Slaving for their dowry

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, May 29, 2011

THE OTHER HALF

KALPANA SHARMA

How the global garment industry is using regressive customs in Tamil Nadu, enabling it to exploit young women workers…

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Behind the smiling exterior of a fast-growing economy lie the tears and tragedies of women like these workers.

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Photo: K. PICHUMANI

No respite: Killing working schedules...

Girls. Dowry. The two go together. No matter what you do to separate them, they somehow get conjoined, like twins that have remained connected in one body. We are told this is one of the main reasons parents don't want girls. So avoid girls.

But girls cannot, and should not, be avoided. So the government makes laws, NGOs campaign for the ‘girl child', there are special schemes and incentives for families to ensure that their daughters survive and prosper. It would be politically incorrect to do the contrary, to encourage killing girls, or to encourage dowry. At least, that is what you would conclude.

Yet, even today, dowry is being used as a bait to tempt poor families to surrender their daughters in the belief that they will return with a dowry. Extraordinary as this might sound, this is precisely what has been happening in the readymade garment industry in Tamil Nadu for over a decade.

Global chain

The readymade garment industry is global. Millions of people, the large majority women, work at different ends of the chain – from spinning the yarn, to weaving the cloth, to cutting the cloth, to sewing the garment, to finishing the garment. After this, the global end of the business kicks in as the garments are priced and sold to well-known brands across the world and supplied to retail outlets. But the price a consumer pays at one end of the chain has no relation to the amount the woman at the other end is paid.

In India, one of the major countries supplying readymade garments to the global market, some of the women at the end of the chain are girls as young as 14. And the bait held out to lure these girls, many of them from desperately poor families, is the promise of a lump sum at the end of three years that could go towards their dowries. Thus a global industry is directly reinforcing and exploiting regressive customs to get its workforce.

What is worse is that this workforce, lured in this manner, is virtually bonded. A disturbing report on the Sumangali Scheme, introduced 10 years ago by garment manufacturers in Tamil Nadu, brings this out. ‘Captured by Cotton' is a 38-page report by two Dutch organisations — SOMO (Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations) and ICN (India Committee of the Netherlands). They looked at four “vertically integrated” companies in Tamil Nadu that are part of an integrated chain that eventually supplies well-known brands retailing in the West. The reason for the investigation is because many of these brands subscribe to the idea of “sustainable chain management” that would require abiding by international labour standards. The Sumangali Scheme clearly does not conform and is, according to this report, “synonymous with unacceptable employment and labour conditions, even with bonded labour.”

What is this scheme? Recruiters are sent to the most impoverished villages in Tamil Nadu to approach families with daughters between the ages of 14 and 21. The families are told that their daughters will be well looked after for three years, will live in a hostel where they will get three meals a day and time for leisure activities. At the end of the three years, in addition to their wages, they will be given a lump sum ranging from Rs. 30,000 to Rs. 50,000. There are 120,000 girls working under this scheme in Tamil Nadu.

The proposition is extremely tempting for these poor families, of whom more than half are dalits. If indeed what is promised is delivered, one could argue that there is nothing wrong with the scheme. But the problems lies in the fine print, something poor families are unable to decipher when they sign on.

Thus, according to the report, girls working under the scheme have reported that they are made to work 12-hour-shifts, with only a five minute tea break and half hour lunch break; that when there is an urgent delivery to be made, they can be asked to work double shifts and they do not have the option to refuse; that they are not allowed to keep cell phones and can only make one phone call a month from a landline close to the supervisor's office, and that they have no place to go if they have a problem.

Inhuman conditions

At work, the girls have to stand for hours. Said one of the girls: “Workers had to get permission from the supervisor for everything, even for going to the toilet. We had a male supervisor. The supervisor was constantly scolding; he used a lot of abusive words. I didn't like his behaviour. He even hit on our heads.”

Some of these girls are either physically sick, or so tired, that they give up half way. This means the lump sum they were promised is forfeit. It is only paid if they work the entire three years.

In any case, what seems like a generous bonus is actually less than what they would have earned had they been paid the official minimum wage rate. In Tamil Nadu, the minimum wage is Rs. 171 per day. But employers have found a way around this by designating these girls as apprentices and thus paying them lower wages. Beginning with just Rs. 60 a day, the girls get paid Rs. 110 a day at the end of the three years. While the apprenticeship scheme is limited to one year in other states, in Tamil Nadu it is legal for three years.

The report contains several heart-rending accounts by girls who worked in different factories. One girl recounted how she did get the promised lump sum at the end of the three years. But by then she was so ill that she had to undergo an operation to remove the cotton balls accumulated in her stomach as a result of breathing in cotton fibres through the day every day. “During my stay at the factory, my parents arranged a marriage partner for me. I was engaged for a while but the marriage was cancelled because I couldn't pay the dowry because all the money was spent on medical expenses. I will never be able to marry because I don't have any money and I still feel sick”, she told the investigators.

Even the provision of three years work is manipulated to squeeze out the maximum number of days from the girls. The three years are broken up into 36 services, each consisting of 26 working days a month. If a girl misses even one day in a month, she has to do an additional 26 days to make up. Thus the number of days needed before you can get your money keeps increasing.

Reports like this get precious little play in our media. Yet, behind the smiling exterior of a fast-growing economy lie the tears and tragedies of women like these young garments workers.

Fortunately, this report has resulted in dialogue between the groups representing the interests of the workers and the employers. So we might well see a happier ending to this story. But this is only one story, brought to light because someone cared to look closer. There are so many more that remain hidden.

(To read the original, click on the link above)Slaving for their dowry

Selling bodies or selling sports?

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, May 15, 2011

THE OTHER HALF

Sportswomen have not only to get past traditional prejudices but also have to overcome commercial pressures to make themselves more attractive and marketable…

Photo: R. Ragu 

GIVE THEM THE CHOICE OF DRESS: Jwala Gutta (left) and Ashwini Ponappa in action.

When a 15-year-old girl from Nizamabad in Andhra Pradesh comes back with a gold medal for, of all sports, boxing, there must be reason to celebrate. In a week dominated with grim news from around the world, the success of young Nikhat Zareen in the Junior World Championships in Antalya, Turkey in the 50 kg category of boxing was like a welcome ray of sunshine.

Nikhat's story, like that of the other three women boxers from India who also won gold, is remarkable for a number of reasons. All of them — besides Nikhat there is Sarjubala Devi from Manipur, Lalenkawli from Mizoram and Minu Basmataray from Assam — have chosen to excel in a sport that is considered “unwomanly”. All of them come from modest backgrounds without the monetary backing to pursue an individual sport of any kind, leave alone boxing. Lalenkawli's parents, for instance, are farmers and she had to travel 300 km to the only training centre in Mizoram's capital, Aizawl. The others also have similar stories.

Relatively lucky

Nikhat is lucky in that her father, Jameel, is a former state-level football player and understands the pull of sports. Neither he, nor his wife Parveen, stood in Nikhat's way when, at the age of 12, she announced that she wanted to box. Her role models were two male cousins who were boxers. She was the only girl who wanted to pursue boxing. Luckily, her uncle, who was training his sons agreed to teach Nikhat. So Nikhat learned to box with the boys. On June 14 she turns 15. In the span of three short years, she has already made a name for herself.

“As a Muslim girl, it was a tough choice to make as everyone questioned what I was doing in the boxing ring,” Nikhat told a journalist. “There were almost no female boxers where I trained in Hyderabad, and I was often alienated.” But she got past this and now joins a remarkable group of Indian women boxers led by the redoubtable Mary Kom from Manipur.

Multiple obstacles

Nikhat's success throws light once again on the vexed issue of women and sports in India. It continues to be an arena of considerable neglect. Sportswomen in this country face an incredibly hard time getting past traditional prejudices about women playing sport. If they succeed, they enter a world dominated by games that men play. Women's sports receives little attention by the media or by the sports authorities compared to the money and time invested in the men. Things change if some women like Nikhat, or the women's hockey team, come back with medals from international fixtures. Fleetingly, they hog the media spotlight. But even before we get to know their names and faces, the focus turns back to the dominant sports. Between tournaments, the women go back to their jobs, usually in institutions like the Railways, and work away until the next big tournament.

Despite all this, it is remarkable that an increasing number of women are making a name for themselves in sports. Women like Saina Nehwal, who has become the face of women's badminton alongside the equally accomplished Jwala Gutta and Ashwini Ponappa. But Nikhat is more fortunate than these women in some ways. No one is telling her, yet, what she should wear when boxing. Women badminton players, on the hand, have been slapped with a “skirts only” rule by the men who head the Badminton World Federation (BWF). Why a compulsory dress code only for women players? The BWF, apparently, decided on this course following advice from the sports marketing giant, Octagon. They wanted to make the women's game more “attractive” and “marketable”.

In other words, the BWF wants women badminton players to look more attractive on court. This, they believe, will draw more eyeballs to the game. What about their skills as players? It would appear that does not matter as long as they catch the male gaze. It seems incredible that someone can seriously contemplate such a rule, and that too for these reasons.

Different reactions

Predictably, many women players have raised strong objections. As a result, the rule has been deferred by a month. Britain's leading mixed doubles player, Imogen Bankier has said, “I will fight to make sure this dated and simply sexist rule does not happen.” Several players from different countries have said that skirts will come in the way when they play and they prefer shorts. The Indian girls have not been so forthright. While Saina has said it was not an issue, Jwala has emphasised that they should be given the choice whether to wear skirts or not.

But what is really troubling about the decision is the blatant effort to use women's bodies to sell the game. And for this, the cue has been taken from women's tennis, where glamour has played a big role in drawing an audience. But there is a big difference. The Women's Tennis Association (WTA) is managed independently and women players have a say in its decisions. Thus, what women wear is decided by women players and not imposed by a male club. If women tennis players choose to be seen as fashion statements, it is their choice. But it has not diminished the power of their game. Maria Sharapova might look like a model but no one can question her skill as a player. Ditto Venus Williams. While those like Anna Kournikova, who drew attention only for their looks, have fallen by the wayside because their game was not up to the mark. People come to watch good tennis, not to gawk at women players who are fashion statements.

It is tragic that at a time when more opportunities are opening up for women, they are told they must “sell” themselves, make themselves “marketable” if they want to get financial backing for their chosen sport. Men too face the pressure of finding sponsors. But they are not asked to dress in a way that shows off their well-toned bodies and attracts female fans. While it is true that there are both men and women who go to watch football, cricket or tennis matches because they find the players good-looking, surely they will not persist unless they also enjoy the game.

As the lines between commerce, entertainment and sports disappear, young women wanting to make a career in sports face tough choices. If they don't have money, they can't train the way they need to succeed. But if they concentrate on looking presentable and finding endorsements, they are likely to be dismissed as being non-serious and in it only for the glamour. The bottom-line, however, is that those who manage a sport must respect sportswomen and give them the freedom to choose how much they bend to these commercial demands. It is unacceptable that a group of men decide how they should dress on court for no other reason than to make them “marketable”.

(To read the original, click on the link above)

Osama is dead, long live print!

What we heard were the predictable voices, the concerted attempt to fix Pakistan’s complicity and the self-righteous tone of ‘security experts’ from India.  Indian news television still has some way to travel when dramatic developments such as Osama’s killing take place, says KALPANA SHARMA

Posted Wednesday, May 04 17:14:57, 2011

SECOND TAKE KALPANA SHARMA The last word on the Osama bin Laden killing has not been spoken or written yet.  Questions are flying all over the world; there is a deliberate opaqueness in the selective information released by the United States that is fueling speculation and scepticism. In such a situation what is the role of the media? Should it try and glean as much information as it can and put it out in the public realm before it launches into airing opinions? Indian news channels, given their past record, routinely fail to provide essential information on a development before they start bombarding viewers with opinion. The hours after President Obama announced the success of his country’s operation to kill Osama bin Laden were not very different. It is true that little information was available barring what the President had announced. It is true that Indian channels do not have reporters in Pakistan and had to depend on feeds from Pakistani channels to get the first images and information. But surely, in this day of the Internet, it would have been possible for news desks in this country to put out cogent information about the site of the attack, Abbotabad, and piece together background that would help viewers make better sense of the story. But if you watched only television, you were left with dozens of questions unanswered. So when May 3 dawned, it was a relief to turn to the print media to fill in the gaps in information. Of course, in the middle of all the grim business, we got a bit of entertainment. For some channels, it was not Osama who had been killed but Obama! NDTV India was the first off the mark killing off the American President and through the evening, talking heads on other channels kept slipping up on the two names, making them virtually interchangeable. The prize for doing this repeatedly should probably go to the irrepressible Arnab Goswami of Times Now who repeated his trademark command performance by inviting Pakistanis to the channel and not allowing them to speak. But coming back to backgrounding ‘breaking stories’, most news channels fall short even though some make more of an effort than others. Here print scores and for those readers/viewers who want to go beyond the favourite talking heads on TV, the next day’s newspapers do fill in some of the gaps – which include simple facts such as who are ‘US Navy Seals’ (forces trained to operate on sea, air and land). Thanks to Arshad Yusufzai, a freelance journalist based in Peshawar, we know from his story reproduced in Indian Express that Abbotabad is in the Hazara province of the former North West Frontier Province, now called Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. That the majority of the population in the district is Hazara and not the Pakhtuns with kin across the border in Afghanistan. That Hazara province has not seen the violent terror attacks experienced elsewhere in Pakistan, particularly in Punjab. That the elite Pakistan Military Academy that everyone kept referring to on TV channels as being a “stone’s throw away” from the hideout where Osama was killed is actually on the outskirts of Abbotabad in a place called Kakul. And that the locals referred to the strange mansion where Osama hid out as the “Waziristan Haveli”. You could argue that all of this is trivia that print media is forced to report because television now hogs all the breaking news. I suggest this is value addition. It gives a perspective. It erases the black and white nature of stories and introduces tones and shades of grey. It nuances events so that our understanding of what happens is backed by history and geography and not just high drama. A good illustration of the best you can find in print on a day when television goes berserk with the breaking news is the lead from a story filed by veteran Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk, who has interviewed Osama bin Laden more than once, in The Independent, London (May 3): “A middle-aged non-entity, a political failure outstripped by history – by the millions of Arabs demanding freedom and democracy in the Middle East – died in Pakistan yesterday. And then the world went mad.” In a couple of sentences, Fisk has placed the incident within the larger perspective of the Middle East, something hours of viewing television news in this country fails to provide. That perhaps is the magic of the printed word; it allows you to read again and to think. The English language newspapers in India were on the whole full of information, based on reprints from foreign papers, and surprisingly restrained compared to the high-pitched debates on television the night before. So restrained in fact that Business Standard had the clearance of the Posco plant in Orissa as its first lead and a photograph of people gathered outside the White House as the second. In the caption to the photo Osama’s name was mentioned but nowhere in the headline. In contrast, all the other non-business papers and the business papers carried the news as the first lead. The prize for the most original headline should probably go toDNA: Obama bins Laden. Speaking of headlines, the American Press was a story of contrasts. The Poynter Institute, has put together the front pages of a number of American newspapers that graphically illustrate how a headline reflects the stance of a newspaper. Headlines ranging from “We got the bastard” (Philadelphia Daily News) to “Burn in Hell!” (Edmonton Sun) to “Rot in Hell” (New York Daily News) to “Got him! Vengeance at last! US nails the bastard” (New York Post), reflect the mood in the US on the night of May 2. But these are mostly tabloids; broadsheet newspapers like New York Times and others followed their traditional, low-key style even when there was such a big story. Not for them the screaming eight column headers. Indian news television still has some way to travel when dramatic developments such as Osama’s killing take place. What we heard were the predictable voices, the concerted attempt to fix Pakistan’s complicity and the self-righteous tone of ‘security experts’ from India. What we needed at this time were some thoughtful voices from Pakistan about what these developments mean for a country that is beleaguered by the internal divisions in their society and a weak political system. Perhaps making such demands on our news channels is asking for too much. Fortunately, with a more restrained and informative print media, we do not face the danger of a convergence of the two media singing the same tune – of hysteria, of vengeance, of triumphalism.   (click on the link above to read the original)

Different and able

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, May 1, 2011

THE OTHER HALF

KALPANA SHARMA

To be a woman, and to be different or disabled is to carry a heavier baggage of discrimination and violence. Yet, there are inspiring role models…

Photo: Rajeev Bhatt 

The sky is not the limit:Deepa Malik, a paraplegic, has won national and international medals in swimming, shotput and javelin and participated in the formidable motor sport event, the Raid De Himalaya.

Two women, both widows, were beaten to death on April 18 in Ranila village, Rohtak district, Haryana. Their crime? They were suspected by Naresh Kumar, the nephew of one of the women, of having a lesbian relationship. 

According to newspaper reports, Naresh suspected the 34-year-old Suman of having an affair with his 35-year-old aunt, Shakuntala. So he dragged Suman out of her house, battered her with a stick until she fell dead and then went to his aunt's home and killed her as well.

What is it that fuels such terrible intolerance? Women are victims of violence, we know, but are women who make choices that are not the dominant ones even more vulnerable? Are women, who out of no choice of their own, disabled – physically or mentally – prone to a much greater degree of violence? And what about those who are born male but believe themselves to be female, the transgender? How do they survive in a society like ours that exhibits such high levels of intolerance for anyone who does not fit the dominant norm?

Gendered realities

These were some of the issues addressed at a recent meeting in Kathmandu, Nepal, organized by CREA ( www.creaworld.org) and intriguingly titled “Count Me In”. Women who do not fit dominant societal norms are counted out, eliminated from our consciousness, virtually rendered invisible. As a result, if they are victims of violence, no one cares or even acknowledges that this is also a reality in our gendered world.

One of the more fascinating areas that the conference explored was women and disability. Much is written and discussed about disability in general. Even the census now counts the disabled. But how are disabled women treated in a country where even able women have to struggle to be recognised as human beings with equal rights?

Anita Ghai is a striking looking woman in a wheel chair. She teaches psychology in a Delhi college. In a paper on ‘(Dis)ability and exclusion', Ms. Ghai touched on a central issue concerning disabled women that we rarely address: their sexuality. It is assumed that if a woman is confined to a wheel chair, or is impaired in other ways, she is de-sexed or asexual. Can she not have sexual feelings? Can she not be the victim of sexual violence?

Ms. Ghai recounted several stories that graphically portrayed the lives of disabled women. Meena, for instance, who was afflicted by polio as a child, describes how she hated going to school because everyone called her langri (cripple). When she wanted to go to the toilet, the teacher would refuse to let her go. By the time the teacher conceded, it was too late for Meena to make it from the classroom to the toilet because of her disability. Meena had to hear taunts from the other children and could not understand why the teacher did this.

Ms. Ghai recounts other, more horrific, stories. Of disabled girls being left with male relatives in the belief that they would be ‘safe'. Instead, the girls suffered sexual abuse but were unable to talk about it. She also writes about how while disabled men are able to get ‘normal' women as wives, disabled women have no such luck. If they get married at all, it is with tremendous difficulty that a match is arranged. One woman, for instance, decided that even if marriage was not possible, she wanted to adopt a child. But when she approached an adoption agency, she was told that she was ineligible.

The conference also brought together women who have overcome all kinds of disability and refuse to get cowed down. Amongst them were the arresting Jeeja Ghosh, Head, Advocacy and Disability Studies, Indian Institute of Cerebral Palsy, Kolkata. If you listen carefully, you can understand every word that Jeeja speaks. She does so with great difficulty, but also with great passion. Speaking on the issue of disability and sexuality, Jeeja pointed out that “Women with visible physical impairments, who fail to measure up to the society's standards of a perfect and beautiful body, are marked as ‘undesirable' depriving them of their feminine identity. Thus they are socialised in a culture of asexuality.” She argues that this results in ‘internalised oppression' where the disabled woman herself begins to believe this, resulting in a lowered self-esteem.

More vulnerable

Women with disabilities face greater violence not only than women in general but even compared to men with disability. Renu Addlakha of the Centre for Women's Development Studies, New Delhi, described the many types of violence that disabled women face within the family home. These include physical violence and verbal abuse from the caregivers, lack of respect and a tendency to be treated like children even when they are adults, deliberate neglect — such as not feeding them in time, or giving them medication, confinement or being kept out of view of visitors to the home, drugs added to their food to keep them quiet and if they are angry, or assert themselves, labelling them as mentally unstable.

Humbling experience

Meeting women like Jeeja, or the wonderful Kanchan Pamnani, a corporate lawyer who lost her sight gradually but has not lost her will or her determination to be independent and to fight for the rights of others like her, was humbling in more ways than one. Kanchan, for instance, has successfully fought for the sight impaired to have the right to open and operate bank accounts, something that was not permitted earlier. As a lawyer, she has looked at existing laws, those dealing with disability but also others — such as labour laws — to see if they address the issues of disability. For instance, she believes the Copyright Act needs to allow exemptions for the visually impaired who need to reprint texts in Braille, or convert them into audio books.

Being conscious of these issues forces us to accept that there are other dimensions to violence against women — mediated not just by caste, class or community but also by disability. Women who are different out of no choice of their own, as with the disabled, or because they have made a choice, as with lesbians, are also citizens of a democratic country, and therefore entitled to the rights and privileges accorded every other citizen. Our collective gaze towards them determines the extent to which we can be called a tolerant and civilised society.

(To read the original, click on the link above)

Where have all the girls gone?

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, April 17, 2011

THE OTHER HALF

KALPANA SHARMA

Does economic development only reinforce regressive values? How else can one explain the phenomenon of disappearing girls in modern India?

Photo: V. Sudershan 

Will laws alone help?

India's Cricket World Cup victory followed by Anna Hazare's indefinite fast on the Lokpal Bill virtually knocked out of the news arena some really bad news. Just days before all these media-grabbing events, the Census office released preliminary figures for 2011. The most shocking of them is that in the 0-6 year age group, the number of girls to every 1,000 boys is just 914, even lower than the 927 of the 2001 census.

How has this happened even as the adult sex ratio has gradually crept up from 933 women to 1000 men in 2001 to 940 women to 1000 men today? Why has this happened even as women's literacy rate has gone up and the gap between male and female literacy rates has shrunk? Why has this happened even when there are laws in place to ensure that sex-selection does not lead to the elimination of girls?

Perhaps a coincidence, but just a few days after the disturbing census results were made public, a group of activists met in Mumbai to mark 25 years since they launched a campaign against the use of medical technology for sex detection and selection. Their campaign had culminated in the first law against sex-selective abortions being passed by the Maharashtra government on January 1, 1987.

Misuse of technology

In those days, the popular method of sex detection was amniocentesis. It was an invasive procedure involving amniotic fluid being extracted from the womb for testing. The technology had been devised to detect foetal abnormality. Instead, in India it began to be used to detect the sex of the foetus. Women risked an abortion if the test confirmed a female foetus even if they got to know at a later stage of pregnancy.

In the absence of a law or any restraining regulation, those conducting these tests were openly advertising them. Advertisements like “Better 500 now than 50,000 later” were common, suggesting that Rs. 500 on a test to confirm the foetus today was better than spending many times more for a dowry later.

There are several aspects of how this first legislation came about that are pertinent in the context of the recently-concluded agitation by Anna Hazare and his supporters for a Jan Lokpal Bill to check corruption. The Maharashtra law banning sex selection came about through a push from below by the activists and a response from above. The activists tried to gather together as much evidence and data that they could about something that was just below the surface. It was virtually impossible to prove as neither the mother, nor the doctor, would admit that the test had been used for such a purpose. Ironically, they had stumbled upon this issue when a multinational company, concerned about the mounting medical claims from its women employees who had sought abortion, asked women activists to speak to them.

Through a variety of techniques, including sending in decoys to doctors suspected of conducting such tests, the activists assembled some proof. They were lucky to find at least one sympathetic senior bureaucrat, the Maharashtra Health Secretary. Without any dharnas or fasts and little media coverage – there were no private TV channels those days – the government and activists spoke to each other, argued over the provisions in the Bill and ensured that it was finally passed. That law was the precursor to the central law banning sex-determination tests passed in 1994 and amended in 2003 – the Pre-conception and Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex-selection) Act 2003.

Loopholes

Even after the 1994 Central Act was passed, the activists were not happy. They pointed out that not a single doctor had been convicted under the Act. Also the law made women who undertook the test culpable for the crime. Furthermore, sex pre-selection techniques did not come under the ambit of the Act. After advocacy and dialogue had failed to get the law amended, the activists turned to the courts and presented their case. It was at the intervention of the Supreme Court that the government was compelled to amend the law to make it more watertight.

But given the latest Census figures, it is evident that the law even today is not strong enough. So the question that must be asked is whether making it any stronger will make a difference if the mindset of families remains firmly set against girls. Can laws really deal with what is essentially a social problem in India?

The other question that needs to be raised and discussed is whether high economic growth and women's status in society are necessarily linked. As India becomes economically stronger, will the value and worth of its women also become higher? In 2001, this was disproved as the lowest sex ratios existed in districts that were the most prosperous.

Today, there is an additional and more worrying phenomenon. Like a virus, the declining child sex ratio is spreading to districts that till now had not been affected. More research will reveal why this has happened but could this be one of the negative fallouts of economic growth?

For, has increased prosperity actually resulted in easier access to technology that assists sex selection? Sonography, the technology currently most popular in sex selection, does not come free although it is far cheaper today than when first introduced. Portable sonography machines can be loaded in the back of a car and taken to even smaller towns or larger villages. But even this would not have made a difference had there been no demand for the technology. That a growing demand exists is evident from the census figures.

Getting more conservative?

Also, is the availability of more money actually having the opposite effect? Is it reinforcing regressive attitudes? Instead of bringing in more enlightened and liberal attitudes, is it making people more conservative, getting them to hold on to beliefs that should find no place in a modern India? How else can one explain the story of India's disappearing girls?

Apart from the law, a great deal of work has been done to create awareness about the value of the girl child. There have been campaigns; state governments offer incentives for girls' education, and even the media and the advertising fraternity has been sensitised to the issue.

But all this seems to be of no avail. So while India shines on the cricket field and in other arenas, the darker, uglier side of our society continues to stare us in the face.

Dealing with this is at least as challenging as rooting out corruption. But will people come out and demonstrate for what someone called this ‘invisible constituency'?

(To read the original, click on the link above)

Where have all the young girls gone?

I will be writing more on this subject -- of the disappearing Indian girls -- but here's a short comment I did for The Guardian.  It is written for a non-Indian audience and I was also constrained by the word length, only 600 words.  But I have tried to convey the conundrum.  Here's the link:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/apr/10/missing-girls-dark-side-india-abortion

Anna Hazare's fast

Anna Hazare's indefinite fast, that ended this morning, with the government agreeing to a joint committee of government and civil society to finalise the contents of a Lokpal Bill, brings up many issues that we need to think about and debate.

Our news channels provided little opportunity for that kind of debate as they went overboard projecting the protests as larger than they actually were.  Some even went to the extent of comparing Jantar Mantar to Cairo's Tahrir Square!

The protestors were no doubt sincere.  It is evident that they were fed-up with scams and corruption.  But the problem since the 26/11 demonstrations largely by urban middle class people is that they have simplified all problems to singular solutions -- and most of these solutions hinge on a hatred of politics and politicians.

Surely, this cannot work in a democracy like ours.  Also, those organising or leading these demonstrations, whether for greater security, or against corruption, must articulate clearly how these issues can be tackled.  Can the endemic corruption in the Indian system be sorted simply by creating another centralised institution?  And are all in civil society, even if they have won international or national award, competent, or even desirable, as people who will sit as judge and jury on issues relating to corruption?

These are questions that should be debated through the media.  Instead, the media has simply jumped on the middle-class bandwagon, celebrating the outcry against corruption which can so easily be drummed up in a country like ours.

Here's the link to a short comment I wrote for the BBC:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-13017897

And here's another link to an interesting and thoughtful article by Shuddhabrata Sengupta on the website Kafila:

http://kafila.org/2011/04/09/at-the-risk-of-heresy-why-i-am-not-celebrating-with-anna-hazare/

Match fixation

SECOND TAKE

Kalpana Sharma

 

As newspaper interviews go, this must stand out as one of the most amazing. Gautam Gambhir, who has come in for much praise for his performance during the recently concluded ICC World Cup, thinks the population of India is 100 million and the interviewer, from Hindustan Times, does nothing to correct him. Instead he repeats the figure in the follow up question!

So is this illiteracy compounded by bad journalism and impossibly poor editing? Or are we expecting too much from Gambhir, from a sports reporter who is not expected to know the population of India any more than Gambhir, or from Hindustan Times that runs this interview? (Click here to read the interview)

There is more to follow and cricket and non-cricket lovers must read the entire interview. Gambhir says that the win against Pakistan followed by a win in the final (the interview was given before the final) should be dedicated to the victims of 26/11. Asked if that would soothe their pain, here is what he has to say:

“I am sure the win against Pakistan would have helped. Once on a trip to Jammu, I met some army men. They told me whatever we do, whoever we play; we should never lose to Pakistan. One of them was posted at the Indo-Pak border and was so emotional that he suggested that I should have a tattoo on my body saying, ‘I will never lose to Pakistan’.”

And then, when asked whether he had such a tattoo, he says:

“No, it's not on my body but is etched on my heart and soul.”

 

A senior sports journalist, who has followed Gambhir’s career over many years, assures me that the cricketer rarely makes such statements and is usually very balanced in his responses, especially on Indo-Pak cricket. So what happened when he spoke to Dinesh Chopra, who did the interview for ESPN’s Sportcenter, the transcript of which was reproduced in Hindustan Times.

 

Hyper-nationalism has now become an accepted part of the script during every international cricket fixture where Pakistan is one of the teams playing. Everything revolves around whether and when India and Pakistan will meet and the media on both sides of the border appears to keep its best arrows and bullets for that fixture. It has become such a routine that even in the atrociousness of some of the excesses, it fails to surprise anyone.

 

But the hyper-nationalism aside, the World Cup has provided entertainment and endless quantities of reports and comment for those who obsess over cricket. For those less interested in the game, it has demanded patience and humour to survive the 35 days until life can revert to some form of normalcy – until the next round of cricket madness begins, the Indian Premier League.

But one thing does stand out increasingly in the coverage of all sport, and most particularly cricket. The merging of sports and Bollywood. You cannot now have a cricket match without a Bollywood star in the stands and the cameras focusing on him or her. Any discussion on a match, and especially the final, must have the mandatory film star – Randhir Kapoor on NDTV the night after the victory who mumbled a few expected lines but had nothing much to add or Amitabh Bachchan’s over-the-top tweet, “Its like we just won our Independence!! Incredible!! Incredible!!” Or cameras focusing repeatedly on Aamir Khan, now sporting a prominent moustache, during the semi-final and final, who was there by virtue of having made a film in which cricket played a prominent role, “Lagaan”. 

More than print or television, some of the more interesting and innovative comments were on the web. Cricinfo, for instance, did a couple of interesting experiments. They got an Indian editor and a Pakistani editor to write why they thought the other team had a better chance at the semi-final. They had a conversation between a veteran Indian cricketer, Sanjay Manjrekar and a veteran Pakistani, Rameez Raja, on Indo-Pak cricket. And the comment section on the site gave you an idea of the feelings cross-border on the match. 

But a web comment that I thought summed up the Indian spectator during the World Cup was a poem written by Sudipto Mondal (I don’t love India but I love cricket). It is an apt comment on the often unsporting attitude of the Indian spectator during matches where only the skill of Indian cricketers is appreciated while that of the opponent is met with a deafening silence. This hardly reflects a real love for the sport. It also symbolizes how nationalism has over-ruled commonsense and appreciation for skill and sportsmanship.

 (To read the original, click on the link above)

If mothers and wives were paid

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, April 3, 2011

THE OTHER HALF

KALPANA SHARMA

With the burden of domestic work on their shoulders, women spend more time doing unpaid work than men around the world…

Photo: H. Vibhu 

Unrecognised contribution to the economy...

It would be fascinating if someone were to calculate the number of person-hours lost on the days that India played a crucial match during the just-concluded World Cup Cricket series. And especially on March 30, the day of the not-to-be-missed India-Pakistan semi-final at Mohali.

Of course, even if we were to undertake such an exercise, we would only look at those with jobs in the formal sector, who get monthly salaries and various benefits. But millions of Indians, the majority, work in the informal sector, with no job security, living each day as if it was the first and the last. For them, missing a day at work, whether for a match, or for illness, is simply not an option.

All in a day's work

The same goes for millions of women in this country who do unpaid work. Match or no match, most women will have to cook and feed their families, clean their homes, wash the clothes and look after children and elders. Such work has never been given a monetary value. No one knows what they contribute as they do a range of unpaid work — from household chores in the home, to strenuous work in agricultural fields, to helping out in small businesses, to home-based work (that is not always paid), to helping out in a variety of tasks that they are expected to do only because they are women. Only in a few countries has a monetary value been placed on such unpaid work.

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) has recently come out with an important study that looks precisely at this issue: women's unpaid work. Titled “Cooking, caring and volunteering: Unpaid work around the world”, the report by Veerle Miranda looks at the amount of time women spend on unpaid work as compared to men.

Miranda found that in each of the countries studied, 26 countries belonging to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and three emerging economies, India, China and South Africa, women spend more time doing unpaid work than men. This is not surprising given that in practically all societies, women are expected to bear the maximum burden of domestic work with men helping out if and when they can. This holds true even in households where women go out of the house for paid work. Yet at the end of the working day, when both the man and the woman return home, it is the woman who is automatically expected to do the household chores.

A current TV advertisement for hot meals served on a low-cost airline sums this up rather well. It shows a housewife, obviously exhausted, preparing a hot meal for her husband who returns from a late flight. He takes it for granted that the meal will be waiting for him. There is nothing in the ad to indicate what the woman's day was like but given the way she thumps the plate down in front of the husband, one can well imagine. It would never have occurred to the man to figure out a way of relieving his wife of this particular chore.

Huge differences

The ILO study found a range of difference in the amount of time women in the different countries spent on unpaid work as compared to men. For instance, women in India, Mexico and Turkey spent 4.3 to 5 hours more than men on unpaid work as compared to a difference of just one hour between women and men in the Nordic countries. And while the women cooked, cleaned and fed the children, Indian fathers, husbands and sons spent time sleeping, eating, talking to friends, watching television and relaxing.

Apart from the gender difference in time spent, the value of such unpaid work was not factored into economic calculations that assess a country's development. Miranda concludes, “Our calculations suggest that between one-third and half of all valuable economic activity in OECD countries is not accounted for in the traditional measure of well-being, such as GDP per capita.”

To many, this would appear to be a non-issue given the gravity of issues that women face in terms of violence, inside and outside the home, many forms of discrimination, sexual harassment and assault etc. Yet, there is a good reason for assessing the extent of unpaid work women do, the gender gap between women and men on this count, and the value of their labour.

Quantifying the value

In fact as far back as 1985, women's groups advocated assessing the value of unpaid work. At the Third World Conference of Women in Nairobi that year, it was recommended that the value of household goods and services be included in a country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP): “Concrete steps should be taken to quantify the unremunerated contribution of women to agriculture, food production, reproduction and household activities.”

Another strong reason for putting a value to such work is that it makes us value better those who do such work for money — domestic helps. In India, such women — and they are mostly women — are grossly underpaid. There is no standard set for the amount they should be paid for the kind of work they are expected to do. What is even more disappointing is that women, who earn well in the formal sector, and who realise that they are better equipped to concentrate on their careers because they have such paid domestic help, also do not put a high enough value on this work. If unpaid work was given a voluntary value, all such women could benefit.

Gender assumptions

Ultimately, the issue is not the amount of time spent on unpaid work, or whether women should be paid for such work, but the expectation that they will do it unquestioningly and for all time to come. Surely, with so much changing around us, this is yet another arena where gender roles must be questioned, where the drudgery and burden of household work must be shared by men and women, and where those who work silently to hold up millions of homes around the world should be given the recognition and appreciation that they deserve.

(To read the original, click on the link above)

Theatre of violence

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, March 20, 2011

THE OTHER HALF

KALPANA SHARMA

Nidhi Gupta's suicide reminds us yet again that violence does exist inside closed domestic spaces and continues to be shrouded by silence…

Photo: S. Subramanium 

In a minority...

A 31-year-old chartered accountant caught Mumbai's attention last week. That morning, she went about her tasks as she did every other morning. She got her two children, aged three and six, ready for school. Then, instead of going down, she took the lift up to the 18 {+t} {+h} floor of her building in a Mumbai suburb. She then climbed up one floor to the terrace. There she carefully placed the school bags on the floor, and one after another flung her children down 19 floors to their deaths. Even before they died, she also took the plunge.

Nidhi Gupta's suicide has shocked people. But it has also forced us to ask a number of questions. Why would a professional woman, who also taught on the side, kill her children and herself? What drove her to take such a drastic decision? Her father believes she was tortured in her marital home where she lived as part of a joint family. But even if that was true, how is it that an educated woman could not think of another alternative? Did she not know that the law now provides options to those who are victims of domestic violence? Was there no one in whom she could confide? Did her parents turn a deaf ear to her story while she was alive? Did they tell her to ‘adjust', as do most Indian parents?

Grim reminder

We might never know the truth about Nidhi's suicide even as fingers are being pointed at her husband and her in-laws. But her death reminds us yet again of the theatre of violence against women that exists behind closed doors, inside the four walls of what should be a secure place, the home. It also speaks, yet again, of the silence that surrounds such violence, the reluctance of women to talk about it, the pressure on them constantly to accept, to adjust, and even to internalise the violence.

In India, the National Family Health Survey established in its very first report the extent to which domestic violence presented a real health hazard for women. Over 50 per cent of women reported experiencing some form of violence in their homes, often leading to injury, sometimes even to death.

The National Crime Research Bureau (NCRB) notes that there has been a 10 per cent increase in one particular crime against women between 2008-09, and that is torture and cruelty by husband and family.

To add to all this available data comes a survey by the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) and Instituto Promundo, titled ‘International Men and Gender Equality Survey', which throws an interesting light on Indian men's attitude towards gender equality. Based on questions asked of 8,000 men and 3,500 women in six developing countries – Brazil, Chile, Croatia, India, Mexico and Rwanda – the three-year study looked at attitudes among men and boys in the age group 18-59.

Of relevance in the context of domestic violence was the finding that 68 per cent of Indian men believed that women should tolerate domestic violence in order to keep the family together and 65 per cent said that there were times when a woman deserved to be beaten.

Behind the times

Indian men stood out in other ways in the survey. For instance, 40 per cent of them believed that it was the woman's responsibility to avoid getting pregnant and 47 per cent said they would be outraged if the wife asked them to use a condom.

Wait. There is more. Only 16 per cent of Indian men shared household chores with women compared to around 50 per cent in the other countries. Also, while 87-90 per cent of the men in the other countries in the survey were supportive of gender equality, the exception was India.

Indian men were also the exception in displaying high levels of homophobia. For instance, 92 per cent of the Indian men surveyed said they would be ashamed of having a gay son and 89 per cent said that they felt uncomfortable in the company of gay men.

Not surprisingly, Indian men were at the bottom of the ‘gender equitable scale' with only 17 per cent of the men surveyed qualifying as being ‘highly equitable' in their attitudes.

None of this information is particularly remarkable. There is enough evidence all around us that illustrates what this survey documents. But incidents, such as that of Nidhi Gupta's suicide, force us to ask what can be done to change attitudes.

Changing mindsets

It has become increasingly evident that laws alone do not change attitudes. The Domestic Violence Act 2005 was the result of campaigning by women's groups who argued that a specific law of this nature was needed. Yet, even women who know of the law do not use it. And millions of women do not even know about it.

Even if the campaigns to inform women about their rights under the law succeed, and large numbers of Indian women come to realise that they need not accept violence in their homes, will that bring about a change in the situation? Going by current evidence, it is unlikely. Because essentially, what needs to change are the attitudes and mindsets of Indian men. Until these change, until Indian men accept women as equal human beings, deserving of the same rights and privileges as them, stories like Nidhi Gupta's might continue to be repeated and shock and shame our sensibilities.

(To read the original, click on the link above)

Women’s Day circus

Superficial treatment by media of issues pertaining to women marked yet another Women’s Day. Bringing Bollywood into the talk shows on the occasion was one indicator of this. The media has run out of ideas on women’s concerns, writes KALPANA SHARMA

Posted Saturday, Mar 12 18:58:33, 2011 SECOND TAKE Kalpana Sharma     International Women’s Day, March 8, saw the predictable media feeding frenzy. From print advertisements that focused on weight loss, including corrective surgery, and fairness products (size and colour matters, we are repeatedly told) to television discussions on women’s safety, the advertisements, articles and talk shows, Indian women and their status was the talk of the day. But the content was typically limited and incomplete.  The media had decided that Indian women lived in metros, were concerned above all about safety in public spaces, were facing major health problems, including body weight and shape but were generally better off today than ever in the past.     The fate of the majority of Indian women did not feature in most of the discussions or celebrations.  That over half the population of Indian women is anaemic; that the maternal mortality rate – that is women dying due to something that is not a life-threatening condition – is at least 250 per every 100,000 live births; that every 54 minutes a woman is sexually assaulted; that every 66 minutes a woman is burned for dowry. According to the National Crime Records Bureau, there were 8,383 dowry deaths in 2009, an increase of 2.6 per cent over the previous year, 25,741 reported rape cases, 89,546 cases of cruelty by husbands or members of family.  Of the rape cases, over 11 per cent of the victims were girls under the age of 15.  Yes, these too are Indian women.  But you would not have known it had you glanced through the Indian print media or watched television debates and discussions.     A woman being shot in broad daylight outside her college in Delhi sparked off, understandably, a discussion on women’s safety onNDTV.  But the discussion was defined only in terms of the urban middle class woman. To give expert comment were the Chief Minister of Delhi, Sheila Dixit, actor Shabana Azmi and then inexplicably, Kareena Kapoor.  Why Kareena Kapoor?  What are her concerns about women, or about women’s safety?  Have we ever heard her make any statement concerning the condition and fate of millions of women in this country?     To her credit, the actor did not pretend to be a concerned citizen.  Her concern about safety extended to the fact that her niece was not allowed to go down alone in the building compound. Her world was clearly far removed from the one that the young women in the audience inhabited.     CNN-IBN did little better with a predictable panel, including the redoubtable Madhu Kishwar, once known as the person to launch India’s first feminist journal in India and now seen often on television distancing herself from feminism with statements like, “I don’t know anything about patriarchy-shatriarchy!”  She was speaking in the context of a recent survey by the International Centre for Research on Women (ICRW) that found that 65 per cent of the Indian men surveyed thought women should tolerate domestic violence. Here again, we had a Bollywood persona, Pooja Bedi, on the panel.      Why are TV channels turning to Bollywood for everything, even issues on which the people invited have no position or opinion?  Can this really help in TRPs?     In contrast to Bollywood, Hollywood does have several actors who have openly espoused causes.  Jane Fonda, Susan Sarandon and Angelina Jolie amongst the women and George Clooney, Tim Robbins, Matt Damon, Sean Penn amongst male actors.  If any of these actors are called to discussions on issues, one can understand.  George Clooney campaigned for Americans, and indeed the world, to wake up to the crisis in Dafur.  Jane Fonda stuck her neck out during the Vietnam War and since then has been outspoken on issues such as violence against women.  Do we have any equivalents in India barring Shabana Azmi, who hardly acts in any films now, and Nandita Das, who has taken a break from acting?  So,why Bollywood?     The media has run out of ideas on women’s concerns, it would seem.  Even the world of advertising cannot find any new products to promote on Women’s Day.  In previous years, March 8 was marked with special advertising supplements in almost every newspaper.    What this actually illustrates is the increasing distance between mainstream media and the reality of India.  The bubble of celebrity and consumerism has become a permanent cocoon, something that obscures the world outside and limits the options inside.  As a result, the same tired faces are seen on TV discussions and debates, repeating what has been said before.  The expectation that Bollywood will add spice falls flat because the Bollywood community has little to say on issues of real concern.  Instead of realising this and breaking out of this cocoon, the circus of talking heads continues unheeded.   (To read the original, click on the link above)