Women changing rural India: Sarpanch Sahib

Common perception is that in spite of poverty and under-development, women in South Asia have played a much more active role in leadership and politics of their countries and their communities than in the western “developed” world. Persons like Sirimavo Bhandaranayike, Indira Gandhi, Sheikh Hasina, Benazir Bhutto, Mayawati and Aung San Kyi are responsible for this common perception. Yet, those who know the reality of our world, know that for most women, especially in rural areas, their lives are often closed in the boundaries of traditions, hidden behind veils, bound by rules of caste and class.

India started an experiment in 1993 to change this apparently immutable world of rural women by reserving certain election seats at village council level (Gram Panchayats) for them. At that time, many persons had thought that this would not change anything, men will continue to decide and rule as usual, using their wives or mothers or daughter-in-laws as a cover.

Initially almost all the women who entered the poltical arena because of this policy, were in some way forced by their families. Most of them did not receive any training for the roles they were asked to take on. Almost fifteen years later, it is perhaps time to take stock and understand how this change has worked out in practice and if indeed there has been a change?

Yes, in spite of all the cynicism and active obstruction by old political power-brokers, the experiment has started to bring about a change. “Sarpanch Sahib – Changing the face of India”, edited by Manjima Bhattacharjya (Harper Collins India with India Today and The Hunger Project, 2009), tells the stories of some such women who became presidents of their Gram Panchayats (village councils).

The stories of the book are told by women like Manju Kapur, Indira Maya Ganesh, etc. and are immensely readable. They talk of villages from different parts of India. To understand what these women went through and continue to pass through, what it means for them to live lives of poverty and yet strive for better governance against all odds, makes for a humbling experience.

I liked all the stories. They are succcess stories, even if they show that nothing is easy and at times, the idea of “success” does not quite express what they have achieved. They show that change in the unchanging world of rural poverty, could be almost imperceptible. Like the story of a person like Kenchamma, a dalit woman, who continues to shell betel nuts for a living, even while she is into her second term in the Gram Panchayat. Like this passage from her story:

Quite far removed from the Kenchamma of 1993, who cried in humiliation as she returned from her first meetings, bewildered and frustated at not being able to say anything. We were walking through the village and my eyes fall on her callused hands. She points to the skin of betel nut strewn in piles every where. She did four sacks yesterday. At 50 rupees a box she makes 200 rupees for the day. ...An uneducated Dalit woman has done for her village what seasoned political aspirants have not. But what has she got in return? What does one make of this strange sort of limbo? Thins have changed so much over one generation – from Cariappa’s to his daughter-in-law’s, yet they remain disturbingly unchanged.

Kenchamma has been president of the panchayat twice and is now a grudgingly respected member of the village community – respected by Dailts and Lingayats. But she is still a poor Dalit woman. As if being any other way would be improper. Improper not to live in a thatched, leaking mud hut, or to plaster her house, to not struggle for daily wages, improper to imagine other livelihoods, work not just for the village but make a career out of governance and use the 10 years of hands-on learning she has had. The boundaries have been pushed, but still only from the limits of the home to the village. Isn’t it enough that you have been allowed to reach this far, the voices seem to suggest?

I think that Kenchammas of this world are wise, they know that entrenched social hierarchies can react back with terrible fury if they feel that the status quo is being challenged. They know that they can not count on any one else to protect them. So they bide their time, they accept to continue to living lives of poverty and marginalisation, even while achieving small changes, providing education for their children. They are not aiming for revolutions, they are aiming for a change. Most of us from worlds far away from theirs, including many development experts, are frustrated with this path of slow change.

Perhaps we, or some of us, would have preferred revolutions?

I would recommend this book to everyone, especially those who think that they know India, that they are building the modern new India, that they are bringing in the progress. It would bring a sense of balance in what they think about themselves and gain some respect for those Kanchammas, working in far away places to bring small changes in rural India, taking personal risks that most of us wouldn't have the courage to take.

Violence of Language

I had seen the Colombian writer, Efraim Medina Reyes in Ferrara, a couple of months ago. He had been in a round table with Arundhati Roy, Gofredo Fofi, Elif Shafaq and Laila Lalami. He might have been a good writer but he did not seem to be a very good speaker to me at that time. Or perhaps when he had spoken I was tired and distracted, I don’t know.

I had written about that meeting in this blog in October 2007.

What ever the reason, after the meeting from that particular session he was the only writer about whom I was unable to remember anything significant from his speech and that had made me feel a little guilty.

Yesterday I saw an article by him in an Italian magazine, Internazionale. “Il sesso forte”, the stronger sex. The article was apparently about the violence against women. I started reading it and just the first few lines made me sit up. Perhaps I had understood wrongly, I had thought and reread those lines. No, he had actually written what I had thought he had written. The article started thus:

Men kill each other for a variety of reasons. Most of all in their hunger for power and money. Yet, behind every war and aspiration for peace, there is always a soft and hairy cunt.

It was this last part of the phrase that had shaken me awake. Internazionale is an intellectual kind of magazine and though in Italian language people do tend to use equivalent words of fuck, prick and cunt much more liberally than in many other languages, this magazine is considered to be a little on the serious side for that. Thus if they have to use words like that they would use equivalents of making sex, penis and vagina, rather than their more popular counterparts.

I felt that the particular phrase in Medina’s article’s had been put in that particular way to shock the reader. As I read further, it was clear that the whole article was written to shock. It does not mince words and uses the words cunt, supercunt, gang bangs and rapes abundantly.

What is there to get shocked, you might well ask. Don’t we all use these words in other contexts? It was this undercurrent of violence that I felt in Medina’s words that disturbed me since apparently he is talking against violence in the world, about violence that especially targets women. Yet even while speaking against violence, he is expresses himself in very violent terms, I felt. For example, look at this part of his article (my translation from Italian):

We men can not imagine how terrible it can be for a woman to be forced to have sex. There are still some who think that when a woman refuses to share her cunt with them, actually she is just trying to provoke them. It must be clear that when a woman says no, it means no and you must forget it. I know it is not easy and it must have happened to everyone. But before letting yourself be obsessed by the cunt that has been negated to you, it is better to think of all others that are waiting for you with a smile.

So I had the feeling that he is writing something but his words are conveying exactly the opposite.

And then I was thinking about something else. In literature, in books and magazines, in our daily language, we are all becoming more open in the use of the swear words. In Italy we tend to use these words in way that they become ordinary words, they lose their taboo power. Parents use them in front of children and children use them in front of parents.

Even in some Indian books, magazines and films, it is the same thing. The written and depicted realities tend to reflect the real world in use of these words.

In a way I understand this need. Our bodies and sexuality in general has been too long hidden behind taboos, embarrassments and silences and it is good that those walls can be broken down and we can speak about these parts of our lives more openly. Yet I have a feeling, Medina’s use of the language is not the answer, that makes our body parts mere objects. Sex is not just a mechanics of penetrations and movements. Or does such language actually help us in breaking those barriers?

If men could breast-feed!

The UK Paddy-Bingo ad showing a man sitting with his exposed tit with a small baby in his arms has been banned by the British tube and the Dublin bus service as "it has the potential to disturb public decency".

I think that the company has got more than what it had invested in this ad. Blogs are writing about it, newspaper carry the ad on their front pages as news, it seems like an advertiser's dream. In a few days, as the ripples of the ad will spread, more and more persons all around the world will know about the ad.

On first reflections, the ad may seem offensive. For example, it does seem to say that women are gamblers, they prefer gambling to taking care of their children. However, if you just look around you, the ad seems laughable, it is not the reality. In families with small children, it is men who go out more. An evening out, with friends at the pub or at the stadium or evening gambling, is more a male thing. Women can go out if they get a baby sitter, but the whole society has such a strong message about "good moms" that most women would feel guilty about leaving their children, especially young babies alone at home, not just for gambling but even for work.

I agree with Oliviero Toscani, the ad designer for Benetton that advertising has a social role. Toscani by using shocking pictures, creates controversies, attracts attention towards the brand he is advertising but at the same time, makes us reflect about issues. In the same way, I feel that this British ad is good as it makes us reflect on issues.

For example, I was thinking if men could breast feed, would the world be safer? Would there be less wars and fights?

Or if we could turn the ad and had a woman with a dildo in her hands and the ad had asked, "where have all the men gone?", would we be offended?

Nepal Diary

I am here for a women's orgasnisation working with women from "low" castes in rural areas of Nepal. I was worried about coming to Nepal with all the news about maoists' attacks and the imprisonment of all the political leaders by the king.

In fact tourists have all but disappeared. Thammel, the old part of Kathmandu full of narrow alleys bursting with tourist shops frquented by europeans and americans, seems a little desperate. I was told that guest houses and small hotels have been forced to close.

Maoists have declared a complete block of Kathmandu from 13 March and some big action by 4 April, so things may get even worse.

This means that it is easy to find a cheap room in a good hotel.

People speak about the BBC interview of Prachannda, the head of maoists and his assurance for maoists' willingness to renounce the path of violence and to be part of the political system. Yet, everyday there are news of new fights, bombs, and people dying.
****

I have been told that from some angles, I look like Prachannda. That really makes me afraid. I am suppose to travel in far away rural areas, some of which are close to maoists strongholds and theatre of their fighting with police and military. If they decide that I am Prachannda and decide to shoot me?

In the some of the rural areas that I visit, poverty and oppression are deep-seated. Most of the maoist boys come from these homes I am told.

With some friends, I discuss the revolution of maoists. I agree with their desire of human dignity, social justice and equity. But I don't think that violence or revolutions change things. Because, human beings are human beings and they want comfort, money, good things, power, etc. A few committed and idealists don't run the revolution, it is ordinary persons in villages, small towns and communities, the frontguards of the revolutionaries, who make a new system, replacing the oppressors of the past with new oppressors.

I understand their impatience with slowness of change and yet, I don't think that there is any alternative to dialogue, empowerment and slow change from within.
*****

Lovely green fields with women in colourful clothes makes for pretty pictures. The women mostly wrap the saries over the lower half, keeping the upper halfs covered only with blouses. To Indian eyes, it makes them look more defiant, less shackled by the veils of modesty.

This picture was taken after a meeting with a women's group in Chaimalle. The women were from Danuvar community, struggling for survival.


*****

The bridge hanging over the waters is on Bhagmati river, about 35 km from Kathmandu. It is made of iron plates with gaps between them, and as you walk over it it moves and shifts like a sleeping snake, waking up and moving under your feet. Looking at the boulders and rushing water through the gaps gives me vertigo.

In Kathmandu, the river is filthy drain. Behind Pashupatinath, as people give the last bath to the dead bodies of their near and dear ones, before placing them on the funeral pyres, it seems that they can't see the thick filth in the holy waters, folding their hands in the sacred prayers.

It is like Jamuna in Delhi. Not the Jamuna of my childhood, when we played in the sand behind I.P. college. Wonder if Jamuna is still like that or they have been able to clean it!

Any way back to the frothing waters of Bhagmati, away from Kathmandu, crashing on the boulders, raising up a spray, it seems like a paradise. As I cross the river, I realise to my horror, the shining white froth on the water is like thick soap, probably coming out of some factories or drains.

Some persons stand in the middle of the river. Are they fishing, I ask. No, there is no fish in this river, not any more, according to the two women accompanying us. Those people are mining sand, they will sell it.

Do their legs get sores and rashes, standing in the middle of the soap foam of the river for hours, I ask. The women shake their heads, not understanding my question.


****
Why do they carry things this way, holding the strap on their heads, I wonder.
Men, women, children, all of them. Small bags, big baskets full of green vegetables and fodder, bundles of wood, sheets of iron, logs. People walk bent forward, the straps straining on their foreheads.
It has been years since I trekked in the mountains. I feel fat and undignified, moving like an elephant while they move quickly and nimbly as goats or deer. The stones push through my Italian shoes and hurt my feet, they walk in rubber flip-flops careflessly. They chatter and I gasp like an asthmatic.
I look up with despair. The climbing never seems to end. Far away I can see the ribbon of the path, hugging the mountain, going down towards the river bed. We walked all that. Now this path going up.
They, the women, they made this path, Sarmila tells me. It is a narrow path on which stones have been placed. It is not a paved path, they have just been thrown there, one above another. I can understand that in rainy season, walking on these paths must not be easy and to have stones under your feet that stop you from slipping down, must be helpful. If you fell down, obviously you have greater chances of breaking your legs over them, I remind myself.
Each stone must weigh half a kg, how much time did it take for them to do it, to line this path? I imagine myself, going down the path, down to the river where we started, pick up a few stones and then climb up to this place. It is too tiring, I give up imagining.
Has anyone ever had heart attacks while climbing these mountains, I want to ask, but I am afraid that asking such questions brings bad luck. So I keep my mouth shut. Rather, I am too busy gasping to ask stupid questions.

*****
We are staying with an old woman in her hotel at Biplate village in Okhaldhunga district. Her hotel has two rooms. A big room where she has the kitchen and the women's dormitory. The next room is men's dormitory. For breakfast we get roasted potatoes with chilli sauce. The toilet is a bit lower down, behind the house. After dinner I have taken my usual diuretic for the blood pressure and I need to pee, holding a small torch, I go out. It is pitch black and the idea of going down the hill to search for the toilet makes me shudder. I finally decide to cross the road and pee over the deep valley below. Above, the sky is full of stars. I feel like a naughty child, peeing in the open like that.
In the morning, there is a procession of donkeys going up on the mountain behind us. Tens or twenty of donkies with bells around their necks. Followed by a lonely man or sometimes by a boy. It is a 3-4 days journey they tell me, going to the Salu, some place in high mountains in Himalaya.
A man carryng a huge bundle of boxes who had slept in our hotel comes out and starts walking on the same day. For four days of walking to deliver those boxes he will get 450 nepalese rupees. For food and sleeping on the way he will spend about 400 rupees and after four days of back-breaking work, he will earn 50 rupees. I can't belive it. One Euro is about 81 rupees.
Then came this boy following his buffaloes or are they yaks?

*******
It is the day of the sex workers they tell me. I am curious to see the sex workers, so I go their meeting. Where are the sex workers, I look around. I don't see them. I see young women, sitting together. Some of them have their children with them.
They talk about the difficulty of convincing the clients to use condoms. They talk of violence. They talk of discrimination, of being blamed for spreading AIDS. They talk of selling themsleves for a plate of momos, when children are hungry. They talk of dignity. They talk of coming out and raising their voices.
Do you want to say something, they ask me. I am used to talking but for once, I can't find the words. I mumble something, feeling inadequate.

*******
They sit on the ground, patiently for hours. I squirm and shift. Move my legs this way and that way. I wish there was a chair. How can you eat this way, I ask myself, trying to reach the thali on the ground.
They talk of domestic violence, alcoholism, poverty, hunger, saving money, second wives, going ahead even if men of their communities do not agree.
Her husband cut the big toe in her right foot with a knife, Sarmila points out towards the woman who is speaking. He was drunk and angry. She is talking about the importance of her women's group, importance of her chicken raising, importance of not giving in to the threats of the men from the village.

Happy 8th March, even if I am late.