Baksheesh or Bonus?

Introduction:

Domestic workers, estimated to be around 5 crores, are found in almost all the urban and semi-urban households in our country. Even if the concept of male domestic workers or helpers (E.g., Rama Gadi in Maharashtra) has been present for a long time, it is the women who make up to 80% of domestic workers because of the gendered notion of housework.

In current times of the pandemic, according to UNDP and UN women estimates, 72% of domestic workers lost their job due to the lockdowns and social distancing protocols. Given this background and my recent visit to a union meeting of domestic workers, this seemed like a good time to bring this issue up for discussion.

A family member or a worker?

We all have, at some point in our life, seen and interacted with a domestic worker; either at our own house or our relatives’ or our neighbours’. What do you call your domestic worker? -Bai? Mavshi? Maid? Servant? Didi? Akka? Ramu? I am sure there must be many other names in different regional languages to refer to the domestic workers. 

The first fight of these workers starts right here - to be seen as workers! It's not only about the names by which they're addressed (sometimes, the employers use names like didi, mausi, akka as they're thought to be more respectful than bai, maid or servant). However, the justification used by the employers that “she is just like our family member”, may have other implications. If he/she is really considered as a family member, why does the domestic worker sit on the floor instead of a sofa or a dining table (if at all the household is ‘kind’ enough to offer her food or at least a lunch break) just like other family members? Why isn’t he/she allowed to use the washroom at her employer’s place? Why the worker is invited only for the preparation of the ceremony and not to the actual celebration in the household? Why isn’t he/she allowed to use the same lift that is used by the residents of the society? Why isn’t he/she given a bonus instead of a baksheesh that essentially is useless to them?

We easily forget the fact that OUR household is their WORKPLACE. It is because of them that the women from the upper class and caste, who can afford to keep a domestic worker, can now go out and work in their offices (since unfortunately the burden of the household chores is still not divided equally between the sexes). That is to say that one of the reasons behind the increase in the FLPR (female labour force participation rate) in the formal sector is the domestic workers. Then but obviously the domestic workers should also be seen as workers; workers with rights! Unfortunately, even the domestic workers have internalized this attitude that has its origin in the tradition of bonded labour; where it is the duty of one particular household (mostly from the lower caste) to serve the other upper caste household in return for food and sometimes a room (corner would be more appropriate) to sleep. This internalization of the age-old attitude and tradition stops them from asking for their rights such as pay-raise, bonuses, weekly offs, paid sick leaves, lunch breaks.

The domestic workers go out of their way and do chores that aren’t even assigned to them in the first place, they keep working even if they’re treated poorly and are kept at the same wage rate for years, they keep looking after the children in the household like their own even if the children curse them when they grow up - all this just because of the emotional appeal and the internalised attitude of ‘they being an extended member of the family’. Therefore, the first struggle for any domestic workers' union is for the recognition of domestic workers as 'workers working in a workspace' by both – the domestic workers themselves and the employers.

Why the traditional trade unions won't work?

One such union fighting for domestic workers' rights is Bangalore’s Domestic Workers Rights Union (associated with Stree Jagriti Samiti). I recently got a chance to have a dialogue with Geetha Menon, the secretary of Stree Jagriti Samiti, and attend the monthly meeting of the union. Geetha was talking passionately about why there was a need for such unions and why traditional unions (usually associated with political parties) have not been able to give justice to this issue. According to her, domestic workers cannot be unionized under one big union since their workplace and employers differ. It is easy to mobilise the factory workers and protest against one employer (the factory owner or the government in the case of PSUs), but how can domestic workers from different areas of a state/region come together and against whom will they protest for their rights if there is no single employer?

For long, neither the traditional trade unions nor the government had recognized the domestic workers as workers. As Geetha Menon puts it, “even after so many years of independence, domestic workers have been invisible slaves. In spite of their contribution to the GDP, as enabling workers, they have been left out of the legal framework”. The first legislation - ‘Domestic Workers Welfare and Social Security Act, 2010’, drafted by the National Commission for Women was brought in 2010. But little progress has been made in passing this bill so far. To date, we didn’t even have the exact figure of the domestic workers since there is no law mandating any registration process. It is now (2021) that the central government has launched the first-ever ‘All India Survey on Domestic Workers’ that will cover all 742 districts in 37 states and Union Territories. However, the definitional issue still persists. Domestic workers are not included in the scope of several labour laws because of the constraints in definitions of “workman”, “employer” or “establishment”. Nature of their work, specificity of employee-employer relationship and their workplace being a private household instead of a public place/private establishment, excludes their coverage from the existing laws.

Given these limitations of the Indian legislation and the limitations of the traditional trade unions in raising issues of the domestic workers on a national platform, forming a different type of union was necessary. Bangalore’s Domestic Workers Rights Union hence mobilizes domestic workers in small groups in each ward and demands legislation for the protection of their rights from the state. The traditional trade unions only look at the economic questions of the workers and their rights at the workplace (mostly factories); The union of domestic workers, however, cannot limit itself only to that. We all have heard about the domestic violence faced by the domestic worker and the husband snatching away all the money earned by the woman. Many times, these precisely are the reasons why the employers refuse to give bonuses in cash and resort to giving a `baksheesh’. Therefore, the union also intervenes in the household matters of a domestic worker. Such interventions include prevention of domestic abuse, awareness among the employers, giving scholarships to their children (there have been many cases where especially the girl child was very ambitious but had to become a domestic worker like her mother because of their economic condition) etc. As part of the International Domestic Workers' Day (June 16) programme, the union has also launched an initiative called `Adopt a Granny’ for the elderly domestic workers who are sacked from the work and have no other source of income to spend the rest of their lives. Many such elderly women (above 60-65) have no one to look after them, no old-age security such as a pension, no alternative employment because of their age and the muscle pain incurred due to the extensive physical labour. This is the category that has lost its jobs during the lockdown and has been pushed out of work permanently. The fund generated under this initiative is used for such women. Even during my visit to the union meeting, I came across one such case of a domestic worker who was 65 years old, her muscles were all sore but she still had to work as she didn’t have anyone to look after her.

“We demand our basic rights as workers”:

The primary demands of the domestic workers are -

• Registration of domestic workers and their employers with the Board (labour department of the state)

• The effective implementation of the ‘Unorganised Workers Social Security and Welfare Act, 2008’: An Act enabling the central government to formulate welfare schemes for unorganized sector workers that include health and maternity benefits, life and disability cover, old age protection etc. 

• Access to toilets at the workplace: In a very heart-wrenching incident in Bangalore, one domestic worker had to pee on the doormat outside her employer’s house since she was not allowed to use the toilets in society and she lost her control after working for many hours straight. Shockingly, after viewing the CCTV footage of the incident, the society members held the victim responsible and blamed her; completely ignoring the reason which compelled her to compromise on her dignity like this! Thereafter, the union has been demanding that access to toilets within the households should be seen as a fundamental right of a worker.

• Bonus and pay-raise: In many cases, the domestic worker keeps working at the same wage rate for many years in a household. A pay-raise (at least) every year or six months according to the inflation rates is one of the primary demands by these workers. The domestic workers’ unions in Bengaluru have also been encouraging the workers to ask for a cash bonus instead of a baksheesh (gift of a sari or sweets) around the festival season. The workers say that the extra money is much more useful to them than a sari as they can use it for additional household expenses and children’s education. The workers demand bonuses in cash as a recognition of their labour. However, most of the employers give baksheesh as ‘charity’ (daan) rather than ‘a tip for the good service’. In many places, the employers don’t pay bonuses saying that “anyways her drunkard husband snatches it all away”. Another popular argument by the employers is: “Akka” is our family member, we give her Sari out of love, how can she ask for a bonus in cash and monetise our relationship? The implicit assumption that sari as a gift is purer than the commodified bonus is evident in this type of argument. The following video (hardly 5 mins long) ‘what happens when a domestic worker asks for a bonus instead of baksheesh’ explains this very well, do watch it for a better understanding of this demand.

Struggle on two levels:

The struggle of domestic workers works on two levels – at the employer’s level and at the state level. As seen earlier, having a dialogue with the employer regarding the rights of the domestic worker is one of the means of reducing the exploitation. Fighting against the state to demand rights like formal registration, issuance of minimum wage, social security benefits etc has also been an important means of struggle. Recently, on 20th November 2021, Bangalore’s Domestic Workers Rights Union had organized one such Morcha in front of the labour commissioner’s office in Bangalore to demand answers about the social security measures offered during the Covid times. 

Sometimes, the pressure to live up to their social status itself can push the employers to bring a change in their behaviour. In one instance in Bangalore, a domestic worker wasn’t offered a lunch break, let alone any food or water in the household she used to work. This made her extremely dizzy. After a few days, she brought a small tiffin from her house and sat in the passage outside her employer’s house in a way that the neighbours can see her. As expected, the neighbours did see her and asked why she was sitting outside; to which she immediately replied: “wo andar khane nahi dete” (they don’t let me have food). Since the very next day, her employers started offering her food and a lunch break!

हम लड़ेंगे कि लड़े बग़ैर कुछ नहीं मिलता (We shall fight comrade because one gets nothing without a fight)

The struggles of the domestic workers' union by far have been successful to some extent, but we still have a long way to go! Apart from the issues discussed above, caste discrimination and sexual harassment at the workplace, victimization at the hands of traffickers or the placement agencies, forced migration, abuse, exploitation in times of gig economy are also very pertinent issues when we talk about the domestic workers; each of which will require a separate dedicated post.

Coming back to the union meeting in Venkatapura, Bangalore (entirely in Kannada, but we could understand a little and the rest was translated for us by Geetha), the one thing that stayed in my mind was the sheer persistence and courage of these women! The women who earlier couldn’t even raise their voice against their husbands, now mobilize other women, lead the protest and raise their voices so loud and clear that even the state is compelled to take a note of it! I strongly believe that the struggle of the domestic workers can be made heard and successful just like the recent successful struggle at ‘Urban Company’ (again, led by women); and we all have a crucial role to play in it - as an employer as well as their ally!

The Survival Game

 Have you ever played a board game named Monopoly? - A multi-player economics-themed board game where players roll dice to move around the game board, buying and trading properties. The player with the most capital or he/she who has not gone bankrupt is declared as the winner. What happens when Monopoly is played in real life with real situations specific to rural India where winning is equated with the mere survival of the participants?

Recently, as part of one of our electives (Competencies for Designing Livelihoods Intervention) in the MA Development course, we participated in a simulation workshop named ‘Foundation Express’ (adapted from the simulation exercise developed by IRMA, India). It’s a daylong workshop where participants experience the real world, its constraints and outcomes. The game focuses attention on the decision-making process - It seeks to simulate how decisions taken by large farmers influence the fortunes of small farmers and landless labourers and how the interventions by the government and civil society organisations can affect the lives of the rural poor.

The game:

The game starts in a village called Narayanpur (imaginary) and assumes a closed economy (No trade outside the village, all the necessities of the villagers are fulfilled within the village). The primary stakeholders are the agricultural households (landed and landless). Other community members include traders, money lenders, gram panchayat members, an NGO and a government representative. Now all the participants are divided into pairs and assigned roles of different stakeholders. All the pairs receive the profile of their households that includes members in the family, land size, initial savings to work with and the rates of basic necessities (clothes, food, seeds). For example, my partner and I got the role of an agricultural household belonging to the general category (caste) that had 7 members (2 adults and 5 adolescent children), 2 acres of land and 20,000 as initial savings. Each household is supposed to manage the assets they have in a manner that they can feed, clothe and educate the family, maximise their financial capital after meeting all these basic requirements and survive. Each household has to buy food, clothing from the traders and engage with agriculture to run life. The prevailing weather conditions determine the production (harvest) which the household sells after the end of the season. The non-landed households have to look for employment with the landed households by selling their labour. The traders are supposed to buy food, clothing and seeds stock from the government and try to maximise their profits. If any household has a child of marrying age (18 and above) the household has to fix his/her marriage in another household and both the families incur 5000 Rs each as a cost for the marriage. If the child is not married off in the first year (the game takes place in 2 or 3 intervals each lasting for 2-3 hours – each being considered as one year with one harvesting season), the family will have to pay 10,000 the next year for their marriage.

In case a household fails to secure foods or clothes or generate income, the family is declared ‘dead due to hunger and starvation’. The household that survives and has multiplied its assets the most is declared as the winner (The game is more nuanced and has many more details but due to the constraint of space and time, we won’t be disclosing them here).

Key take-aways:

Can the ‘invisible hand’ lead to a just and equitable development?

Adam Smith comes up with the concept of ‘invisible hand’ where he claims that the market force (invisible hand) helps the demand and supply of goods in a free market to reach equilibrium automatically; hence the government should not intervene if we want an efficient distribution of goods.

In the game, during the first half, all the households were competing against each other for survival. The behaviour of people was solely controlled by the market forces. There was no government control and no collectivization efforts by the villagers. The traders and money lenders were charging exorbitant rates to maximise their profits and the individuals had no bargaining power at all. Those who were better off in terms of financial assets (land and initial savings) were able to cope up and survive; those with marginal or no landholdings couldn't; in the first round, four to five households couldn’t survive due to hunger deaths of almost all the family members. Families were desperate to get their young daughters married by striking all kinds of deals since it reduced one mouth to feed and the charges were going up the next year (the second half of the game).

Hurdles in collectivisation:

The NGO present in the village tried to convince people to form a self-help group to add some security to their fragile livelihoods (The SHGs can provide loans to the community members), but people were more concerned about survival in the current season by taking care of short-term necessities than any long-term investment. It was astonishing that all of us being students of development and advocates of collectivisation, couldn’t make collectivisation our priority! We talk about the merits of mobilising people but when we were put in their shoes, we also started thinking on the following lines: “Pehle Apna dekh lete hai, fir meetings vagaira attend karenge”. Even while attending the SHG meeting, the first question we all asked was not how it’ll benefit everyone, but “hame kya milega”. This was an eye-opener – reflecting on our own behaviour at that moment made us realise the hurdles in the collectivisation efforts of the community. Firstly, People will lead the larger struggle only when their basic necessities are taken care of. In that case, the initiation of larger struggles, protests and unionisation should come from the regular salaried class (not the affluent ones) - those who have these daily needs covered, who can afford to devote their energy to larger causes. Secondly, the success of ideological mobilisation seems highly dubious and common people (workers) can only be mobilised when they have some personal stake or benefit in it. Thirdly, even if nominal, the SHGs do charge a contributory amount from every member – in the game, people didn’t even have 50 Rs as an entry fee to join the SHG. It partially explains the homogenous nature of SHGs with respect to their caste and class composition (only those having at least a marginal surplus are able to become members of the SHG).

Need for government interventions:

The first half proved to be a disaster since the village was left purely at the mercy of the market forces and there were no collectivisation efforts to demand government interventions. In the second half, we all had realised that there’s no survival for marginal and non-landed agricultural labourers if we do not come together. Through those efforts, the villagers were able to put pressure on the Panchayat members to organise Gram Sabhas, regulate the trade, do the social mapping of the village (like NSSO data), and demand interventions like PDS, mid-day meal and NREGA from the state. The impact of these interventions was immediately seen at the end of the second harvest season where no hunger deaths were reported. The PDS system took care of food security and NREGA assured additional & secured income to the agricultural labourers who could then buy clothes and seeds. The government school first didn’t see any enrolment as children's education was the last priority for those struggling to manage their food; but the moment the mid-day meal scheme was announced, almost all the households enrolled their children into the school as that meant fewer mouths to feed. This perfectly depicts the reality – the increased enrolment in schools after the launch of the mid-day meal scheme in 1995.  

 

Even if the point was proven that interventions were beneficial, they needed a lot of reforms (the government in the game was trying to act exactly like the real government – the role of government was played out by our professors). The daily wage rate in NREGA (100 Rs per person) was below the minimum wage rate (in reality as well, the unions are fighting for the demand to raise the daily minimum wage to 375 Rs), subsidies for seeds were announced at the end of the harvest season when farmers had already sold their lands in absence of seeds and any subsidiary income to just sail through the current season. When the distress sale of lands to money lenders and the traders brought down the price of a one-acre plot to 500 Rs, the government announced a scheme to buy land from the villagers which proved to be a big relief. However, there was a catch here. The government announced that it will give 15000 Rs per acre only for 25+ acres of land. Most of the villagers were marginal landholders, so we all had to take extra efforts to come together, convince others to sell their productive assets (toughest job), bargain with the government and after receiving the amount, distribute it across the contributors as per the amount of land they had given (fraudulent practices were observed here as well). 

The protests against the government couldn’t last long as people had to get back to arrange for the basic necessities within the 30 minutes time limit (This fact also sparked a conversation regarding the failure of unions and why workers’ protests cannot last long in our country).

Gender equations:

It was surprising to witness how subtly the patriarchal division of labour works. Even if we all were highly educated and the proponents of gender equity, it was observed that the decision-making positions (Panchayat representatives) were easily taken over by the male participants. The women participants were leading the decision-making process within the household, but not in the public sphere where community decisions/demands were being made. There were no initiations by women participants nor were there any proactive efforts from the men to invite or include women. The external environment and imbibed patriarchy were undoubtedly shaping our behaviour and strengthening the power dynamics already present in the environment. 

Surplus labour and exploitation:

To survive through the second harvest season, most of the marginal landholding families had to sell their lands leaving almost 3/4th of the families in the village landless. We all were forced to sell our labour to the better off agricultural farmers at a very competitive rate (the bargained value of labour came down to as low as 1500 Rs for an entire year, whereas the prescribed wage rate was Rs 800 per month!). In the end, we all were saved from this exploitative situation when the government finally launched NREGA.

The surplus labour, in the absence of any union or a cooperative, led to steep competition amongst the agricultural labourers that brought down the market rate of wages. We, as landless labourers, completely side-lined the option of collective bargaining which could have saved us from this extreme exploitative condition. We were shocked at our own behaviour considering how in the classroom we were the ones shouting: "workers of the world unite"! This reiterated the fact that collectivisation might be the toughest job – may it be in the form of a union, a self-help group or a cooperative.

Ethics – a privilege?

Before the game began, each of us was supposed to write down the values that are non-negotiable for us. I had written `honesty’ and `self-respect’ as my non-negotiable values. Within 1-2 hours of the game, my ‘values and ethics’ had already gone for a toss – To just be able to buy the basic necessities of life, to survive as a family, we had to resort to fraudulent practices and stealing. 

This raises crucial questions regarding the human psyche and the decision-making process. How do you really make a choice between `surviving’ and ‘being ethical’ when it becomes a zero-sum game? Is being ethical/moral also a sign of privilege? - A thought to ponder upon!

How everybody could have survived:

The results were obvious. In the end, when we calculated the initial assets of the families and the assets at the end of the game, it was clear that the winners were the traders and the moneylenders. Almost all the families of agricultural labourers couldn’t survive (verdict based on the assets each family owned at the end, the amount of loan taken and the surviving family members). The traders and moneylenders were successful in multiplying their assets and maximising their profits mainly because of the factors like access to physical assets, bargaining power and the market monopoly. The wealth and growth inequality was tremendous.

We literally lived the reality by putting ourselves in the shoes of the most marginalised section of our society. We were able to experience the barriers in implementing theory into practice, and see how the external social factors were controlling our behaviour. This, according to me, was a crucial realisation especially while addressing and working on social issues/practices such as child marriage or child labour.

After the end of the game, during the analysis round, our professor discussed with us how everybody could have survived. There was enough land and equivalent labour in the village (even if unequally divided) since the beginning of the game. If only all of us (those owning lands and the landless labourers) had come together and formed a cooperative, we all could have survived. But all of us coming together was itself hard – the landowners neither wished to give away their lands nor employ labour from outside. This is not surprising; as even in real life, this becomes one of the reasons behind the failure of producer cooperatives.

Overall, the simulation workshop proved to be an eye-opener, giving many insights, forcing me to reflect upon my convictions and making me experience the life of the communities (even if hypothetically) with whom I might be working!

(A big thanks to my batchmate Arati Tawade for sharing her reflections as well)

पुस्तक परीक्षण: साता उत्तराची कहाणी

तुम्ही जर राज्यशास्त्राचे विद्यार्थी/अभ्यासक असाल, किंवा तुम्हाला जर राजकारणात रूची असेल, तुम्ही जर स्वत:ला राजकारण/समाजकारणात झोकून दिलं असेल, किंवा तुम्हाला समाजसुधारणेच्या ध्येयानी पछाडलेले असेल, किंवा तुम्हाला जर राजकीय घडामोडी आणि त्याच्या पडसादांबद्दल जाणून घेण्यात रस असेल, तर वाचलंच पाहिजे असं पुस्तक म्हणजे ग.प्र. प्रधान लिखीत ‘साता उत्तराची कहाणी’.

ध्येयानी प्रेरलेले सात तरूण. स्वातंत्र्योत्तर काळात या देशाच्या राजकीय, आर्थिक आणि सामाजिक जीवनाला लागलेले ग्रहण सुटावे म्हणून आपल्याला पटलेल्या मार्गाने वाटचाल करणारे. त्या वाटेतील वैचारिक आणि भावनिक संघर्षांना धीराने सामोरे जाणारे. त्यांच्या ध्येयजीवनाची ही कहाणी. खरंतर त्यांच्या आणि त्यांच्या नंतरच्या पिढ्यांचीच ही प्रातिनिधिक कहाणी! ह्या कथानकाच्या माध्यमातून ग.प्र स्वातंत्र्योत्तर काळातील भारताच्या वाटचालीचं पटलच उलगडून दाखवतात. समाजवादी, मार्क्सवादी, रॉयिस्ट, फुले-आंबेडकरवादी, हिंदुत्ववादी, गांधीवादी अशा विविध विचारसरणीचं प्रतिनिधित्व करणारे हे सात तरूण. ‘चले जाव’ चळवळीपासून सुरू झालेलं हे कथानक जयप्रकाश नारायणांच्या मृत्यूपर्यंतच्या (१९७९) चार दशकांचं चित्रण आपल्यासमोर मांडतं. ह्या कालखंडातील मुख्य घडामोडी, त्या घटनांचे भारतीय समाजावरील परिणाम, राजकीय पक्षांची त्या घडामोडींसंदर्भातील भूमिका, पक्षनेतृत्वाने घेतलेल्या काही निर्णयांमुळे निष्ठावान पक्ष कार्यकर्त्यांची झालेली ओढाताण आणि माजलेला भावनिक हलकल्लोळ, भारतीयांच्या मनात उमटलेले पडसाद आणि पक्षीय राजकारणाला लागलेले नवे वळण अशा सर्व गोष्टी ह्या तरूणांच्या पत्रव्यवहारातून आपल्या समोर येतात.

राज्यशास्त्राची विद्यार्थिनी असल्याने ह्या सर्व घटना, राजकीय पक्षांची भूमिका, विविध विचारसरणी - त्यांच्यातल्या त्रुटी ह्यांविषयी तसं मला माहित आहे. पण ह्याच सर्वांकडे गोष्टीच्या माध्यमातून- विविध व्यक्तींच्या (थोडक्यात, विचारसरणींच्या) दॄष्टीकोनातून पाहताना मला आणखी मजा आली! इथे विशेष नोंद अशी करावी वाटते, की हे सर्व लिहिताना कुठेही प्रधानांची स्वत:ची विचारसरणी झळकली आहे, किंवा कोणा एका विचारसरणीवरच जास्त लक्ष केंद्रीत झालं आहे असं मुळीच होत नाही. अतिशय तटस्थपणे ग.प्रंनी सर्व बाजू आणि सर्व विचारप्रवाह टिपले आहेत.

केवळ ह्याच सात तरूणांमधले वैचारिक संघर्ष नव्हेत, तर त्यांचे आणि त्यांच्या मुलांचे थोडक्यात, दोन पिढ्यांचे होणारे संघर्षही ही कहाणी मांडते. त्यांच्या वैचारिक आणि राजकीय संघर्षासोबतच त्या वाटेतले भावनिक हिंदोळेही आपल्या समोर येतात. मार्क्सवादी असलेल्या वैद्यच्या मुलाचे शिवसेनेत जाणे, रॉयिस्ट असलेल्या एम.आर च्या मु्लाने नक्षलवादाचा मार्ग स्विकारणे, दोघेही गांधीवादीच असले तरी वडीलांचा सर्वोदयाचा मार्ग डावलून सामंतच्या मुलाने जयप्रकाशांच्या राजकीय चळवळींचा मार्ग निवडणे, ह्या सर्वातून ग.प्र नव्या आणि जुन्या पिढीतील वैचारिक आणि त्यातून निर्माण होणा-या भावनिक संघर्षावर बोट ठेवतात.

कोणत्याही समाजकारण वा राजकारणाला झोकून दिलेल्या ध्येयवादी व्यक्तीचा प्रवास तिच्या सहचर वा सहचारिणीच्या समर्थ साथीशिवाय यशस्वी होऊ शकत नाही. ती व्यक्तीही तितकीच ध्येयानी प्रेरलेली, सोबत्याच्या ध्येयाला समजून घेणारी, त्याच्या संघर्षात समजून उमजून साथ देणारी असावी लागते. ही कहाणी त्या सर्व साथीदारांचीही तितकीच आहे जितकी ती ह्या सात तरूणांची आहे. वसंतासारखीच मार्क्सवादी पक्षाची सदस्य असूनही त्याला पार्टीवर्क करता यावं म्हणून ताराने संसार चालवण्याची, पर्यायाने नोकरी करण्याची जबाबदारी स्वीकारणं, कालांतराने "पार्टीत सतत राजकीय विषय आणि चर्चा हेच चालू असतं" म्हणत वैद्यने तारासोबत आधीसारखी राजकीय चर्चा करायला दिलेला नकार, त्यातून ताराची होणारी घुसमट, सतत दौ-यावर असणा-या ह्या पक्ष कार्यकर्त्यांच्या सहचारिणींनी एकहाती संसार सांभाळणं इत्यादी छोट्या छोट्या घटनांच्या उल्लेखांतून राजकीय-सामाजिक कार्यकर्त्यांच्या सांसारिक आणि भावनिक अडचणीही आपल्यासमोर मांडल्या जातात.

किंबहुना त्यामुळेच ही केवळ राजकीय विचारसरणी वा वैचारिक संघर्षाची कहाणी रहात नाही. ह्या पुस्तकातील एका पात्राने म्हणल्याप्रमाणे, ही त्या सर्व वेड्या, ध्येयवादी व्यक्तींची कहाणी आहे; जी व्यावहारिक अर्थाने सुफळ नसेल, अपूर्णही असेल पण तरीही त्या कहाणीत आपलं मन गुंततं - कारण ती अनामिकांची संघर्षगाथा आहे!

आता शेवटाकडे येताना... प्रत्येक कालखंडात नवनवीन आव्हानं निर्माण होत असतात आणि ती स्वीकारायला तरूण पिढीतून काही जण पुढेही येतात. कधी आधीच्या पिढीतल्या कार्यकर्त्यांच्या पावलावर पाऊल टाकून तर कधी नवे मार्ग शोधत तीही आपला संघर्ष चालू ठेवतात. ह्या वाटचालीत काही समस्या सुटतात, काही नव्याने निर्माण होतात, काही अनुत्तरित राहतात; काही आशेचे क्षण येतात, कदाचित त्याहूनही जास्त निराशेचे येतात...पण म्हणून संघर्ष मात्र थांबत नाही! आजच्या पिढीतल्या समाजसुधारणेच्या ध्येयानी प्रेरलेल्या सगळ्या तरूण-तरूणींसाठी ही संघर्षगाथा नक्कीच प्रेरणादायी ठरते; त्या पात्रांमध्ये नकळत आपण स्वत:ला बघू लागतो आणि त्यांचा संघर्ष आपल्या आजच्या संघर्षासोबत हळूच मिसळून जातो! आणि माझ्या मते,आजच्या पिढीलाही ही आपलीच कहाणी वाटावी, हेच ग.प्रं चं सर्वात मोट्ठं यश आहे!

Women and Large dams

India’s first prime minister, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru had called large dams 'the temples of modern India', little did he know that these temples can also have disastrous effects, especially on the lives of the marginalised. Large dams and huge hydropower plants are usually considered crucial in the development of any country. The main critique of this mainstream notion of development (which inevitably involves the construction of large dams) is that it is not equitable. Equity comes into play where some communities suffer disproportionate losses compared with those that enjoy the benefits of the development. Women are one such category that suffers. You might be puzzled, doesn’t displacement caused by the construction of large dams affect all the people who live in that river basin? Well, that is true, yet we are claiming that even among that community, women have to bear more brunt of the socio-economic impacts of these huge developmental projects.

Various studies have shown that women and men adopt different livelihood strategies according to geographical scales and climatic season. The man of the household usually holds the title of the land that belongs to the family. When the displacement and resettlement process takes place, it is he who gets registered as the 'beneficiary' of the compensation since the land is in his name. On the other hand, a woman who also loses her traditional livelihood (that which depends upon grazing land, non-timber forest produce, grass used for artisanal products) does not get compensated directly. That means, the woman loses out on her right to land, compensation for the lost sources of her income and the control over family resources & finances due to the power dynamics inside the household. It has also been observed that the men who received the compensation have spent the entire amount on alcohol or Jugaar leaving the women and other members of the family with absolutely nothing.

The displacement and resettlement process affects the family’s food security and direct access to water & sanitation - both considered being the responsibilities of the women of the household. Various project-affected women have reported ‘there being no drinking water pumps for the initial years of the resettlement process’ which meant that they had to spend hours and hours collecting water from lorry tankers. All these changes might affect a family’s health and their children may miss out on education because of the change in the place and worsening economic condition; in both cases, women are overburdened and blamed since household work and child care is considered as their domain in a patriarchal setup.

The compensation procedure by the state mechanism views only the loss of physical land, not the impacts associated with it. Let’s take the example of the proposed Chentikheda dam construction in the Kwari district of Madhya Pradesh. The dam won’t only take away lands from these people, it will lead to the loss of ‘double-cropped’ agricultural land, will deny them access to the forest produce, it will cut off the villages on the other side along with disrupting their trading activities. As compensation, the government is only offering them a piece of land. In many cases, even the land-for-land compensation is not given (as witnessed in the case of Sardar Sarovar Dam). The very few households who receive such compensation, get a rocky land instead of their earlier fertile one. This badly affects the agricultural sector and the people involved in it, many of which are women! They have to do all the extra hard work (without any payment) like tilling the rocky land.  (Attached here is the link to the documentary on the case of Kwari: The story of Kwari).

Women also suffer both socially and culturally as they have to get used to new and unfamiliar language, communities, culture, traditions, economy (including the marketplaces). The new settlers are seen as outsiders by the host community and tension is always present between the old and the new settlers over resources. Since women are in charge of collecting resources like water, firewood they are always placed in a difficult position.

It is interesting to note that the ‘integration model’ for development (also called the liberal integration model) believes resettlement is a blessing in disguise for women. It believes that resettlement itself may produce psychological and economic benefits for women. Like employment, it can stimulate new ways of thinking conducive to women's equality. It believes that moving women away from their traditional homes can help break the narrow boundaries that restricted their roles and aspirations. The model also predicts that women relocated to urban sites will enjoy significant improvements in the quality of their lives due to the greater access to modern health care facilities (O'Bannon, 1994).

However, in reality, as we saw earlier, the project affected households hardly get any compensatory land; let alone getting land in urban sites. Besides, the women from the project-affected households feel differently about this scenario. Rehabilitation sites are often located hundreds of kilometres from their ancestral homes, restricting the mobility of women and breaking them from their social network & support. Below is a quote by one of the women named Ushaben Tadvi belonging to the scheduled tribe. Ushaben was displaced due to the Sardar Sarovar Project and got involved in the Narmada Bachao Movement later:

“Here (in resettlement site), only if we have 300 rupees, 400 rupees, we can go to our maternal home. These days, it is not possible to go to my maternal home for 2-3 years. Whereas there (from our own village), we visited our maternal home every 2-3-5 days.”

These types of socio-psychological non-measurable impacts do not find mention in any of the government’s planning and compensation documents.

                        A photo of protesting women in Narmada Bachao Andolan

Along with the construction of new large dams, the older dam projects also create gender-differentiated impacts. One of the dangers they create is that of floods. Consider the example of Damodar Valley. There have been three major floods since the Damodar valley corporation dams came into existence after independence: in 1958, 1978, and 1998; mainly due to the release by the Damodar valley corporation of excess water into the canals during late monsoons to protect the dams. Now interestingly, even though a man is usually held responsible to protect his family, in case of such emergencies and disasters, women are the ones who are disproportionately burdened with the responsibility of finding means to survive, procuring food for children, and ensuring physical safety for themselves and their families. Women are forced to fetch water from distant areas as most of the tube wells are contaminated due to the flood. Losses of harvest and livestock have a high impact on women as nearly 58% of them rely on cattle and chickens for their cash income according to the research conducted by Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt (2012).

One of the biggest reasons behind all these unforeseen impacts of large dams and hydropower plants in India especially on women, as agreed by most of the scholars, is the lack of representation and inclusion of women within the institutional mechanisms such as the planning bodies and the hydropower industry. A gender lens and gender-sensitive planning have been missing in India’s development planning body for a long period of time. Gender-sensitive planning could include public consultations with women to better understand the power dynamics in the public and the private sector. It could also include assessments of sex-disaggregated data to develop a gendered project baseline.

The question is if this has been identified already, why isn’t it getting implemented? The answer lies in the societal as well as the working/organisational culture that has been in place for many years. For example, Engineering work in hydropower is perceived as highly masculine and immensely risky. In fact, the water sector itself has been identified as deeply masculine. The hydropower sector, in particular, symbolises ‘male’ capabilities to restructure and control nature (in this case, water) since it includes working in remote locations, blasting tunnels through solid mountains of rocks, stopping and containing the flow of mighty rivers etc. The notions of subordination and hierarchy (chain of command) within these institutions serve to perpetuate these gender power differences. These hierarchies within the organisation are found to limit access to information and opportunities for the staff working at lower positions in the organisation, most of which are women. This fact clearly communicates that it is not possible to promote gender equality in the planning and implementation of hydropower projects without addressing masculinities and the associated hierarchies within the organisational culture in the water sector.

Including women at the planning and decision-making level can be a key to reduce the severity of various impacts caused by these large developmental projects. As noted by Jha (2004), the 'freedom to make decisions' is central to the idea of participation! Apart from this, instead of treating the household as a homogeneous unit, the government should look at the gender-disaggregated impacts while designing the compensation policy where women will also be given their rightful share in the compensation and will be helped in finding an alternative livelihood.

However, I strongly feel that these solutions will only work as a bandage. To address the root cause, in the long run, we have no option but to search for alternatives to large dams and hydropower projects. The elephant in the room is, is that even possible? Can there be any alternative to large dams that doesn’t hamper the economic progress of the country? Well, that will be the subject of exploration of some other post.

Thanks for sticking around till the end, would love to know your take on this, reader! Please do comment below. 

Introductory Post

A warm welcome to you, reader!

Have you been wondering about the strange name of this blog? Well, then I am sure this post will quench your curiosity. 

Let’s start with a story, shall we?

A long time back, around 300-400 BC, there lived a great Greek philosopher named Socrates in Athens. Once, the oracle of Delfi stated that Socrates is the wisest man in entire Athens. This greatly puzzled Socrates who used to consider himself as the most ignorant man in the land. To check the validity of the oracle’s claim, Socrates sets out to find someone wiser than him by initiating a dialogue with the poets, politicians, craftsmen, all sorts of people in Athens. What he finds is that poets don't know why their words move people, craftsmen only know how to master their trade and not much else, and politicians think they are wise but don't have the knowledge to back it up.  He discovers that none of the people knew anything, but they all thought they did. Socrates then concludes that he indeed is the wisest man, because he at least knows that he knows nothing! He is wise not because he knows more than anybody else, but because he is aware of his own ignorance.

This is famously known as the Socratic paradox. Later, the story was used by another philosopher named J S Mill to defend a philosophical theory called Utilitarianism. He comes up with this quote:

“It is better to be a Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied”.

What moral do I draw from this philosophical discussion and the story? I believe it’s important to be aware of the fact that we only ‘know’ in bits and pieces, yet sometimes we believe it to be the absolute truth; we do not challenge the existing knowledge or the believes we hold; we do not reflect on our actions, on our experiences and how they’re shaping our world view.

Through this blog, I try to embark upon the journey of ‘reflecting’, critically looking at the world around me and trying to make sense of it. After all, as the saying (again attributed to Socrates) goes: “An unexamined life is not worth living!”

You’re more than welcome to accompany me in my journey, I look forward to having an insightful exchange of reflections with you (The comments section is open to all)!