Calling a crime by its name

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, July 22, 2012

How safe are our public spaces for women? Photo: Arunangsu Roy 

 

Can we stop talking about the horrific incident in Guwahati on the night of July 9 as the “Guwahati molestation”? To molest, according to the dictionary, means “to pester or harass, typically in an aggressive or persistent manner.” What happened that night on Guwahati’s busy G.S. Road was a “sexual assault” on a young girl. So before we even begin talking about it, let us call a crime by its real name.

The full story of what happened that night is still unspooling. But enough is known to raise several crucial questions; ones that relate to women, to our society, to the media and to the law enforcing agencies. The incident might have occurred in what is usually considered a remote part of India. But its fallout affects all of us, including those who live in what people in the Northeast call the “mainland”.

 

Displays of insensitivity

Much has already been written about the July 9 sexual assault. Not without reason has the representative of the National Commission for Women, Alka Lamba, been asked to step down. In an astounding display of insensitivity, she revealed the identity of the young woman to the media. The Chief Minister of Assam, Tarun Gogoi, outdid her by getting his office to send photographs of himself with the girl to the entire media, and retracting after the pictures had already been circulated. So much for protecting the survivor’s identity.

The question of the media’s role is the subject of much debate. The Assam government has conveniently blamed the journalist who claimed credit for making the story public. It is possible that this journalist is culpable. Or he might have followed the example of many others, journalists who stood by and recorded horrific events without making any effort to intervene.

But journalists are also citizens. Even if there were only two of them against a mob, they had no business to go on filming for a full half hour without doing anything to stop the participants. In fact, when you watch the video, you realise that the attackers are enjoying being filmed. At the same time, the Assam government cannot absolve itself of all responsibility by blaming the journalist.

No one is surprised at the actions, or rather lack of them, of the Guwahati police. Why did they take so long to respond? Why did they not arrest many more on the spot? Did they have to wait to see the footage to identify the attackers? If they had acted with alacrity, would the main assaulter, seen grinning at the camera, have escaped? We end up asking these same questions repeatedly. When poor people demonstrate for their rights, hundreds of them are rounded up and taken to the lock-up. But if members of a political party go around vandalising and beating up helpless people — as they do with regularity in Mumbai, for instance — or when such incidents of sexual assault occur in a public place, the police sit on their hands and wait. Not just women but everyone has to be worried at this mockery of what is called “the law and order machinery”.

 

Chilling indifference

And what can we say about the “aam janata”? Anyone who has been to Guwahati will tell you that G.S. Road, or Guwahati Shillong Road, is a main arterial road. The pub where the girl was attacked is not in some isolated part of the city. Hundreds of vehicles ply on that road, as they did that night. Hence her ability to find an autorickshaw which she was about to take to go home. One of the most chilling sequences in the video is watching the girl running on the road, begging people to stop and help her. No one did until one man, another journalist, came to her rescue and stayed with her until she was handed over to the police. Why did no one help? Why do people not care, not want to be involved, to extend themselves for another person? This is one more example of the callous indifference that has infected urban life in India.

As for what this means for women, not just in Guwahati but all over India, particularly urban India, the message is clear. The more things change, the more they remain the same. Women might believe that they now have more rights, that they have access to public space, that they can make choices. The reality is that a patriarchal society will not accept that women should have these rights, that it will try and teach those who make choices “a lesson” and that violence is the currency that will be used to teach these lessons.

Depressing, I know, but sadly true. As a young reader from Guwahati wrote to me after this incident: “Some of us have the tendency to break things or bash up some objects when we were furious or angry. But nowadays we find that women have become potential objects capable of replacing inanimate objects to suit the whims and fancies of the diehard chauvinists of the country.” 

(To read the original, click here.)

A case of not knowing enough

Posted on The Hoot

The media are guilty of blindly reporting the motivated leaks by the police about Pinki Pramanik’s sex. Reporters and editors failed to acquaint themselves with the law, says 

KALPANA SHARMA.

 

Posted/Updated Wednesday, Jul 11 19:56:52, 2012

SECOND TAKE

Kalpana Sharma

 

 

The medal-winning track athlete Pinki Pramanik was granted bail on July 10 after 25 tortuous days in police custody. The charge for which Pramanik was held was rape – bizarre in itself as it consisted of her live-in partner, another woman, accusing her of being a man. Yet Pramanik has been tried over this month by the media and the police for a crime she did not commit – her supposed androgyny.

 

Since June 14, when the athlete was arrested, until her release on bail, one saw a range of reports and editorials. Given the general lack of sensitivity in the media on many issues, much of the reporting, and the editorials in particular, were surprisingly sensitive and mature. For instance, despite the Kolkata police treating Pinki as if she were a man just because she had been accused of being one, the majority of reports continued to refer to the athlete as “her” and not the ambivalent “he/she” which would mean they accepted the questions raised about her gender.

 

The editorials raised questions about the absence of understanding and compassion in Indian society that fails to accommodate people who are different, who do not fit into dominant norms, as well as the gross violation of Pinki’s human rights.

 

Television, which usually reduces such issues to a generalised discussion that yields no information, also did surprisingly well. On Face the Nation (CNN/IBN), Sagarika Ghose raised relevant questions, such as why Pinki was arrested – and molested – by male policemen, why she was detained in the male lockup, why she was denied bail and why was she sent for gender verification tests. 

 

Yet, every now and then the absence of knowledge on the issue – that people are often not clearly male or female – came through in the kind of headlines and copy of news stories. For instance, on July 10, the day Pinki was granted bail, the India Today website had this headline: “Pinki Pramanik’s gender test report to be submitted to Barasat Court today: athlete has male chromosomes, say sources.” The story goes on to say: “Sources indicated that the report shows Pramanik having X-Y chromosomes, which pertain to her male status”. 

 

There are two obvious problems with this story. First, given the on-going confusion about the gender verification tests, what is the point in quoting “sources” about Pinki having “male chromosomes”. 

 

Secondly, it is evident that neither the reporter, nor the editor that dealt with this copy, is aware that many individuals have XY chromosomes but are not necessarily male. They could have a condition called Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (AIS) where despite the chromosomal composition, their bodies do not clearly exhibit physical attributes of a male and they grow up as females. In other instances, despite XX chromosomes that would identify them as females, they appear masculine and could grow up as males. This is an inter-sex condition. Such people should not be penalised for the physiological confusion in their bodies. So, if journalists are fed information emanating from a so-called “gender verification test”, they should know that this in itself does not settle the issue.

 

In fact, women athletes who do exceptionally well in track events, or in events like weight lifting for instance, where their levels of endurance are considered “unnatural” for women, are often suspected either of taking performance-enhancing drugs or being “male”. There is a long history of the battles fought by women athletes, including India. In Pinki’s case, no one raised these questions during her medal-winning period. She has been in virtual retirement for the last five years. And suddenly, her sex has come into question and is being “discovered” in full view of the media by an insensitive police force.

 

The Pramanik issue will not disappear just yet. But there are several important lessons that the media can draw from it.

 

Reporters keen to get a story, especially one as sensational as this, did not bother to acquaint themselves with the law. Until proven otherwise, Pinki is a woman. Hence male police cannot arrest her. Nor should she have been kept in a male lockup. And she certainly cannot be groped in the manner Pinki was in full view of cameras and the press. Those covering this story could have questioned the police about this right at the outset. Even if one argues that it is not a reporter's job to raise these questions, surely they should have occurred to the seniors at the news desk and a follow-up story could have been done. 

 

The media woke up to these aspects only after human rights and LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) groups as well as some senior women athletes began to ask questions. In fact, even the discussion on the way the police treated Pinki only came up on television channels once these groups had drawn attention to it. Otherwise, the footage showing a policeman groping her might have gone unnoticed.

 

Where the media went wrong is in reporting the motivated leaks by the police about Pinki’s sex. The first so-called gender test, taken without her permission, was clearly the work of an unqualified practitioner. If reporters had been aware of the difficulties or the unreliability of such tests, it is possible they would have questioned the policemen who leaked the information, or not treated it as credible information. In any case, the media should have been wary of such a police leak and questioned why the police was doing this. Instead, as it happens with so much of such inaccurate information that emerges from the police room, the information is reported as “fact” without any qualifier. By the time it is contradicted, the damage has already been done.

 

Finally, I think this case provides media seniors opportunity to consider training reporters in what Laxmi Murthy terms the “emerging other” in her excellent chapter on this subject in the book “Missing: Half the Story, Journalism as if Gender Matters” (Zubaan, 2010) which I edited. The chapter provides an essential working knowledge for journalists on issues related to sex and gender, something that all journalists need to know. After all, the reporters assigned the Pinki case were your run-of-the-mill crime reporters. They would probably assume that they need not know about AIS, or inter-sex, or the difference between transgender and transsexual. But it is this kind of basic information that has now become essential for all journalists. This is the single-most important lesson to take away from the Pinki Pramanik issue for the media.

 

I give below some useful articles and links that have emerged in the last month:

 

No way to treat a human, Economic and Political Weekly, July 14, 2012, http://www.epw.in/editorials/no-way-treat-human.html

 

Restore Pinki’s dignity, The Hindu, July 5, 2012, http://www.epw.in/editorials/no-way-treat-human.html

 

Gender Controversy: Run, Pinki run, Times of India, June 20, 2012, http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-06-20/off-the-field/32334540_1_santhi-soundarajan-gender-afi/2

 

The right to our bodies by Gautam Bhan, Times of India, July 9, 2012, http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-06-20/off-the-field/32334540_1_santhi-soundarajan-gender-afi/2

(To read the original, click here)

Thank you, Sania

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, July 8, 2012

The Hindu Sania Mirza. Photo: PTI

When Sania spoke up, everyone reacted. Sania Mirza did not mince words. She was polite. But she told the All India Tennis Association (AITA) that this was no way to treat “an Indian woman belonging to the 21st century”. She said she found it “disillusioning” and “humiliating” that she was “put up as a bait to try and pacify one of the disgruntled stalwarts of Indian tennis”. She ended by stating, “This kind of blatant humiliation of Indian womanhood needs to be condemned even if it comes from the highest controlling body of tennis in our country.”

Many applauded Sania for speaking out. Others insisted she had gone overboard by invoking “Indian womanhood” in a battle that was essentially of egos and the system that governs a national sport. But whether one likes Sania Mirza as an individual, or a player, or one agrees or disagrees with her statement, there is no doubt that she has forced open a subject that must be discussed — sexism and gender discrimination in sport.

Of course, it is easier for someone like Sania Mirza, who plays an individual sport like tennis, to speak out than many other women in sports. She does not depend on state patronage. She has now played enough grand slams and won to be able to hold her own.

In contrast, a woman hockey player, for instance, would find it impossible to go public with a grievance. Hockey is almost totally dependent on state patronage and the girls who play hockey for India are hardly ever in the limelight except fleetingly, when they do well in an international tournament. The rest of the time we have no idea about their training facilities, how much they are paid and whether they experience discrimination at various levels through the year. We will never know because they would be afraid to speak out and the media is mostly indifferent.

With Olympics on the horizon, we do know now that at least some of our medal hopes for India are women — the redoubtable boxer Mary Kom, or the world’s number one woman archer, 18-year-old Deepika Kumari, or even the low-key badminton champion Saina Nehwal. But the path of women to the Olympics worldwide has not been an easy one.

Astonishing progress

According to a United Nations report on women and sports (Women, Gender Equality and Sport, December 2007), in the first modern Olympics held in Paris in 1900, only 19 women competed in just three events — tennis, golf and croquet. By 2004, during the Athens Olympics, women participated in 26 out of 28 sports and comprised 40.7 per cent of the total athletes.

This progress in numbers and the variety of sports is not accidental. It is the result of a concerted effort to break stereotypes about the sports that women can and cannot play, about ensuring that facilities and opportunities are available for women to progress in these sports and to expose and fight against discrimination and sexual harassment that restricts women’s chances of succeeding in sports.

In fact, the current Olympic charter, adopted in 2004, includes this significant statement: “encourage and support promotion of women in sport at all levels and in all structures with a view to implementing the principle of equality of men and women”.

Yet, despite this, women face very real hurdles to get ahead. Some of them are physical. In many countries, the facilities that will allow women to train in a sport simply do not exist. If they do, they are restricted and often out of reach for those without money or backing.

There are social constraints. Many societies continue to regard most games and sports as “unfeminine” or not suitable for girls and women. As a result, it is virtually impossible for a young girl growing up under such constraints to attempt to succeed in a sport. Until quite recently, women were considered too weak for endurance sports such as the marathon, or weight lifting or cycling. Such sports were actually deemed harmful to them. Yet, women have successfully broken through this stereotype. In India, it has been fascinating to watch women who are excelling in precisely some of these sports — boxing, wrestling and weight-lifting.

There are economic constraints. Poverty automatically excludes a large section of the population. Only the lucky few, who perhaps manage to go to a school that encourages sport, or are backed by a patron or a non-governmental organisation, can come through. We simply have no idea how many potential sportswomen, or sportsmen, there are in a country like ours where poor children are denied basic education leave alone physical education.

And after all this, even if some women come through, they have to fight against gender discrimination — with the sport in which they participate being given secondary status — as also sexual harassment. A research study conducted for the Norwegian Olympic Committee between 1995-2000 found that 28 per cent of women athletes reported sexual harassment “in the sporting context”, which means from other athletes, coaches, managers or spectators. The percentages were much higher in other countries.

Women playing sports like tennis have had to fight for equal prize money and have finally got it for the major fixtures in tennis. But in many other sports, they continue to argue for parity.

No one can now dispute the benefits of sports and outdoor activities on health — for men and women. But for women and girls, participating in individual or team sports has another dimension — it increases their self-confidence. This is particularly true in societies where girls are forced into accepting that they are weaker and inferior to men.

So thank you Sania, for speaking up. In your own way you have given a leg up to many other women who feel like you, who suffer worse forms of discrimination, but whose stories are never told or heard.

(To read the original, click here)

No space for women

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, June 24, 2012

Big hit: A ladies-only bus. Photo: Vipin Chandran

Looks, they say, can be deceptive. At first glance, Kerala’s capital city, Thiruvanananthapuram, is not just incredibly green and beautiful but also clean. The latter, in particular, seems a singular achievement given the monuments of uncleared garbage that mark practically all cities, big and small, in India. Yet, open a local newspaper and you read about malaria and dengue, hospitals spilling over with cases and politicians almost coming to blows over the garbage crisis. “So where is the garbage?” I ask the taxi driver. “It is dumped on the inside roads”, he informs me, so that casual visitors like me will not see the ugly sight.

The garbage crisis in Thiruvananthapuram has reached epic proportions. In a state where there is little uninhabited space, creating dumpsites for urban waste has become a challenge. People living in villages such as Vilappinshala near the state capital are refusing to allow dumps or waste processing plants to come up in their vicinity. Not in my backyard, they are saying. So whose backyard will handle the increasing tonnage of urban waste? That is a question that all cities will need to ask — and resolve.

But just as Thiruvananthapuram’s surface cleanliness hides the true story of uncleared garbage and the spread of disease, the experience of women in Kerala also stands out in marked contrast to the popular myth about their status.

We all know that there are more women in Kerala than men — an exception in a country where girls are being eliminated before they are born. We also know that women in Kerala are more educated, have longer life expectancy, and get married later than women in the rest of India. Yet, ask them whether they feel safe, and they will tell you a story that speaks of disempowerment, of helplessness, of anger.

 

Revelatory

Sakhi, a women’s resource centre, and several other women’s groups set out to survey women’s perception of safety in public spaces in four cities in the state — Thiruvananthapuram, Kozhikode, Kochi and Thrissur. Their findings blow the lid off the myth about the power of women in Kerala.

The overwhelming majority of women surveyed in these four cities said that sexual harassment was their main safety concern. They routinely experienced verbal and physical harassment. Buses that the majority of working women are forced to use were a primary site for such harassment. Women passengers were groped, pinched, leaned upon. Apart from male passengers, even the conductors took their chances.

Girl students in particular had a torrid time. One student reported how someone who stood behind her sliced her dress from top to bottom with a sharp instrument. Another spoke of the abusive language used by bus conductors. Other women talked of being leaned upon, about men “accidentally” falling on them when the bus took a turn, of men using every opportunity to touch parts of their bodies.

Auto-rickshaws were not a particularly happy alternative as auto drivers would refuse women a ride much of the time and especially in the evenings when they most needed it. In any case, most women said they did not feel safe venturing out after dark.

While women in many cities have to suffer this kind of daily assault, what was striking was how most women felt unsafe in public parks, beaches, theatres and even standing at ticket counters. Cities like Thiruvananthapuram have beautiful parks that would be the envy of people in cities like Mumbai where we are starved for open spaces. Yet, in the verdant surroundings of Kanakakunnu Palace in the state capital, you rarely see women, or even groups of women. Men accompany the few that come there. My friends tell me that if a group of women decide to break the norm, they will be stared at as if they are entering forbidden territory.

 

Absence of infrastructure

Apart from the sexual harassment, for women the question of safety was also linked to the infrastructure in these cities. For instance, the majority of women complained about the complete absence of clean and safe public toilets. The few toilets available were filthy and almost routinely used by men. The approach to such public toilets was such that women would feel afraid to go anywhere near them.

Poorly lit roads, uneven pavements, open drain covers — everything that makes the public space difficult for the elderly, for children, for the disabled also impacts women’s sense of safety. Here is an important lesson for urban planners. Make cities safe for women and the most vulnerable and they will be safe for everyone.

Ironically, even the women conducting this safety audit were harassed, stared at, touched, hit and followed. They also found it difficult to persuade women to speak about being harassed because of the dominant perception that only “bad women” get sexually harassed. Hence, the women being surveyed felt that if they admitted to being harassed, they would be considered “bad women”!

How women are treated in the public space provides a true reflection of women’s status and how they are valued by society. You can educate women, give them health care and give them jobs. But if they cannot step out of their homes and offices without the fear of being assaulted for no other reason than their gender, then clearly there is something very wrong. 

(To read the original, click http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/columns/Kalpana_Sharma/article3562199.ece)

Taking the stink out of city sanitation

The Hindu, Op-Ed page, June 7, 2012

In South Mumbai's upscale Malabar Hill, a neighbourhood of 6,000 people share 52 toilets, 26 for men and 26 for women. That works out to around 115 people per toilet. Nearby live some of the oldest and richest families of the city with homes where one person may have a choice of many toilets.

But this is Simla Nagar, where 720 households are precariously perched on a not so wealthy slope of Malabar Hill. The path to the two-storey toilet block in the slum is like an obstacle race that only the able can undertake. Depending on which part of the slum you live in, it can take you anything from five to 20 minutes to reach the toilets. On the way you climb steep, uneven steps, walk uphill through narrow lanes barely four feet wide that are slippery with soapy water as scores of women wash clothes and utensils, then downhill through equally treacherous lanes to finally reach the destination.

If you get there before 10 a.m., you are lucky. There is water in the taps; hence the toilets are reasonably clean. If you wait longer, the water stops; you carry your own mug of water, just enough for your personal needs but not enough to flush the toilet. By mid-afternoon, all 52 toilets are rendered unusable. People wait in resignation till the evening when the toilets are cleaned. At night, although the toilets are lit, the path leading to them is not.

Some enterprising people have built their own toilets inside their tiny homes. But there is no sewerage. So the waste pipe dumps the human waste in the open drain outside. If you are the unfortunate neighbour of one of these inventive souls, you live with the stench and the flies and mosquitoes. No one complains. You just curse your luck that you do not have the resources, or the space, to copy your neighbour.

For old people, especially old women, getting to the toilet is virtually impossible unless your jhopdi is next door. And children? Mothers say they use the open drain. Who has the time to drop everything and run with the child to the toilet?

So Bill Gates' idea to launch a global quest to “reinvent the toilet” is certainly timely. India has been given the singular honour of hosting the “Reinventing the toilet” summit in 2013. Very appropriate given over 60 per cent of Indians are forced to defecate in the open because they have no access to toilets. If nothing else, the conference will draw necessary global attention to a problem that is often relegated to the bottom of the endless list of challenges poor countries face.

Innovations needed

Technological innovations are needed as in rural areas, and even in some towns, where capital-intensive underground sewerage systems might not be feasible. Also flush toilets waste too much water and are unsustainable given the growing scarcity of water. But coming up with new ideas for toilets should not be rocket science. As Union Minister for Rural Development Jairam Ramesh stated recently, “We can launch missiles like Agni and satellites but we cannot provide sanitation to our women.”

The real challenge for India is dealing with the sanitation needs of cities and towns, particularly the areas where the urban poor live. Having failed spectacularly all these years to provide affordable housing in cities — Mumbai is now constantly referred to as “Slumbai” — the least governments can do is to put the sanitation challenge within slum settlements top of their list of priorities.

 

In cities like Mumbai, the problem is partly compounded by the carrot of redevelopment that is dangled before many notified or regularised slums such as Simla Nagar. Because they are designated for redevelopment at some future date, not much attention is paid to their immediate needs. As a result, you have toilets that are nowhere near enough for the colony, yet new toilets will not be built. And you have a water supply that comes for just four hours every evening thereby making the hand-flush toilets unusable for a significant part of the day. 

 

Appeals to augment the supply fall on deaf ears. In the end, not out of choice but out of compulsion, many residents of such slums are compelled to defecate in the open at the cost of their own sense of dignity.

There have been efforts, often half-hearted. Funds are allocated but lie unused for years because no one really cares. And the majority of toilet schemes in slums fail for precisely the same reasons: not enough water, zero maintenance and an unresponsive administration.

Even if people come up with innovative ideas, there is little encouragement. Many people from outside government who have tried to intervene in the sanitation sector end up hitting their heads against a brick wall: the unwillingness of much of the bureaucracy to be flexible and open to new ideas, to design adaptations and to the beneficiary community's views. To meet the toilet challenge, it is this mindset that has to be reinvented.

(To read the original, click here)

Unequal unions

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, May 27, 2012

Taking the plunge: Wishes fulfilled? AFP PHOTO

Why should women obliterate their personalities, their lives, once they get married?

Last week, a young man, 24 years old and a graduate, introduced me to his new bride. He comes from a tradition-bound Maharashtrian family. The couple had completed their round of temples in the city. And I was told that after a month, the bride, a girl born and brought up in Mumbai like the bridegroom, would be dispatched to a village in the Konkan to help his mother with the housework.

The young man introduced his wife as Tapasya. I asked the young woman her name. She said it was Usha. “But ‘they' have changed my name”, she said. And both seemed to accept this unquestioningly. As if it was the most natural thing to do. So the girl loses not just her last name but also her first name. In other words, she becomes a new person, apparently with no connection with her past.

This name-changing custom, followed only in some parts of India, is at the extreme end of the continuum that ordains that a woman's identity and independence ends the day she takes her marital vows.

The change of name might seem a minor issue. But it is what it represents that needs to be questioned. Why? We need to ask that. Is it essential? Will it make a difference to the quality of the marriage? Will it make a difference to the lives of the young people entering into matrimony? And why only the girl? Perhaps both ought to change their names so that they start their lives on a completely clean slate!

First in France

A stark contrast is France where the new woman in the Presidential Palace in France, is the first unmarried woman to live there alongside the man elected as President. On May 6, France voted in Francois Hollande of the Socialist Party as President. With him came his “First Lady”, Valerie Trierweiler. The two are not married and as of now have no plans to do so.

Ms. Trierweiler has been married twice, divorced twice and has three children. Mr. Hollande has four children from a previous relationship. And the French do not think this relationship is worth even a comment.

What is interesting about this is not just the non-marital arrangement. Or the ease with which the French seem to accept it, but the fact that Ms. Trierweiler, a 47-year-old political journalist with two decades of experience, has chosen to continue in her profession. She says she has no plans to be financially dependent on her live-in partner. “I haven't been raised to serve a husband. I built my entire life on the idea of independence,” she is quoted as saying in the New York Times.

The idea here is not to advocate an end to the institution of marriage or to debate whether live-in relationships are ideal. But the example of the independent Ms. Trierweiler is interesting not just because she is with the President of France, but because their relationship and her attitude towards it highlights an important question on women and marriage.

Is it essential for a woman to obliterate her personality, her life, once she gets married, or when she enters into a publicly-acknowledged relationship with a man? Does she not have the right to remain her own person?

Is there something sacrosanct about women subsuming their lives in that of the men they marry or live with?

Surely this is one of the reasons girls count for so little in our society.

In India, we are not encouraged to ask such questions. In fact, questioning in general about anything is actively discouraged. Children are firmly told not to be pesky if they question. Girls are put in their place if they do — or called “Maoists” as a Kolkata student was branded by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee during a recent television talk show.

In our educational institutions, “note-taking” is the norm, not argument and questioning. As a result, there are scores of so-called customs that continue unquestioned by most people except a few who are inevitably called “rebels”. But women's status within marriage is most certainly an issue that needs constant questioning.

Expected sacrifices

Some of this is changing as more girls get educated and follow careers. Many customs have been questioned and have been modified. Yet, the expectation that the woman will automatically and willingly “sacrifice” her independence, her career, her personality, and even her given name at the altar of marriage somehow remains sacrosanct.

What is even more perplexing is how, despite a so-called “modern” education, the majority of girls continue to accept without question that their years of freedom, or independence, are limited to the time they get married.

Some edifices are too solid, too difficult to bring down. But perhaps we can begin by training our young people to ask: Why?

(To read the original, click here )

Aamir, listen in

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, May 13, 2012

Photo: N. Sridharan

Everyone is talking about Aamir Khan's Satyamev Jayate programme. The criticism is muted and much of it predictable. Most viewers have been impressed by it. The first episode was suitably engaging and shocking. It focussed on sex-selective abortion (a more precise and correct term rather than the more commonly-used ‘female foeticide') and the consequences of the declining sex ratio. Even the cynics must agree that every attempt to make a dent in the entrenched mindset in this country, where educated people think nothing of making women go through multiple abortions simply because they believe they must have a son, is welcome.

The actor has probably got all his episodes in place. But here is a subject that he should consider, one that requires the same kind of puncturing of middle-class attitudes that he did quite effectively in his maiden episode. Predictably, people interviewed said only the poor, illiterate and rural people resort to practices like sex-selection. Khan established with effective and simple graphics that the exact opposite was the case. I also liked the simple and clear way he stated that it is the male that determines the sex of the foetus. It's frightening how many people refuse to accept this as a fact.

Helping hands

The subject I suggest is a programme on domestic help. All of us have people “working” for us. Yet, we do not grant them the rights of workers. They are invisible, part of the furniture, taken for granted. With increasing urbanisation, and women stepping out of the home for jobs, the middle class is ever more dependent on such help. Yet greater demand has not led to better conditions for these workers.

Despite articles in the media, some campaigns, and notable documentary films like “Laxmi and Me” by Nishtha Jain, we do not see a shift in attitudes towards domestics. Instead, we read stories of violence and abuse. So, Aamir Khan, how about something on the way we treat our domestic help?

The good news is that finally, after years of campaigning for some regulation governing domestic workers, the union cabinet has prepared a note based on a draft national policy on domestic work that was prepared by the Ministry of Labour in 2009. If the policy is accepted, domestic help will come under existing laws that govern all workers such as the Minimum Wages Act, the Trade Union Act, the Payment of Wages Act, Workmen's Compensation Act, Maternity Benefit Act, Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act and the Equal Remuneration Act.

Last year, Indian delegates at the International Labour Organisation (ILO) voted for employment standards for domestic workers. The government has extended the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY), the central health insurance scheme, to cover domestic workers and three members of their families.

In the policy, a domestic help is described as “a person who is employed for remuneration whether in cash or kind, in any household through any agency or directly, either on a temporary or permanent, part-time or full-time basis… but does not include any member of the family of an employer.”

What this means is that you cannot get away with paying your domestic help the pittance that most people do. As the National Floor Level for Minimum Wage is currently Rs.115 per day, a full-time domestic should be paid at least Rs.3,450 a month. She would be entitled to maternity leave, annual leave, sick leave and paid for overtime. The sexual harassment law has finally included domestic workers in its ambit. So she would be protected against sexual abuse and violence.

Syndrome of sorts

A policy like this comes not a day too soon. We shed tears about women who are forced to abort female foetuses or other victims of violence. But are we aware of the daily exploitation under our very noses? We refuse to accept that paying a woman less than the minimum wage, for work that is back-breaking and certainly something we don't want to do, is exploitative. Yet in this day and age, there is simply no justification for the “servant” syndrome to continue.

Of course, in India, rules and laws alone rarely bring about real change. It is the attitude of the people, those who employ domestics, that needs to undergo a revolutionary change. Just as in the case of sex selection, simply having a law, even with strong implementation, is not enough to make people think differently. One hopes that media interventions, like Aamir Khan's show, will begin to make a difference. At least, the issue will be discussed. It will be in the open. And those who continue with the old view will be exposed.

Similarly, domestic work needs to be talked about, the reality constantly exposed, the law implemented. The rules governing domestic work are particularly difficult to implement because contracts are individually negotiated, the exploitation takes place behind closed doors, inside people's homes. How can any government agency monitor this or insist on compliance? A change is only possible if the “employers”, people like you and me, accept that these invisible hands that make our lives so comfortable need respect, acknowledgement and above all a fair wage. 

(To read the original click here)

All work, no play

 

How many times have you come across a scene like this? Photo: Arunangsu Roy Chowdhury .

What a way to begin the week after the long Easter weekend. First, we got the news about baby Afreen in Bengaluru, whose father has allegedly beaten her to death. He did this apparently because he wanted a son and was mad at this wife for producing a girl. Then in a village near Jalgaon, Maharashtra, a 19-year-old girl was strangled to death. The chief suspects are her father, uncle and grandmother. The reason: she was in love with a boy from another caste. And in Mumbai, the police arrested a 20-year-old man who was trying to abduct two minor girls.

But distressing as these reports are, the news from Delhi the previous week of the 13-year-old domestic left locked in a flat by her employers who went off to Bangkok is even more chilling. The facts of that case are now well known and even the international media has reported them. The couple, both medical doctors, have been arrested and charged under various provisions of the Juvenile Justice Act, the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, the Child Labour (Prohibition & Regulation) Act and the Indian Penal Code. The girl, rescued by the fire brigade when neighbours reported seeing her on the balcony crying, has now been taken to a shelter. And the man who brought her to Delhi from Jharkhand has also been arrested. 

Subterranean cities

This story, however, does not end here. It is the beginning of another story, one that gives us a glimpse into a nether-world, one where children are kidnapped, stolen or sold into servitude from some of the poorest parts of India; a world where these children have no choice, no voice. When we think of trafficking, we usually think of the sex trade. In fact, many children are trafficked into domestic and other forms of labour and are never detected.

The story of the 13-year-old girl in Delhi is not an exception. Every now and then similar stories are reported in the media. In Mumbai, we still remember the horrific tale of 10-year-old Sonu who was tortured by her employers and eventually died from the injuries.

But there are two aspects of this story that are particularly worrying: indifference and impunity. Let us take the latter first. In October 2006, the government included domestic work in the Child Labour Act. Earlier, children under 14 years were prohibited from working in a number of hazardous industries that were identified. After 2006, the law banned children from being employed as domestics or to work in dhabas and restaurants. Yet, many like the educated professional couple in this case, think nothing of breaking this law.

Usually, when people like them are asked why they employ children, they come out with a set of standard excuses: “We were looking after the child as if she was our own”. “We were feeding and clothing her, something she would not get in her village”. “She is like a member of our family”, etc. But the point is that they are breaking the law. And with impunity. The fact that so many affluent and middle class people do this is because they are confident that the law applies to others, not to people like them. In fact, they firmly believe that most laws apply to others, not to them.

Unacceptable numbers

Data is not easily available on this issue but roughly 20 per cent of the 12.6 million child workers in India (these are official figures and therefore a gross underestimation) are domestic workers. Of these, the majority are boys. But girls too work as domestics and are particularly vulnerable to sexual abuse. Both boys and girls suffer various levels of physical abuse.

The other side of impunity is indifference. How many of us turn our faces away when we see a woman being harassed, a child being beaten, a law being flouted? No one wants to be involved. I wonder how many people in the housing colony where this couple lived were aware that a child was working in that house? What stopped any of these people from reporting this to Childline, which has a well-advertised number (1098) that anyone can call and an email address where a complaint can be sent?

We are not helping any children, including our own, if we justify employing children to work in our homes. We are flouting not just the child labour laws but also the constitutional provision that gives every child the right to compulsory and free education. Sadly, in India, being educated and part of the better-off class does not necessarily add up to enlightened attitudes. As with dowry, the more we learn, the more we earn, the more we slip back in our attitudes. 

(To read the original, click here:All work, no play)

Money and marriage

  

Will changes in laws make a difference... Illustration: Keshav

Why the recent Marriage Laws (Amendment) Bill may not make much difference to a majority of rural women.

Should women cheer now that the Union Cabinet has approved the Marriage Laws (Amendment) Bill 2010? If it becomes law, women will have the right to an equal share of property acquired after marriage and divorce will become easier. The additional ground of “irretrievable breakdown of marriage” has been added and there is a shorter waiting period when both parties want to end a marriage.

Most television talk shows have focused only on the urban, educated, middle class women. There is an assumption that divorce and partition of marital property affects only them. There are also crazy scenarios being created about a “divorce epidemic”.

Exercising rights

In fact, we have to ask whether such a change in law will make any difference to the majority of women, especially those living in villages. Most women do not know that under law they are granted many rights. Even if they do know — such as the right of daughters to inherit a share of their parents' property — they are forced or persuaded to sign away their right. A recent study by the Rural Development Institute (RDI) of women's land rights in Andhra Pradesh and Bihar noted that more than half the Hindu women surveyed had signed away their right to land they would have inherited.

Inheriting property or land is crucial for many women seeking some form of economic security. Yet, this is precisely where their lack of knowledge or ability to exercise the right forces them to continue living in abusive and violent marriages. To walk out of such a marriage means walking into destitution. But if they fight for their right and succeed in getting their share, they are ostracised by their own community. Nothing has changed the entrenched belief that a woman, once she leaves her natal home, has no right to anything there and that the dowry she carries with her is adequate compensation.

The other side of ignorance about rights is the absence of supportive structures to help women claim their right. According to the RDI study, 61 per cent of women said they had never gone to a revenue office and of these 99 per cent said this was because men handled such matters. Of course, it did not help that the majority of the lower level revenue officials were also men. A simple step like appointing more women to such posts might begin to make a difference.

Several studies have shown that women who have the ability to stand on their own feet are less likely to tolerate an abusive marriage. Of course, there are always exceptions to this rule as is evident from the searing essay written by the young poet and writer Meena Kandasamy, “I Singe The Body Electric” (http://www.outlookindia.com/ article.aspx?280179) where she speaks about the abuse she suffered within the first four months of getting married. Economic independence did not protect Meena from domestic violence but it gave her the courage to walk out.

Double-edged

What about women living in villages, in highly patriarchal societies, where the majority of women accept that beatings and abuse are part of what marriage is all about. In such societies, inheriting property can become a double-edged sword.

A fascinating study on the link between economic independence and domestic violence is by feminist scholar Prem Chowdhry for UNWomen (http://www.unwomensouthasia.org/ economic_security.html). She could not have picked a more appropriate state for such a study. Haryana has one of the lowest female sex ratios in the country. It has become known for the horrendous incidence of so-called “honour” killings where young men and women are murdered merely for marrying a person of their own choice. According to the National Family Health Survey-3, 27 per cent of married women in Haryana have seen physical, emotional and sexual violence and 46 per cent of women and 33 per cent of men felt that a husband beating a wife was justified in certain circumstances. In such a State, where girls are not allowed to be born, can women escape such violence if they assert their right to a share of property?

As in the States surveyed by RDI, in Haryana too women tend to sign away their right to parental property. But now this has begun to change. With the spread of urbanisation, property prices are hitting the roof. Girls are now demanding their share, often egged on by their in-laws. Of course, there is no guarantee that they will have control over the money if they manage to get it. But the study cites many instances where the situation of women, and even of their daughters, has changed dramatically once they have money or property in their own name.

Studies like the one by Prem Chowdhry and many others firmly establish the link between women's economic independence — either by way of property or an assured income — and a reduction in domestic violence. Even as laws are changed in the name of empowering women, we have to take the first steps — of informing women of their rights and creating the supportive structures that will guarantee that they can exercise these rights.

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

Gendered economics

  

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, March 18, 2012

No bed of roses. Photo: Paul Noronha

Economic downturns impact women in more ways than they do men. Here's why.

If you stand at a fixed spot on the road leading from Mantralaya, seat of the Maharashtra government, to Churchgate station in south Mumbai at around 5.30 p.m., you are likely to be mowed down by the phalanx of government employees moving out of their offices. If you survive this onslaught, you will notice that the majority are women. They are all rushing to catch the “Ladies special” that transports thousands of women like them to their homes in distant suburbs. This scene also reminds us of the importance of the public sector and government jobs for millions of ordinary women.

India, we are told repeatedly, is not going to experience the kind of economic downturn so much of the Western world has witnessed in recent years. That is small comfort for most people whose fixed and limited incomes are disappearing under the onslaught of rising costs. High growth does not benefit everyone equally. That is self-evident. But the costs of economic decline are born disproportionately by the poor, and also by women.

Hard hit

This is already evident in the UK where the Conservative Party government has started the process of pruning public services in the face of the economic downturn. According to The Independent, London, 80 per cent of the 710,000 workers in Britain's public sector who will lose their jobs in the next five years are women. In the local government, where 75 per cent of those employed are women, an estimated one in every 10 employee is going to receive marching orders. The rate at which women are being rendered unemployed is almost double that of men.

In addition to this, the British government has been cutting down on services, such as childcare that women could use in the past. Now they have to pay more. As a result, many women are choosing to stay back rather than resume work after childbirth. By creating redundancies in sectors where women employees are the majority and cutting back services that benefit women, the British government has delivered a crippling blow to thousands of women.

In India, the majority of women are employed in the informal sector with no job security. They do not know from one day to the next whether they will earn enough to eat. So if there is a problem with economic growth, not only will more women be pushed into the informal sector as they lose secure jobs, but even those already there will have to struggle harder to remain where they are. This is the silent, unrecorded calamity that occurs in the lives of millions of poor women when there is an economic slowdown.

What of the small percentage of women who do find permanent jobs in the formal sector? How much job security do they have? How much of a risk do they face of being laid off or made redundant when there are cutbacks?

Politically, few governments in India can take the unpopular decision of laying off people. In fact, the government is the largest employer in every state and women have benefitted from this. A growing and diverse private sector is also giving many women opportunities. But how secure is the future of women in this sector?

Family pressures

According to the Gender Diversity Benchmark for Asia 2011 report, many women drop off due to social and family pressures even when they have permanent jobs in the private sector. The report looked at women in China, Japan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and India employed in technology, consulting, financial services and consumer goods companies. It found that while in the first five countries, the majority of women dropped out between the middle and senior levels, in India they left between the junior and middle levels. Clearly, family pressure played a much larger role in the lives of Indian women. Few young married women in India have the autonomy to choose to work in a city of their own choice. They must give priority to the husband. And once children come along, then career growth plans come to a screeching halt, or are so badly ruptured that they cannot be resurrected. In any case, few Indian companies have pro-active policies in place to encourage young women to resume their careers. Also, as those in junior positions are more likely than others to be axed if companies prune their workforce, once again women are disproportionately affected.

Economic independence is an important step in enhancing women's status. It does not provide all the answers. For, even when women contribute substantially to family income through paid and unpaid labour, there is no guarantee that they will either be respected or spared violence and abuse within the family. But it does make a difference to the lives of many women. Unfortunately, governments and employers fail to recognise this gender dimension of economics.

Selling nirvana

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What's there to celebrate Photo: Ritu Raj Konwar

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Come March 8, another Women's Day will get buried under marketing buzz. But it's a good time to introspect on what empowerment really means.

March 8, International Women's Day approaches. And the marketing gurus are hard at work. Selling. Selling. Selling us women the idea that we are empowered if we buy. Empowered if we spend. Empowered if we get a facial, a manicure, a pedicure, even a botox job. Empowered if we dress right, look right, are the right shape, have the right hair, of the right colour. The origins of March 8 have now been well and truly buried under the lavender hues of the marketing buzz that surrounds us through an ever-obliging media.

Time to take stock

A Women's Day, however, should be a time to assess, to introspect, and certainly to celebrate. We need to make an honest assessment of where we are, introspect about what still needs to be done and celebrate what has been achieved.

So while we, who live in cities, are being told that nirvana lies in spending more, there are millions of Indian women who cannot afford to buy enough food to feed their families, let alone themselves. While we are told how to exhaust the country's energy sources by buying energy-intensive gadgets that will reduce our “drudgery” (although most women who can afford such gadgets pass on the “drudgery” to other women who they employ), the other half, or more than half of Indian women spend hours each day collecting the fuel wood that will light their inefficient stoves. What remains of the day will be spent collecting water. In their case, for the fraction of energy they need to cook, they drain a great deal more of their physical energy. And no energy planner takes into account how to reduce this very real “drudgery” that the majority of Indian women are never spared.

I choke each time I listen to an advertisement on a popular radio station in Mumbai where a domestic help complains to her employer about the amount of work she is forced to do and threatens to quit. The response of the woman employer is to tell her about a new liquid that magically removes stains and cleans tiles without any effort! The domestic responds (you can almost ‘ hear' her beaming) that now she has no problems! If only new cleaning agents would remove the drudgery of cleaning.

And while young women living in cities are being lured by the marketing brigade into believing that they can let their hair down and party until there is no tomorrow, we have gang rapes in Kolkata and Noida that remind us that no woman, regardless of her age or her class, can assume that she will be safe or that law-enforcers will be sympathetic.

Usual hostility

In Kolkata, when a 37-year-old woman is gang-raped in a car, she is asked by the police to describe in lurid detail how the rape took place and mocked while she tries to lodge an FIR. A Minister in the West Bengal cabinet goes further by asking what a mother of two was doing in a nightclub drinking. And the media does not help by giving details such as the fact that she is an Anglo-Indian or that she is separated from her husband. How is any of this pertinent in a case where the police initially failed to take the basic steps required in a rape case?

In the Noida rape, where a minor was gang-raped by five men, it becomes worse. Not only do the police reveal the identity of the rape victim, the Noida superintendent of police, in full view of television cameras, proceeds to cast aspersions on the victim's character by claiming that she went willingly with the men and that she had consumed alcohol. Are the police anywhere in this country trained at all to deal with rape? Have they not been taught the basics about how to deal with such cases? This was not your havaldar in a small chowki but an SP, someone who should have known better.

Remember them too

So, certainly let's celebrate March 8 as Women's Day and applaud the women who have succeeded. But even as we admire a woman like the boxer Mary Kom, who is preparing hard for the Olympics, let us not forget Irom Sharmila from her home state of Manipur, or ordinary Manipuri women who live daily with violence and the lack of basic infrastructure that could ease their daily burden. Even as we appreciate the women who have clambered up the corporate ladder and made it almost to the top, let us not forget that the majority of women in India work in the informal sector where there is no job security, no increments, no designations.

The glass is not half full. It is three-quarters empty. There is a long way to go before we get to the point where March 8 will be a day only of celebration.

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