chutney. When another male member of the same family cam'! home erlier than his wife, he started making the fire and cooked dill, took out the flour for c:Ju,p,tis and did odd jobs in the kitchen. The wife came and made clutpt,tis and they had their meals one after the other. In another agricultural labourer family, the interviewer observed the sons of the family helping the mother. They made chilli sauce, served the food and handled the youngest child. In another labourer's fanu'ly, even when the man kept shouting and scolding the wife, he helped in the kitchen and held the grandchild. However, a young son of fifteen who was in eighth class was not helping at all, and was dictating and demanding in a manner more in the tradition of Jat households. In another house the eldest boys helped the mother in domestic work. The daughter was too little to help. The elder son deaned ·the house, kept the fire going in the kitchen, and kept the water warm when his mother came back in the evening. He helped in the shopping. The younger son helped her take care of the youngest child so that the mother could do cotton picking easily.

Loss of Parental Support Except for the time spent on going to and from the field, women spend almost all their time in the family compound. The pressure of w~ both at home and in the fields, gives them very little time to go anywhere. Questions regarding visits to their parental home brought out this aspect very clearly. For example, all of the 15 Jat women interviewed said they would like to visit their parental homes more often, but each also said .Y

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they could not visit as often as they liked bealuse of the pressure of domestic work and other family responsibilities. Two of the women gave an added reason: they could not afford the bus fare. Six of them said they could get to their mothets house two or three times a year. Of these 6, one woman's mother lived only twenty minutes away from her house. Three of the 6 had parental homes at about two hours' distance. Only one woman came from about as far as a day's journey by bus. Two women said they visited about ten times a year; one had her pa"'l!ntal home only five minutes' distance by bus, and·the other's was only a half hour away. Both of them would have prefe11ed to visit their pa!"i!ntal home even more often.. One woman said she went only when necessary. Even during the first years of her marriage, she went a maximum of once a year, and never stayed overnight. One woman had stopped visiting after her mother had died some years ago. A woman who lived only an hour away from her parents said she went once every two years. Another said she went once in three years, though her parents' house was only four hours away. Even a woman whose parents lived ten minutes away by bus could not visit them more than four or five times a year. Among the women agricultural labourers 12 out of the 14 said they would like to visit their parental home more often. Six of ~he women a,uld go about once a year, their parents living at distances of half an hour to half a day away. Two women visited less than once a year. One of them had parents living two hours away and the othet s were six hours away. A recently married 17-year-old said she could not visit her parents as often as she desired because her in-laws did not allow her to travel on her own. The parents have to go and bring her to their home each time. So she visits them about thrice a year. Among the reasons given for not being able to do so, 8 of them mentioned don,estic work and/or field labour. Going on a visit would mean losing wages. One womar said the economic condition of her family, and the fact that she had r." clothes for such visits, inhibited her from going. She had not been to her parents for the last three years. Another woman mentioned quarrels in her in-laws' place as the reason for not being able to visit as much as she would like to. Another said that her brothers were not bothered, and another one talked about quarrels with her parents' family as the reason for not going there more often. . It is not too far-fetched to conclude that this pressure to loosen ties with the parental home has the effect of denying these women crucial emotional and other support in their day-to-day lives and makes them much more vulnerable. In such a situation, it is very unlikely that anyone would intervene on their behalf if they are being ill-treated. Therefore, apart from other things, the patrilocal family (the husband's family, village, or house, which the wife moves into) seems to play an important Digitized by

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role in making it easier to oppress women.

Restricted to the Family Compound In general, these women seem to live a very closed-in existence. Almost all their time not spent in agriailtural field work is spent within the family oompound, and there are restrictions even within the four walls. For example, in one Jat home there is a room near the entrance for the males and the male guests. Won,en go to give tea or food but are not supposed to stand or sit with them. The woman must remain in the inner oourtyard of the house near the kitchen. She is allowed to meet male guests but not to sit or talk with -them, and she must always keep her head oovered. Women rarely go out. Even visiting each other _in the village is an unoommon practice. Some of the reasons mentioned by these women for living such a closed-in existence and not visiting each other throw interesting light on the general atmosphere of the village. A 45-year-old Jat woman said: ''Our social life is inade very diffiailt because of these drunkards. We can't step out in the evening.'' Two other wo~ who are sisters married to two brothers, said they oould go out only where and when their husbands permit They oould ·meet only people who were on good terms with the husband. A 70-year-old Jat woman remarked sadly that there are people who still believe that a girl should not step out of the house until she is married. She also said that ''for the last six or seven years a tradition has developed that girls or boys don't visit their friends beca,1se P.very time it happens, somehow a quarrel will erupt Earlier, people used to visit each other but due to opium and drinking, a tradition has developed that everyone avoids visiting anyone in the villag~''. · Another Jat woman, 25 years old, told the interviewer about various restrictions on women~s going to other people's houses in the village. She herself went out only to pick cotton. She felt bad that she was uneducated. Otherwise, she said, she would leave domestic life, work outside, and be independent. A young woman oomplained that while her husband spent a gieat deal of time with others, she was not allo~ed to talk to anyone except the neighbours. And this is how a middle aged Jat woman desaibed her situation: ''My husband makes all the decisions because he is the 'master'. I never go out except when my husband asks me to. I cannot go out without his permission." Even at her age, she was still kept under severe restrictions; this began ·at the age of 10. Now she says she has stopped thinking about it, though at one time it used to make her feel bad. Two other women said they were much happier picking ootton than staying at home: That is the only time they get out.

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Among the agricultural labourers, the situation is somewhat different. Two of them reported living under relatively fewer restrictions. One woman, aged 45, said she had no restriction, but the village had no tradition of women visiting other women. Moreover, there was no time for all this, since life was too full of problems to think of such things (four of these women's children had d~ed, mostly owing to malnutrition). Another woman, who otherwise S£"eD1ed to have a far more cooperative husband, when asked about restrictions, gave the following answer: '1 do everything according to my husband's wishes.'' And this is how a middle aged agricultural labourer woman described her life: '1 have to do everything under the instructions and orders of my husband. I have lived a slave's life right from childh()(>d.'' She sounded very bitter about it and said, ''Whatever be my husband-old, sick, almost blind, good for nothing, earning little, even then he behaves like a lord. I have to listen to him and do everything as he wishes.'' An elderly agricultural labourer told the interviewer that her husband takes her pay directly f100:1 the landlord. She can't go anywhere without his permission. He behaves lilce a master. When she was eight years old, a number of resbictions were imposed on her, follow~ by many more after marriage. Her husband did not even allow the daughters to go ~ the fie~ds alone. Therefore, it was impossible to think of going to other places. A 20-yearold said, ''The question of other social restrictions does not arise because I am being beaten up by everyone all the time-by my mother-in-law, usband, and sister-in-law's husband.'' In thjs situation, she hasn't the to imagine going out anywhere or doing anything aanrding to her own wishes. Only two women among the agricultural labourers said they had no restrictions. One of them even said she is fr:ee to talk and spend· time according to her own wishes, she goes· wherever she likes and is not forbidden to talk to this or that person, or forced to wear a dupatta. One interviewer observed that among the agricultural labourer families, won,en spolce less about restrictions as compared to women of cultivator families. This was especially true for traditions such as keeping the head covered, not visiting other people's h011ses, not having the freedom to ' · sit with male guests in the outside room, and so on. After talking to these women, both Jat and agricultural labourers, the interviewers felt it was very hard for these women. to grasp the idea of restrictions or the lack of them, as we expressed them in our questions. Their lives seem so overburdened with work that .keeps them bound to the house that the idea of using leisure time outside the house seems remote. Moreover, the atmosphere of increasing insecurity in the village is a major reason for women's hesitation to step out of the house. It seems that with increasing prosperity in the village in recent years, the men,

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especially the Jats, are drinking more heavily, and there is more violence as a result, especially at night. Now this restriction seems to have aaiuired the force of tradition, so that the question can no more be seen as one of this or that family imposing an individual set of restrictions, because in such an atmosphere very little variation seems possible. The result is that an informal sort of curfew has come to be imposed upon women. Most women said that they cannot step out of the house because of drunkards in the village.

Men Make Major Decisions Decision-making is another area in which the answers of the 29 women interviewed revealed the relative powerlessness of women, both inside and outside the house. We asked the women a series of questions about which members of the family decide: a) how money earned by family members will be spent; b) how many years the children will go to school; c) when the children will get married, and to whom; d) at what age to look for work for the children; e) whether or not the woman will be available for paid work outside the family; f) how many children will they try to have; and g) who does the shopping for any costly things the family buys. Not one woman, either among the Jats or the agricultural labourers, said that she could decide on her own whether or not she will be available for work outside the home. Ten out of 15 Jat women said their husbands decided, 3 mentioned their sons as deciding, and 1 woman mentior.i-!d her brother-in-law. One woman did not answer the question. Similarly, 11 out of 14 agricultural labourer women also answered that their husbands made the decision on this matter; 1 woman said her father-in-law, mother-in-law and husband together would decide. Only 2 women said they would decide together with their husbands. This seems to indica12 the powerlessness of women in taking one of the most basic decisions of their own life. It is often believed that participation of women in paid employment necessarily results in increased independence and active participation in family decision-making. But the answers of these women suggest that it is important to find out why the paid employment of some of them seems to have such a minimal effect on their status in the family. In some other family decision-making areas, the agricultural labourer women seemed to have a relatively greater say compared to Jat women. For example, 6 out of 14 agricultural labourer women said husband and wife jointly decided expenditures in the family, while 7 said the husband was the sole deciding person. In comparison, not a single Jat woman mentioned joint decisions in this area. In all cases, it was either the •

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husband, son, or a brother-in-law who decided family expenditure. Similarly, on the question of who decides how many years the children will go to school, only 4 out of the 14 agricultural labourer women reported the husband making the decision by himself, while 7 said they made the decision jointly with their husbands. In comparison, only 5 out of 15 Jat women said it would be a joint decision. For all other Jat women, either husband or son took such decisions. Among Jat families, only in the decision about how many children to have did the women participate in some measure. About half of them said both would decide, while 5 repo1 ted that their husbands alone would decide. Only 1 Jat woman said she herself would decide. Among the agricultural labourer women more than half (8 out of 14) reported joint decisions. For the rest, it was the husbands who decided. Another area of relatively greater joint decision-making was children's marriages. Six Jat women and 9 agrirultural labourer women reported deciding together with their husbands. For all the other women, again, it was the husband or some other male family member who made the decision. Significantly, however, in decisions reganiing costly things that the family buys, the women, Jat or agricultural labourer, had little or no say. In all the Jat families either the husband or some other male member took such decisions; these were not even joint decisions. In agricultural labourer families only 2 women mentioned joint decisions. In all other cases, the men decided alone. This was another indicator that the greater participation of women agricultural labourers in paid employment did not necessarily result in much more of a say for them in crucial family decision-making, as COIY\pared to the Jat women. The women's answers regarding decision-making are contrary to some of the prevalent myths about women dominating household dedsionma1cing while men dominate social and economic life outside the family: Young or old, mothers or grandmothers, most women in our sample (even the elderly women) seemed powerless in influencing not just major family decisions, but also basic decisions crucial to their own lives.

Wife-'Beating and Alcoholism Though it was hard to estimate the prevalence of wife-beating with any accuracy, even the number of instances women did report to us show it to be an important factor in the lives of many village women. The interviewers got the impression that beatings were under-reported. For example, one woman reluctantly admitted being beaten, but refused to say any more since she felt that such a discussion would be an insult to her husband. Nevertheless, 3 out of 14 agrirultural labourers admitted to having been beaten. Digitized by

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In one case, the woman was beaten with a stick by her sister-in-law's husband; she was injured and had to be treated by a doctor. She also reported that her mother-in-law beats her with a broom, her father-inlaw beats her as and when he likes, and her husband beats her with whatever comes to hand. She says they want to get rid of her. Another woman was beaten because she went to her parents' house without asking permission. The comment of a 27-year-old agricultural labourer woman was even more revealing. She said she felt very lucky that she did not get beating or abuses from her husband, implying thereby that such behaviour was to be expected of most husbands, and you could escape it only by good luck. Only one of the Jat women acknowledged having been beaten. She said her husband beats her when he gets drunk, which is about every semnd day. She said she can do nothing to stop his beatings. She sometimes quarrels.with him about it, but it is of no use; she has to learn to live with it. She regrets that the children learn the wrong things from watching it. In the case of another Jat family, villagers who knew them were ces wn that the husband beat his wife regularly, though the woman herself did not indicate this. The Jat women reported that the men in 6 of the 10 households Wen! heavy drinlcers. In one of the 6 families, all 3 adult men were drunkards and opium addicts. One Jat woman told the interviewer that her husband kept a big pitcher of country liquor in the house, and he drank every day. Sometimes, he started drinking at 7 a.m. As a result, she muld not relax in the house or eat properly. She wanted dowry and liquor to be banned in the country. Since the major portion of their family income was spent by the husband on drinking, she was even unable to get medical care when she needed it. She was seven months' pregnant, and said she muld not afford the special food she required. The family was heavily in debt on acmunt of the husband's drinking. Six out of 11 agricultural labourer households have men who drink, three of them heavily. In one case, both father and son also take Rs 4 to 5 worth of opium per day. Thus, almost half the households in the sample have men who drink heavily, and some also use opium. · While interviewing a Jc1t woman, one of the interviewers reported that some of the neighbouring women joined in the conversation, and told her how the men drink a lot, sometimes two bottles, sometimes three a day. Normally, they drink till they get dead drunk, she was told. When the_inter~•iewer asked them if women were beaten by their husbands, they said it was a routine thing. Most of them said women get beatings when their husbands are drunk. These women reported that most of the men drink in the evening, though a small percentage of the men also drink in the day, and some take opium. Few women take opium in this village. They further stated Digitized by

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that during_the wheat harvest opium is distributed to the women labourers in order to get them to work harder. Opium, they claimed, was a normally accepted thing in the village. But the women are ordinarily not supposed to take drinks or opium. Usually, the men consume jarda and bhang as well. The interviewer was told tha:, in ext1eme cases, some men's expenditure on opiu_m is as much as Rs '5 a day. Most women expressed helplessness about the drinking problem. A woman from a Jat rultivator family narrated how she made various efforts to get her husband to stop drinking. She took him to a guru and for two years the drinking stopped. But all this effort was useless because one.of his relatives helped him start all over again. ~ow she only pleads with him to drink at home because when he drinks with friends outside he ronsumes much more. As a result of this drinking, the husband is . unable to look after cultivation, so she had to compel their son to leave school and take to rultivation. Another 45-year-old woman from a cultivator family seemed even more worried about her future because of her husband's drinking habits and resultant bad health. She was manied at the age of 27 because her parents could not afford much of a dowry for her. This man was much older, and this was his second marriage. She spoke worriedly about her future, conoo,,ed lest her husband die because of his drinking and bad health. She felt the sodal and economic life of a widow is very difficult. ''If the woman dies, the man WOJ\'t be affected because he still has his share of land. Society makes a woman's life very difficult after her husband's death. Her income stops and land is given away on theJai," she said.

Serious

mness Among Women

Eight of the 15 Jat women indicated they were in poor health. All 8 seemed to be suffering from fairly serious ill health. One woman had reca,tly undetgotte an operation for abdominal pain. She rouldn't specify the type of illness. A 23-year-old woinan, with a three month-old baby she was breastfeeding, had been ill since her delivery. She complained of pain and swelling in the breast and found it painful to feed the child, but was getting no treatment. Another one talked about her ''blood turning into water'' about six years ago, and was being treated by a village 'doctor'. Yet another one was suffering from a serious mental illness. She had suffered from fits and lockjaw since the birth of her third child. Her daughters looked sickly too- one of them had her whole body full of boils. Among the agricultural labourer women, 6 of the 14 were either suffering from pr had had a serious illness. In addition, one woman was blind and one mentally deranged. We do not have an answer to the health question from 4 of the agricultural labourer women. Of those still ailing, Digitized by

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one had a serious skin disease all over her body which was not improving. She also had· a wounded foot and had difficulty in walking, yet she continued going for fieldwork. A SO-year-old woman, seriously ill for the last two years, without any proper treatment, whose breasts were swollen and rontinuously oozed pus, has already been mentioned. Another woman contracted an infection after a sterilisation operation, and it developed into a serious illness. On the whole, according to the interviewers, most agrirultural labourer women looked overworked and tired.

What Makes a Woman Happy? When asked about the two or three things that made them most happy sina? their marriage, as we noted earlier, the most frequent response was the birth of a son; this was mentioned in 12 out of the 15 cases where the women mentioned anything at all. Two other women mentioned the birth of children, not specifying the sex in their response. Almost half the women (13) did not report even one thing that made them happy since their marriage. It is not clear what some of these women meant when they gave no response to the question. It may be that such a sweeping question made no sense to them. A few of these 13 women, however, gave some possible explanation of their lack of response. One said: ''No one can be happy after marriage, at the in-laws' place." Another said nothing made her happy before or after her marriage. It is significant that husbands were never mentioned in response to this question, except negatively by one -..voman. She said the thing that made her most happy since her marriage was when her husband stopped harassing her for not having brought him enough dowry. A good harvest, a brother's marriage, the woman's parents builcling a house--oone of them even said any kind of birth ''even if the buffalo gives birth'' -all these were given by the women as reasons for feeling happy. But never once did a woman mention anything to do with her husband as one of the things making her happy. The perception of many of these women about their own lives ranged from grim fatalism to arute dissatisfaction. While some of them said their own lives were·no different from their mothers', and some did not expect anything better to occur in their daughters' lives, others were very arti~late about what kind of change they wanted. Among the most politically conscious was a 35-year-old woman who wanted a socialistic system and wanted dowry to be abolished. She said she ·wanted revolution even if it meant she would have to work harder in her old age. She wanted some time of her own, which, she said, she could not get from her husband in this system. The fact of her belonging to a small landholding family did not seem to be of much use to her. ''We are the slaves of slaves. Agricultural labourer men help Jat men in the fields, ,

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but for Jat women it only means more work. We have to rook mote food and feed the labourers as well." Thus, when they hired labour in the fields, this increased the burden of Jat women. She said: 'Women should also have fixed hours of work. We too must have a rest period." Many other women spoke against the tradition of marrying off girls so young that they could enjoy neither their childhood nor their youth. ''While they are very young, they bear children and are forced to live a life full of responsibilities." A woman in her ·t hirties said, ''I wish I knew what it was like to feel young and carefree." She was in favour of contraception but did not want women to. be sterilised. She said: ''Instead of women, men should be operated on because women suffer more pain and men enjoy life. Therefore, the process should be reversed so as to relieve the pain and torture of women." She wished she had been a little educated, so that she could have left her domestic life and worked outside and been independent She talked very proudly of her sister-in-law's daughter, who is studying and does not allow her parents to marry her off. She felt thrilled that a woman could do such a thing. For herself, she even felt irked that she has to cover her head because of social pressure. She said even 10-year-old girls were made to cover their heads and asked not to inter(ere in others' talk. But another woman from a cultivator family did not see that education by itself would help change women's lives. She felt that ''higher education is of no use because the girls have to do the same dirty job of carrying dung on their heads, work like cattle in the fields, take care of the buffaloes, do the domestic work and produce children''.

Conclusion It is important to remember, when describing the condition of women in Punjab, that we are observing the relatively most prosperous rural community in India. Both the peasant cultivator and the agricultural labourer here are better-off than their counterparts in most other areas, yet most of them live in poverty, and many of the agricultural labourers remain heavily indebted to the landlords. But the poverty is clearly more severe for the women of the family. We have tried to highlight some of those aspects of women's condition which, though commonly known, are not recognised as having a potentially disastrous effect on women's lives and their chances of survival. The picture that emerges from this study of agricultural labourer women and Jat women from small landholding families, details the types of powerlessness and forms of discrimination that the present family structure i~scs on them. . Women e~t much less than men, and they eat last in the family. While they are somewhat shorter than the men, they are a great deal thinner, pointing to a possible discrimination in the allocation of food within the

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family or in the ,vay the food is divided up within the family. Employment opportunities for them in the midst of increasing agricultural production continue to be severely limited, instead of expanding; when they get work it is on far more disadvantageous tetms than for men. Furthermore, the women are not even to decide for themselves where, when and with whom they can seek paid employment Even when they work for wages, hardly any of them seem to have much say in how the bulk of the family's inmme will be spent, and, are not allowed to participate in other important areas of family decision-making. Some of them reported being subjected to severe physical violence in the family. Their lives are hedged in by aippling restrjctions. The women work much longer hours than the men, and yet they are mnsidered a liability, a burden. In most families, the major justification for their existence is their · ability to produce the requisite number of sons. Even in middle age most of them seem as powerless as they were as young daughters-in-law or daughter.;. No wonder, then, that most of them do not wish to have a daughter, not only because the birth of a daughter adversely affects their own status in the family, but also because, among other things, dowry and lack of paid employment for women II\akes them appear liabilities. The women agricultural labourers seen, to be almost as powerless as the Jat women in most of the areas we have investigated. However, even though they are confined to more and more marginal jobs in the rural ~nomy, th~ fact of paid employment gives them a relatively greater say in family affairs and they live under relatively fewer restrictions. At the same time, what we also see is a great similarity in the way their family structure imposes certain forms of subjugation and soda1 norms on women both in Jat and agricultural labourer ho1Jseholds. One of the reasons may be the influence of the ideology and family structure of the dominant peasant cultivator caste groups on agricultural labourer families. Frequently, where the dominant and dominated groups coexist in close proximity, the latter may see the behaviour patter11S of the dominant group as a norm and begin to adopt it, even at times when their economic situation is not suitable for practising such behaviour. The women from both these groups put in 15 to 16 hours of arduous work a day. But they receive less than adequate nourishment and care. This seems to have a disastrous effect on ~heir health, especially during periods of pregnancy and breastfeeding. It is ironic that their much glorified role as producers of sons does not even afford _them some minimal measure of work relief and extra diet and care during their childbearing period. Consequently, most of them seemed in poor health, some of them even seriously sick. Yet their need for medical care goes largely unattended.

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It is reasonable to expect that these forms of discrimination and neglect are likely to result in a much higher mortality rate among women. In our study we could not collect adequate data about whether discrimination and neglect exist to the same extent for baby girls. If this is so, the consequences for them are likely to be even more grave. A few studies that have been done in South Asia on the subject suggest a much higher mortality rate among baby girls. Much more systematic work needs to be done to confirm whether this in fact is a widespread phenomenon, and. if so, how it is caused. Such studies may provide important insights into a rather disturbing reality, the huge deficit of females in the country's population. According to the 1981 census there are 22.9 million fewer females than males in the total population. It is important to uncover the factors that result in the Joss of these millions of women, and the extent to which the family's neglect of its female members contributes to this appalling situation. (Data

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collected by Bemy Horowitz) M1111ushi, No. 11. 1982

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Drought-Women the Worst Victims MANUSHI EDITORIAL

Why are you writing about drought? What has that got to do with Manushi, with women? We were repeatedly confronted with this kind of question while some of us· were trying to collect information on drought. . This question springs as much from ignorance as from arrogance which leads men to assume that not just running the affairs of the country but also messing around with the problems they have created are their prerogatives-that women, if at all they are to speak, should confine themselves to 'women's issues' such as dowry and birth control. The attitude behind this question is one that pushes women into invisibility. Are not women 50% of the poor, the Harijans, the Adivasis and every other oppressed group in this country? Are not women in rural India affected even more disastrously by drought-the first to be hit by malnutrition and disease, the first to die, the first driven into destitution and prostitution? And is it not the woman in the cities who is suffering the worst consequ~nces of scarcity and price rise-struggling harder and harder to make both ends meet on an ever-shrinking budget, standing in long queues to buy essential commodities, having to work harder and substitute with her labour and time for services she can no longer afford? For the middle class woman, this means every kind of drudgery from unravelling old woollen sweaters to re-knit them, to cutting down on her own consumption and needs so that the children's fees can be paid or shoes bought for them, or not being able to afford the ocalsional short scooter ride and having to crush herself into over-crowded buses, regardless of her age, her health and of what she may be carrying. Or else she has to put off visiting the doctor, consider her .own health unimportant so that she can save a few rupees and prevent the family's standard of living from sinking too rapidly. For the poor woman, the privations are even more pronounced and the labour input more back-breaking. It means standing in endless queues to buy kerosene, fetching water from distant anci erratic taps, being forced to turn from kerosene stove to co,vdung chulha, getting up earlier to grind the wheat herself in order to save a few paise, walking miles just to buy at a slightly cheaper market, cutting down on her own food so that there is enough to go around, and being forced to supplement the family income by doing poorly paid, menial jobs.

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While in the dties, soaring prices and artiftdal scarcities are taking a heavy toll of women's lives and labour, in the rural areas, want takes a much more brutal form. Two hundred million people, that is, onethird of the total population, have been in the grip of famine for the last so many months. In the seriously affected areas, villagers have no food stodcs left, no employment and no money with which to l,uy anything. They are just starving, stilling the pangs of hunger by chewing leaves and digging up roots (Hindust1111 Times, 6 December 1979). Even these have got exhausted over the months. It is during such times that poor peasants and landless labourers are pushed even more deeply into debt, and forced to mortgage their land to landlords and moneylenders. As food and water resources have grown scarce, thousands have been driven to migrate to cities in search of work, the ronsequence being that women are often left behind in the villages to fend for the children and the old. As people are forced to live in subhuman conditions, as human lives are systematically devalued, degraded, it is women who suffer most, are the first to be sold or exchanged for food, the first t9 die. It is not surprising then that an overwhelming number of the starvation deaths so far reported have been those of women (Hindust1111 Times, 31 March 1980). Even in normal times, women in this muntry, as elsewhere in the world, have always borne the brunt of poverty and malnutrition. In every family, women eat the last and the least. This, and many other forms of neglect and devaluation of women within the family seen, to be on the increase. No wonder that the mortality rate among women even in 'normal' times is much higher than among men. (Between 1951 and 1971, the number of females per 1,000 males decreased from 946 to 930.) Here is a living example of how this comes to be. Inder Malhotra reports in the Times of Jndili (September 1979) how Ratna Chamar described the death of his wife at the Hanna relief work project in Uttar Pradesh. ''Ratna daimed and others confirmed that on the day of her death the poor woman had worked on the canal relief project all day and then had mllapsed on reaching home. 'If you have survived all this time, why do you say that she starved to death?' he was asked. His reply was: 'We get very little grain and we get it very late... It was her habit to feed me first, then the children, and not eat enough herself." Thus the traditions built into male-dominated society, which force women to see their own lives as less valuable and to think that virtue lies in self-saaifice, mean the slow starvation of the woman when the family is living at bare subsistence level.

The Double Burden It is because of this devaluation that women accept as inevitable. their double burden of work-paid and unpaid. Their daily toil begins hours

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before the men's 'working day'. The burden of fetching water tor the family has, for instance, always been a woman's burden. So, when all nearby water sources dry up, it is the woman who walks anything from 1 to 3 kilometres in MJrdt of water, saapes it out of a riverbed or spends hours scooping it out of a nearby well~(Stlltesrrum, 22 May 1980). Added to this strain is that of gathering some kind of food or procuring it by long hours of bade-breaking labour~ A woman political worker -from Chhattisgarh district reported how one landless labourer with three clu1dren and a father-in-law to support, took to gathering firewood to eke out a living. She had to walk miles daily to a distant jungle, mllect firewood and carry the heavy load to the dty. This strained her so much that one day she started bleeding profusely and just mllapsed. When thf: ex1atic Food for Work projects appear, women from surrounding villages have been flooding them. At cerlain sites the percetttage of women far exceeds that of men. They have to walk miles carrying the children, work on the project, again walk miles to the 800's office and wait hours for the grain to be distributed,and then somehow convert the virtually non-edible grain into food for the family. Women put all their energy into food gathering activity-Adivasi women and girls rise before daybreak and rush to sweep up ffllUUMI flowers to feed the family. Even these resources have been slowly snatched by the local rich to feed their animals since even fodder has bemme ~ftJ! (Plltriot, 17 April 1980). In parts of Orissa, tribal girls who go out to mllect basic Adivasi foods such as bamboo shoots, have been arrested and clapped into jail for the aime of bespassing in bamboo groves which have always belonged to the tribals but have now been talcen over and 'protected' by the government without as much as informing the tribals. Since all edible roots, leaves and fruits have been slowly exhausted, people have been driven to eat poisonous chllt'IUUA grass, wild kesllri ""1 which causes te11ible skin diseases, body swellings, blindnes., and paralysis Undum &press, 14 March 1980). Here too, women have been usually the worst hit, the first · to die of starvation-which the government mnveniently chooses to ~bel as deaths due to 'malnutrition' or 'poison', sintE in some cases deaths oa:ur after rather than before mnsuming poison. As all sources of food become more and more out of reach of the rural poor, families have had to sell their last possessions from domestic animals to utensils to even doors and windows (Patriot, 16 May 1980). In parts of east Uttar Pradesh, one ragged sari has to be shared by all the women in a family so that if one goes out wearing it, all the rest must hide in the hut. And, finally, when there is nothing left to sell, the least valued human beings, that is, the girls and women, are sold. Year after year, newspapers report how the sale of women into prostitution shoots up during times of drought.

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InNawapara, Orissa, girls in the age group 10 to 14 are reported to have been sold for anything from Rs 15 to Rs SS (Ptitriot, 7 May 1980). Businessmen from Madhya Pradesh purchase these girls and sell them to vice dens in the cities at a very high price. One Raja Nayak of Komma village sold his 8-year-old daughter Premlata to a businessman for Rs 40: '1 CX>Uld not give her food for days together and my entire family starved so I preferred to sell her. She can now survive on the food given by her master, aJtd my family and I can survive for a few days on the money I got by selling her.'' Another report succinctly sums up how wom~ are being used, and then accused and punished by administrators who are supposed to be administering 'relief: ''Recently, the police apprehended a woman in the vicinity of the Food for Work food grain stores at Kadar village .... She was in possession of a bag of rice .... Working on the suspicion that she might have stolen it from the stores, the police officer took her to the Block Development Officer's residence .... It took the BOO quite some time to open the door .... a young girl in a dishevelled state was also in the room . . .. BOO introduced her as a dose relation .... But when the woman with the bag of rice entered the room, the girl rushed towards her, aying 'Ma!' Finding himself thoroughly exposed, the BOO immediately raised an alarm and asked the police to arrest both mother and daughter on a charge of pilfering grain from the stores. He said that he had allied the woman to his room for interrogation. The matter is still under investigation and no action has been taken against the BOO so far.'' (Blitz, 26 April 1980). And then, of rourse, there is the usual phenomenon of the sexual abuse of women by rontractors and petty officials at the worksites. For example, in a rich rontractor's camp near a road l;>uilding site in Palamau district, the Sundlly magazine reporters saw eight young tribal girls taking care of him-one pressed his limbs while another held his head and so on. (Sll1&dJiy, Special Drought Issue, 1980). In UP it has been reported that tribal women who collect firewood and go to sell it in towns, are sexually exploited by ticket checkers because they have no money to pay for the short train ride from the village to the town. The Tripura government recently uncovered a major interstate raclcet wherein about 2,000 tribal men and women, mostly unmarried girls, are exported from Bihar every week, and many more from Orissa and Madhya Pradesh, to work in privately-owned brick fields in Tripura. The women were sexually exploited as well (Organiser, 22 June 1980). Another typical case was reported in Statesmiln, 27 November, 1979: ''... migration of landless labourers and small farmers in Singhbhum is not that unusual. What is unusual is that while male members are finding it difficult to get employment outside the state, the women are

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. being trapped by unscrupulous contractors . . . . who lure them by promising them a daily wage of R5 10 .... this year's drought has made the task of the contractors even easier .... the girls are sent to ·brothels or dumped in private homes to do domestic work. In 11\0St ·cases they are not paid anything except two meals a day. Failure to obey orders of the master invites torture and beating .... there are also instances where girls have been sent back to·their homes after their 'utility' in the brothels is over.'' These m.ses go to show how poverty acquires doubly brutal dimensions for women. While for a man poverty means starvation, for a woman, it invariably also involves rape and a myriad forms of sexual exploitation. · . Women are made so much more vulnerable in poverty that the distinction between voluntary and forced action seems to completely lose its meaning. It is reported that 50 destitute girls aged between 20 and 30 years, went to a magistrate's court in the famine-stricken district of Raagpur and registered themselves as prostitutes .... the girls filed affidavits before the magistrate, declaring they were voluntarily accepting prostitution as their profession because of 'extreme economic hardship'. Prostitution; they felt, was better than begging (Times of lndill, 28 September 1979). These cases are the mere tip of the i~berg because big newspapers either systematically under-report or never report what is really happening to the poor, especially women, in this country. Such facts are given occasional coverage, simply to provide titillation by sensationalising atrocities on women.

Relief: Myth and Reality The government has been piously promising relief on a 'war-footing'. But how have the much-vaunted Food for Work programmes been functioning? On the one hand, government officially admits that there is no absolute scarcity of food in the country, that tons of food are lying in state godowns. It is also known that tons of foodgrains lie hoarded by private traders. On the other hand, the government bureaucrats, in their air conditioned offices, pretend to be as helpless before the calamity as are the starving landless themselves. All the political parties, including those in power at the ll!ntre and in the states, are openly making politim.l m.pital out of people's misery. Those in power blame the previous regimes, while those in opposition blame those in power. The landless poor are trapped between the exploitative landlords and the hypocritical relief schemes. Often, these two connive to rob the workers of their rightful earnings. The landlords, bemuse of their political connections, can ensure that the Food for Work project is shortlived so

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that the poor bea>me more dependent and are forced to accept any wage they may decide to fix, or even work in some form of bonded labour. In Madhya Pradesh, ·t he landlords areireported to have sent their bonded labourers (known as lcamia mu.doors, since the term 'bonded', though not the fact, has been banned) to work sites; they then pocketed the wages of the labourers and gave them the usual meagre ration of food. Furthe,ntore, there have also been reports of poor labourers preferring work on the relief project to work in the land.l ord's fields, only to find that the whole project is in the control of the landlord who then takes his ~venge on them. Reports from all over the country show that those who work on relief projects are being cruelly cheated of their rights. Almost everywhere, large-scale bungling has been reported, involving every power holder from village heads to relief officers and some social workers who are supposed to be running voluntary organisations. The wages which actually reach the labourer's hands are far lower than what is allocated on paper. In Palamau, for example, only three kilos of wheat were given to workers instead of the promised four. Worse still, in Bundelkhand region, all the food was reported to have been diverted to the open market where it was sold at high prices, the profits being pocketed by contractors and government staff. Workers were given SO paise for a whole day's toil (Plltriot, 28 April 1980). Another form of government relief is to flood fair price shops with food-where it lies unbought beause the people in these areas have no money. In many places, the workers are not paid. Who are they to complain to, when the authorities themselves are the exploiters? In Kundra for instance, the only relief work undertaken was the construction of a fivekilometre dirt road. This was completed within three weeks last September and the wages had not been paid as of March. This delay in distributing the meagre wages is a common feature at most 'relief works. The villagers have no means of knowing when food distribution will begin. In Banda district, after 26 days of work, the people were given certificates and had to walk many miles to the block headquarters to collect their food. In other places, they had to wait hours in the sun before distribution started. Women at most of these sites were being paid much less than men-by the same government which boasts of having passed the Equal Remuneration Act! A study conducted by the Planning Commission shows how wellorganised this robbery is. In one state, foodgrains meant for the labourers were sold, and crockery and furniture were bought for government inspection bungalows. In another, the money was used to beautify the collectorate building. Some contractors selling food in the market said that labourers were not used to eating wheat anyway! In other cases,

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good quality foodgrains were sold off by contractors and ration shop

owners, and inferior grain disbibuted (Patriot, 14 February 1980). '.:>ften, the wheat distributed is not fit for human consumption. Also, as Shyama, a woman in Durgapur, pointed out, is plain wheat food? For a whole day's hard labour, ''Would it be too much if they gave us a pinch of salt or a handful of chillies to go with it?'' she said (Times of lndiA, 22 May 1980). The women trying to make do with the meagre quantities of sub-standard grain ate often forced to adulterate it still further so that they can feed the whole family. They mix sawdust with the flour to make cluipatis. (National Herold, 20 March 1980). When we are told by the government and the~ media that Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Rajasthan, UP, Bihar and parts of West Bengal, Jammu and Kashmir, Assam, Punjab, are affected by drought-what does this actually mean? Who are the people made to bear the burden of this calamity? A new dimension of barbarity is.added to famines and starvation in the present-day world by the fact that millions are being condemned to starvation in the midst of plenty and opulence, and, worse, that such ocrur,ences have become good occasions to speculate, hoard and make super-profits.·What is scarcity for the poor becomes a blessing for the rich. Government policy is doubtless giving an impetus to this trend. Even during this 'unprecedented' drought, the victims are largely landless agricultural labourers and poor peasants. The rich farmers and landlords have· remained immune from its destructive effects. For instance, the kharif aop was supposed to have been badly hit, but the arrivals in the market have far exooeded the government targets cU\d stand close to the level of the bumper harvest of 1978 (Indian Express, 7 December 1979). Oearly, those who have a marketable surplus to sell are invariably rich fal'll\ers and landlords.

'Natural' or 'Created' Disaster? Is it any longer true that famines and droughts are unavoidable 'natural' calamities? Or is this just another myth, like that of the 'natural' inequality

between men and women? That the drought is not a mere 'natural' calamity is evident from the fact that even though Punjab and Haryana had no rainfall last year, they have, on the whole, mairttained their level of production. This is because rich farmers in these states are relatively better off and have irrigation facilities. Even in the worst hit and traditionally 'backward' areas such as.Madhya Pradesh, the rich farmers, able to afford private irrigation facilities, managed to harvest 60% to 70% of the aop Undum Express 17 December 1979). · Drought, like price rise and inflation, has its own politics and there

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Wok dinner, and sleep only at 11 p.m. Now, after the water problem has sbudc, many sleep only on altetraate nights. Those who get water tankers are better off, as is Padmasini, 43, mother of three. She works in the electridty board office for 8 boars every day. She is also the mok, washerwoman and cleaner in the house, as she proudly declares. The tanker on her street is kept closed till 8 p.m. in mnsideration of office-going women like herself. As soon as she returns from the office, she runs for water. Her husband helps, and she is grateful and considers herself very lucky.

The Financial Loss People who can afford maid-servants and tankers are feeling the pinch in their budgets, up to Rs 100. The maid-servants are paid about Rs 20 a month to collect six kodlims of water every day. Some families call in private agents once in ten days. Six families share the 8,000 litres delivered, and each family pays Rs 25. Thus the families incur an expertditure of Rs 100 a month. This is made up by cutting down on the family's consumption of milk, vegetable and pulses. Some self-emp!oyed families undergo a terrible financial loss due to water shortage. Such is the family of 16-year-old l.akshmi, second of six children. Her elder sister is married, all the other members of the family are engaged in making bidis and 11glll'bottis. They work from 6 a.m. till 9 p.m., pausing only for short intervals to have D'lea)s_ In n01n1al times, J.alcshmi used to carry the 16,000 bidis to her employer every day, and received payment at the rate of Rs 1.25 per 1,000 bidis, that is, Rs 25 per day. Her father is a mill worker who gets about Rs 250 a month, after much has been deducted from his wage in payment of a debt incurred for his elder daughter's marriage a year ago. The family spends Rs 300 a month on rice. They have to repay a debt of Rs 6,000. The family now incurs a loss of about Rs 190 a month owing to water scarcity. They depend on the bore pump in their colony for drinking water, which is supplied in the middle of the night, on alternate nights. For other requirements, Lakshmi goes to a huge tank nearby which provides unpotable water. She leaves her work every evening to go and collect six or seven kod"77f5 of water; she thus .loses two hours of paid work. Since all the members of the family keep awake during the night, they are unable to start work at 6 a.m. as was usual. Moreover, due to -lade of sleep they fail to produce up to their full capacity. They produce 5,000 bidis less every day, thus losing Rs 6.25 which adds up to Rs 190 a month.

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W,,ta Shorlllge in Suburbs lf people in Madras dty are spending considerable time and enetgy collecting water, they can a>nsole themselves with the thought that at least water is not very far from t~r door. The situation is far worse for those living in the suburban areas which are p,nnected to the dty· by electric trains and roads. No proper water supply was ever planned for these areas, which stretch up to 20 kilometres from Madras to the south. · They were always dependent on wells. Now that all the wells are dry, residents have engaged women who go by train to the city and mllect about'40 kBdlims of water every day. The charge is Rs 15 per 1codllm per mm& · There are scores ot families surviving by supplying water in this way. One such family is that of 40-year-old Mari who lives at St Thomas Mount just at the border of Madras city. She has six sons and a daughter aged 17. They never had any sourm of drinking water and always travelled It' Saidapet, abo~t 6 ldlObtetres into the city, for the purpose. For the past six years she has been supplying water to families living at St Thomas Mount She takes the first train, which leaves for the city at 4 a.m.; by 8 a.m. she mllects 40 kolll,ms, keeps 6 for domestic use, and sells the rest. She thus earns Rs 320 a month; her daughter helps her; her sons, who are unemployed, do not. Another such family is that of Vasant:hi. She is 18 and belongs to a family of 8 members. She mllects about 15 kodllnrs every day with the help of her sister and ~other. She sells 10 kaanrs, thus making Rs 150 a month. Vasanthi also works as a domestic servant for Rs 20 a mmth. Immediately after collecting water she leaves for her job. This has been her routine for the last four years. The family has no other sourm of income. Perhaps Vasanthi will mntinue this work for many more years, because the drinking water problem in ·the city being unsolved, the government has no time to think of the needs of the fast expanding suburban areasThere are also many families who cannot affonl to engage women to bring them water. Women of these families walk for not less than two hours every day, to a distant well, to collect enough water for the day. Washing and bathing is done on alter1tate days. They do not know what they will do if these wells on which they now depend go dry. Perhaps the worst hit are a few hundred families living in slums just behind the huge buildings that line the Marina beach. Though they live in the heart of the dty, near some of the prosperous localities, these families have no tanks to supply drinking water, no wells to provide saline water, and no bore pumps. They cannot sink a well or a bore pump because it a>sts too much; sinking a bore pump costs Rs 4,000. They depend entirely on the water obtained by digging seven foot deep holes

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in the beach; these holes are dug around a public platform. Since the sand acts as a filter the water that comes up is aystal clear and potable. The houses are situated about 300 metres from these sand wells, and women walk to them daily not less than 20 times. They never give a thought to their sleeping hours or leisure hours. Night and day have ceased to mean anything. Hours chase each other and it just happens that the sun sets and darkness comes. Th~y sleep when absolutely ~ for continued working, bathe when possible and spend many hours ·every day walking to the source of water, doing all the chores . requiring water. They think of nothing but water, day in and day out. Such is the life of 35-year-old Thangamani, mother of four children. She has three sons, the eldest being 18. Her 10-year-old son helps, but her daughter is too young. From 8 in the morning till 1 p.m. Thangamani is busy, bathing the children, washing the dishes, cooking, shopping, and mopping the floor. From 4 to 7 p.m. she is at the beach washing clothes. H she is too tired to come in the evening, she oomes at 3 next morning to oollect 20 kodlims of water, enough for all the children to bathe and for moking and cleaning. H she oomes in the morning, she spends five hours collecting +vater- By 8 a.m. she would have walked not less than four kilometres; each time she climbs up to her house on the third floor. For half that distance, she would have carrie two todJims of water, which is about 30 litres. H she is too tired she collects only 10 kodlims and no one bathes that day. This is rare, because the Madras weather is such that one cannot but bathe at least once a day. Thangamani cannot go to the beach in the afternoon because the sand is unbearably hot at that time. Her husband, who earns about Rs 200 a month, returns home at 9 p.m. and she never asks him to accompany her in the early morning. ''He comes home so late, and is so tired ...''

The Role of Men It would perhaps be biased to say that men do not help at all. They do. But only a small minority actually participate in procuring water for their families. Many men in middle class residential areas like Mambalam and Ashok Nagar regulate the supply of water. They issue tokens and ensure that every woman or family gets a particular amount of water. At one point, I counted 75 women standing by the buckets which numbered about 200. At the tank whe~ the queue began, there were about 8 men who regulated the supply of water. Being in a position of power, they did not physically exert themselves. When I asked the women why they did not regulate the water themselves, since they were the ones standing in queues, one of them replied: 'We could have, but women have no unity, you know." · H men are really affected by the situation it is because they have to escort the women to the taps at night. Usha's father was just sitting on

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the roadside while si!e washed all the clothes and mllected enough water for the family. One man was mmplaining that he has to keep awake at night to esa>rt hls wife. He was not worried about the physical safety of his wife but about the mpper vessels she carried to the tap. Copper

is so expensive, you see! Strangely, though a major part of the responsibility of procuring water is undertaken by wome~ they depend completely on transporting water on foot. I did not see a single woman using a cycle. They make many trips on foot to the tap and back, though a cycle would make the work less laborious.and time-mnsuming. Not many can afford a cycle but even when there is one at home, women do not use it for fear of social ridirule. It is here that the impracticality of the sari comes into dear focus. No man buys a ladies' cycle, and a men's cycle, even if an enterprising woman wants to ride it, is not practical because of the sari. Suddenly changing over to some other dress is unthinkable. On the other hand, men seldom walk. They always 11se bicycles or tricycles, unless the water is being taken for domestic use, and the house is just a few steps away. A man on a cycle can transport up to 60 litres of water at a time, one vessel on the carrier of the cycle and two hanging by ropes from either side of the carrier. All three vessels are of the same size. Women can carry only one 1codam of about 16 litre capacity on the waist or on the head and one in the hand, not more than 32 litres at a time, half of what the men carry in less time, with less labour. Men also use tricycles. These are the men who supply to tea shops. They place a large drum of 225 litre capacity on the cabin and finish the work in one trip. The private agents of wells along the mast line, their emplc,yeis, and the truck drives, are all men. They supply water to hotels, aerated bottlers, industries and other bulk ronsumers. Only men are engaged in this lucrative business of ·w ater for profit. In the last few months, business has picked up as never before, and they are minting money. On the other hand the women of the suburban areas trade in water, but only for their bare survival. If Vasanthi does not engage in the trade, her whole family will starve. So will the family of Mari, all the male members of which are unemployed. The maid-servants of Madras also earn some additional money since the water problem started a few months ago. This means a lot of labour, but the money does help them substantially.

Effect on Women's Health Carrying less water at a time, walking longer distances, the women experience intense pain in different parts of their bodies, partirularly the legs, waist, hip bones and shoulders. Burning eyes due to lack of sleep is a permanent mmplaint. According to doctors, continued lifting of kodams will lead to a

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prolapsed uterus. Lakshmi, aged 37, is a victlnt of this disorder. She is a mother of two, and works as a punching operator, earning about Rs 450. For _the last five months, she has been spending many hours procuring water. She_had to go to pumps or taps a muple of streets away from her house, and each time carried the 1codll1Prs on her waist. This resulted in a prolapsed uterus, and she had to be operated upon. Now supposed to be convalescing, she cannot avoid lifting weights. As she says: '1 have to, ·what to do?'' All women above 35 are exposed to this risk. Of the women who are engaged in procuring water, at least 301, are above 35. How many are suffering from uterus problems or will suffer in future cannot be said with ce,tainty. •

Wrong Priorities While the women of Madras are thus spending many hours procuring water, the five-star hotels, aerated bottlers and small hotels have no problem getting water. The private agents supply them with as much as they want A truckload of 8,000 litres costing Rs 100 to 200 is available to the hotels and bottlers whenever they call for it. 1bey ring for a truckload and it is at the door within two hours. The two five-star hotels mnsume about four million gallons of water every month. The two major aerated bottlers, Spencers and Madras Bottlers, consume about one million gallons of water every month. The Madras map handout available at the tourist departn,ent lists 27 hotels. If all of them are well and prospering, one wonders why there is water scarcity at all. There is scarcity only for the poor and middle rlas--c:.es. The rich who frequent hotels and those who have cars to transport water have no problem. When people are walking miles for a kodlim of water, would it be too diffirult for the government to nationalise water and divert the trucks to the water-starved areas? Would this effort ha~e been greater than the mammoth task of getting water from Vijayawada by train at a public cost of Rs 3 lakh a day? KalpaJclcam, 80 kilometres from Madras city is the location of the prestigious department of atomic energy. It is a sprawling settlement of many acres. The houses built for the scientists are spacious and fitted with modem conveniences. It lacks nothing. Just a kilometre away is the village Kavakarai with a population of 125. This village is situated beyond a canal that irrigates the surrounding fields. This canal divides the atomic energy settlement from the village. During the monsoon when the canal floods, one has to swim aaoss to get to the other side. During the floods the inhabitants are trapped in their village and young men swim across to buy essential commodities. A bridge is two kilometres away. The village,s of Kavakarai depend for their drinlcing water supply Digitized by

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on a well which is now fast depleting. It cannot be further deepened ainc:2 there is danger of its caving in. The· villagers have no idea what they will do if· it dries up by July. They may have to walk many kilomet1es to a well in some farm. H such is the plight of this small group, should not that of the vast population of the atomic energy settlement be far worse? Not at all. The residents of the atomic energy c.omplex are supplied with water n>und the dock from the Palar river. The river has dried up but underground water is supplied. Pipes were laid when the complex was amstructed. The villagers of Kavakarai have been living there for the last 40 years. Would it have been too difficult to extend the budget a little, so as to provide water for them too? Very few people in the complex even know that such a village exists. They are too busy spending a ores (one aore = ten million) to tap atoD;\ic energy. Drinking water is too insignificant a matter for them to bother about. When the ·people were thus engaged in getting water, Madras Doordarshan screened the film '1111,nneo-, Tlumneer one Satuniay. The film depicts the plight of the people of a small village named Attipattu. The WOQlen of that village walk 10 miles every day to get drinking water. Their repeated appliaitions to the bureaucracy yield no results. They even take the radiail step of boycotting the elections. Their step receives a pasSing mention in a newspaper and has no effect on the government. Fmally, they decide tQ take control of their own lives by digging a 10 mile ainal froa, Tenuttu lake, from which the women used t:o amy water to the village. When the work nears compl~tion the government intervenes with the help of the law and declares their venture illegal. The adamant villagers proceed to finish their task. Violence ensues, the villagers migrate, and the village is left to a few families who are without water. The apathy of the bureaucracy, the greed of politicians, the total disinterest of the government which aiters to the rich, and the role of the media as no more than entertainers are brought out pointedly. The film is based on a play by Komal Swaminathan. When asked what he thought could be the impact on the people of Madras since they are cwrently in the samf! plight as the villagers, he was sceptiail and declared that he expects no impact on the people. They are not suddenly going to react radiailly to the situation. They have been too long fed, even by the media, on theories like fate and destiny to be woken up by one film. The demonstrations and processions by various groups in the dty have made little impact. They have rec:2ived no more attention than a few lines in loail newspapers. One demonstration taken out by Pennurimai Iyakkam members in June 1982 was perhaps more fruitful. Though the demonstration attJacted little attention, the follow-up action by members

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of the group has led to the installation of bore pumps and tanks in various plac:a. The group is still pursuing offidals with more demands. It is not very difficult to understand why women have decided to yield to the further pressure on them caused by water sh01 tage. Always seeing themselves as unimportant beings who exist to labour for their families, there is little that is new to provoke them in the scarcity of water. Their birth~ women is fate, their having to labour is fate, every probleD) they face is fate, so it is easy to give the same name of fate to this new problem. Since they are always striving to berome the ideal woman who has the patience of heroines in novels and films, more troubles only provide a better chance to prove their mettle as patient and enduring . women. Mllnushi, No. 16, 1983

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Porter Women in Pune SULABHA

BRAHME

This.is a summarised version of a study of lumuzl (porter) women in Pune whose work rovers transport of various kinds of goods on the head or in handcarts from trucks or railway wagons to godowns, from godo~ to shops or from shops to the residences of individual customers. The related activities of repair and maintenance of gunny sacks in which most of the goods transported are packed, and upkeep of the main godowns, are also included. The survey is based on personal interviews. with 75 women working in five main centres of the city. The luunal women studied here are part of a populahon of women employed in 'gainful economic work', a population which has actually been ·shrinking in India in recent years. The question of women's employment, which is the central idea motivating this study, is of the utmost importance for all those who are conceixted with the emancipation of women. The extent of women's unemployment has often been hidden where statistics have been based on the assumption that the woman is essentially an economic dependant. Only in 1961 did the Indian census, for the first time, classify the total population into workers and non-workers, and working women appeared in the category of workers in their own right. The degree of participation of women in gainful work has changed over the years and the nature of the change and its effects have been the objects of economic and sociological investigations. The growth of iJtdustry from the early decades of the twentieth century brought a number of women to work in plantatiqns, mines and textile mills. The number of women employed in 'traditional' occupations-agriculture, artisan work and petty trade-declined from 34.44% of the total working population in 1911 to 17.35% in 1971. The job opportunities for women that have expanded in the last decade or two are mainly in the fields which demand a certain amount of skill and education. Unskilled women workers, whose traditional occupations are being destroyed by mechanisation, have very few openings in the organised sector. As a result a .large number of women seeking work in manual occupations in urban areas can find work only in the unotganised sector, like bidi industry, construction work, casual work, . and, very importantly, domestic service, while many have to remain unemployed. •

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1Qrt themselves. There were 6 caS'?S of desertion by the husband. In one ca_se, the woman was childless, in other cases the women had both sons and daughters to support Another woman ·had left her husband after a quarrel. . There were 19 widows and two who had remarried. There are no sodal or religious restrictions on widow remarriage in the communities (Marathas and Dalits) to which the luimal women belong. When asked · why it is not frequent, the women said emphatically that they did not wish to remarry: ''Who wants the headache of childbirth every year and you can never rely on a man to keep on bringing money home; it is best · to be on one's own.'' · On .the whole, neither widowhood nor desertion ~ considered a calamity. Some of the women we interviewed expressed a cynical view of the prospects of. their married daughters. A woman who had recently Q;Ot her daughter married said; ''Time only will show whether he looks .

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after her or not Her elder sister returned to stay with me after two years. Anyway, I have done my duty by marrying the younger one now.'' ·Most of the women had been married between the ages of 8 and 13

years. The daughters of the women were married between the ages of 13 to 16. The women say: ''In our community, if a girl is unmarried and is up, the people aill her names.'' The average number of children bom was 4; 25% of children bom were not living. One woman aged 45 bad borne 11 children, 9 of whom died in infancy and one boy died at age 13 by falling into a canal. Six of the women who were in their 30s had undergone tubectomy operations. They found it a welcome release after having had three to four children and five to seven pregnancies.

grown

Wo,ting Conditions Conditions of work differ in the five major cenbes. About 50 women work in the central wholesale foodgrains and groceries market at the certbe of Pune city. Wholesale and semi-wholesale trade in cereals, pulses, jagger)', chillies, tamarind and other spices is carried on in this area. The total annual turnover in 1975 was about Rs 400 million. Women mainly deliver goods to retailers, sort and unload goods, and open and resew sacks when goods are sampled. There is no standard rate of payment for these tasks and the rate is arrived at through an agreement. The women usually come to the market at about 9 a.m. and stay there ·till 7 p.m. Most are casual workers and wait till some shopkeeper or customer calls them for some task. The amount of work they secure varies frmr, day to day and the work is slack during the rainy season. There is no shelter for the women from either sun or rain.. The major problem for them is the rmcertainty of work. Their earnings -0n a good day in the busy season vary between Rs 1.50 and Rs 3. They are on the look-out for work about 10 hours daily but the actual hours of work are variable. Most of the women are of the Maratha castes. Dalits are not allowed to work here because foodgrain and edibles have to be handled. The women are residents of the same area. They have to keep an eye on their housework and children while waiting for work. , Six hundred men and 50 women work at the central vegetable and fruit market where work is fairly steady throughout the year. Work begins at 4.30 a.m. and the busiest hours are till 11 a.m. Women usually wait till 2 p.m. for their payment Sometimes, when there are late arrivals, they have to wait till S or 6 p.m. They have no choice, either because their employers compel them to stay or because they cannot afford to ' miss a little. extra income. One woman, for instance, said that on the previous day, she had earned Rs 2.50 after a worlcing day of over 12 hours. The market stalls are damp. Continual work in .this dampness affem the health of the women. Most o f ~ suffer from fever or chronic pains. \

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They cannot go to a doctor because that would mean losing the day's earnings, and they cannot afford even the nominal fee charged by the government hospital. The women drink tea in the market but do not eat . the cheap meal provided, partly· because these meals are not cheap enough, and partly because it is hot socially acceptable for women to eat out The women who work for specific dealers are paid between Re 1 and Rs 3 while casual workers earn about Rs 1.80. . Because work in the market starts at 4.30 a.m., the women have to set out from home long before it is light. They WcPk in groups and have been threatened at times. They say, ''We can look after ourselves'', but admitted this would be nearly impossible if they had to go to work alone. Here, too, Dalit women are not employed. The employers overwork the women and beat them harshly. However, the women are ready to speak for themselves and support each other when conflicts arise. About 30 women work in the timber market. Their hours of work are front 8 a.m. to 5.30 p.m. Conditions here are worse than at the other two markets. There is amsiderable unemployment-much of the day is spent in waiting for work. There is no shelter for them or their children. The work, too, is physically tougher. The women who pull handcarts usually work in pairs and the weights they carry are quite heavy. They have to go on working, ignoring ill health; the rate of infant mortality and miscarriage is high. · · Sitting in the open, the women are often harassed by drunken men. They live in ~nditi()ns of extreme poverty and destitution. Alcoholism is widespread among the men-drunken men may be seen even in the daytime. The hutment colonies are particularly insanitary and crowded. Most of the women are Dalits. They do not form dose knit groups as do the women in other areas. They aH>perate only to the extent of looking after each other's children while waiting for work. In the brisk season, . women earn about Rs 1.80 a day. In other months,.the income is even smaller. This gioup represents the absolute borderline between the lowest paid form of unskilled work available in cities, and utter destitution or starvation. At the railway goods yard, women are employed to unload coal. Twenty-two wo~en work here as a team, sharing the ~ork and the payment among themselves. They remain in the yard from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., waiting for the wagons to arrive. Sometimes the wagons arrive • late, and they may have to work till 10 or 11 p.m. The women dare not leave the yard for even a short time, because when the wagon arrives, it must be unloaded immediately, and anyone who is not there loses her share of the earnings. One woman said, '1f I go home, which is nearby, to feed my children or to visit the hospital, there is always some confusion. Work arrives while we are gone and we lose a day's~,, Each wagon takes about an hour to unload, with 8 women working Digitized by

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on it. 5ntext, I would like to discuss one particular meeting held in the early phase of the struggle, in 1979. I had gone to Bodhgaya in an interval between two of my examinations. Anil Pralcash, who was working the~, said ·h e would like to organise a village meeting in Pesra where I wo~d speak on the women's struggle and he would speak on . the land struggle. I suggested we do it the other way round. I would speak on the land struggle and he a>uld speak on women's issues. I th(?ught that might have a better impact. For one thing, I said, women's interest in the land struggle might increase if they heard a woman speak about it. Secondly, men would feel that a woman a>uld take interest in . other things besides women's issues. Also, if a man spoke on women's issues, people might take it more seriously. All the women sat on the floor and the men on cluzrpt,is. I sat on the floor with the women. At this, everyone protested and asked me to sit on the cluzrpai. I said I would sit on t~ cluzrpai only on a>ndition that other women would also sit with me. None of them moved so I admitted defeat but stuck to my resolve of sitting on the floor with them. I said that if we did not sit together, we..should adjourn the day's meeting. All that came of it was that the men finally got off the cluirptiis and sat on the floor with the women. We felt that it was better to get everyone on one level. · After that, we started discussing wife-beating. Some village men argued that they beat up women because they made mistakes, they didn't cook at the right time, they didn't listen to their husbands. We had a big argument and asked them whether men never made mistakes, and if they did, whether they were beaten up for this by the women. The men remained convinced that god had made women to serve them. In that rontext, Anil Prakash happened to suggest the sharing of some small portion of housework. He said .that since both men and women work in the fields, the burden of housework should not be left to the women alone. The· women agreed, and told .the men that since the men ploughed but the women did harvesting and other jobs, there was no reason why women alone should do the housework and look after the children. Anil suggested that, to begin with, men should start washing their own plates after meals. It seems that this discussion had an impact on the women. Prior to this, they had never discussed such issues. These were very new ideas for them. At night, when serving dinner to her husband, one woman remarked that from that day onward, he should wash his o,w n·plate. No

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soon~ had sh~ said this tban he flung the plate in her face and beat her • so brutally that she was badly injured. In the morning, children from several other homes reported that their mothers had also been beaten up. One 16-year-old girl reported that her father had oome home drunk, .a nd when her mother had refused to sleep with him, he beat her mercilessly, overcoming. the children's attempts to intervene. That night, we held.a meeting to discuss what we should do about these beatings. Wededded that only women should be allowed to speak in the discusmon on wife.beating~ Some men tried to insist upon speaking, but they were stopped. Someone at the meeting made a suggestion that men who beat up their wives should not be allowed to join the organisation .or the struggle. However, this suggestion could not be implemented. All the women did not put it so dearly, but, on the whole, they all felt that if their men got the land, they would beat them even more. Nothing much came of the meeting except that some people decland they would not even drink water in the homes of men who beat up their wives. I at once decided that I would neither sit with, eat with nor drink water &ont the hands of a man who beat his wife, and I declared this openly. After this, the·children started bringing me news about men ·who beat their wives. For example, if someone ~led me over to his house, the children would say: 1 'No no, don't go to his house, he also beats his wife.'' In this way, the truth started ooming out. Before this, it was not even acknowledged that wife-beating took place. In actuality,. beatings were so·frequent that children grew up believipg their mothers were, made to be beaten. Now,.these same children began to express their resentment against it . But the effort to stop wife-beating did not have much impact because very few people openly and oonsistently spoke out against it. Some of the Sllllthis (oompanions ~ the struggle) who had been beating their wives without really oonsidering whether it was right or wrong gave up wifebeating altogether. Jankidas and ·Karu were among those who came to .believe that it was a aime to beat women, and so stopped doing it. Women also~ oonsciously to feel that beatings were wrong. Some stopped aa.-epting it as a fact of life. There were also some attempts at social boycott. Sometimes, such a man would not be allowed to sit in the village meetings. This happened in Katorwa village. However, in general, the struggle against wife-beating was not taken up in as systematic a way as was the land struggle. As a result, the wife-beating issue is now almost completely buried. Yet village women did often oome to each other's rescue. For instance, in Shekhwara village there was a woman called Shanti who was very active as an organiser. She had herself sterilised after she had given birth to two sons. Her husband beat her up brutally for this. Kunti, who lived in the Vahini office, intervened. Many other women also came to Shanti's

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rescue, and managed to send the husband away. There was no Vahini activist present at that moment. The village women decid~ to hold a meeting and discu~ the inddent. The meeting could not be held for some reason, perhaps because it rained, but the man was publicly humiliated by the women for having beaten his wife, and for living off her. Thus, raising the i~ue had some small impact on about a dozen villages. Yet the issue does not manage to surface in most political meetings. I feel the reason for this•is that the proper atmosphere has not been created in the meetings for women to speak openly about it. Even trough they speak to individual won,en activists, they do not speak about it at the village meetings. This means that somehow the movement has remained insincere in its attitude toward such issues, and therefore women are not encouraged to speak out as much as is needed.

Struggle Against the Math In the early days we had launched a struggle for the implementation of the government-minimum wage laws. The struggle started before.the niJu,, harvest, but it was unsuccessful because it was also directed against the small peasants who did not have the means to pay the minimum wage. This meant that if the labourers refused to wor~ the small peasants just tried to do all the work themselves. When the organisation realised this, the struggle was withdrawn and Vahini decided to focus on the struggle against the Math. In August 1979, it was decided that the land struggle would take the £4,rm of a st1 ike in all the movement areas. Gaya has been a ~ine stricken district, and even in normal times, starvation is always at the door. Yet the people's commitment to struggle was such that they were ready to stake their lives. They decided that they would not plough the land till they had rights over it, nor would they all~w the Math to plough . it. The land would lie fallo,v. This was a risky dedsion since no alternative employm~nt was available to them at that time. Most of the people in this area are landless labourers, of whom most are from scheduled castes. The marginal farmers, who are primarily agricultural labourers with a little land, are from what are called the backward castes. The majority of those active in the struggle are Harijan landless labourers. It was not possible in.every area to get the poor peasants td accept the leadership of ·the landless. We had successfully reduced the conflicts between these two sections, yet enough tension still remained which prevented the peasants from directly joining the movement. All the scheduled caste people are landless, but among the backward castes some are landless and others have small pieces of land. These latter are marginal farmers who themselves labour on the land, but once in a while also employ wage labour. The backward caste people are about as poor as those from scheduled castes, but social differences remain Digitized by

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prominent. The Bhuiyan caste is a scheduled caste, and others, such as Yadavs, are backward castes. In the beginning, the backward castes would not join the struggle, even though they possessed very little or no land. They had a feeling of caste superiority. Bhuiyans felt that since backward caste people also exploited them, they should not join with them in the struggle. After some time, they did begin to come together, but only a little, at a personal level. Some individual Yadavs like Bansi Yadav joined the movem~t ~ut the majority of Yadavs did not join. Somehow the labourers managed to survive the long struggle. Some of them also got work on government food-for-work projects. Since every individual in the village was not able to obtain employment, those who went out to work shared their grain with the families who were jobless. Different villages organised the sharing process differently. In some villages, all the grain earned was collected at a common place and _.distributed equally after allocating a certain fixed share to the 'struggle fund'. In others, each employed individual was given the responsibility of supporting one or two families who had no earning member, and each individual also contributed a certain fixed portion of grain to the struggle fund. The struggle fund of grain was kept for a crisis when no employment was available to the striking workers. At this time, we also got quite a lot of publicity in the press, and help poured in from urban areas. A Bodhgaya Sangharsh Sahyog Samiti was set up at the national level. However, the Math made extensive preparations to get the land culti.; vat:ed by hired labour brought from outside. Local police and ruffians wae used to protect them. The villagers were determined to prevent the lands _from being ploughed. When the outside labourers, accompanied by lathiwii!ld4tg ruffians, approached the fields, the villagers women, men and children-\Vould stffl8LI\ into the fields, singing revolutionary songs and -----· 'Hal kholo, jaldi bhago' (Unyoke the bullocks and run away - shouting slogans: fast). They would then unyoke the bullocks and drive them off. Dnuns were used to summon the villagers. A drum beaten in a particular way was a signal for people from neighbouring villages to collect. The moment this drum beat was heard, everyone would rush off~e women flinging aside their household work, _and the children arriving in a swarm. In some cases, when outside labourers, guarded by ruffians, started to plough, the villagers would tell them to unyoke the bullocks. If they did not obey, the children would immediately lie down in the field. In an instant, dozens of them would be spread out like a sheet on the ground. Meanwhile, the adults would try to unyoke the bullocks. In this way, it would become impossible to plough the fields, and the Math's men would retire defeated. Usually, more women than men were present in these actions, because the men used to find employment outside their villages. The Math spread police and goonda terror throughout the area. There

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. were many incidents of ruffians waylaying and beating the villagers, abusing the women and threatening to rape them. Dozens of false cases were registered in local courts against the villagers. Individuals would be arrested from the marketplaces, so that no ·oollective resistance was possible. Every effort was made to frighten the women and girls. It became dangerous for women to go out·alone -0r even to go out at all at night. In one incident one of the Vahini activists, a tribal girl named Alice Kanchan, was going from one village to another, when some ruffianly youths caught hold of her, beat, abused, and insulted her. Her clothes were tom. Jankidas, who was with her, .was also beaten up. The news , spread quickly and the villagers collected. The culprits took refuge in a local gurudr.mrll. .The villagers were in an angry mood, and many _of them brought liithis. Violence did not erupt, because the villagers remembered the mmmitment of the movement to non-violent principles cUtd therefore reiterated their resolve that even in self-0efence they would not take up arms. In spite of the attempts at intimidation, the villagers -· did not lose heart, because they were well organised. Simultaneously with the struggle for the land, a struggle was also conducted to demand food-for-work programmes for the unemployed. The organisation used to decide which of the sathis would go to gherllO (surround and ,besiege as a form of protest) the Block Development Officer and who would stay in the village to prevent the Math's men from ploughing the land. This part of the struggle took place during the Janata Party regime, between 1979-80. Even though the Janata government did not directfy- - · help in the struggle, they saw to it that the polic;e did not directly attack us. That is how the struggle muld stay non-violent. Only in 1980, after the Congress came to power, were the police sent to Bodhgaya. Though the local administration and police were always inclined to favour the Math, yet direct intimidation such as raids, firings and beatings by police began only after 1980. In the initial phase the government did not send in the police to smash the movement The Mahant's men were responsible for .the 1979 firing; the police did not fire. The general attitude of the Janata government was not to interfere in the struggle, though some help came from the several food-for-work programmes that wer~ started in the area by the goverment at difficult moments when the people had nothing to eat in mnsequen~ of the strike. Sympathetic individuals within the Janata government gave help through the back door, and party members in the government came out openly in support of the struggle, some even joining demonstrations. Nobody from the goverment openly opposed the movement. With the coming of the Congress government, all this changed. The police were directly used to attack the movement and several activists were arrested

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on false charges. After 1980, Bihar Military Police, Border Security Force and Central Reserve Police camps began to be set up in the villages to te11orise the people and to defend the Math's interests. In November 1982, a full-time Vahini activist was arrested on the charge of inciting the villagers to indulge in looting, and of living on their loot. This phase of the strike was directed not so much against the economic power of the Math as against several myths which contributed to the exploitative situation, such as the belief that the Math is a divine power, and that women are weak, inferior beings, unfit for public life, meant to serve-men, and that men have the right to beat women. This time, childre11 also directly participated with women in the action programme. It became clear that •:children were able to be involved mainly because of women's participation. It had now been proved in practice that it was impossible to fight for change in the system without women's. participation. They began to come forward, not just in equal, but in even larger numbers than men.

Anti-Liquor Cam,-zign Simultaneously, a campaign against drunkenness and wife-beating was car_ried on in many of the areas. This aspect of the movement was a collective battle waged jointly by women an4 children. Two women activists, Kumud and Kanchan, took an especially active part in it. Heavy drinking is very widespread in this area. Th~ movement found it difficult to grow under such circumstances. In the evening, when meetings were held, men would come drunk, shout abuses, and talk nonsense. It would become impossible to conduct political meetingsin such an atmosphere. Everyone agreed that this should stop but there was no agreement within the organisation on whether to start arampaign against it. Excuses were offered for. the drunkards, saying that the men drink because of poverty. The organisation was not willing to state that drinking must be opposed because it resulted in atrocities on women. When discussions were ~eld about the drinking problem, women said that one of its worst consequences was wife-beating. It was revealed that most of the beatings followed heavy drinking. Some young girls said · · when their fathers came home drunk, they would order their wives to sleep with them. H the women refused, the men would beat them. Women had other reasons for considering men's drinking oppressive. When men spent their earnings on liquor, the financial responsibility for running the household fell on the women. The men would often beat the women to demand more money for drink. Therefore, it did not take long for women to understand that drinking was an important issue for the struggle. Very few women drink; most do not drink at all. The anti-liquor campaign emerged primarily as a women's campaign. For e~ple, Kumud told the organisation: ''H you don't want to make

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an overall policy on this issue, I won't insist upon your doing so. But wherever I am working, I am going to start a campaign against it.'' Every now and then, whenever I went to Bodhgaya, I would also try to get the women to campaign against drinking. The campaign was conducted. quite vigorously in a dozen villages, especially in Iw passage leading to the forest, the men used all sorts of threats, and later, on .the pretext of being drunk, even tried to misbehave with the women. But the women refused to budge and bravely resisted all misbehaviour. Finally, one of the men spat at Gaura Devi's face. The women remained cool but firm. However, when their husbands returned, instead of being elated at Gaura Devi:s success, they got frightened,at the prospect of being arrested and P'f-t,behind bars. To save their skins, they made their husbands put all the blame on Gaura Devi. 'Gauia Devi stood by her.action. First the contractor tried to bribe her into letting his men enter the forest Wpen she refused this offer, the forest ~ e n t personnel threatened to call the police and arrest her. The ..mntrac.tor, in league with some villagers, composed folk songs describing th~ arrest of Gaura Devi and her torture in jail. They used to sing these songs all night long and dance together. Since Gaura Devi is not educated, she was not SUie what the reperrussions of her action rould be. Naturally, she and her son began to get unnerved. One day her son started crying. She herself was bold in front of the men but actually the tension·was so great that she lost her appetite and sleep. She had never met Chandi Prasad Bhatt who had spread the message of Chipko in the village. Her son had attended Bhatt's meeting and told her about it. She was not sure whether he would support her and was afraid that if she let it be known that Bhatt had told her son of the need to protect the forest, Bhatt too might be arrested. So she took all the blame on herself. Three days later, Bhatt came to the village, complimented Gaura Devi on her action and assured her that.he would take full responsibility and would fae2 all the consequences. After this the tide turned in her favour. For a month, people from different villages came to express solidarity with her and to protest against the tree-felling. The government appointed a committee to look into the matter, and accepted its recommendations. However, the widespread publicity and success increased the harassment of Gaura Devi by the village men. In 1974 Gaura Devi was about 51 years old. She had been widowed at the age of 22. Hers was 11

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one of the poorest families in the village and after the death of her husband she had to rely on the help of the village niien to get her field ploughed (because women are not supposed to use the plough though they do all the other much heavier work). The influential villagers who had rented their houses to the contractor and his men, or who had gained euaployment from the tree felling operation, first got annoyed with her and decided to help the authorities in punishing her. But once the grea~ of her deeds began to be publicly acknowledged by the media, they became very jealous. How could a poor widow gain $Uc:h recognition and aaiaim? Henoo they took every opportunity to fament petty quarrels with her. In such a quarrel, her son was beaten up. Now she is being threatened that her son will be murdered. The Mahila Mangat Dal (Women's Welfare Society) had got some funds for repair of the water tank but the villagers opposed this and would not m-operate, even though it was for the benefit of all. Another instance of women being harassed by the village men is in Dongri Paitoli villages. These villages are situated at a height of 6,000 to 7JXKJ feet in the catchment area of the Pinder river in Chamoli district. The nearest motor road is 10 kilometres away. Hence these forests had not been !=()mmerdally exploited. But the government decided to 'develop' this region by replacing the dense oak forest wi.th a sheep centre and a potato seed farm. The village headman, who owns shops at the bus stand, along with other male leaders, entered into an agaeerr.ent with the horticulture department, to let the 62-acre village forest be used for construction of a farm in exchange for a motor road, elecbidty and a hospital. No thought was given to the question of women's gathering of fuel and fodder. When the contractor started construction, the village women were ho,, ified to see their village being encircled by the boundary walls of the proposed sheep farm, potato farm and junior school. There was no outlet for the cattle! The Mahi1a Mangat Dai of women resoi ted to Chipko action and saved about 40 acres of their oak forest This sutt the 1972 assembly election. The general response to this could be gauged from the drop in election participation •from SO % to approximately 27%. Men and women realised it was in their power to decide their vote. The activists had just begun their work there. They would, however, go to the fields where women would be working and talk to them about the elections. Women would say: ''It is true. What is the use of voting? Until now we were blind." This indicates that women workers respond better to men activists at the worksite where they work in groups than at home where they are isolated. In 1972, the GSS organised a •tyagnw, for the liberation of the lost lands of the peasants. The women affected by this demand were from the poor and middle peasant class, but few participated. However, just three months later, in the 1972 strike at Pariwardha, the militancy of a few women who took part played a crucial role. The strikers were demanding an inaease in wages. Some strike-breakers under the protection of the police went to work in the fields. A group of women participating in the strike, discussed amongst themselves and with the others, the implications of the strike for their struggle and their unity. The women went further and argued thus with the strike-breakers: ''All of us are starving. It is not only for a wage increase ~hat we aJe struggling. This struggle indicates our unity and resolution against the employers. How then do you feel like working for the rich peasants?'' In spite of the presence of the police, the women took the _strike-breakers back home. But women were $till regarded as an appendage to the movement which remained dominated by men. The men wanted to negotiate for the women's wages as well, but the women insisted that they would negotiate for their own wages. There were two struggles in 1972-one revolving round the land issue and the other round the wage issue. In the three months between the two struggles, the GSS intensified its night meetings in the villages. With the help of the women who were involved in struggles earlier, they began to involve other women in the night meetings. As a class, landless laboute.ts and women get organised faster, and on a more sustained basis, than do the holders of small strips of land. This is related to the parcellised nature of small peasant existence as against that of landless women who find a natural oommunity of interest in the problems that they experience collectively. The struggle against crop protection societies also intensified. The landless and small peasant women suffered most at their hands. ''As we participated in struggles and discussed more and more issues we_began to trust the male activists'', said .1 woman from Kurangi village. Women like Bhuribai from Kurangi, Bajabai from Moad and many

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others who partidpa~ in wage struggles, in the land grab moven1ent, and in struggles against atrocities perpetrated on labourers by the aop protection societies, emerged as leaders of women. The mass of women, .however, remained outside the activities of the Shramik Sanghatana. They hardly participated in the night meetings of the villages. The gioup of men and women activists discussed how the mass of women rould be involved in the struggle. They decided to plan for a camp where women from different villages could come together, discuss their problems and take up struggles jointly. The activists had realised and the women activists had experienced that women found it easier to discuss in groups, outside the home, in the company of other women, so they tried to contact women while they were going to work. They discussed the issues with them and the preparation for a women's conference. _ There was a severe drought in Maharashtra in 1973. This led to severe food and work shortage. To alleviate the rural crisis, the government started drought relief work such as stone-breaking, road-building and well-digging. The work started was extremely inadequate for the drought-affected population. In the beginning, hardly ~ of the population was employed. After the organised struggle of the agrirultural workers, this increased to more than 85%. Though the government had fixed minimum wages on a quantum basis, corruption was rampant, and wages were invariably given late. The tribals organised themselves around the demands of entployment, timely wages, and against rorruption. All the peop1e participated wholeheartedly because they were severely affected by the adverse conditions, and their life depended on their organisation and their struggle. _· Women constituted 50% of the morchas and gheraos. They came in large numbers and sang songs; they brought their children along. This was one of the first occasions that they began to talk in large meetings before crowds. Thus it was their class demands around a most pressing issue that brought them out of their isolation and apathy. This experience was not unique to Shahada, but was common to all struggles conducted during the drought period, all over Maharashtra. The situation demanded it of them; their life and survival depended on them getting employment, their wages in time, and thus on their organisation. Having once participated in struggle, the women discovez\!d their strength and ~sserted it in other aspects of their lives. Yet there remained a contradiction within their power in ronfrontation with the rich peasants and landlords, their own Ii ves. For while outside the home they were beginning to assert their power in confrontation with the ridt peasants and landlords, oppression at home continued. Wife-beating and drunkenness remained. This oppression also restricted their participation in issues of general ro11certL As one woman

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in the first ~ c e had put it ''We sing songs we like. First, we were scan!d of the police inspector, now we no longer fear him. 1be times have changed. However, we are still beaten by our husbands." It was in such an atmosphere that the first women's camp took place. A discussion was held by Shramik Sanghatana with the women of Kharwad on how to organise the camp. Women's committees were set . up to look after various organisational aspects of the meeting-to oollect grain, to petsuade women to come, to arrange drinking water. The meeting was centred around questions of almholism, wife-beating, and women's self-defence. While ·persuading other women to oome, the women related their own experiences of ~ i o n and the need to collectively fight against it.

First Women's Conferena In order to consolidate and further il.:: ft'1-e the participation of women

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in the sbuggles, a women's camp was organised in March 1973, at Kharwad village. It was expected that two or three women from each of 10 to 15 villages would oome for two to three days. However, the response Web lTen:1endous: over 150 women-10 to 12 from each village -participated. . At first there was some resistance from the men against sending women to the camp. A discussion took place at Tarhawad. Men, et;peaally old men, objected, pointing to the work at home. This was discussed in the presence of activists. Other women volunteered to look after the children and housework of the delep,tes. The number of women attending the camp kept dtanging through the two days as women would attend for some time and go back. This was their first expeiience of sitting down and discussing issues at a stretch. Women from different villages related their own experiences. They talked _openly about how their husbands drank and beat them up, about sexual harassment by rich peasants and police, about their long days of work, the burden of ho11sework and what they had to do to get the chance to mme to the camp. It was a frank discussion and every woman participated. During thP camp, the women from Karanlcheda village had described how their husbands drank and beat them up, and they asked the women at the camp to help them eradicate liquor from- their village. Spontaneously, all the women walked to the village. On the way, more and more women from villages along the route joine4 in. They marched to the liquor den and broke all the pots. ''We will not allow you to produce and sell liquor again,'' they threatened. They also gheraoed the police inspector and asked him for an explanation. This was a clear manifestation of the power of women. Soon a wave of liquor pot-breaking shook the area. As in Moad village, women moved around in bands to break liquor pots and terrorise the ruffians of the village.

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'1bam's ec..,.,-, In the pn>CESS of the liquor pot-btNling •diVlty, informally organised wna•e•'s mmmitttts developed. Women who had been participating in p1.aal dass ismes, in the tm sbikes, for example, and those women 1wlu bad imisla:I that women be part of the negotiation committee were the Cll!l,tral &guns iil tlwse aw1a11littees. Then! were no reg.Jar 'Ulef."lingUld not implement it. He had put all the blame on me alone. Perhaps he does not know that one cannot clap with one hand. Anyhow, it does not matter now. When the new bride ~mes, try and listen to what she says, and do not quar,el with her. Even if her relatives do not pay much attention to you, you should try to stay happy. You should ignore t ~ things. Otherwise, her life will be ruined. And if she talks to you privately about anything, never tell anyone else in the house what she says. Now I am going. If I survive, do not come to see me because you will not be able to stand the sight If such a situation arises, you should give me poison 90 that I do not suffer much before I die. • This time, when I left your house, I told you that I would not return, because I had already taken this decision. After that, I did once think that it was not right to leave you for ever. But yesterday, I again decided that this would be best for you. You never felt at peace since 10 May, nor did anyone else in your house. I hope Tony has been successful in his work. Now I have talked enough, I had better go. Only your T11to MlmllMi, No. 1, 1979

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Ime the victim of his rage and suspicion, and to add to it, the apathy of the people around who mntributed to the cruelty by their non.:interference. Before this, I had never ta1cen women's iswes seriously. I used to laugh away the idea of women's emancipation as a liberated women's 'fad'. Malarkodi's death has come as an eye-opener to me. What is the status of an average Indian woman? Has she any chance of dignity in life and in death? These thoughts hurtled. in· my mind. Now f realise how much work is to be done to help women bemme aware that the daily oppression they suffer at the hands of their husbands can be amtrolled through organised action. Wl_\ile undertaking such action, there will be a possibility of alienating men to some extent We enmuntered varied responses to Malarkodi's death from different people. Most of the women in the slum were afraid to speak about the murder though.all were aware of what had happened to her. When I asked some of the men why they had not intervened, their reply was that it was a 'family quarrel'. A step ahead was the reply: ''She was killed by her husband. So why should we interfere?'' But it was not just the slum dwellers who reacted this way. I found that almost all men, whatever their dass, job or status, thought in the same manner. When we wept to the police inspector of Tilak Nagar to demand Malarkodi's dead body, he said, ''Why are you taking up this issue? She was an immoral woman. Otherwise, no sane husband would do this." When the people were organised into a morcJui to protest against wife-beating and drinking, and to demand her body from the police, two tlemen passing by on the road came and said to us: ''Why do you a h\le and cry about this? After all, it is her husband who did it." Later, when I ;was narrating the incident to some boys who study in my class, they too offered the same consolation: ''Oh, it was her husband who killed her. What can you do about it?'' So, for a woman, the thali is a death noose. A husband is almost deified, to the extent that he can dole out life or death to her. H we don't fight against this superstitious, oppressive culture of ours, how can we emancipate women and men?

Maushi, No. 11, 1982

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do a regular BA. She was made to do her BA by mrrespondence course, · even though they lived next door to the university. He did not want her ever to step out of the house alone. He told us the long story of how for years she silently suffered beatings and torture at her in-laws' place, and the first time she stepped out of the house alone was when the inlaws actually beat her out of the house and pushed her on to the street.

Right to Choose an Occupation (Article 19g) One of the most important results of this dependence of women on men is that men are able to exercise control over women's lives and labour, the mnditions under which they ain labour, the price they can get for that labour. The primary decision as to whether a woman will be allowed to work outside the house us11ally rests in the hands of the dominant male members of the family, whether she is an agrirultural labourer, a peasant woman, a factory worker, a nurse, a school teacher, a typist or a doctor. This makes women's situation in many ways similar to that of a bonded labourer beai11se, like others in bondage, women perform crucial services for society but do not have the freedom to decide the conditions of their own labour. 1bey rarely have independent mntrol over thm income. In the Punjab village study mentioned earlier, not a single woman, whether from a Jat peasant family or from an agricultural labourer family, said that she muld independently decide whether or not she would be available for work outside the home. All the women who answered the question said that their husband, father, father-in-law or brother-in-law would decide. Similarly, all these women, induding those who were the primary earners in their families, clearly stated that they had no control over decisions regarding major expenditure inrurred by the family, or even over their own earnings. The same lack of control over their own earnings was reported by primary school teachers interviewed by Miznushi in Delhi. Many said that they had to hand over their salaries to husband or inlaws, and were given only bus fares. This is also true of many women doctors, nurses and lecturers. • The government and its legal machinery provide support and legitimacy to families in crushing the resistance of women on the few ocaisions that women do manage to challenge the authority of the male heads of the family over the women's right to employment. This typiail decision of the full bench of the Punjab high court in KJlilashwati vs Ajodhilz Prakash brings this out very well. The husband filed a petition .for restitution of conjugal rights after his wife, a school teacher, was transferred out of his village, and hence changed her place of residence. He argued that he could support her in ''dignified comfort'' so she should give up her job and return to the ''conjugal home'', which he implicitly defined as the home where the husband resides.

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Ioking and looking after the children even while she labours a~ the paid task. A middle class variant of this is giving of tuitions and running nursery schools at home, which are considered respectable even though lo~-paid and tiresome. While there are no legal bans preventing women from taking up most jobs, yet they are ghettoised in the lowest paid, least skilled occupations. If, for example, they work at construction sites, the power of unwritten laws is much greater than all constitutionally guaranteed rights; they can work only as headloaders and earth diggers and not as masons or carpenters. There are powerful invisible forces at work to ensure that they are not allowed to acquire the simple skills, involving even lower order technology, so that they are pushed more and more into backbreaking, unskilled jobs, needing only hard labour. Even these few jobs Digitized by

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are rapidly slipping out of their hands. Threshing, for instance, was traditionally considered a woman's job and millions of women earned their livelihood from it. But as soon as a simple threshing machine comes into wide use, in one stroke women lose access to their traditional jobs, and men acquire an exclusive monopoly. If today·women form two-thirds or more of India's illiterates, it is primarily because families will often not send girls to school, and when they do send them, will not allow them to study long enough even in order to attain minimal literacy. Boys are more frequently sent to school or to learn a trade, while girls are commonly kept at home to do the housework and to look after the younger children. This not only puts them at a disadvantage in seeking work and employment, but denies them basic information and skills that would help make them more independent in coping with the world outside the family, and in fighting for their rights within ·the family. Most of the industrial training institutes set up by the government to teach new skills of use in obtaining better-paid jobs are meant for men. There is no provision for teaching these skills to women. Industrial training institutes for women are not only much fewer in number but also usually do not teach any skills that will help women to get better jobs. The vast majority of these institutions teach only traditional skills, such as sewing for the family. Polytechnics for men provide important engineering and scientific skills but women's polytechnics, even in dties like Delhi, by and large teach things like cookery, beauty care, hom_e decoration and, at best, typing and shorthand.

Right Against Exploitation: Against 'Begar', and Other Forms of Forced Labour (Article 23i) When the man is able to stop the woman doing any form of paid labour, she must then perform never-ending unpaid labour in the service of the family from which she can never hope to escape. Against this from of beg• she can never hope to seek legal redress because it is seen as her 'natural' duty. Because this labour is unpaid she is made to feel dependent on her husband and therefore bound to fulfil his desires and obey his commands. Though the labour performed by women at home is crucial to the survival of all the family members, it is depreciated by society and therefore by herself as 'doing nothing, sitting at home'. The fact ~hat in the census, women performing housework or doing field labour on their own family farms are not even listed as workers is one indication that the government does not ':Yen recognise the existence of women's exploitation through these forms of begar or unpaid labour. Because it is seen as 'natural' for women to do all the housework and is seen as 'natural' for women to do all the housework and childcare, Digitized by

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their social isolation from the outside world comes to seem natural and inevitable.

No Discrimination in Respect of Employment (Article 16(2)) The ideology of the male-domi,:,ated family leads people to suspect as 'immoral' any woman who works outside the house. Sexual harassment at work is used as another reason for not allowing women to go and seek work far away from home or for not sending them for training to acquire skills. Sexual violence and harassment is perhaps the only aime which is seen as primarily the fault of the victim rather than the aggressor. Such crimes set into motion a vici9us cycle, entrapping women so that· they end up by seeming to choose their confinement within the house. The most socially 'respectable' situation available to women within the patriarchal ideology is to remain at home and in pardll, ·a situation which also makes them absolutely dependent and powerless. Those jobs·that bring women social exposure are usually the ones where sexual hatassment is most frequent and dangerous. The·social status of the working woman therefore is in llUll\Y ways much lower than that of a homebound woman. This attitude of contempt towards working women plays a crucial role in making women believe that the only way they can gain social respect is to stay at home performing unpaid labour.

Right to Form

no: and Unions (Article 19c) The politics of everyday life under the patriarchal, patrilocal family makes any formal guarantee of the right to form associations in the way defined by the Constitution irrelevant to the lives of the majority of women in the co~try. Therefore, no laws or emergency regulations are l\eeded to effectively exclude women from most political activity. The prinwy form of assodatio~ for a majority of people, is one that grows out of the alliances formed throu~ family, kin and neighbours. The very structure of the patrilocal family makes it difficult for wom~ to form independent connections. A key source of women's vulnerable isolation arises because women are made to shift to the husband's home after marriage. There they are not only isolated from their primary associations but are also made to live under conditions of very limited contact with their new neighbours and the social world. . This further restricts women from forming their own alliances and support groups so that they become more powerless and vulnerable. The ideology of the patrilocal family also prohibits them from visiting their parental homes often enough or seeking parental support as and when they require it. Since any other contact and association with the outside world is considered disreputable, women are left with no base to operate from in the politics of everyday life, which is far more important than the politics of nations.

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This helps explain the near total exdusion of women from all the formal and informal village level political institutions. In fact, it is easier for women in small numbers to reach the higher levels such as parliamP.nt and state legislatures, than to attain effective participation in binulllri

-ptmd,lzy11ts, .. because those few who get to the higher citadels of power almost invariably do so at the behest or with the backing of powerful male-dominated families. But at all other levels dealing with everyday life, women are excluded from effective participation at the outset because of the way the patrilocal, patriarchal family restricts them from forming even more basic everyday contacts and associations.

Right to Properly This right was taken . out of the list of fundamental rights by a Constitutional amendment in 1979, with the professed aim of enabling the state to acquire private landed property for public good, or to redistribute land in the interest of social equity. However, the Constitution still presumably guarantees that no one will be denied their basic right to property except by due process of law (Article 300a). But · here again the family plays a decisive role. Women are not allowed any independent aa:ess to inam,e producing sources of property. In ~ predominantly rural society .like ours, where land is the most important form of property, women's lack of rontrol over landed property becomes the major source of their economic bondage to men. Even in families with substantial landed props ty, the status of ~men is similar in many ways to that of the landless poor who toil without any rights to land. Some half-hearted steps have been talcen to ronfer pope! ty rights on women, such as the Indian and Hindu Su~ion Acts. 1hese measures have, however, proved i~dequate, not only because they contain deliberate loopholes to nullify this right for most women, but also because in many other ways the state tries to aeate and protect male control over property and family. For example, even when the state decides to confer rights on relatively disadvantaged groups through various paltry land reform measures, the ownership rights are invariably bestowed on those whom the government refers to as the male heads of the family. There is hardly any example of land distributed jointly in the name of husband and wife. Whether as mothers, wives or daughters, women are allowed a limited right in land only if there are no male adult memebers in the family; even then they usually act as caretakers till the 'rightful' male inheritor takes over. So strong is this bias rooted in the present family structure and so determined the effort to keep women powerless and dependent on men that middle class families will happily spend lakhs of rupees on the

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marriage of their daughter, give her a lavish dowry, but will not part with even a small portion of all that money for their daughter in her own name, under her independent control, in the form of land or other income-generating property. In the present family system, women are mainly used as commodities, as vehicles for transfer of ex>nsumer forms of property from one family to another. Even control over women, as over slaves, is passed from one owner, the parents' family, to the other, the husband's family. By and for themselves, women can seldom acquire any real control over even what is customarily supposed to be theirs, such as jewellery and household go~s. At best, women have a sort of usufructory right in jewellery which is traditionally supposed to be passed on to the son's wife, and thus to stay within the family. In cases where a man throws his wife out, all the products of the marriage are usually assumed to be his, from which he may give her what he chooses, or give her nothing at all; this includes their house, household goods and even the children. The father is ex>nsidered the legal guardian of all children over the age of five. · This power relation regulates all property relationships in India; government and legal procedures simply reinforce it. For instance, a married woman is seldom allowed \o apply for a passport without the husband's signature authorising her to do so. Similarly, if the husband is alive and in town, the ration card is normally given in his name.· Custody and adoption laws are similarly biased in favour of the male 'guardian'. A married Hindu woman cannot adopt a child in her own name; the child has to be adopted in the name of her husband. In hardly any area of social life can a woman independently enter into a ex>ntractual relationship.Ha married couple wants to lease or buy a house, a man can do it in his own name, but a woman will rarely be allowed to do so, despite the absence of any formal statute forbidding it.

Right to .Freedom of Speech and Expression (Article 19a) One special feature of women's oppression is the way they have been trained to consider many crucial areas of their oppression and exploitation as unmentionable. The manrler in which they are socially victimised for speaking about their oppression _ensures their silence much better than any press censorship or other governmental bans on freedom of speech and expression. The most effective censorship on women's speaking out comes from their own families. For example, if a woman admits to having been raped, the usual consequence is that her own husband will throw her out of the house, as happened to thousands of women in Bangladesh. Many of the women who were raped during the 1947 partition were disowned or even killed by their families. This happens so routinely that

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women have been forced to choose silence in order to ensure their survival. This silence is not limited to cases of atrocities on women by outsiders, but includes many instances of violence within the family. Women silently bear maltreatment because they feel they would be betraying their families if they talked to friends or neighbours about their maltreatment at the hands of a husband or a father. Shakuntala Arora, a college lecturer recently burnt to death, always pretended that she had hurt herself accidentally, when her colleagues expressed ooncem at the bruises caused by her husband's brutal battering of her. Similarly, women who protest against harassment on the streets or in buses and trains are routinely hushed by other people, and made to feel that their own dignity would be best protected by pretending to ignore the harassment. To put up with indignity and act as if nothing whatever has happened has been socially defined as the most dignified course for a woman to adopt. A man who puts up with indignity would be oonsidered a coward, but a woman who puts up with it is oonsidered a 'true woman'. This silencing of women beginning in the family has been powerfully institutionalised in our society. In most parts of rural India, women are not only disallowed from becoming members of the panchayat,.~ut are also prevented from opening their mouths in public meetings. A sodal worker in Rajasthan reported an incident which is a good example of how, without any legal bans, women's opinions are censored out of existence. She said that no woman is ever allowed to attend a panduzyllt meeting. She described how two men took their dispute before the panduzyllt; in the course of deliberations one of them was about to agree to a settlement whereby his family would have had to pay Rs 700. His wife, who was watching from a distance, intervened to say that he should not agree to this, as it would mean the family having to incur a heavy debt. The pancluzy ! members were so outraged at this violation of 'decency' that they promptly fined the man Rs 51 and threatened to impose a heavier penalty if his wife dared to open her mouth again in the presence of men at a 7"'ncluzyat meeting. Many other political workers in rural areas report similar exclusion of women from panchayllt meetings. Sometimes, when a woman is involved in a dispute, she alone may be asked to be present, and thus may be too intimidated to speak. ·The point when the censorship imposed by the family becomes the woman's internal self-censorship is the point of her final silencing. Under such conditions, it is not too far-fetched to say that freedom of speech and expression as defined by our Constitution or interpreted by political parties becomes irrelevant for a large majority of women. Unless the censorship imposed on women by their family, community and society at large, and internalised by women in all areas of life, is made a political Digitized by

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issue, women's voices are not likely .to be heard in sodal and political life.

What is the Solution? . The first prerequisite for all those involved in the struggle for women's rights is to acknowledge and reaJ,se that the chains for woi;nen's bondage are first forged in the family. This bondage is not just a moral issue. It is_one which adversely affects their very survival. The promising feature of. the situation is that struggles are beginning to emerge all ov~r the country in which women are demanding independent rights. However, we do not yet have an effective programme and strategy of action which would add strength to, and build connections between these sporadic struggles. A roherent programme of action is likely to emerge out of more widespread debate and discussion among all those who are struggling for change, especially in rural areas. However, we can tentatively identify· a few of the key issues which will help make the crucial breakthrough, where women will be able to work at breaking the weaker links in their chains, where small victories will give further impetus to a widening and deepening effort for more substantial change. 1. ~e need to ensure and strengthen women's access to independent and adequate sources of income. . a) 1'he need to fight for women's greater access to paid employment and jobs. _ b) The need to fight for guaranteed employment for the poor, · particularly women, and demand that government provide for the subsistence needs of those for whom no work can be provided, for example, the aged and the disabled. c) The need to make the issue of women's control over income-· generating property one of the foremost issues of our struggle. Progressive political forces should try to make women's land rights a priority issue and an integral part of their struggles for land redistribution«--whether they ai:e active .in rural areas and fighting for land for' ~ltivation, or the struggle is taking place in urban areas where the demand centres around housing sites that will belong to the poor. Once women do not have to depend for their survival on the whims of male heads of the family, they will be better able to resist maltreatment. 2. We need not only to build the social opinion that housework and childcare should be equitably shared by men and women but, even more importantly, we need to identify those aspects of housework which contribute most to producing a life of unending drudgery for women. Easy access to clean drinking water and sufficient inexpensive fuel are

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JUSt two examples of how giving priority in our struggles to fighting for these basic needs will allow poor women more time and energy to involve themselves in social a>ncerns and political action. 3. Since an important factor in preventing women from acquiring gn:ater mobility and venturing into outside employment ls the fear of sexual violence and consequent loss of social status, activists muld attempt to form women's a>mmittees in workplaces, in the dty, in every village, and in mohalllls, which can take up cases of harassment and build social opinion, not only against those who perpetrate such violence, but also in support of the woman victim. Also to fight the dominant prejudice of seeing the woman victim as the person 'dishonoured' which pervades both the family and our society. · 4. Simultaneously, we need to help women enhance their political rights and participation in the community, so that they are able to hold on to their eoonomic rights. Without women organising themselves as women at the village and moluzlll, level, and exercising an effective say at the local decision-making level, their rights to land and propel ty will rm,ain mere paper rights, and they themselves are likely to become vehicles for bauimi dealings. Therefore, the demand for wou,en's partidpation at all dedslonmaking levels needs to be pursued vigorously and systematically. This is true especially when people are organising for their rights. Within theae struggles we need to give priority to struggles against the tyranny, maltreatment and physical violence that women are subjected to within the family. The attempt to enable a vast majority of men and women to relate to each other in a just, muti,ally respectful and humane way in their most primary relationships needs to be made lntegial to our struggle for a ~t and humane sodety. ·

Mimuti, No. 14, 1983

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5. CASTE, CLASS AND POLICE VIOLENCE Caste-Hindus Attack Dalits in Maharashtra VIBHUTI P A'IEL

The Maharashtra Vidhan Sabha took a unanimous decision to rename Marathwada University as 'Babasaheb Ambedkar University'. The caste-Hindus of the town rioted in protest agcµnst this decision. Privileged caste-Hindus in rural areas also took this opportunity to terrify the Dalits and Mahars. · The attack was mainly directed against the Mahar community among whom class-consciousness and awareness of their rights has been spreading. The caste-Hindus wanted to teach the community a lesson, and crush their awakening spirit of revolt. As the caste-riots in Maharashtra were reaching boiling point, some women from Bombay went there to collect information about the prevailing conditions, especially about the atrocities being perpetrated on women. These five women, of whom I was one, visited the tensiongripped Nanded district. The press had not considered it necessary to tell the public of even a fragment of the picture that confronted us there. Besides, we had to waste two days in futile argument with the police and the collector before we were able to reach the riot-tor1, villages. Here is the nightmare reality of the villages of Nanded district. In Sonkhed, Insented to the marriage. The engagement was perforated in great style. Her parents lavished money, gifts, none of which they could afford. Her fianc:e now said: ''We are going to get married so why can't I sleep with you now?'' She didn't give in but held on tf? her little bit of tradition-she couldn't do thllt. But after three months she gave in: '1 sacrificed a belief for him and you know, two weeks before the set date of marriage he told me it was all off.'' And the reason was honifying-it was that she wasn't really pure. All the pressing and maxing was nothing but a 'test' he said-one which she had failed. I felt a murderous rage swell within me and noticed an inane thing-my stop had passed. She learnt that his parents had found someone else for him-someone who could 'give more'. For two years she lived, trying to reconcile herself. Her mother went around with a 'See, you should have listened to us' look on her fac:e and her brothet mocked at her. She had the job and that was all. No friends, no one tc talk to. Her parents kept urging her to marry, they found someone for .her and she got married. Her husband seemed to be a nice, understanding person and after four months she thought she.ought to tell him so that she wouldn't feel she was cheating him. So she did. She was met with stony silence. And after that, every day he taunted her, flung humiliating words at her, made Digitized by

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references to her private parts as though she were dirt. He would make brutal love to her and keep asking: ''Is this what he did? Or is it this?'' And then begin tormenting her all over again. '1t's good I have _a jobbut when I reach back home, he teases me about the men in the bus, the men in my office . . .'' She endured_this inan for some time and then decided to take her own life because, she said, she would not suffer a complete ''spiritt,al death'' at the hands of a S(.'Oundrel. ''He killed a lot-the first man, but my husband killed more. But I had enough spirit and strength left to decide to leave. But it is verv hard. to make decisions ...'' I've always rursed this bus for the unnecessarily long route it takes, but here I was, feeling so thankful for it. I talked to her, tried to analyse her experiences and show her that the was not at fault in any way, that she had shown great strength of spirit and character. I focused on h~lf as a woman. I also asked where she.was going. We were a)mQSt at ~ bus terminal by now. I could see that she was now in two minds about her decision. I got off ~ith her and said I wouldn't leave her till I felt I should. We sat on the pavement and talked some more. I talked about all kinds of things, especially about her body, sex taboos, and cam.e back to the point about her spirit. Finally I asked her, ''Now what are you going to do?'' ''I'm J\Ot going back home-not to my husband, not to my parents,'' she replied. I asked if she knew someone outside Delhi. She had a cousin sister in Gurgaon. I told her to go there for a while, reminded her that she was educated, a q11alified, experienced typist and that a job sl)ould be no real problem even if she left Delhi. And that she was much better off than a lot of other women were. I told her I wasn't deciding for her but was trying to suggest a new line of thought. I gave her my address and told her to get in touch whenever she felt like it. Then I put her on the bus to Gurgaon and went home. I didn't hear from her at all. But last week, in Connaught Place, someone tapped my shoulder and I turned to see her-looking vastly different, happier, healthier and very much alive! ''I lost your address. I am going to Luck.now for an interview,'' she said, I was really happy artd told her I was sure she'd get the job and she must keep in touch. I am telling you this because I feel the issue of women's health, bodies, sexuality, is very important, especially in a country like ours. You see, this woman, after all that humiliation, was beginning to believe that she was dirty and repulsive ...

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un·,mcs ro MANUSHI Our struggle is going to be long and hard ... We have to tell each other that we are not alone. G4rgt· Bal-"-=-hnan QAIU, , Delhi Mlfflushi, No. 8, 1981

No Dmmy On reading the editorial on boymtt of dowry marriages, I was moved to share with you my own story. I am the eldest in a family of three sisters and a brother. I evolved a different, a romanticist perspective on maniage, which definitely did not coincide with the ideas of my parents and grandparents. It was a period of great ronflict and emotional dilemma. My mother was, on the one hand, propagating an early marriage to just anyone who was eligible, and on the other, was instilling in me the fear that if I was too choosy I would miss the boat But gradually as the years passed I ~ out of my Denise Robins type of 'they loved, they married, they lived happily ever after' romanticism •.. I knew what I wanted-marriage to a man who would marry me for what I was, not for what I could bring as dowry. Also, I decided that I would spend my own savings (Rs SOO) on the marriage and the man should spend exactly the same amount. Just this and nothing more. I did not even want new clothes for the occasion. I was going to take the same old dothes. Of rourse my family was sure I would not meet anyone to fit the peg and they gave me up as a bad joke. This was way back in the early seventies when I had not been exposed to any ideology but I had a personal abhorrence to being bought or sold as a mmmodity. I did ultimately meet an old college friend who had exactly the same views on marriage.... Shashi Sail, Chhattisgarh ' Mllnushi, No. 7, 1981

No More Silas The ideals, ethics and morality heaped on women since time immemorial

are suffocating and killing. The adjectives used to praise us have become oppresmve. Calling us loving, they have locked us in the closed room of culture, calling us gentle, they have reflected us in a mirror of helplessness, calling us kind, they have tied us in mwardice, they have handcuffed us with modesty and chained our feet with loyalty, so that far from running, we have not been able even to walk ... Now we must refuse to be Sitas. By hemming a Sita and submitting to the fire ordeal, woman loses her identity. This fire ordeal is imposed on women today in every city, every home. Our exclusion from the scriptures, from temples, from S1,uitis, is also our sbength. We can be

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fearless since we have no models ... Today we are not Sitas but Saritas, flowing, free, able to aoss rocks, capable of generating electricity. Or rather, instead of getting caught in this net of words, why not simply say that we are Manushis, singers of liberation, vehicles of liberation, Manushis . . · Saroj Vasaria, Varanasi · (lnmsl4ted frcnn Hindi) MJmushi, No. 15, 1983 •

Huw I Escaped I an·, the first woman in .Karrliltaka to have filed a dowry case against my husband. My lawyer is of the opinion that the case will not stand, because according to the law the giver of dowry is also punishable. I wish the dowry law muld be amended in a manner calculated·to help more victims like me come out without fear of themselves being punished. . . . I was married in 1979. As I am an only daughter, my father spent more than he could afford, and the ·w edding took place in a grand style. My husband was a government employee. Though I did not continue my undergraduate studies, I was expet t ln embroidery, painting, knitting. My husband used to say that he was lucky to have me as his wife. For the first month I was well looked after. His was a joint family consisting of his mother, two younger unmarried brothers, and two unmarried sisters.. Three married sisters also frequently visited the house. Then started the trouble. My mother-in-law and husband asked me to get a scooter, a diamQnd ring and electric gadgets from my father. · I was thunderstruck. I knew how hard it had been for my father to raise the money for my wedding. My brothers are still studying and my father has no income except his meagre pension. So I kept quiet and did not ~11 my parents anything about the demands for dowry.·I suca!eded in making them believe that I was happy in my husband's home. I had to get up at four ·in the morning and do all the housework without taking any rest. It was always after midnight by the time I lay down as my husband never returned before that time. I felt ill as I was not at all accustomed to such treatment, but no medication was given to me. I was not allowed to w:rite to my parents and their letters were never delivered to me. I grew emaciated. Whenever any of my relatives came on a visit, I was humiliated before them beyond desaiption. My husband daily beat and tortured me till blood flowed from.my nose and mouth. He happened to see my diary in which I had written my woes. For this offence, I was fori>idden entrance to my husband's room and was often made to sleep in the open verandah on the floor.

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All the membe,s of the family would insult and ill-beat me openly. When I tried to protest, my husband asked me to commit suicide if I could not bear it. In a blind rage I went and poured kerosene on myself but at the last moment I threw away the matchstick and resolved never to try it again. My husband used frequently to tell me to go and drown myself in the tank. He used to boast of his illicit relations with other women. I came to know that he was suspended Eron, his job because of his bad behaviour with won,en in the offim. I resolved to get out of his house whenever I got a chanm. I had no way of informing my parents of my sufferings since I was virtually a prisoner in my husband's house. After everyone had eaten, I would be given a measured quantity of food and was never allowed a second helping. My husband never spent even 10 paise on me. My mstly saris were tom and made into bedsheets and curtains. I was not allowed to listen to the radio or to read the newspaper. At last I managed to send word to my parents. They came and begged my in-laws to send me with them for a few days. My mother-in-law refused point-blank and asked my father to transfer the small site he had to my husband's name. That night I was inhumanly treated for having asked my parents to come. The next day, I managed to give my parents a chit in which I asked them to save me. My father lo9k police help and took me away from that hell of a ho11se, My shameless husband told me that if I wanted to stay there, I would have to stay as everyone's slave but not as his wife. I left without taking any of my jewellery, clothes, furniture. Now I am studying and looking for employment. My husband filed a case of desertion agaiast me. I filed a case against him under the Anti-Dowry Ad. The cases are going on. Name withheld, Kamataka Mauslri, No. 13, 1983

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7. ABOUT MANUSHI An Introduction Mtmushi• is a Delhi based women's organisation founded in 1978. The first task undertaken by this organisation was to put together a journal in Hindi and English called Manushi.: a journal about women and society. The producing of this journal has been one of the most consistent and visible activities of organisation.

Manushi hopes to provide a platform for women - to speak out - to help raise questions in their own minds about the oppression we suffer individually and in society at large - to generate a widespreael debate about ways of bringing about change -and to move towards a rommon understanding for a rommon struggle. ManflShi also tries to -bring women's organisations and human rights activists in touch with each other - reach women everywhere who want to break out of their passivity and isolation - enquire into and reevaluate the historical experience of women - counter the systematic distortion of the life situation and image of women and trivialisation of women's issues, carried on by the mass media - help build a widespread information-gathering system to collect data about the life situation of women in different parts of the country - and build conm!te linkages between the emerging women's rights movements with overall human rights struggles. ,.The word 'MtmUSlri' nans 'woman', with an emphasis on the human identity of woman. It is a coinage by us, from the Sanskrit word 'manush' which means 'human being' as distinct from 'purush' which means 'man'. The emphasis is on humanity, not manhood, because we feel manhood has mainly been expressed through violence, warfare, aggression and domination. 1Manushiy11 1 as an adjective means 'humane'. It ls also dose to the word 1 fflll1U1S 1 which means 'mind' or intellect. Monoshi in Bengali means 'dear to the heart' or 'beloved'.

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However, a lot of other activities have evolved out of and/or grown around the magazine. 1. In addition to putting together the material that comes to us from different parts of the country, Mllnushi undertakes its own investigations and research into various issues of importance. We hope that this effort will grow into a full fledged research group, going beyond purely journalistic investigations. • 2. We provide free legal advice to women in Delhi and elsewhere and take up public interest litigation cases which affect groups of women and aim at changing law and its interpretation. 3. In the early years, we provided shelter and support to women in distress, even though we had no institutional framework for organising such suppm t. Now we advise such women and refer them to appropriate institutions. 4. We keep in close and active contact with a whole range of activists and individuals and help them in their organisational work as and when they ask for such support. 5. Manushi representatives are often in·lited to initiate discussion and dialogue on various issues in different parts of the country. 6. We have f!xperimented with street theatre and composed songs, and hope to be able to work through other media such as video and film. 7. We have organised protest demonstrations around specific issues and participated jointly with human rights groups. 8. We are starting to publish books and booklets from ManushiPrabslum, and intend to expand this area of work. . 9. We are actively involved with civil liberties and minority rights issues, and see our work as part of an overall human rights movement in India.

Origin of Manushi Mllnushi's birth coincided with a new phase of activity and debate around women's issues after a lull of about three decades following national independence. It also coincided with an important new phase in the political life of the country following the Emergency. One of the key issues on. the political agenda became civil liberties, democratic rights and frt!edom of the ·press. The general clampdown on civil liberties and the severe censorship imposed on the press during the Emergency seem to have sensitised most sections of the press not only to be more vigilant to protect their own freedom but also to be relatively more aware of the struggles of other groups for their basic human rights, especially when _they face brutal repression. Although even now such news covers only a very small proportion of the total newspaper space, the shaking off

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by the press of some of its slavish, progovemment, pro-status quo stance marked a significant change. This period also saw the birth of many new magazines and }oumals, a number of them representing the nonmmmercial, alternative media, by big and small political groups. Manushi was among the earliest of such magazines to appear after the Emagency. and the only one to choose issues mnceming women as its primary focus.

Why Manushi? Until the Emergency, the commercial media, taking their cue from government's aattitudes, tended either completely to ignore rural struggles or to treat them as 'law and order problems', and were especially careful to underplay instances where rural women organised to challenge the power of the rural elite. We, therefore, felt the need to create women's own forms of communication to mllect and disseminate this information systematically, to begin to understand and identify the issues around which women in different parts of the country were beginning to struggle, and to try to find out how we muld help strengthen and spread such struggles. Another task we hoped to undertake through Manushi, and one which has become inaeasingly impm lailt for us over the years, was to stimulate and as.,ist in information gathering about women's situation in different parts of the country.

How We Put it Together From the beginning, we took ce1 lain strict decisions regarding our finances: -We would not accept grants from any institution, Indian or foreign. - Mtmushi would raise its own funds through subscriptions and small donations from individuals and not depend on rich donors. -We would not accept accept any advertisements which depicted women in oppressive or stereotyped roles. This decision ruled out most available advertisements except the rare ones from publishing houses. This meant making the magazine totally self supporting through a regular and stable flow of subscriptions. We saw oollecting subscriptions and persuading individuals to give donations as an important political task because in the process we were simultaneously linking many of them to Manushi's future and to the wider human rights movement of which it is a part. This seemed the best way not only of ensuring readers' sense of active participation in Mllnushi's development, but also of ensuring its autonomy and its commitment to the movement rather than to any set of donors or institution. This has been one important factor in keeping Manushi alive till now. Digitized by

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Paradoxiallly, our financial situation improved and the issues began to appear much more regularly once we stopped chasing adve1 tisements and concentrated more of our energy on the magazine work. The deficit resulting from copies sold at subsidised rates is covered partly by small donations, and partly by foreign subscriptions which have been deliberately priced above the mst price.

Who Re.ds Manushi? For a small magazine, Mllnushi reaches an incredibly wide spectrum of ralders. Apart from a whole range of conce,,,ed women of every age, bac:xground and cJass, Mtmushi is also read by social and political activists working among the rural and urban poor, students, teachers, professionals, overseas Indians, and people from other muntries interested in women's issues and struggles in South Asia. Considering that an overwhelming majority of the women whose lives Mlmushi tries to focus on are illiterate, what impact can it have? We have been acutely ~ware of this limitation from the beginning. One of the ways we have tried to partially overcome this is by making a systematic effort to reach people working with rural and urban poor women, who are either making efforts to organise them politically or acting as social or political workers. Many u~ the Hindi publications as reading material in literacy classes; some read articles from Manushi aloud to illiterate women, while many others who muld not use it directly because of language barriers have tried to incorporate some of Manushi' s ideas into their work. In this way, very slowl}•, the ideas and information in Mllnushi are beginning to have a wider impact. From the outset, despite our limited resources, we brought out both an English and a Hindi edition of Mllnushi. English is used primarily by a small section of urban educated people. Unfortunately, it is the only language with an all-India reach. For over eight years, we brought out Mllnushi in English and Hindi. However, we found that except for some poetry, letters to the editor, and brief reports of atrocities and protests, hardly any publishable material came in Hindi. The Hindi magazine ended up being a translated version of the English magazine. The readership remained small for this type of magazine; interest never picked up sufficiently despite years of very high subsidies for this publication from the resources generated by the English issue. As an experiment, we have now suspended·publication of the Hindi magazine. Instead, we are bringing out, through Manushi Pralaishan, a series of Hindi language coll~ons, pamphl~ts, and creative writing that we feel will reach a larger readership than the magazine was able to reach. We hope that redirecting our efforts from the Hindi version of the English ManflShi towards producing a more relevant and useful series

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of publications in Hindi will help lay the groundwork for the eventual reappearance of a Hindi Manushi that will be more seU-susta.ining.

Support and Distribution Network Throughout the years we have maintained active contact with many Manushi readers and supporters. Distribution is largely looked after by its readers-individuals, women's groups, women and men activists working in a range of social and political organisations. So far, less than 10 per cent of the total number of copies printed are sold through commercial distribution channels. Since we could never afford the large sums of money needed for publicity campaigns, many Manushi readers have done this job in their own areas, using their own initiative and resources. As soon as the first issue appeared, some of the women journalists in national n!!wspapers wrote review articles on their own initiative. Several regional language papers have written about Manushi, after chancing upon a , copy somewhere, and Manushi articles are frequently translated by readers into different languages and published in regional papers. Individual readers and several political groups have also helped publicise M1inushi in their areas by putting up posters, distributing leaflets, organi_sing Milnushi stalls at public places,:fairs and conferences:, and enrolling subscribers. This is how Manushi reached areas where we had no direct contacts. · Many of our readers not only share their Manushi copies with their friends, but some ever ask for extra copies-five, ten,- twenty, fifty or a hundred-which they then sell or use to enrol new subsaibers. Sometimes, this has led to the emergence of a new women's group because, while persuading others to buy Manushi, these women hav~ been able to start discussion on women's issues in their own areas or workplaces. A number of progressive political groups working in urban and rural areas, often mostly men at first, also began to help with Mlfflushi distribu.tion. In the process, some of the organisations started a women's group as an important component of their political activity. Several groups use Manushi as reading and discussion material with women who are being initiated into political work, and some use the Hindi publications for literacy classes among semiliterate women. Many individual women who had been completely outside the efforts of women's and other political groups have begun to be actively involved after reading Milnushi and asking us to put them in touch with other interested women or political groups in their areas. We are often invited to meet Milnushi friends who organise support meetings for us. We have travelled to many places where emerging groups or individuals have organised conferences or camps. Mimushi also ; igitized by

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