“Why Is She Smiling?” :
Circular Migration and Women’s Empowerment
in Rural Rajasthan, India
by Nicole Daniels
Senior honors thesis submitted for graduation with distinction in the
Department of Cultural Anthropology, Duke University
April 18, 2014
Dr. Harris Solomon, Primary Advisor
Dr. Laurie McIntosh, Secondary Advisor
Dr. Heather Settle, Committee Member
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© Nicole Daniels 2014
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To all of my wonderful interviewees, whose stories light up this paper, and to my
mother, who means everything to me.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to express sincerest gratitude to my fabulous thesis committee— Dr.
Heather Settle, Dr. Harris Solomon, and Dr. Laurie McIntosh— for their tremendous
support and mentorship.
Thank you, also, to everyone who has supported me throughout my thesis research and
writing journey, my undergraduate career, and the many other aspects of my life. I
would especially like to acknowledge the Global Semester Abroad program, Chitra,
Professor Anirudh Krishna, the Cultural Anthropology Department, the Program in
Education, Duke Service-Learning, the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship, the
Deans’ Summer Research Fellowship, and The Kenan Institute for Ethics.
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Table of Contents
Introduction...................................................................................6
Chapter One: Gendered Relations of Power ................................27
Chapter Two: Rethinking Migration ............................................49
Chapter Three: NGO Intervention ................................................70
Chapter Four: Neighborliness .......................................................91
Conclusion...................................................................................107
Works Cited ................................................................................110
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Introduction
It’s day three in my new host family’s home in rural Rajasthan, India. Fifteen
minutes into a much-needed afternoon nap, the door between the dining area and the
main room (temporarily converted into a bedroom for me and my translator) swings
open abruptly.
I slowly lift my head up from my pillow and a swarm of curious faces surround
me. A few women sit on the edge of my cot and touch my arms tenderly. They all
begin speaking at once, only to realize from the bewildered look on my face that I
cannot understand one word they are saying.
“Who are these people?” I whisper to my still-horizontal translator, Shilpa,
nudging her to sit up.
A groggy Shilpa opens her eyes and slowly lifts her torso. She yawns.
“I think they’re here for the wedding Kriti Ji was telling us about this morning.”
Shilpa begins fielding the women’s questions about us and our purpose in the
village. She explains that we had just laid down for a nap, but we would join everyone
later in the evening for the wedding festivities. After some time, the group disperses
and Shilpa and I resume our slumber. Meanwhile, my host mother, Kriti Ji, cooks roti in
the kitchen.
Twenty minutes later, the door swings open again.
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“We know you are resting. We are very sorry to wake you. But we really like
seeing you, and it is very hard for us to wait.”
I can’t help but smile at the sweetness of the women, even though I feel
exhausted. Now, we must find a way to entertain our guests. Shilpa inserts a DVD
recording of one of her colleague’s marriage festivities. The film begins with two
women sitting beside the bride, drawing beautiful designs across her arms and legs in
black henna. About 15 women and children huddle around the small television set and
watch captivity.
“Was this a love marriage?” Kangna inquires.
Kangna is the mother of an adorable newborn baby girl that I cannot help but
fawn over. She is here visiting her maternal family in the village for a couple weeks, but
usually resides in her husband’s village.
“No. Arranged,” Shilpa explains.
“Then why is she smiling so much?” asks Kangna, perplexed.
Neha, the bride in the video, was indeed smiling a lot. Although Neha’s marriage
was arranged, her membership in a well-to-do family in the metropolitan city of Udaipur
made the circumstances of her marriage rather ideal. The man she was arranged to
marry was a childhood acquaintance and someone she liked. Neha requested that the
wedding be postponed until after she finished her bachelor’s degree, a request that her
parents granted. Even after her marriage, her education continued and she is currently
enrolled in a prestigious masters program in Finance. When I told Neha about the
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reaction the village women had to her wedding video, she shrugged and said, “Of course
I am smiling. I mean, I love my husband!”
Lamentably, Neha’s position is the antithesis of her poor, rural counterpart.
Kangna recalled being sent to live hours away from her maternal family with a group of
strangers she now calls family. When I met Kangna for a more formal interview a few
days later, one of the very first things she told me is that she is irritated because her
husband is too dominating about what she can and cannot do. When I tried to ask
further questions, however, she quickly retreated and told me that her husband is, “Not
that bad.” Even though Kangna had some frustrations about her husband, I got the
impression that speaking too poorly about him would be out of line for her to do as his
wife.
Still, when many of the men in this area are migrant workers who live hours
away in large cities for the majority of the year, I figured dominating husbands must
only be an occasional problem. Surely, I imagined, migration allowed the women in this
community to fare much better while the men are away. That was the argument I
planned to make in this thesis paper, anyway. But Kangna rejected my theory.
“I don’t experience different freedoms when my husband is away,” she told me.
How could this be? If Kangna’s husband is out of the picture, why can’t she
make at least some decisions without his knowledge or consent? This moment forced
me to rethink my entire project. As I spoke with other women, I heard similar
narratives. I realized I needed to explore and unpack the barriers to women’s
empowerment that exist in spite of the physical absence of men.
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As I began seeking literature to help me with this project, I struggled to find
scholarly works that investigated my same research topic. The majority of migration
research done in India focuses on the experience of male migrants, especially the
human rights challenges they face in terms of discrimination, poor working conditions,
and debt bondage (Deshingkar 2010; Khandelwal, Sharma, and Varma 2011). Although
these occurrences are tremendously important for researchers to illuminate, far less
attention is being paid to the experiences of the local communities that produce
migrants, and particularly the experiences of the wives of migrant workers. In addition,
much of scholarship I was able to find pertaining to migration and gender concerned
women who migrate themselves and take on positions including domestic workers,
nannies, and maids. In Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New
Economy, a series of essays edited by Ehrenreich and Hochschild, the authors argue that
the migration of women eases a “care deficit” in rich countries while creating one in the
developing countries where migrants originate. As interesting as I found this research,
there was little room to compare it to my own. The women I studied did not leave their
families and children, but rather sustained their homes in the absence of their
husbands. Our understanding of migration and who “counts” in this matter must be
broadened.
Rethinking Migration
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When I searched for “migration” in the dictionary, all of the results explicitly
mentioned movement. This outcome was not that surprising to me considering the
Latin root of migration, migra, means “to move.” Still, I find this definition restrictive.
Why does migration have to be a physical movement? Who gets to move? Who and
what is left out? How do ideas, values, and cultural practices migrate? When do they
remain stationary?
migration
Syllabification: mi·gra·tion
Pronunciation: /mīˈgrāSHən
NOUN
1
Seasonal movement of animals from one region to another: this
butterfly’s annual migration across North America • 1.1
Movement of people to a new area or country in order to
find work or better living conditions: the extensive rural-tourban migration has created a severe housing shortage 2
Movement from one part of something to another: there is
virtually no cell migration in plants Source: Oxford Dictionaries
I find that some anthropologists have focused too narrowly on the physical act
of movement as well. In Traveling Light: On the Road with America’s Poor, Weston
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writes about her fieldwork zigzagging across country on Greyhound buses for seven
years. According to Weston, buses have a rich culture of “poverty in motion.” She
argues that buses are the space where gossip, life experiences, and current events are
discussed among a diverse cross-section of America’s poor. Weston claims that buses
show us what is really happening in America and how people move through poverty.
Indeed, movement is a fundamental component of migration and a phenomenon that
yields important findings about our world. Still, what’s missing from her analysis, in my
opinion, are the experiences for those who are not mobile and remain “on the
ground”— those who might not have the ability or freedom to join her on a crosscountry road trip.
By conceptualizing migration through movement alone, we are doing a huge
disservice to the people and places that are immobile, yet are deeply influenced by the
movement of other people and ideas. Amrith makes the case that migration is far more
expansive than the journeys of migrants themselves, which I have adopted as the
framework for my research project: “While individual suffering and self-realization form
an important part of the story of global migration, it is essential to remember that most
migrants’ journeys are undertaken in the context of their relationships to their families
and local communities.” (Amrith 2001: 178). This thesis explores rural villages, the
sending communities of migration in India, and particularly the experiences of women
whose husbands migrate for work. My initial research questions included: What
changes does migration bring? What stays the same? What does it mean to be left
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behind by migration? Do the social freedoms of women differ while their husbands are
away?
My Site
My fieldwork was conducted in rural villages in Udaipur District, Rajasthan as
well as the metropolitan city of Udaipur. Located in northwest India, the state of
Rajasthan covers roughly ten percent of the country’s area. The main geographic
features of Rajasthan include the Thar Desert and Aravalli Range. A large part of the
total area of Rajasthan is desert. The political structure is divided into state, district,
block, and gram panchayat (village or small town) levels. The main religion is Rajasthan
is Hinduism, with Hindus accounting for 88.8% of the population. Muslims make up
another 8.5%, Sikhs are 1.4%, and Jains are 1.2% (Government of India Census).
Rajasthan consists of many different castes and communities, with diversified
traditions of their own. A significant portion of the population belongs to the Rajput
clan, considered to be the decedents of the warrior class of North India. Brahmin are
considered to be a group of priestly people who can preform worship or religious rites.
Vaishya are considered to be the business community. Agricultural castes include the
Jat, Gurjar, Mali, and Kalvi. Finally, tribal groups, considered to be the indigenous
peoples of India, include the Meena and Bhil. Notably, there is a great degree of
variance in the way the caste system works from place to place, as Mines and Lamb
(2012) have written about very eloquently. Caste can be influenced by the norms within
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different geographic locations and socio-economic classes. Caste also matters
differently to different individuals.
Rajasthan is recognized as one of the most ‘backwards’ states in India due to its
feudal past, tough geographical terrain, and low levels of literacy (Mathur 2004).
According to Mathur, the situation of women in Rajasthan corresponds to the vicious
cycle of mutually reinforcing gender inequalities and patriarchal practices [ibid]. The
greatest number of child marriages exists in Rajasthan, leading to a high level of
maternal and child deaths [ibid]. At the time of Mathur’s writing, 49 percent of women
between 15-19 were married, including 11 percent who were married but guana, a
northern Indian ceremonial custom associated with the consummation of marriage, had
not yet occurred [ibid]. The geography of the desert state makes it difficult to deliver
basic services such as education, health, water, and roads.
A short monsoon period with low level of rainfall makes Rajasthan the most
water deficient state in the country (Human Development Index). This geography,
particularly the shortage of rainfall, also yields limited agriculture and livelihood
opportunities. Consequently, thousands of people in rural Rajasthan are forced to
leave their homes for urban centers in search of work. Few people can afford to leave
the village permanently because of the high cost of living in urban cities so people move
back and forth between the village and urban centers in a phenomenon termed circular
migration. Migration is largely pursued by men, and women maintain the homes in the
village.
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A key challenge with the current information on migrant workers in India is that
it is difficult to determine exactly how many migrants exist due to their mobile nature.
Although the 55th round of the National Sample Survey states that there are 10 million
short-term migrants in India (just 1% of the country’s population), estimates based on
village studies suggest the number is in fact around 100 million or 10% of India’s
population (Deshingkar, Khandelwal, and Farrington 2008). It is especially challenging
to tell how many women migrate for work. Government surveys only ask for a primary
reason for migration and most women select marriage (Deshingkar and Akter 2009).
Although marriage might be the primary reason, looking for work may be a secondary
reason which is not visible under the current system [ibid]. There is also debate over
the official statistics that report migration is higher among better off individuals than
the poor. These surveys mainly capture permanent migration and do not accurately
represent short-term migration (Deshingkar and Akter 2009). Village studies suggest
that there are very high migration levels among the poor, except for the very poorest
who cannot afford to leave home (Deshingkar and Akter 2009).
The inaccuracies of the official statistics mean that migrant workers are
neglected at the policy level in India. Because migrants are perpetually moving, they are
often excluded from both urban and rural decision-making (Khandelwal, Sharma, and
Varma 2011). Migrant workers lack social protections because the current system
focuses on residents and leaves out migrants (de Haan 2011). Currently, migrants
cannot access subsidized foods through Public Distribution System (PDS) and they
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struggle to access state schools, cheap housing, and government health care
(Deshingkar 2010).
In response to these gaps in government policy, NGOs have entered migrant
communities in India. These NGOs recognize migration as a useful poverty interrupter
and aim to minimize risks and maximizing returns for migrants. My fieldwork in
Rajasthan was shaped by a particular NGO that has offices in both rural and urban
centers around Udaipur. This NGO helps migrants to access banking and other services,
vote in elections, and avoid harassment from police and civic authorities. It also collects
demographic and work related information for research.
The Literature: Bringing Gender In
Hondagneu-Sotelo argues that research exploring issues of gender is often
confined to a small niche within migration literature: “Feminist concerns and
scholarship, and nearly all research that makes central the analytic category of gender,
remain marginalized from the core of international migration research. Indicators such
as publication in the major migration journals and awards for migration research attest
to this continued marginalization” (Hondagneu-Sotelo 2000: 113). The first stage of
feminist scholarship in the 1970s and early 1980s sought to remedy the exclusion of
women from migration research and scholars and policymakers began to pay attention
to women migrants. Hondagneu-Sotelo refers to this phase as “women and migration.”
Although this development seems simple today, it was met with some resistance
initially. British anthropologist Anthony Leeds (1976) argued that focusing on migrant
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women would undermine scholarly attention of practices of capitalist labor exploitation.
Some of the first efforts used what Hondagneu-Sotelo calls an ‘add and stir’ approach:
“Migrant women were added as a variable, inserted and measured without regard to
say, education and fertility, and then simply compared with migrant men’s employment
patterns” (Hondagneu-Sotelo 2000: 114). In response, a second phase emerged in the
1980s and 1990s, which Hondagneu-Sotelo refers to as “gender and migration.” This
research focused on the gendering of migration patterns and on the way migration
reconfigures systems of gender inequality. Pessar’s study of Dominican migration to
New York City (1991) and Hondagneu-Sotelo’s work on Mexican undocumented
migration to California (1994) both examined intrahousehold relations of power that
shape migration decision-making processes, as well as the gendered nature of social
networks that facilitate migration. Lastly, Hondagneu-Sotelo identified a new phase in
the literature emerging at the time of her writing which she calls “gender as a
constitutive element of migration.” She predicted the future of this phase as exploring
the extent to which gender permeates a variety of practices, identities, and institutions.
Over ten years have passed since Hondagneu-Sotelo’s essay was written, but
unfortunately, a lack of gender analysis in “mainstream” migration literature persists
today. Sinha, Jha, and Negri find that migration literature still largely ignores
fundamental concepts such as sex, gender, power, and privilege from their vocabulary
and research design (Sinha, Jha, and Negri 2012). They argue that modern day studies
continue to ignore the implications of migration and development on women as they
have been ignored in the past. With that, my research is particularly exciting and
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unique in that it will study the migration of men through the framework of women’s
experiences. In this way, I hope to contribute something original and meaningful to the
conversation. However, I must note than my research has many limitations. My
conversations with interviewees tended to have a very hetero-normative focus and
tended to focus on the relationship between husbands and wives. I was not able to
gather as much material on other types of male-female relationships and intergenerational relationships.
Important to my analysis is Pessar and Mahler’s framework on gender and
migration, “gendered geographies of power,” used “for analyzing people’s gendered
social agency—corporal and cognitive—given their own initiative as well as their
positioning within multiple hierarchies of power operative within and across many
terrains” (Pessar and Mahler 2003: 818). Pessar and Mahler recognize that the world is
an uneven playing field, and instead use a language of “social locations,” to describe
how people fit into historical, political, economic, geographic, kinship-based and other
socially stratifying factors. I engage with this theory throughout my paper as I consider
the various positionalities of my interviewees and the other members of my site.
Research Methods
My thesis fieldwork began while studying abroad in India through the Global
Semester Abroad program offered through Duke University. While living in Udaipur,
Rajasthan in January and February 2013, I took coursework related to poverty,
development, and health. These courses exposed me to fieldwork methods as well as
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academic literature, case studies, and data germane to Rajasthan. Outside of the
classroom, I resided with two host families. My urban host family in Udaipur was uppermiddle class and consisted of two university-educated parents and two adolescent sons
enrolled in private school. My rural host family from a village approximately 70
kilometers outside Udaipur was working to overcome significant debt and included a
widowed mother, a son who migrates to Gujarat for work, a daughter who dropped out
of school and was beginning a career as a beautician, and a teenaged son who attends
the government school. My host families, especially my rural host family, were among
my most helpful informants. Being apart of their everyday lives also illuminated many
disparities— between upper class and lower class, and between urban and rural.
Another element of this project was field study under an Indian NGO, a provider
of a range of services to help seasonal migrants address rights violations, establish their
identities, and increase their incomes. I conducted several informational interviews
with NGO staff members to get a better understanding of the ideology and practice of
the NGO. I also observed interactions— such as the staff members of the legal team
survey day laborers about grievances with their bosses and conduct meetings with rural
women to inform them about government programs and proper health measures to
follow. I recorded observations as field notes, paying special attention to the
relationships migrants have with the NGO. This opportunity allowed me to gain more
insights into the migrant experience and witness how an NGO deals with pertinent
issues.
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The research available for the villages I studied was primarily quantitative
surveys compiled by the NGO. I am inclined to think that going around to a hundred
households and jotting down figures on questionnaires yields a very limited picture of
community members. I was also left with a general mistrust of the validity of statistics
after reading How to Lie With Statistics in high school. As a Cultural Anthropology
major and enthusiast for qualitative data, I wanted to know the stories behind the
numbers and find out what it really means to live in a sending community and belong to
a migrant family.
I was able to conduct approximately twenty interviews with women who are the
wives and mothers of migrants. The interviewees were recruited, in part, through
recommendations from a community member appointed by the NGO (who also doubled
as my host mother) as well as suggestions from local people through the snowballing
method. My research was conducted with the aid of an interpreter who is fluent in
English, Hindi, and local languages. The interviews were informal conversations without
preset questions. I asked interviewees open-ended questions that encouraged them to
discuss significant experiences that would illustrate relationships and values and that
are important to them. I modeled my interview questions after those used by Duke’s
Kenan Institute for Ethics in research projects on refugee resettlement, which draw
upon on the theory put forth by psychologist Dan McAdams that people give meaning to
their lives through the stories they tell about themselves. I typically asked my
interviewees to 1) describe a typical day in their life, 2) tell me about their family and
community, 3) narrate a timeline of key events in their lives, with emphasis on their
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families’ relationship with migration, and 4) speak about gender roles in their family and
community. This method was designed to let my interviewees take the lead in framing
their stories. Having the migrants address these core questions allowed me to hone in
on the issues they revealed with follow-up questions.
After the Global Semester Abroad program, I was able to return to India in July
and August, 2013 through the Deans’ Summer Research Grant at Duke. During my first
week in Udaipur, I had the opportunity to attend a one-week course, a pilot program
between the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke and the Indian Institute of
Management Udaipur. The course had the bold title of “Future Leaders in
Development” and fifteen students participated, five of which hailed from Duke and the
rest from Indian universities and NGOs. This course allowed me to hear the
perspectives of Indian students interested in joining the field of “Development” as well
as current NGO workers, including staff from the NGO I conducted my fieldwork with.
After the course, I continued to engage in field study of the NGO and attended their
annual staff retreat.
My Life as a Researcher
In many ways, I was the ideal candidate to complete this research project. For
starters, my fieldwork would have never been possible if I were a man. During the
Global Semester Abroad program, my male colleagues who were interested in women’s
access to prenatal healthcare quickly learned that actually singling out a woman to
interview— let alone discussing the topic of woman’s health— would be unthinkable.
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Similarly, in the “Future Leaders in Development” summer course, two male students
who tried to ask a group of rural women about birth control and family planning were
met with fraught reactions.
In addition to my sex, my physical appearance also proved valuable in the field.
My father is African-American and my mom is Irish-American, but by and large, villagers
mistook me for Indian. Meanwhile, the blue-eyed, blonde haired Duke students
conducting research in nearby villages were easily labeled as foreigners. One of my
peers said that some of her informants could not get past her whiteness and were
insistent that she must be creating a list of beneficiaries for an aid program. Having tan
skin and dark hair, I was much harder to place in their conception of what an American
looks like. “Why can’t she understand us? Why are you here?” they would probe my
translator. In all fairness to them, even I would say I resemble my host family in rural
Rajasthan a lot more than I resemble anyone in my biological family. Because of my
appearance, I likely escaped some of the apprehension or irritation a white researcher
entering brown communities could attract. The fact that I was treated as such a benign
presence in my field was a true privilege.
Further, I found that people were even more sympathetic to me after I clarified
that I was not in fact Indian. I could get away with asking basic questions about culture,
gender, and religion and people were willing to explain these things assuming I knew
very little. Hearing their explanations allowed me to observe how my informants
framed the concepts. As a female and as a person of color, I had just enough in
common with the women to get me in the door, so to speak. Still, I possessed just
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enough foreignness that people were willing to talk about their everyday lives and know
that I would still be interested.
A Dilemma
During a week in August that I largely spent being sick in bed, it became clear to
me that two different papers were emerging from my research experience. The first
paper addressed my actual research question: the lives of rural women in Rajasthan and
the implications of male absence during seasonal migration. However, a second paper
was developing on the politics of the NGO that guided my fieldwork. This paper had all
the “academic edge” my thesis advisor spoke of. It would talk about the Udaipur office,
filled with highly-educated Indians, many of whom passed up lucrative careers to join
the NGO sector and “help” marginalized communities— a dynamic that can be
problematic in many ways. It would talk about how my NGO mentor walked around
villages and pointed out how “backwards” everyone was, constantly asking me to take
photos of “that thin boy over there” and “that boy washing his own school uniform” and
send them to her.
A useful framework for me to think through this dilemma was Coutin’s (2005)
work on unauthorized migrants in transit from El Salvador to the United States. Her
essay focuses on the ambiguities for both the migrant and the ethnographer (Coutin
2005). Salvadorian migrants cannot easily acquire travel documents to secure work
documentation and their legal protections are tied to the migrant’s place of birth [ibid].
When unauthorized migrants move, their legal selves remain behind, leaving them in a
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complex and ambiguous situation: “Physically present but legally absent or unresolved,
unauthorized migrants existed in multiple places and yet nowhere” (ibid: 201). Coutin
introduces the term “clandestinity,” to describe the reality they could be caught or
harmed at any moment throughout the migration journey. Interestingly, she applies a
similiar concept to the experience of the anthropologist during the production of the
ethnography. Coutin argues that ethnographers enter the field while becoming absent
[ibid]. She refers to Strathern’s work, which describes this phenomenon as
“immersement” (Strathern 1999). Strathern argues that ethnographic practice has a
“double location”— in the “field” and “at the desk” [ibid]. Because the ethnographer
does not know what will turn out to be valuable, data must be collected in an
anticipatory fashion. According to Coutin, data collection makes the field materialize
around the ethnographer, much as clandestinity can materialize around an
unauthorized migrant (Coutin 2005).
As two papers were being written inside my head— one about migration and its
implications on Indian women and one about NGOs— the paths were diverging further
and further away. I found myself confused about which narrative I was telling.
Ultimately, I decided that the two stories were inescapably intertwined and I could not
tell one without telling the other. As Coutin would say, my ethnography materialized
around me.
Goals
My thesis is inspired, in part, by Goodale’s charge to anthropologists to produce
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research that contributes to the crucial field of human rights. In “Ethical Theory as
Social Practice,” Goodale calls for “philosophical interventions” to ensure that
anthropological research can make contributions to debates outside of anthropology
(Goodale 2006: 26). He argues that anthropology should have a have a larger voice in
the human rights debate: “human rights must be studied ethnographically and, as
important, conceptualized as one among different—and at times competing—
normative ideas that come together within social practice” (Goodale 2006: 26). Due to
the nature of anthropology as a “distinctive blend of theory and practice,” something he
feels is missing in current human rights discussions, Goodale argues that anthropologists
should be included in the debates at the United Nations and Amnesty International
(Goodale 2006: 27). He contends that anthropology of human rights can help record
critical intellectual history— documenting the progress of human rights in various
cultures across the world. He also asserts that anthropology can provide cultural
critiques that help expose the origins of human rights violations such as the combination
of power, knowledge, and violence [ibid]. My thesis aspires to answer Goodale’s call to
action for anthropologists.
An ethnography that I hope to emulate in particular is Hopkin’s Braving a New
World: Cambodian (Khmer) Refugees in an American City, which explores the
Cambodian refugee experience in the United States. I found that Hopkin’s book is not
directed at other anthropologists and academics as much as it is a practical guide for the
public to understand the refugee experience. Unlike many anthropological texts,
Hopkins’ vocabulary is simple. She does not incorporate much theory on transnational
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migration, which is detrimental in certain respects, but also a strategic move so that her
writing does not go over the heads of non-academics. Hopkins hopes her ethnography
will help educators, health care professionals, social workers, and policymakers create
services that are more culturally suitable. Hopkins’ central argument is that cultural
competency is what’s missing from the institutions trying to help refugees, and her
research methods and writing style support sharing this message with the public in an
effective manor. Based on her interviews and observations, she outlines many ways
schools can be improved to be a more conductive environment for Cambodian students.
In the case of my thesis, there were some expectations I needed to fulfill to
please my thesis committee, and some of the theory I write about might be challenging
for the general public to understand. I aim to address a variety of stakeholders:
academics, policymakers, NGOs, and the public. I hope that my position as an
anthropologist can be a productive medium to share the lived experiences of women in
migrant worker families, for the purpose of fine-tuning both the discourse and policy
surrounding migration, gender, and NGO work.
Chapter Outline
In Chapter One, I describe how, contrary to what I initially expected, the
migration of men outside of the village does not produce many freedoms for women.
The patriarchy is not attached to the male migrant and able to travel with him. Using inlaws, the panchayat (the village government), and cell phones as three locales where
26
patriarchy is alive and well, I argue that our understanding of migration itself must be
broadened to include the experience of the women left behind.
In Chapter Two, I describe the phenomenon of circular migration in southern
Rajasthan in greater detail and unpack how it can be both exploitative and desirable for
men and women.
In Chapter Three, I focus on the NGO that guided my fieldwork. I speak towards
the differences in education, class, power and privilege that complicate the dynamic
between the NGO staff members and the women they are serving. I also look more
broadly at humanitarianism and NGO’s efforts to “empower” women.
In Chapter Four, I describe the ways in which the village women are coping with
migration through the support of their neighbors, and showing resistance to patriarchal
practices in their own ways.
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Chapter One
Gendered Relations of Power
I had just finished eating the three helpings of rice and daal that my host mother
served me, when Maria, another Duke student staying nearby, and her translator
walked over for a visit. We went out to the front porch, arranged the plastic patio
chairs, and sat down. My host sister, Divya, joined us. We chatted about our days, the
hot weather, and the bugs. It was evening, but still light outside. Bollywood music
started playing from a stereo in the communal backyard that my host family shared with
a couple of their neighbors. I didn’t think much of it, but Divya looked uneasy.
“We need to go inside now because the men are drinking,” said Divya.
Maria and I were stunned. What did that have to do with us? We could not
even see any men drinking, or any men period.
“The men are drinking alcohol tonight and celebrating for the wedding,” Divya
said, as if that sound speak for itself.
Again, what did that have to do with us, we wondered. Are men considered
dangerous to women when they drink? Is Divya concerned about violence? Rape? Does
the community judge women for being around men when they are drunk and “asking
for trouble”? I asked my translator, Shilpa, for clarification.
“When men are drinking, women can’t be around. That’s how it is here,” she
said firmly. “Let’s go inside.”
28
I still do not understand why exactly women cannot be outside and in close
proximity to intoxicated men, but regardless, the community was vehemently against it.
This experience was one of many I observed in which space— physical space in this
case— was owned and dominated by the men. Dipti, a staff member from an NGO that
works in the village, spoke about this occurrence frankly, “The men just walk around
here like they’re God’s gift to Earth.” She was spot on! Meanwhile, the women skirted
around the men for space, making sure to go indoors at the first inkling of drinking men.
But how did all of this reconcile with the fact that so many men leave the village,
and exit the physical space, as migrant workers? Can the women reclaim the space, at
least in part? Several scholars have concluded that male absence during migration has a
positive influence on women’s overall status. Gulati found that male absence during
migration provided women in Kerala, India with the opportunity for independent
decision-making, access to money and freedom of mobility (Gulati 1993). Desai and
Banerji found that Indian women with migrant husbands are more likely to participate in
household decisions, better able to venture outside the home without seeking
permission, and more likely to participate in the labor force than women whose
husbands have not migrated (Besai and Banerji 2008). Regretably, I did not observe the
same situation as these scholars. My findings are more closely aligned with the work of
Sinha, Jha, and Negri, which found that although women may gain some autonomy
through the absence of men, they are left with greater stress and vulnerability, an
increased workload, and a high chance of extended family intervention (Sinha, Jha, and
29
Negri 2012). During my fieldwork, I learned that women face obstacles throughout
society, and husbands are not the only impediment for women’s empowerment.
Patriarchy In Many Locales
The concept of patriarchy is extremely pertinent to my site and has a
longstanding history in social science discourse. Patriarchy is an ancient Greek term that
means ‘the rule of the father’ (Chowdhury 2009). Max Weber, an influential German
theorist in the fields of social theory and social research, wrote about patriarchy in
reference to a system of government in which men ruled societies through their
positions as heads of households (Weber 1947). Other scholars have amended and
expanded on this definition. Walby finds that Weber’s approach overemphasizes men’s
domination over other men and underplays men’s domination of women (Wably 1989).
She defines patriarchy as “a system of social structures and practices in which men
dominate, oppress, and exploit women” (Wably 1989: 214). Wably identifies patriarchy
as a critical tool in the analysis of gender relations [ibid].
Patriarchy is comprehensive and wide-ranging. Hartmann argues that the core
components of patriarchy are heterosexual marriage, female childbearing and
housework, women’s economic dependence on men, the state, and institutions based
on social relations of men such as clubs, sports, and professions (Hartmann 1979).
Walby’s components include household work, paid work, the state, male violence,
sexuality, and cultural institutions (Walby 1996). Similarly, in my field site, patriarchy
exists in many locales. It exits in male in-laws. It exists in female in-laws. It exists in the
30
panchayat system. It can be facilitated through technology like cell phones. It exists in
NGO workers. It even exists in the woman herself. The patriarchy does not solely exist
in the husband and travel with him into and out of the village. For this reason, circular
migration does not disrupt the patriarchy.
Part I: The Restricting Gaze of In-Laws
“Chai? Chai?” Meenal asked Shilpa, my translator, and I encouragingly at the
commencement of our interview inside her home.
She served us tea and poured an oversized cup for herself.
“I need this to get through the day!” she said, smiling.
She lowered herself to the floor.
“Please! Join us,” I said. Gesturing to the woven bench Shilpa and I were sitting
on.
“Oh no, I am fine.”
“No really, please sit with us” I insisted.
“No, no. I am fine. Really, I am fine.”
We continued this song and dance for a few minutes, until Meenal finally
admitted that although she’d like to sit on the bench, she was worried what her in-laws
would think if she were not on the ground.
I had entered this research project expecting that the women whose husbands
migrate for work would experience greater freedoms while their husbands are away.
However, I had not accounted for some key players in the lives of rural women: in-laws.
31
Meenal’s response was striking to me because we were alone in her home. Throughout
my interviews, I always made a point to try to find a quiet place without men nearby
where the women could talk openly. Still, my best intentions were no match for the
realities Meenal faced. It seemed she could never truly let her guard down.
In his book Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Michel Foucault argues
that the most effective form of subjugation comes through being watched and the
possibility that one is being watched. He describes how various institutions create
mechanisms of disciplinary control that heavily rely on observation and examination,
including the military: “The camp is the diagram of a power that acts by means of
general visibility” (Foucault 1975: 171). In military camps, every soldier can be located
based on their role and their rank. Foucault contends that in a perfect camp, all power
would be through observation [ibid]. This kind of force is powerful because the people
under its influence experience physical effects on their bodies relating to how they will
think and act, all without the need for physical violence: “He who is subjected to a field
of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he
makes them play spontaneously upon himself; he inscribes in himself the power relation
in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own
subjection” (1975: 202- 203). In factories and schools, observation is used as both force
of production and a mode of discipline. In the case of my fieldwork, although Meenal’s
in-laws were not at home during our interview, she was very conscious of the fact that
an in-law could enter at any moment and make judgments on her behavior. She altered
her actions and her body around their expectations.
32
Due to the observation and inspection of in-laws, eliminating the husbands from
the picture through migration did not produce many improvements for women’s
freedoms in my field site. According to Millett, the main institution of patriarchy is the
family (Millett 1970). The family encourages its members to conform to sexually
differentiated roles and maintain the inferior position of women [ibid]. Dominance and
submission are learned from the family (Hartmann 1979). The Indian joint family, in
particular, is built upon the idea and reality that power comes through numbers. The
training children receive focuses on interdependence and belonging to a group over
individual needs, and a woman who follows the laws and customs of her family will be
controlled and bring honor to her family (Wadly 1989).
Meeting the expectations of in-laws and maintaining an amicable relationship
with them is vital for of the wives of migrant workers. A few of my interviewees
expressed that if there is tension between wives and female in-laws, the in-laws might
report bad things about the wife to her husband in spitefulness. This, in turn, can result
in the husband committing domestic abuse. Violence against women is a pervasive
occurrence in Rajasthan (Mathur 2004). According to Mathur, a woman’s sexuality and
physical integrity is considered part of her family and community “honor” rather than
her personal autonomy [ibid]. Domestic violence is considered a private matter that
does not merit public concern [ibid]. The idea that female in-laws can contribute to a
husband’s domestic abuse was not something I had considered previously, but is logical
in retrospect. In order to understand the perspective of in-laws, I had to consider what
the stakes are for them. In actuality, their entire family’s reputation is at stake, and
33
family has the utmost importance to life in rural Rajasthan. In-laws have an allegiance
to their family and to their blood relative: the man. They do not have an allegiance to
the wife as an individual.
The oppressive abilities of in-laws are reflected in cross-cultural examples from
across the globe. In Julia Pauli’s study of gender relations in Mexican migrant
communities, many of her research informants viewed themselves as prisoners while
living in their mother-in-law’s home: “They say they are encerrada (locked away) in the
suegra’s house” (Pauli 2008: 177). In his analysis of what he refers to as “the motherin-law problem” in North American culture, Allen S. Ehrlich theorizes that tensions
between daughter-in-laws and mother-in-laws stem from the North American concept
of the nuclear family as an autonomous unit, which is reinforced by a sex-role
socialization: “Females have been socialized to perceive the home as their home”
(Ehrlich 2001: 178). When mother-laws interfere in the home, a fight for domestic
control ensues [ibid]. Although these same Western cultural notions about nuclear
families are not pervasive in rural Rajasthani society, some of my informants still craved
independence.
Kangna, who I introduced in my Introduction, is married to the eldest of four
sons. Because her husband’s brothers are not yet married, the obligation falls on her to
care for the entire family. Kangna receives the sole “burden,” as she put it, of cooking,
cleaning, and washing the dishes. Kangna’s household duties are demanding, she
admitted, but she lives by the mantra, “I have to do it somehow.” Still, she longs for a
home of her own.
34
“What are your dreams in life?” I asked Kangna.
“To buy my own house. But I can’t afford it. My mother always teases me
because my dreams are too big.”
Returning to Pauli’s fieldwork in Mexico, the expression “la casada casa quiere”
(a woman who marries wants a house) was fundamental to the everyday discourse of
her site. She contends that, in contrast to the muteness and social isolation women face
as subordinates in the mother-in-law’s house, the saying reveals an active woman with
her own hopes and desires (Pauli 2008: 178). Pauli finds that a growing number of
village women in her site are using their husband’s remittances to construct their own
homes to escape traumatic experiences of residing in their mother-in-law’s residence
(Pauli 2008). Still, in the case of my field site, Kangna’s dreams are up against a deepseated tradition of extended families and devotion to in-laws. Stridharma, the women’s
code of conduct in Hindu theology, declares that an ideal wife and an ideal daughter-inlaw is someone who places her families’ needs before her own (Reddy and Hanna 1998)
and who follows the wishes of her husband and in-laws (Raval 2009).
Further, Judith K. Brown’s work (Brown 1997, 2004; Dickerson-Putman and
Brown 1998) speaks to the cyclical nature of the repression of in-laws: “At marriage the
wife enters into a life of servitude and is expected to be obedient, submissive, and stoic
in the face of gratuitous mistreatment, both psychological and physical, until she
becomes a mother-in-law herself” (Brown 2004: 168). This scenario is germane to the
experiences of my research informants. Kangna, the first daughter-in-law, must wait for
35
her husband’s brothers to get married so that she can share her “burden” with those
women. Perhaps she, too, will become dominating to these women and her future
daughter-in-law, as Brown suggests.
While I had assumed men were the main inhibitors in women’s lives, I learned
that many complications exist as women can also perpetuate social norms and
patriarchal practices. Mathur cautions that structural categories like patriarchy imply a
one-way relationship of men over women where all men dominate over all women,
which is not the case (Mathur 2004). Rather, some women dominate over others, and
women can be violent towards other women. In addition, many men are supportive of
women in situations of violence [ibid]. Likewise, Inhorn argues that gender perspectives
need to be widened beyond husband-wife or male-female relations: “If gender politics is
to be more broadly defined to include the interplays of power among women and
among men rather than just between them, then how do women view other women
and men other men?” (Inhorn 1996: 18). I agree that the concept of patriarchy must
consider these various nuances and positionalities.
In fact, several scholars suggest that in-laws do not always have the upper hand.
Chowdhury contends that family relations are considerably more complex than most
feminist critiques (2009). In her field site of Bangledash, motherhood is not considered
opposed to women’s emancipation, rather motherhood gives women bargaining power
with their husbands and in-laws (Chowdhury 2009). Similarly, Wadly discusses a
women’s song from the 1980s in her field site of Karimpur, West Benegal which
challenges the rule of the mother-in-law:
36
“Mother-in-law, gone, gone is your rule,
The age of the daughter-in-law has now come.
The mother-in-law grinds with the grinding stone,
The daughter-in-law watches.
‘Your flour is very coarse, my mother-in-law,’
The age of the daughter-in-law has come” (Wadley 1989: 3).
According to Wadly, the daughter-in-law is likely to be far more educated than the
mother-in-law and more willing to demand independence and mobility than in previous
decades [ibid].
Although this argument is a convincing one, I did not personally observe any
examples of the women pushing back against their in-laws in my field site. During my
stay in the village, I saw the role of in-laws as a major contributor to women’s workloads
and a force that can exert psychological control. In-laws create a barrier for women’s
empowerment that is constant throughout the migration cycle. Migration does not
disrupt the patriarchy.
Part II: Political Authority
While in-laws exert control over migrant wives within the household, I wondered
if male migration created any additional opportunity for women to rally together and
advocate for changes in their community through the panchayat raj, the village-level
political system.
“Who would you say makes the decisions for the village?” I asked Meenal.
“Men do.” she replied.
“But you mentioned how nearly all able-bodied men in the village migrate, does
that mean there are more women than men around here most of the year?” I asked her.
37
“Yes, there are a lot more women than men,” Meenal confirmed.
“So the women outnumber the men, and yet, you told me that men have the all
the power to make decisions for the village. Why is that?”
Meenal’s hand flew to cover her mouth.
“You made me think!” she announced after a long pause. “It’s just what’s been
happening. It’s inherited, I guess.”
Like Meenal, many other women I encountered had a difficult time justifying
why men have different liberties despite being outnumbered by women. Some women
were not very bothered by the power disparities, which seemed discouraging to me at
first. However, the fact that women were able to vocalize differences between men
and women’s freedoms can be considered a sign of progress in itself. Something
powerful happened in the moment when Meenal realized what she had taken forgranted. Pierre Bourdieu refers to the experience as doxa, when “the natural and social
worlds appear self-evident” (1972: 164). Further, Raval (2009) argues that it is
dangerous to assume all women have or should have the same desires to be free from
subordination and structures of hierarchies. She critiques the works of many traditional
feminist scholars (Cutrufelli 1983, Jeffrey 1979, Lindsay 1983, and Minces 1980), writing,
“What these scholars overlook is that people’s desires develop as a part of their cultural
meaning system” (Raval 2009: 492). Raval contends that it is wrong to use a Western
lens to asses other’s decisions: “Utilizing a restricted understanding of agency, one
reaches an inaccurate conclusion that women who do not ‘rebel’ against societal
structures are not acting in their social world” (Raval 2009: 493). Meenal’s dreams of
38
escape and empowerment versus the dreams of other women to remain in a place they
feel secure demonstrates that not all women have the same desires.
Raval’s critique has important policy implications. The 73rd Amendment Act of
the Constitution of 1992, heralded as a milestone for women’s rights in India, says that
one-third membership of each panchayat raj should consist of women, and that women
should head one third of total panchayats. The reservation of seats for women in the
panchayat system assumes that women have the ability and desire to disrupt the
patriarchy through receiving political power, which is not typically the case. As my NGO
mentor Dipti explained, female sarpanches (the panchayat leaders) are often elected in
name only to fulfill the mandate while the panchayat is actually run by her husband.
“The woman is often illiterate and unable to sign her own name [on official panchayat
documents], so the men will take the woman’s thumbprint,” Dipti told me. According to
Mandal’s work in West Bengal, women sarpanches are mostly over forty years old,
come from large, rich land owning families and play a virtually insignificant role (Mandal
2010). They usually do not attend meetings or make decisions, but rather put
signatures on papers as asked by their husbands or other men [ibid]. I witnessed this
scenario firsthand when I visited a paychayat building and spoke with a man who I
believed was the sarpanch. Afterwards, I learned that his wife technically held the
position and he was merely the de-facto sarpach.
Some of my interviewees were not complacent with occurrence and
acknowledged the injustices of the panchayat system. A few of my interviewees
attributed it to male chauvinism. However, a major factor preventing the women from
39
becoming politically active themselves and advocating for changes is their workloads.
Jyoti lives alone and finds it challenging. She has one child and is pregnant with a
second. The biggest difficulty she encounters with her husband away from home is
simply replacing household items as they run out, an errand that entails about five
kilometers of travel and is typically done by a man. Jyoti has neighbors and relatives
who support her when they can, but it is still difficult. Many wives of migrant workers
that I spoke with said they could not come to panchayat meetings because they needed
to look after their children and clean their houses. They simply did not have the time or
ability to attend. Unlike the optimism of my hypothesis, taking on greater responsibility
as a result of male migration is not something women take pride in or feel empowered
by, but rather something they are required to put up with.
Without a husband in the household to pitch in, the added obligations placed on
women can trickle down to their children, particularly female children. During a group
interview I had with one of the NGO’s support groups for women, a couple women
spoke about relying on their daughters to help care for younger toddlers when they
needed to get extra work done in their farm or travel into the city, forcing the girls to
skip school periodically. In this way, daughters seemed to be primed for their future
roles as homemakers and caretakers of children, not members of the village
government.
The educational deficit between women and men creates another obstacle.
During the group interviews I led, the majority of the women were often quiet and
reserved. Like Meenal, they insisted on sitting on the ground instead of joining me on a
40
bench. As I observed the women’s support group meetings that the NGO led, I noticed
there was a tendency for women to agree with statements that had already been raised,
but not initiate discussion on their own. A woman named Swetha admitted that she and
many rural women are uneducated and illiterate. She feels, “We would not understand
what goes on in panchayat meetings.” Similarly, Sneha expressed being uncomfortable
with public speaking and not knowing how to articulate her ideas.
Ideally, the panchayat is a space for village residents to speak out about issues
facing the community and generate solutions. However, the panchayat system is
another locale that perpetuates patriarchal practices. The countless responsibilities of
motherhood are often more constraining than empowering. They inhibit the woman’s
ability to physically attend panchayat meetings. Once again, the absence of men during
migration does not introduce many new freedoms for women.
Part III: Cell Phones as an Extension of Patriarchy
Although my host family lacked a toilet or running water, every member of the
family owned his or her own mobile phone. Because they only received electricity
sparingly throughout the day, they were quick to charge their phones whenever the
lights came on. The reception inside their house was exceptionally poor, so most phone
calls were made on the roof of their home. In order to receive calls, they stored their
phones as high as possible— on a wooden ledge above their front door. My host
mother had to jump to retrieve hers.
41
The presence of cell phones in villages like my field site is an increasingly
pervasive phenomenon. As in many regions of Africa and Asia, cell phones were the
first form of electronic communication technology to be widely used in India (Tenhunen
2008). Telecom Regulatory Authority of India figures estimate that there were
approximately 850 million wireless subscribers in India as of June of 2011, against a total
population of 1.2 billion (Census India 2011). In rural India, tele-density has increased
from 2 percent in 2005 (Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of India) to 41.6
percent in 2013 (Department of Telecommunications). This is due, in part, to the state
subsidy of building mobile networks and competition amongst service providers and
phone manufacturers over the rural market, which has led to decreases in handset
prices and tariff reductions (Tenhunen 2008).
Cell phones are popular in rural Rajasthan for their ability to connect families
that are disjointed due to migrant labor. Since radios and televisions sets predated
phones in villages, before mobile networks, villagers once had better access to world
news than to the lives of their long-distance relatives (Tenhunen 2008). My host mother
used hers to communicate with her eldest son, a migrant worker in the hotel industry.
Villagers I met who did not own cell phones experienced anxiety. Roma, one of my
interviewees, was the mother of a teenage boy who recently began migrating to
Ahmedabad to support their family. He had been away from home for three to five
months working as a waiter in a hotel. Neither Roma nor her son owned a cell phone.
Instead, Roma used a relative’s phone to call her son’s boss once or twice a month. She
was very displeased with this type of communication, and had many unanswered
42
questions: “I don’t know when my son will come home. I do not even know what hotel
he is working at or where he is staying.” As many families relied on remittances as the
main source of their income, the migrant’s health and safety was a major concern for
women. Communication through cell phones helped alleviate these concerns.
However, cell phones could also be detrimental for my research informants in
terms of escaping patriarchal norms. During my interview with Meenal, we spoke about
how decisions are made in her household while her husband is working in Ahmedabad.
I wondered if she would be able to exercise more of her own opinion in the months that
he is gone.
“When your husband is away, who makes the decisions for your family?” I asked
Meenal.
“I have to ask my husband for any action,” she said plainly.
Meenal’s response confused me. How did she manage to get her husband’s
consent when he is four hours away?
As it turned out, the answer to that question was simple: cell phones. Meenal’s
husband calls her three times everyday at established times: 7 A.M., 2 P.M., and 7:30
P.M.
Virtually all of the women I spoke with reported that they consult their migrant
husbands via cell phone to make all household decisions beyond basic things like
shopping for food and clothes. I initially wondered if the women ever avoided obtaining
their husband’s approval by not answering their cell phones or not disclosing everything
about their activities. But my curiosity came from the privilege and perspective of my
43
Western background. My interviewees had a much different outlook; they were
forthcoming with information to their husbands and generally followed his advice
without question. As a woman named Sanjana reasoned, “Men will get mad if women
do not ask them first, so it is better just to be safe.” Thanks to cell phones, the physical
absence of a man no longer means he cannot stay in control of her. However, I must
note that this relationship is not antagonistic for all women. Some of my interviewees
had a sense of affection towards their husbands, which explains their willingness to be
honest and open when communicating over cell phones.
Several anthropologists have written about the challenges of technology and
communication for women whose husbands are migrant workers. Mahler’s (2001)
study of a rural, remote zone of El Salvador describes how women are forced to make
collect calls to their migrant husbands in which they must first plea to whoever answers
the phone to accept the collect call, then appeal to their husbands for desires like
greater remittances, which the husband is at the mercy to grant or not grant. Similarly,
Richman’s (2005) research on transnational courier services and recorded cassettes
found that in rural Haiti, the cassette allowed the taped voice of the migrant husband to
speak as if he was actually present, allowing husbands to control and discipline their
wives, just as in my field site. These examples have forced me to reexamine my own
attitude about technology’s usefulness to development.
Cellphone access is typically celebrated as a sign of advancement. Many
researchers speak highly of cell phones usefulness to the development sector. In a
report commissioned by Vodafone, a mobile service provider, Coyle (2005) examines
44
national statistics and survey materials from Tanzania, South Africa, and Egypt. She
concludes that cell phones help people access market information, discover job and
educational opportunities, save time, and experience security. In their ethnography of
cell phone use in Jamaica, Horst and Miller (2006) contend that the cell phone is a tool
for people in poverty to manage their lives while enduring a state of constant crisis.
They found that poor cell phone users dealt with their immediate needs by scrolling
through their contact lists and calling relatives and friends to gather funds for a
purchase or communicate during an emergency. Several initiatives operate under the
assumption cell phones improve women’s wellbeing in developing countries. In
Chennai, India, the Foundation of Occupational Development (FOOD) provided women
with mobile phones along with micro-entrepreneurial training in marketing (Loyola
2005). Similarly, the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh is a Nobel Peace Prize-winning
microfinance organization that has been lending money to women to obtain mobile
phones since 1997.
By 2015, four major regions of the world (sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia,
South Asia, and the Middle East) and 40 countries are expected to have more people
with access to mobile networks than electricity in their homes (Watkins, Kitner, Mehta
2012). As cell phones erode the barriers for people living in remote areas to access the
world around them, it is also important to consider the implications for these
individuals— as they, too, can easily be accessed. I hope to add a cautionary viewpoint
to the body of research that examines cell phones and other technologies in the
developing world. Technology is often discussed as a sign of progress, but for the
45
women I spoke with in rural Rajasthan whose cell phones deliver instructions from their
husbands, it seemed to be doing the opposite. This left me wondering: is the
technology to blame, or the people who use it? When studying peoples’ interactions
with cell phones, should we view the technology as a reflection of culture, or does the
technology shape culture?
In Miller and Slater’s (2000) analysis of the impact of the Internet on Trinidad,
the authors found that Trinidadians did not use the Internet to explore unprecedented
new possibilities, but rather address pent-up frustrations. Miller and Slater termed this
phenomenon as “expansive realization.” Similarly, in another book co-authored by
Daniel Miller, The Cell Phone: An Anthropology of Communication, the cornerstone of
their argument is that, “technology is used initially with reference to desires that are
historically well established, but remain unfulfilled because of the limitations of previous
technologies” (Horst and Miller 2006: 6). In this sense, the cell phone is fundamentally
an extension of the preexisting culture, not the creator of new practices. Horst and
Miller’s field research concerns cell phone usage among low-income Jamaicans. They
contend that the most common ways Jamaican adults use cell phones, after socializing
and gossip, are organizing church functions and betting on the lottery. According to the
authors, this occurrence reflects culturally-embedded meanings about the centrality of
devotion and fate in economic success and other aspects of life. Horst and Miller cite
Fischer’s research on telephones in the U.S. as support for their argument: “the
telephone did not radically alter American ways of life; rather, Americans used it to
more vigorously pursue their characteristic ways of life” (Fischer 1992: 5).
46
However, I find that Horst and Miller contradict, or at least complicate, their
central argument when they describe the way the cell phone itself acquires meaning to
Jamaicans: “Given the increasingly strong connection between the cell phone, the
church, and the lottery … it is not surprising that the cell phone itself is commonly
looked upon as a form of blessing” (154). Other scholars have challenged Horst and
Miller’s thesis by examining the complexities of the relationship between technology
and the people who use it. In a collection of papers on cell phone usage in primarily
Western countries, editors Katz and Aakhus (2002) conclude that mobile phones alter
the nature of public space and the dynamics of private relationships.
In Tenhunen’s ethnographic analysis of the appropriation of mobile technology
in rural West Bengal, she calls attention to a change in the language around technology,
from ‘the use’ or ‘the adoption of technology’ to ‘the appropriation of technology,’
which, according to Tenhunen, exemplifies a cultural shift (Tenhunen 2008). The terms
“appropriation” and “cultural appropriation” appear frequently in this body of
literature. Note: This type of “cultural appropriation” is not to be conflated with the
“cultural appropriation” that has a negative connotation and refers to the adoption of
one culture’s elements by a different cultural group. Hård and Jamison (2005) define
“cultural appropriation” in the context of technology as "the discursive, institutional,
and daily practices through which technology and science are given human meaning" (p.
xiv). Further, Tenhunen introduces the concept of ‘social logistics’ as “a tool to develop
the understanding of the relationship between technology, culture, and society” (2008:
517).
47
With that, I return to the question I grappled with earlier: Are cell phones to
blame for worsening women’s freedoms in my field site, or has society been this way all
along? I have come to realize that “blame” is not what I should have been seeking at all.
Rather, the interplay of technology and society is what matters. The two cannot be
separated. In “The Medium is the Message,” McLuhan describes how the media and
technology greatly influence society, and vise versa (McLuhan 2005). He argues that
media and society are so closely linked that mediums are actually an extension of the
human. McLuhan states that we cannot talk about technologies on their own; they are
created by humans and always linked to the people who interact with them: “That our
human senses, of which all media are extensions, are also fixed charges of our personal
energies, and that they also configure the awareness of each one of us…” (McLuhan
2005: 26). In addition, McLuhan argues that all mediums interact with each other, and
therefore, each medium cannot be studied on its own, but in relation to others through
“the cultural matrix within a medium operates” (McLuhan 2005: 20).
In the case of my site, while a culture of oppressing women has long existed in
rural India, the cell phone takes on a meaning of its own when it is used to actively
perpetuate male authority. In rural Rajasthan, the cell phone has become another
method of women’s surveillance, a way for husbands to check-in on wives even when
they are not physically present. This occurrence is a convergence between technology
and society, a convergence that shifts with changing technologies and changing
societies.
48
Conclusion
While I initially assumed that the absence of women’s husbands for most of the
year would create opportunities for women to make their own decisions and live
without the judgments of men, patriarchy is not something that travels with women’s
husbands into and out of the village. Rather, patriarchy is perpetuated by peoples,
institutions, and technologies. In Rajasthan, as long as societal norms persists in which
women must get married, attend to entire families of in-laws and obey their standards,
husbands are not the only obstacles for women. The temporary removal of the
husbands through circular migration does little to remedy the situation or provide
agency for women. What does this mean for village women enmeshed in this system?
It asks us as analysts to rethink our notion of female empowerment and change.
Notably, something is shifting in my field site that is giving way to these discussions of
patriarchy and male domination, potentially setting the stage for long-term changes.
49
Chapter Two
Rethinking Migration
Bishnu welcomed me into her home after she saw me talking to her niece,
Kangna. She, too, had a lot to say about village life and migration. Her husband has
been migrating to Ahmedabad, the former capital and largest city of Gujarat, for thirty
years. He started out as a hotel waiter and worked his way up to a supervisor of
waiters. Later, he decided to learn how to drive busses, and he currently drives routes
from 800 to 1000 kilometers.
“Why does your husband migrate to Ahmedabad?” I asked Bishnu.
“There is no work in Salumbar (the nearest town from the village). In Salumbar,
you can only earn just enough to cover your transportation there and back. So the men
have to leave.”
“Did your family consider moving to Ahmedabad permanently?” I asked.
“There are no other options for how to live,” she replied determinedly. “I would
want to live in Ahmedabad, but it would not be feasible for an entire family to pay for
expenses like food and education there. My children and I go to Ahmedabad for seven
to ten days during their summer vacation. Living in Ahmedabad year-round might be
possible for a very small family with young children, but it’s too hard for a large family.“
Bishnu’s comments, particularly the fact that she felt there were no other
options for how to live, were striking to me and also raised several questions: How does
circular migration work? Who benefits from it and in what circumstances? What is at
50
stake for women? In Chapter One, I concluded that migration does not disrupt the
patriarchy that exists in rural Rajasthan. With this chapter, I hope to complicate
migration further and show how although circular migration may not disrupt the
patriarchy, it is necessary for many families’ survival and is even desirable for some
women.
Migration
Although the terms “migration” and “immigration” are often used
interchangeably (Horevitz 2009), anthropologists have come to understand immigration
as a state of permanence and migration as a state of impermanence (Foner 2003).
Anthropologists draw a distinction between the old immigration of the past (the Great
Transatlantic Migration) and the new migration that began as a result of globalization
(Horevitz 2009). According to Zohlberg, “One of the sharpest contrasts between the old
and new literatures is the conceptual shift from a view of ‘ordinary’ international
migration as the aggregate movements of individuals in response to differential
opportunities, to a view of this process as a movement of workers propelled by the
dynamics of the transnational capitalist economy, which simultaneously determine both
the ‘push’ and the ‘pull’ ”(1989: 406- 407).
In India, the common terminology used to describe the movement of people
within the country is circular (or seasonal) migration. Deshingkar and Farrington define
circular migration as a “temporary move from, followed by return to, the normal place
of residence, for purposes of employment” (2009: 1). In their edited anthology of
51
circular migration in India, Deshingkar and Farrington argue that that migration is a vital
aspect of the livelihood strategies of millions of poor people living in agriculturally
marginal regions [ibid]. Using field research and conceptual frameworks, the volume
demonstrates that migration in India is sustaining and improving the livelihoods of
unskilled and semiskilled rural people and families, and therefore deserves scholarly
attention. Further, Deshingkar and Farrington argue that the official government census
neglects to capture this occurrence due to the mobile nature of migrants, and the
authors address policy conclusions [ibid].
Anthropological theories of migration are situated in the context of capitalism
and globalization (Horevitz 2009). While some scholars take the stance that migration is
destructive and exploitative to migrant workers (Breman 1996; Coutin 2005), another
camp argues that migration is beneficial for it allows people to take ownership of their
lives and disrupt the poverty cycle (Krulfield and Camino 1994; Deshingkar and
Farrington 2009). A popular conclusion in anthropology is that neither of these
approaches is suitable because migration is intricate and multifaceted (Piot 1999; Tsing
2000). My argument is most closely aligned with the third approach, for migration is
highly variable. Migration can be both exploitative and beneficial in different situations,
and can differ for men and for women. I was initially reluctant to take this stance
because I thought it sounded like a copout. However, with migration, it is fallacious to
declare any hard-and-fast rules. In addition, I add that migration also enables
continuity in certain contexts. In Rajasthan, the way people migrate and the outcomes
they obtain are heavily tied to societal caste and class structures.
52
Migration and Modernity
The concept of modernity is frequently explored in anthropology and the
literature on migration. In Remotely Global: Village Modernity in West Africa, Piot
problematizes the perception that Europe is the place with modernity and Africa is the
place with tradition (Piot 2009). Piot lays out many theories including Marxism and
structural-functionalism, but ultimately declares that the Kabre culture of northern Togo
is far more complex than these theories. He seeks to dispel the image of remote locales
as timeless and removed from the rest of society. Instead, he reasons that modernity is
plural. My conversations in the field showed that migration allows for women to
develop their own aspirations and sense of modernity. In contrast, “backwards” is a
word I heard frequently in Rajasthan when people were critiquing cultural practices they
did not agree with. For instance, Dipti, one of the NGO workers that supported me
throughout my research project, made comments like, “Indian society is really
backwards. People think putting kohl (eyeliner) on babies makes them look beautiful.”
Osella and Osella describe how members of an ex-untouchable “backward”
community of South India, the Izhavas of Kerala, represent and make sense of their
relationship to “modernity.” According to the authors, a collective memory as well as a
collective amnesia go into the way communities talk about modernity. Notably, they
argue that modernity involves winners and losers as people compete to live up to the
community ideals: “Modernity produces dream and disillusionment, promising progress
to all while delivering to a few” (Osella and Osella 2006: 569). Further, Osella and Osella
53
contend that modernity requires the interrogation of ethnographic evidence more than
grand theory: “While a ‘modernity’ corresponding perfectly to classical theories might
never exist, concepts, ideals, and practices of something called ‘modernity’ certainly do
exist and are continually appealed to in people's economic endeavours, political
projects, and identity craftings” (Osella and Osella 2006: 570). How does migration
challenge or add to what constitutes progress for rural communities?
Progressive Elements of Migration
One approach in migration literature within anthropology addresses the issue of
agency for migrants and contends that migration allows for advancement among
migrants and societies. Under modernization theory, anthropologists conceptualized
migration as the movement of people from rural to urban environments and viewed it
as a positive phenomenon that would help the process of modernization (Horevitz
2009). Modernization theory first emerged in anthropology in the 1960s (Horevitz
2009) and was rooted in anthropological and sociological models of social change and
neoclassical economics (Kearney 1994). The neo-classical position within economics
claims that labor circulation between poor and more affluent areas benefits both the
areas where the labor is done and the areas where the workers originate (Deshingkar
and Farrington 2009). Through modernization theory in anthropology, “Migrants were
seen as progressive types who would have a positive impact on development by
bringing back to their home communities innovations and knowledge that would break
down traditionalism” (Kearney 1994: 333). Migration was seen as a process that
54
individuals could elect to do, allowing them to move away from the traditional
“backward” countryside and into a modern city with employment prospects (Ibid).
Other anthropologists contend that migration fosters a creative ability for people
who are experiencing dire conditions and trauma to reconstruct their lives. In the
Introduction to their edited volume on refugee identity, gender, and culture, Krulfield
and Camino argue: “Despite experiences of being violently or forcibly uprooted and
plunged into discord and disorder, refugees demonstrate the strengths of innovation for
survival, as well as the vitality to create and negotiate new roles and behaviour to
achieve both necessary and desired ends. By doing so, they reveal the multi-layered
richly contextualized meanings of their lives and traditions as they act to re-affirm self
and community” (Krulfield and Camino 1994: xv).
Migration also had empowering elements for both men and women in my field
site. Its important to note that the overwhelming majority of women I spoke with were
satisfied with circular migration, recognizing it as necessary and important. When I
asked women if they would prefer to live in a city like Ahmedabad instead of the village,
three different women had the same kneejerk response: “But who would take care of
my farms and my animals?” The perplexed expressions on their faces told me that they
were baffled as to why I would ask such an absurd question. These women did not want
to see their village become industrialized; they preferred a rural environment. At the
same time, they also recognized that the opportunities in the village to earn a decent
living were incredibly deficient. They were grateful for the job prospects for men in
55
cities like Ahmedabad. In a sense, seasonal migration offers many women the best of
both worlds: economic stability and the rural lifestyle they have always known.
Kangna, a young Rajput woman, has been married for two years. Her husband
has been migrating for eight. When we spoke, she had not seen her husband in two
months. Kangna seemed perfectly content with her family’s migration arrangements:
“When I was pregnant with my daughter I stayed with my husband in
Ahmedabad for about three months. I would prefer to live in [the village]
to Ahmedabad. Besides, I have a duty to take care of the family here.
My husband likes living in Ahmedabad and is happy with his salary.” In
this instance, the extended kin network of in-laws, who can restrict
women’s freedom and mobility in many ways, also make it possible for
women to satisfy their desire to remain connected to a rural way of life
that (some) women value and to secure economic security and mobility
for their children. This system would likely collapse without the woman
at home having this extended kin support.
Kangna’s husband’s journey started from relatively modest beginnings and required
diligence:
“He had no money for a bus ticket, so he took the bus without one. For
two years he washed dishes in the hotel, and then worked his way up to
be a waiter. He goes with his brother and he has friends in Ahmedabad
as well. He works in a hotel as well as a taxi driver. He shares a single
room for rent in a colony of five to seven people. It is relatively far away
from his work so he has to walk or take a bike. The work is pretty secure.
He is able to come home to [the village] every two to three months. He
applies for a seven to ten day holiday. However, this means he has to
work seven days a week to save up days off.”
Despite these challenges her husband faces, migration is valuable and
worthwhile according to Kangna:
56
“My husband migrates to Ahmedabad for a better salary. Most men from
here also migrate to Ahmedabad. I have seen migration transform
family’s lives, allowing them to buy vehicles and things they would never
be able to afford otherwise.” For Kangna, her husband’s income allows
her to have optimistic hopes for six-month old baby: “My dream is for her
to go to a good school and to get a government job. Government jobs
are secure and would allow her to get by on her own. Incase anything
happened to her husband, she could make it on her own feet. You can
never know if there will be an emergency and I want my daughter to have
a secure future.” Having her daughter attain a government would be a
considerable feat for the family: “My husband couldn’t get a government
job because he only studied until tenth grade. He had to drop out of
school due to financial problems in the family. He started migrating right
away at seventeen years old. His brother joined him when he was
eighteen or nineteen.”
Kangna’s focus on her daughter’s future is demonstrative of some women’s decisions to
postpone their own empowerment in favor of the next generation— all made possible
through increased educational and economic opportunities that the husband’s migrant
salary provides. This is a long-term view of women’s empowerment though migration
and one that has the potential to change gender relations down the line, if not in the
immediate moment.
Regressive Elements of Migration
Still, the agency-centered approach adopted by some migration literature is not
comprehensive. Many scholars have raised the critique that wealth generated through
migrant labor does not truly trickles down to the rest of society, especially the lower
class. According to Deshingkar and Farrington, migration causes Indian metropolises to
57
grow merely in population, not prosperity (2009). These mega cities deny migrants
basic provisions such as food, water, and sanitation and are becoming scenes of
extreme social and economic inequality that can lead to crime, violence, and class
conflict (Ibid). They refer to labor migration as “the mother and father of social
inequality” (Deshingkar and Farrington 2009: 10). In my opinion, the arguments from
the exploitative approach must be considered alongside the agency approach, not in
isolation from one another.
In the 1970s and 1980s, anthropologists produced work on a variety of subjects
inspired by the Marxist critiques of the times within anthropology (Piot 1999). Olivier de
Sardan, Pierre-Phillipe Rey, and others criticized earlier writers for their inattention to
power and inequality—between juniors and elders, women and men, and between
societies and the colonial system—and gave analyses that placed these issues at the
forefront (Ibid). The Marxist examination of migration views migration as an essential
stage in capitalist production and development. It tends to focus on the class structure
of the society of which migrants belong, emphasizing the negative and exploitative
aspects of migration (Deshingkar and Farrington 2009). An advocate for the Marxist
school of thought, Breman argues that labor migration is the only survival option for
people alienated from their land in the transition to capitalism, and asserts that
migrants possess very little power or visibility: “Although in many cases footloose, these
are not free laborers able to go wherever and whenever they want. Many have been
contacted through advance payment which binds them to an employer or his agent, the
jobber. Others remain attached by systems of delayed payment permitting them only
58
to leave at the end of ‘the job’ or when the season is over. The footloose workforce can
be found in the open air but is also ‘domesticated’ and kept indoors, away from the
public eye, in the multitude of sweatshops that form the backbone of the informal
sector economy” (Breman 1996: 7). Although migration creates the potential for people
to move up the class ladder, Breman blames it for perpetuating exploitative relations
and inequality.
According to Karl Marx, capitalism creates a group of people in power, the
bourgeoisie, who believe they must perpetually expand and conquer more people and
places: “The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the
bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle
everywhere, establish connections everywhere” (Marx 1997: 42). The bourgeoisie does
not merely scrape by; it advances. Conversely, the people without power, the
proletarians, devote their lives to working but never receive ownership of the final
product: “… the object that labour produces, its product, confronts it as an alien being,
as a power independent of the producer. In political economy this realization of labour
appears as a loss of reality for the worker, objectification as a loss of the object or
slavery to it, and appropriation as alienation, as externalization” (Marx 1997: 16).
Although the proletarians constantly work, they are detached from the fruits of their
labor and alienated from their own bodies in the process.
Exploitative components of migration were apparent in my field site, although
the issues at hand were hardly black-and-white. One morning, the NGO that supervised
my research project put me in touch with a man named Abhay. He was kind enough to
59
come to my host family’s house to meet with me later that afternoon. I had spoken to a
staff member from the NGO about my difficulty finding male migrants to speak with,
since most of the men who migrate were gone. I had assumed Abhay was a migrant
worker, but about ten minutes into the interview, I started to question whether he was
or not. Abhay was only speaking about his previous job as a veterinarian and his
current job in a school in a nearby village. I was curious why the NGO recommended
that I talk to Abhay if he did not have a direct connection to migration. I told him about
my interests in learning more about migration in the community and asked him if he
had ever considered opportunities in other cities for work. He paused for a few
seconds.
Abhay then identified himself as an ex-migrant. Before his job as a veterinarian
he used to migrate to Ahmedabad. In Admedabad, Abhay worked on construction,
carrying heavy iron rods. Facing financial problems in his family, one of his friends
already in Ahmedabad gave him the address of the company that he worked for. He
worked eight hours every day and came home every two months for about five or ten
days. His family was supportive of his migration, realizing it was necessary to support
their family, and gave him money for his train ticket. However, Abhay did not earn
nearly as much as he expected. “The accommodations and food were provided, but
they were deducted from my earnings. This nearly put me at a loss.”
If the job was hardly profitable, I wondered why Abhay’s friend encouraged him
to come to Ahmedabad in the first place. At first, Abhay said that his friend was happy
doing the same work as him. After some innocent questioning on my part, however, he
60
revealed that his friend had set him up. “My friend had connections in the company and
made a deal with a boss. He got a commission for recruiting employees. I was not
aware that he was an agent when he recommended the opportunity.”
“Sounds like he wasn’t a very good friend” I replied.
He nodded.
Now I could begin to understand why Abhay had been reluctant to discuss his
experience with migration initially. His migration story was not the proud tale of a man
who provided a huge financial contribution to his family in a time of need, but of a man
who was misled. I asked Abhay to explain the difference between people who find
success through migration and the people who do not. He replied, “When people are
educated, it’s easy to create contacts with other educated people. The supervisors are
more educated and try to extract as much money from all the people they can.” Indeed,
the privilege of receiving an education and having elite contacts can be a major
advantage for migrant workers. In addition, Abhay also believed that time and
experience could be another route to access: “Some people have been learning the skills
of work since birth. I have seen many children-- as young as 6 and 8— working along
side me. These types of people gain a lot of experience and can work their way up.
Eventually they can start their own business and learn how to make commission off
recruiting others.”
Although both of the pathways to success that Abhay discussed required the
acquisition of power and the exploitation of others without power, they cannot be
attributed to solely migration, in my opinion. Rather, it seems that migration, along
61
with the forces of capitalism, class, and caste, become layered on top of one another to
create a profound disadvantage. Similarly, Peteet’s work on Palestinians in refugee
camps concludes that Palestinians continue to use their old village destinations and recreate neighborhoods: “If one wished to locate the home of a person who is from Safed,
one could ask, ‘Where do the people of Safed live? In short, the camps were structurally
arranged to mirror rural Palestine in a desire to re-form a physical and social geography
of trust” (Peteet 1995: 174). In Rajasthan, both continuities (class/caste) and change
(new earning opportunities in burgeoning urban areas) work together to influence
migrant outcomes and the takeaways they receive from their experience.
While the exploitation of migrant workers is a substantial issue to address, I
believe the Marxist framework places too much emphasis on the exploitative nature of
migration. It does not create enough space to explore the messiness of migration, the
intricacies of peoples and societies, or the positive potentials of migration. In addition
to the categories of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, caste and class differences
within the migrant worker population noticeably shaped their migration experiences
and outcomes. I believe these nuances need to be explored in greater detail, and the
capitalism-centered approach discourages us from doing so. The Marxist interpretation
suggests migrant labor is a one-sided practice that only benefits capitalist production.
By focusing on the exploitative aspects of migration, Marxist analysis tends to dismiss
the possibility for agency of the migrants in making decisions and influencing society
(Deshingkar and Farrington 2009).
62
I will now explore how migration can be potentially disempowering for the
women whose husbands migrate (although, notably, these examples once again cannot
easily fit into any category). Meenal spent nine years in Ahmedabad alongside her
husband, but has lived in the village for the past five years. She left Ahmedabad
because the high cost of living meant that she and her husband were unable to save. In
the village, she receives help from her in-laws to care for her two sons, which also
factored into the decision. The transition back to a village setting was difficult for her:
“It took me a year to adjust to life in a village, and I was unhappy at first.”
Although she has had time to settle in, it was clear from the expression in her
voice that she was still infatuated with life in Ahmedabad. “Even if Salumbar had more
job opportunities, I still wish I could live in Ahmedabad. There are also better
educational opportunities for my children there,” she lamented. One of Meenal’s
comments was especially intriguing to me: “My son’s skin was fair until we moved to the
village.” Here, Meenal is expressing a politics about migration through the body of her
son. Fair skin is highly revered in Indian society. On television and in Bollywood movies,
the faces on screen are extremely pale. I could not purchase a bar of soap that did not
claim to have “brightening” agents, or whiten the skin. Meenal recognizes the
importance of pale skin for her son’s career and social life, and worries that being in the
village will jeopardize an opportunity for fair skin. Perhaps she is also concerned about
herself as well. She needs her son to succeed— both financially, to send remittances
that support her, and socially, to provide a daughter-in-law to support her and the
63
family. Meenal is thinking about what migration to the city is doing for her husband and
recalibrating the possibilities for her own life vis-à-vis her son.
Meenal’s insightfulness is pretty remarkable. She is willing to put her dreams of
living in the city aside to do what is best for her family in the long run: “But it would not
be practical. My children are settled in school here, and we would have to return to the
village frequently for marriages and ceremonies.” Meenal and her sons go to
Ahmedabad during the children’s summer vacations, although Meenal can only stay for
ten to fifteen days. She must return to her work in the fields and tend to the buffalo
while the children stay on with their father. The fact that she and her husband lead very
different lives and lifestyles presents a challenge for their relationship. “He speaks your
language now,” she told me, referring to the English her husband has picked up as a taxi
driver. “He doesn’t find much comfort in the village anymore. He has become
accustomed to city life. So he doesn’t like to stay in [the village] for long.” Here,
migration disrupted a marriage between a husband and wife (which could be a good
thing or a bad thing for a woman, depending on her thoughts about her marriage).
Rural women of Rajasthan are highly attuned to the issues around them. A
tremendous calculus goes into the minds of women as they develop aspirations for
themselves and their families through the possibilities afforded by migration. I hope to
convey that women are not totally disempowered people; they are partners in the
migration story (although they may not be equal partners). A major topic from my
conversation with Krishna was her longing for husband while he is away. However,
Krishna said the sacrifice is necessary for her family’s wellbeing as they rely on the
64
income it yields. Krishna described her outlook quite beautifully. “I have two hearts,”
she explained. In one heart, she is sad that she is separated from her family members,
but in the other, she knows the importance of migration and is happy that her husband
and son are providing for her family: “We use our money carefully because we need to
save. How else will we have homes, have our children study, and get our daughters
married? We must consume our salary carefully.” In these examples, the women
seemed to delay their own empowerment to support the empowerment of the next
generation: their children. These circumstances make it complicated to analyze the
situation as a disempowering one, supporting my argument that migration is highly
nuanced.
Continuous Elements of Migration
In addition to empowering and disempowering elements, I also found that a
throughout the migration journey there is a continuing set of cultures, patterns, and
beliefs. In Rajasthan, I found that generally speaking, family’s successes and
misfortunes with migration had little to do with sheer luck or individual prowess.
Rather, systematic forces such and caste and class played a heavy role in migration
experiences and outcomes.
Bishnu belongs to the Rajput community, which is considered the highest ranked
caste in the area. She identified her family’s caste as a prominent factor that shaped her
husband’s migration experience, particularly what occupations to pursue: “For Rajput
families, hotels and driving are the only options. Construction is only for tribal people.
65
No matter how much trouble your family is in, construction is not okay. It would be very
difficult for your children to get your married if you participated in construction work.”
Bishnu’s account demonstrates that the type of labor a man engages in as a
migrant worker reinforces caste roles and hierarchies. The Rajput men avoid
construction jobs at all costs to avoid being like tribal people. This occurrence
demonstrates and perpetuates the social stigma cast on tribal people. According to
Chakravarti, agrarian class relations in the Indian state of Behar are embedded in caste
(2009). Further, caste determines why a substantial segment of rural Bihar continues to
be subjected to extreme forms of exploitation (Ibid). Migration starts from a
differentiated situation and the social class of the migrant predicts the type of work that
the migrant will engage in (Deshingkar and Farrington 2009).
The disparities between castes are further perpetuated through migrant labor.
Belonging to an elite caste brings lucrative networking opportunities. Seema, another
Rajput woman, explained, “My husband started off by working at a hotel in Ahmedabad.
Then his friends encouraged him that driving was more profitable. He started at a job in
Ahmedabad driving smaller vehicles, but is now doing the Mumbai trip with a larger bus.
He secured this job through our family connections.” Having a high caste and socioeconomic status also helps foster a sense of security that other migrant families lack.
With her connections to well-off family members, Bishnu had a back-up plan incase her
husband’s job fell through: “The work is sufficient for now, and if my husband lost his
job, our family could loan us money.”
Meanwhile, in a neighboring village comprised of primarily Scheduled Caste and
66
Scheduled Tribe families (considered the lower ranking communities) I observed a
different scenario. When I visited this neighborhood for the first time, I noticed
immediately that homes were more rundown compared to the Rajput area my host
family lived in where the houses were painted with bright colors and beautifully
decorated. I interviewed a woman named Ankita who identified herself as Meena, a
Scheduled Tribe. Her husband was also left with no option other than to migrate to
Ahmedabad: “My husband was originally a day laborer in Salumbar, but he did not earn
enough money to provide clothing for our family or to have savings incase someone
became ill. We own farms, but they only produce enough food for our own family’s
consumption. We are unable to sell anything for profit.”
Ankita’s husband decided to migrate to Ahmedabad. He has been doing so for
seven to eight years, returning home every two months. Although they did not have the
same powerful connections that many Rajput families have, social networking was still a
helpful strategy for her husband’s career: “He worked around Salumbar and nearby
cities until he slowly gained contacts. Ahmedabad was the only place he considered
because he didn’t have friends or contacts in any other city. Our neighbors also began
to go to Ahmedabad. My husband usually travels alone but sometimes goes with
friends from the village. Two to three people share a room because a single would cost
too much.”
Unlike the Rajput men who used their social networks to obtain jobs as taxi
drivers and hotel staff like Bishnu’s husband, Ankita’s husband is a laborer who carries
bricks and stones on his head. Social networks have helped poor migrants to overcome
67
some of the costs and barriers of entry into migrant labor markets (Deshingkar and
Farrington 2009), but not to the same extent these networks have helped Rajput
families prosper. For tribal migrants, typically groups of families from the same hamlet
or village work in a brick kiln (Joshi and Khandelwal 2009). They leave as a group, live on
the site as a makeshift community and return after the cycle is over. They are usually
recruited by a friend or a contractor who belongs to the same village or panchayat as
the workers (Ibid).
Ankita’s husband’s occupation is a reflection of the poverty and lack of
opportunity in the tribal community: “He chose construction only because he did not
have enough education for other jobs. There didn’t used to be schools nearby.” The
majority of rural, tribal poor migrants have few skills, little information, and virtually no
support services (Khandelwal, Gilbert, and Gantt 2009). The lack of education means
that the employment opportunities available for this group are short term, irregular,
and prone to fluctuations in the market (Ibid). The workers are paid poorly and are
forced to accept manual labor jobs with little opportunity for advancement. Out-ofstate migrants are often harassed by local authorities and even in-state migrants (Ibid).
Construction and mining occupy the largest number of tribal migrants (Joshi and
Khandelwal 2009). Among highly skilled occupations such as plumbing, carpentry,
masonry, and painting, there is a limited tribal presence. Mining and quarrying in
Gujarat has prospered on the cheap tribal labor from Rajasthani migrants (ibid). Hotel
and restaurant work in Gujarat and Maharashtra employs child laborers from Rajasthan
as helpers, sweepers, cleaners, and waiters. In industrial areas and factories in Gujarat,
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tribal labor is engaged in head-loading and pushing carts. Gujarat is the key destination
for Rajasthani migrants, although mega cities like Mumbai and Pune are also attracting
migrants from Rajasthan (Ibid).
For Ankita’s family, migration has helped improve their income and quality of life
in certain respects, but not overall. In Salumbar, Ankita’s husband could only make Rs
150 a day (about $2.40 USD) and they would spend the entire amount each day. Now
that her husband works in Ahmedabad, they get money in bulk and find it easier to save
and budget their money. Nevertheless, Ankita’s husband has had mixed success. In the
construction sector, the number of days he receives work varies: “Sometimes he may
work thirty days in a month, others only fifteen. If there’s a period when the work is
stagnant, he might come back home and try the day labor in Salumbar.”
For some of the poorest families, the transportation and start-up costs affiliated
with circular migration meant that they were barred from migrating altogether. Instead,
these men relied on day labor in the nearby town of Salumbar. Janu wished that her
family could afford for her husband to migrate to Ahmedabad to earn more money. Her
husband earns Rs 50 a day (less than one U.S. dollar) and they do not own farms. The
work is irregular: “Sometimes he transfers wood or helps others with farm work, but
nothing is fixed and nothing is beyond our block [of villages]. In Salumbar, he usually
receives work fifteen to twenty days a month. This is not at all sufficient. We cannot let
our children study and we do not have enough clothes.” In this manor, class and caste
still have heavy bearing on migration outcomes. All of these examples demonstrate
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how many aspects of life are not disrupted by migration. Migration is not an exception
to the rest of the culture.
Conclusion
In rural Rajasthan, circular migration is virtually compulsory for many families.
Anthropologists contend that migration is exploitative, empowering, and/or
complicated, and there is truth in each of these approaches. Still, in my field site,
continuity was also a large piece of the migration story. Although there is a geographic
movement of male migrants into and out of the village, in many ways, the rules of the
village follow them. The women I spoke with were generally supportive of male
migration. They receive a more substantial income through their husband’s
remittances, and they can preserve the rural lifestyle they have always known. In this
sense, they receive the best of both worlds. Yet for other women, migration can create
the frustration that they are missing out on a life in a big city. These women hold
opinions of tremendous value, yet their voices are largely ignored by scholars and
policymakers alike. Before casting judgment one way or another on migration in
Rajasthan, we need to recognize that many women value it as necessary and important,
for as Bishnu put it, “There are no other options for how to live.”
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Chapter Three
NGO Intervention
I entered my fieldwork intending to focus on the experiences of rural women
whose husbands migrate for work. In my field notes, however, I started to take interest
to the other players involved in my research project, particularly the NGO that guided
me throughout my research and also migrated in its own way— entering urban and
rural communities to support migrant workers and their families. The NGO’s mission is
to promote the security and dignity of people dependent on migration. Its scope of
work includes direct services, advocacy, and research. The NGO’s offices are located in
rural areas across southern Rajasthan, the source of migration, and also several offices
in large cities in Rajasthan and Gujarat, the migration destination centers. Its services to
migrants include skill training, ID registration, legal aid, and financial services. The
organization recognizes that the well-being of migrants is linked to the security and
safety of their families, and works to support the women and children of migrant
families through its “empowerment” support groups targeted at women.
The majority of the NGO staff members are university-educated, middle to upper
class, and from urban cities. This created a fascinating dynamic as they interfaced with
women who were largely uneducated, lower class, and lived all or most of their lives in
rural India. I was alarmed by some of the side comments the NGO staff members made
to me in English about the village people:
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“That woman’s name is Lal. Lal means red. The people here are so
uneducated that they can’t think of any nice names, so they name each
other colors.”
“Life is different here, isn’t it? People and animals live together!”
“Take a picture of that thin boy there. He is really thin.”
“Look at that little boy washing his own school uniform.”
“Caste is huge here. Even I don’t like the upper caste women here. They
think they are better than everyone else.”
The NGO, whose work I admired, employed workers whose backgrounds made them
out of touch with the lifestyle and realities of rural Rajasthan. When entering my
research project, I did not expect such a major focus of my thesis to be the politics of
NGO work. As Susan Coutin would say, this component of my ethnography materialized
around me.
During my second trip to India, I spent most of my time in the NGO’s Udaipur
office where Dipti, who leads the women’s empowerment program is based. I no
longer had a homestay family in the village and I resided in the city, as Dipti does.
Although some staff members are stationed at the village sites and live in one of the
NGO’s guesthouses there, Dipti is one of the commuters. She and I usually traveled to
the NGO’s village offices by car with the NGO’s chauffeur, but occasionally we took the
public bus. The villages were up to three hours away, but we would leave Udaipur in
the morning and return the same night. In this way, staff members could go into the
field as needed but maintain their homes and lives in the city. The NGO staff navigated
these two worlds in interesting and thoughtful ways. One weekend, the NGO had their
annual staff retreat in a nearby city. Before we departed, Dipti had a noteworthy outfit
72
change. She had been wearing a traditional Indian kurti during our work in the village
that day. Before the staff retreat, she went into the bathroom and returned wearing a
Western style plaid button-down shirt. In this manner, she could fluidly shift between
the two spaces. What an immense privilege it is for Dipti to be able to enter and leave
village life as she pleases!
With this chapter, I hope to shift the focus to analyzing and understanding the
NGO, a stakeholder invested in the experience of migrant women in my field site. The
NGO staff entered rural communities hoping to provide a useful service to them, but
they carried their own baggage, too, including their wealth, education, and
preconceived notions. As an institution, the NGO also possessed a heightened position
of power. In this chapter, I caution against the NGOs approach at women’s
empowerment. The NGO should not rely on the fact that its staff and the clients are
both women as their only point of solidarity. Rather, the different positionalities of
NGO workers and rural women leaves little space for commonality and cooperation.
My close personal relationships and friendships with the people featured in this
chapter make it all the more difficult for me to write about them. I considered omitting
them almost entirely. However, I knew that would not yield an accurate account.
Fontanella-Khan, who spent time in Uttar Pradesh with leaders of The Gulabi Gang, a
women’s group, said this about her work: “Despite being close to the gang, however, I
am very aware of the shortcomings of the organization and the challenges it faces. I
have not hesitated in discussing these frankly in the book” (Fontanella-Khan xiii).
Similarly, I must also not be afraid to talk about my contacts in Rajasthan with a critical
73
eye. I have chosen not to reveal the NGO’s name and continue to use pseudonyms. At
the same time, I also hope not to solely place the blame on them for issues that face
many, if not all, parts of the world.
What is Women’s Empowerment?
Like the organization that I worked with, many NGOs claim to be “empowering”
the local people. But what does that mean, exactly? One obvious component of the
word “empowerment” is “power.” The very notion of empowerment implies that
power did not previously exist before, and now it does. Several scholars have defined
“empowerment” as a shift from a disempowered state to an empowered one (Mahmud
and Becker, 2012; Chakrabarti and Biswas, 2012). For the purpose of this paper, I will
adopt Kabeer’s definition of empowerment: “the expansion of people’s abilities to make
strategic life choices in a context where this ability was previously denied to them”
(Kabeer 2001: 19). But how exactly does this transformation occur? Intrinsic to the
empowerment process also seems to be an outside force, be it an NGO or some other
actor, who introduces the change.
Further, a tremendous body of scholarship exists surrounding the concept of
women’s empowerment. After the 1980s, the phrase “empowerment of women”
appeared in reference to the movement to help women overcome inequality and
gender discrimination (Lamani and Honakeri, 2012). Specifically, “empowerment of
women” refers to the process of providing power to women to become free from the
control of others, and to assume power to control her own life and to determine her
own conditions [ibid]. Women’s empowerment is also discussed as process of women
74
receiving recognition on par with men (Adhikary, Acharya, and Musiar Ali, 2009).
The empowered woman is an illustrious character in development circles who is
often depicted as inherent to the advancements of other sectors. The World Bank
acknowledges the empowered woman as a critical agent to what it considers to be
sustainable development processes (The World Bank, 2011). A popular UNESCO slogan
(quoted from Chudhury and Nosheen, 2009: 225) is, “Educate a man and you educate
an individual; educate a woman and you educate a family.” At first glance, this
statement sounds pleasant; it acknowledges the critical roles women play in society.
Upon further analysis, however, the idea presented is actually an onerous one. It places
the sole expectation on women to not only improve themselves, but others as well. As
a philosophy for creating social change, the approach of unloading all of the
responsibility onto women seems problematic. Nevertheless, the concept that women
are linked to improvements in other areas does have some merit. Several studies have
found correlations between educated and economically “empowered” women with the
development of themselves as well as their family’s education and health (King and
Mason, 2001; Department for International Development 2007). However,
empowerment can lead to undesirable consequences. Greater mobility for women can
create increased exposure to violence (Mahmud and Becker 2012). Women’s increased
role in decision-making may cause men to become less responsible for important
decisions like health care [Ibid]. In short, empowerment brings both rights and
responsibilities (Basu and Koolwal 2005).
75
The NGO
In Bernal and Grewal's (2014) anthology, Theorizing NGOs: States Feminism, and
Neoliberalism, the authors discuss how women’s empowerment efforts are largely led
through NGO work. They argue that what constitutes an NGO is profoundly gendered
(Bernal and Grewal 2014). Since women are generally underrepresented in official
positions within the public political space, the NGO is the platform that (middle-class)
women use to make claims. Bernal and Grewal contend that the name
"nongovernmental organization" gives organizations an official, yet simultaneously nonofficial status [ibid]. NGOs are separate from states but yet intertwined with states. In
this way, the NGO derives power from "working with the biopolitical logics of the state"
(Bernal and Grewal 2014: 8). According to the authors, “NGOs constantly negotiate with
a dynamic state and multiple contents as well as with traditional and new ideas about
feminist struggles. Questions of social justice, critiques of heteronormativity and racist
and colonial practices, and the current state of capitalist market democracies also help
to unsettle neoliberal power relations and constuctions of gender. Thus, NGOs are
simultaneously neoliberal entities and sites of struggle for feminists” (Bernal and Grewal
2014: 15). Instead of debating the pros and cons of NGOs or performing assessments of
their accomplishments, Bernal and Grewal argue it is important to consider the
structural components of NGOs and their contributions to new constructions of gender
and gender relations.
In the case of my fieldwork experience, the NGO staff members exhibited a
sense of paternalism in the way it handled women’s issues. Dipti is the head of the
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empowerment program the NGO and served as a mentor to my research project. She
arranged my village homestay, introduced me to the other NGO staff members, and
took me under her wing. Dipti is extremely dedicated to the cause. She left her
previous career in Delhi to pursue something she felt could help other people. Her
husband and adult son remain in Delhi, and Dipti’s move has put a strain on her
marriage and family. She periodically takes an overnight train back to Delhi and stays
for the weekend. Although her husband wishes she would move back to Delhi, Dipti
told me, “I don’t want to go back, I like working with the women here. I don’t know
what I’ll do.” Dipti and I shared similar social and political views. In a country where so
many women I met were infatuated with marriage, Dipti advised me not to get married
and to follow my own passions. Her views resonated with me because I was raised by a
single mother who instilled similar values in me. I admired Dipti very much.
However, Dipti’s words and actions often surprised me. During one of the
meetings of the NGO’s women’s empowerment program, a village woman named
Nirmala addressed Dipti and said, “I have four children and I am struggling to provide for
them. Can you do anything to help me? Do you know of any government programs?”
I nodded in sympathy with the woman who was experiencing difficult times, but
Dipti maintained a solemn composure.
“Then why did you produce four children?” Dipti asked.
I was shocked! How could she say such a thing?
During my first trip to India, the village women told me how birth control is
stigmatized in the community, and how men are extremely stubborn about using
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condoms. They emphasized the importance of giving birth to a son and a desire to keep
trying for a boy if daughters were born first. I had heard so many discouraging stories
from women about how their husbands were controlling and how the men in the village
make all of the decisions. Dipti is the head of the women’s support group program.
Hadn’t she also had these conversations? Where was her compassion? I thought that
this NGO had a progressive agenda and was working to empower the village women.
However, it also cast judgment on the very people it was supposed to be serving. I
found this contradiction confusing and upsetting.
Dipti likely had good intentions and was trying to show “tough love,” but her
moral-judging approach seemed paternalistic. In his 1968 address to the Conference on
InterAmerican Student Projects in Cuernavaca, Mexico titled “To Hell with Good
Intensions,” Monsignor Ivan Illich’s offers a critique of volunteerism in Mexico during
the 1960s. Illich goes into the heart of the dangers of paternalism, asking which party is
really benefitting from service work— the host community, or the American volunteers
who become “mature people” after their “summer sacrifices” (Illich 1968: 5). He
writes, “The fact that you live in huts and eat tortillas for a few weeks renders your wellintentioned group only a bit more picturesque” (Illich 1968: 4). Illich also argues that
some groups like the Peace Corps spend too extravagantly on its member’s training—
money that could be put directly into the communities without a need for so much
outside influence [ibid]. Illich cautions that volunteering is often less about helping
others and more of a way for Americans to feel better about themselves. Likewise,
Dipti’s approach to the women with four children captured a disconnect between the
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realities for rural women and the ideals that many of NGO staff members across India
hold.
Mitra writes about the same paradox I encountered. She recently completed an
ethnographic study in Kolkata, India of women from upper and middle classes who work
with 14 non-governmental organizations (Mitra 2013). Mitra draws from feminist
standpoint theory to consider the challenges and motivations of women who become
volunteers and activists. Developed by Dorothy Smith, feminist standpoint theory looks
at the social world from the perspective of women and the way they socially construct
their worlds. Mitra concludes, “The women we are studying in this book are volunteers
and activists who want to uplift and contribute to development of women in India at a
local level. They are progressive and forward thinking by their own accounts. These
women want to bring about social change and uphold equality of the sexes in both
public and private spheres. Yet in many ways, they remain traditionalists at heart.
Certain notions of gender roles and physical spheres are too deeply ingrained in their
psyche, even as they negotiate these roles and question the boundaries between the
spheres” (Mitra 2013: 65). Further, Mitra argues that the domination of leadership
within many NGOs by upper and middle class women reflects and perpetuates class
difference: “In democratic India, NGOs are staffed by well-educated professionals
(which include lawyers, journalists and university professors) and some are funded by
international agencies. These organizations become a ‘primary vehicle’ for women’s
development and interaction with governmental institutions and the social
environment…” (Mitra 2013: 47).
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In my site, these class differences were reflected in subtle variances that the
NGO staff members interacted in the Udaipur office and in the village communities. In
the Udaipur office, the staff spoke a blend of Hindi and English. Although my
knowledge of Hindi is limited, I noticed they used more formal Hindi to address their
colleagues such as “Aap keisi hei?” and “ji nahi.” When speaking with the local people
in villages, however, they used more expressions that denote less respect: “Keisi ho?”
and “nay nay.” What did that say about the relationship the NGO staff members had for
rural people? I suspect it had something to do with where their respect lies.
The PowerPoint
On one of my last days in Udaipur, I gave a PowerPoint presentation to Dipti and
some of the other leaders at the NGO about my experience with the program and my
critiques. I have reprinted a few of my slides here.
Problem #1: Program is neglecting gender issues, only addressing economic
empowerment
 The meetings I observed were dedicated to linkage of women to NREGA and
other government poverty alleviation schemes
o This is important as many families are struggling financially
 However, there is little discussion of the social lives of women and gender
issues like domestic violence etc.
In the meetings I observed, the NGO staff members dedicated the majority of
the meeting time to reviewing the procedures for applying for employment through the
village panchayat. Through the National Rural Employment Act (NREGA), men and
women are entitled to 100 days employment, often through landscaping or some
service to the community. However, oftentimes the male panchayat leaders deny
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women the jobs they are legally entitled to. As Dipti told me, “The panchayat leaders
say there is no work and send the women home. We tell the women ‘It is your right,’
but they are afraid.” Indeed, this information and encouragement is an important
service for the NGO leaders to share with the village women. However, according to the
NGO staff, another purpose to the support group is to address issues of domestic abuse
for the wives of migrant workers. I did not feel that the NGO lived up to this aspect of its
mission.
I was able to ask questions to the support groups at the end of the meetings I
observed. When I asked about domestic violence, it was clear that women were very
uncomfortable speaking on this topic and sometimes they became defensive.
“Domestic abuse does not exist in our community” one woman told me. I found this
hard to believe and I posed the question again. There was a long pause. Then a
different woman came forward and admitted that she has personally experienced
domestic abuse. Very slowly, others agreed and eventually the group came to a
consensus that it was in fact a huge problem in the community, often fueled by alcohol.
The fact that it took several minutes for this issue to unravel demonstrated that the
NGO had not likely spent much time discussing this issue.
The NGO administrators were very receptive to this slide, which was good to see.
Abhi, the director of the NGO said that my presentation brought to light that none of
the staff assigned to the women’s empowerment program had a background in
women’s issues, and said they need to think about hiring someone on their team that
does. Still, by “having a background” he was referring to the staff member’s program of
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study in university. I would take this a step further and argue that “having a
background” in women’s issues for the purpose of this NGOs work should refer to a
woman who actually belongings to the rural community and personally experiences the
lived realities there.
Problem #2: Caste issues are not properly addressed
 In some communities there are strong tensions between women of
different castes
 According to program members in one village, the upper caste women
will not join the group because they feel superior
 In another village, the opposite is happening: upper caste women do
want to join, but the NGO group leader does not let them join because
she does not think upper caste women face as many problems
The NGO held several assumptions about the rural women that I challenged
during my time there. The staff operated under the belief that the poorest women from
the lowest social rankings, Scheduled Tribe (ST) and Scheduled Caste (SC), were the
worse off and targeted those groups for their support groups. However, as I talked to
women from a range of backgrounds, I noticed that the situation was far more complex.
Many upper caste women I spoke with seemed to have the fewer social freedoms than
lower caste women, although this was not a hard rule.
During a group interview in a village with members of the empowerment
program, I asked about women’s participation in panchayat meetings (the local
government). The women I spoke to were from ST, SC, and OBC communities and said
they are attending panchayat meetings regularly, but noted that they are alone. As a
woman named Janu explained, “We tried to convince women from the upper castes to
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join us, but the upper caste women are very reluctant.” This story was reiterated when I
did a group interview in a Rajput (upper caste) community. In the lower castes, poverty
has often forced the wives to go out for work, allowing them to get out of their homes
and socialize with other women. In most upper caste families, however, the economic
situation was better and only the husbands needed to work. This meant that the
women were confined to the home and faced a great deal of isolation. They told me
they were unable to attend panchayat meetings due to the stigma in their communities
of women leaving the home.
Again, Abhi, the NGO director, was very interested in my theory, which was
encouraging. He asked a new staff member who just recently joined the NGO (and
would be working with the women’s support groups) to explore this issue in further
detail. She was present at my presentation as well. Interestingly, Abhi asked her to
consider developing a more quantitative way to measure this issue. I understand that
NGOs often rely on quantitative reports to receive funding and run their organizations,
but at the same time, what does it say for an NGO to be quantifying women’s
empowerment?
Problem #3: Men interfering with meeting
 Some program meetings were held very publically outside where men can
easily see what is going on
 During several meetings, nosy men tried to join and at times just shouted
over the women speaking at the meeting
 When this happened, sometimes NGO leaders did not respond properly to
the situation and allowed the men to dominate the conversation, and even
defended the men!
o This is problematic because how are women supposed to talk about
sensitive issues like domestic violence with the men present?
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It was actually Dipti’s idea to make this slide. She felt strongly that the village
men were a hindrance to the NGO meetings and that some of her fellow staff members
made excuses for them. I witnessed this personally when a man arrived at a meeting,
shouted over everyone else, and an NGO staff member brushed him off saying, “He’s a
nice man. He’s just trying to help.” Ironically, even the NGO worker, meant to be a role
model for empowerment, was subservient to the village men. Of course, having
physical space for women to talk honestly and openly about sensitive issues is critical.
Abhi agreed, saying that this program is meant to be an opportunity for women to work
on their “defense strategy” when they experience discrimination from men in the
community, which is impossible to achieve if men are present at the meetings. By not
confronting the men, the NGO staff perpetuated some of the same problems they were
trying to alleviate.
Returning to Mitra’s work, she outlines similar challenges facing the feminist
consciousness of NGO workers and volunteers. Many of her interviewees were
confused about feminism in general and western feminism in particular (Mitra 2013).
Others had an aversion to the term altogether [ibid]. Mitra writes, “The women
volunteers and activists in this book have a strong desire to see women in India gain
equality with men—as fellow human beings. They want them to have access to
education and have the potential to earn a living. But it appears there is neither general
consensus nor a concrete vision on what exactly women should aim for when fighting
for their human rights or attaining gender parity with the menfolk. In fact, it is not
completely clear how women’s human rights are defined or understood by the
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development sector of NGOs” (Mitra 2013: 157). By pointing out the gaps in the NGO
leader’s understanding of feminist praxis, Mitra opens the conversation for ways
feminism can support the effectiveness of women’s organizations.
Third Wave Feminism: Acknowledging Difference
Second wave feminism emerged in the 1960s in the United States and became a
worldwide movement. While first wave feminism focused largely on women’s suffrage,
second wave feminism expanded the discussion to issues including sexuality, family, the
workplace, and reproductive rights. Still, second wave feminism has been critiqued for
its lack of depth into issues of race, nationality, sexuality, class and intersectionalities
along those lines. Breines’ work, based on the documents and interviews of social
feminists active in the 1960s and 1970s in the United States, characterized the theory
and politics of white feminists during second wave feminists as “abstract anti-racism”
(Breines 2002: 1122). According to Breines, while many white second wave feminists
analyzed differences by race and class, they seldom interacted socially with black
women (Breines 2002).
Although women of color were present in the first and second waves of
feminism and made important contributions then, they were the pioneers of the the
second wave’s critique. Women of color were the first to use the term “third wave”
(Springer 2002: 1063). In this literature, feminists of color and ethnicity utilized the
language of identity politics and intersectionality theory to critique the second wave
“for its alleged essentialism, white solipsism, and failure to adequately address the
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simultaneous and multiple oppressions they experienced” (Mann and Huffman 2005:
58). Mann and Huffman write about the shifts within the discourse surrounding
feminism and gender relations in the United States with the decentering of second wave
feminism and the rise of third wave feminism (Mann and Huffman 2005). Citing other
works such as Foucault (1984) and Grimshaw (1993), Mann and Huffman argue, “Recent
developments in social thought have heightened our awareness of how theories of
emancipation can be blind to their own dominating, exclusive, and restrictive tendencies
and how feminism is not innocent of such tendencies” (Mann and Huffman 2005: 56).
One of the first texts to articulate the simultaneous and non-hierarchical nature of
oppressions was the Combahee River Collective’s “Black Feminist Statement,” published
in 1978 (Mann and Huffman 2005). Other classics included All the Women Are White,
All the Blacks are Men, but Some of Us are Brave (Hull, Bell-Scott and Smith: 1982), This
Bridge Called My Back: Radical Writings By Women of Color (Morega and Anzaldua:
1983), and Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology (Smith: 1983). These writers viewed
themselves as “outsiders” within the feminist movement and sought to create a
feminism of their own through the third wave (Mann and Huffman 2005).
In the 1980s, a new movement emerged within feminist thought in the United
States called global feminism. These writings helped transform the macro-unit of
analysis from a societal level to a global level wave (Mann and Huffman 2005). Feminist
colonial theory added theoretical and political coherency [ibid]. However, many
international feminists criticize this trend. Indian scholars including Spivak (1987),
Narayan (1997), and Mohanty (1988) call for historical specificity to address
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generalizations and essentialism. According to Mohanty, “The application of the notion
of women as a homogeneous category to women in the third world colonizes and
appropriates the pluralities of the simultaneous location of different groups of women
in social class and political agency" (Mohanty 1988: 78).
I agree with the aforementioned Indian scholars that specificity is needed to
understand the challenges that face women. The notion that all women should feel
solidarity with one another despite differences in background and other circumstances
is a far-fetched one. These differences were apparent to me daily as I engaged in a
fieldwork experience with my own privilege and set of ideas as a student from the
United States who could enter and leave the field as I pleased. Even though my
translator, Shilpa, was Indian, her background still made it difficult for her to become
immersed in the community.
During my first trip to India when I had a homestay family and lived with Shilpa,
my daily experience in the village was shaped by Shilpa’s perpetual struggle to find
nonexistent cell phone coverage. She had a different service provider than most of the
village people, and also owned a smartphone, the Apple iPhone. Having recently
obtained her first boyfriend, a secret she kept from her family, Shilpa was glued to her
iPhone. Her mood seemed to depend entirely on the condition of her phone: “No bars,”
“Still no bars,” “No battery!” or “O-M-G! I have service, Nicole! Finally! Finally! O-M-G,
Nicole, I have five messages!” My translator’s obsession with her iPhone became a
problem, though, when she would take out her phone mid-interview and check for text
messages. I found this behavior disrespectful to the interviewees and asked her to stop.
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She seemed to snub the village people in other ways, too. During interviews, I
tried to allow for pauses so that the interviewees could have sufficient time to think and
add to their responses before moving on through my line of questioning. Shilpa always
seemed anxious to speed things up, jumping in with, “Okay! Next question!” At the end
of an interview, I would express appreciation and gratitude to the interviewee for their
participation in my research project, and I would ask if they had any questions of me or
if there was anything they wanted to share that was not addressed in the interview.
Instead of translating any of my closing remarks, however, Shilpa often said quickly,
“Bahut dhanyavad! Chalo!” or “Thank you very much! Let’s go!”
I do not believe Shilpa was being completely malicious here. Rather, habits like
checking her cell phone for messages were a crutch she turned to when she felt
uncomfortable. A Masters student in finance at a prestigious university in Udaipur,
Shilpa had spent little time with rural people prior to our work together. Notably, the
fact that Shilpa needed to access her boyfriend through her cell phone was quite ironic
considering she perceived herself as a very modern woman and scoffed at other young
women for wanting to get married. “I was born in the wrong country,” Shilpa told me on
multiple occasions. Although she said she would like to live in the U.S. like me, Shilpa
had more in common with the rural women than she realized.
Nevertheless, Shilpa’s behaviors accentuated her urban background and upper
middle class, and villagers seemed to pick up on this tension. One hot afternoon, we
were introduced to the village Bhopa (faith healer). Within a few minutes of talking to
the Bhopa, he addressed Shilpa and said, “You were afraid to come to the village,
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weren’t you?” Shilpa looked a little surprised, but laughed it off. Since they had just
met, the bhopa’s statement was likely based off Shipa’s outward appearance— her
clothing, sleek hair, sunglasses, and handbag likely tipped off the fact that she belongs
to a higher class and is an outsider in the community. Towards the end of our stay, my
host mother knocked Shilpa’s iPhone off of the table it was charging on, shattering the
glass screen. That night, Shilpa borrowed my phone and called her boyfriend in tears. I
will never know for certain if it was really an accident, and I wouldn’t blame my host
mother if she did it on purpose out of irritation with Shilpa. Regardless, the challenges
Shilpa and I experienced joining the rural community are demonstrative of difficulties
that women’s organizations also experience. Just because we were all women was not
enough to create a sense of unity.
In their book Feminist Colonial Theory, Lewis and Mills contend, “whilst gender
will always be imbricated in the matrix of power, exploitation and resistance that
characterizes colonial and the postcolonial, it is not always the predominant factor in
people’s consciousness nor is it always the most effective rallying point” (Lewis and Mills
2003: 20). Mohanty also takes issue with women’s characterization in feminist analysis
as a singular unit formed on the basis of shared oppression, which implies a ‘sameness’
of their oppression (Mohanty 1988: 62). She writes, “By women as a category of
analysis, I am referring to the crucial presupposition that all of us of the same gender,
across classes and cultures, are somehow socially constitutes as a homogenous group
identifiable prior to the process of analysis” (Mohanty 1988: 65). Women are often
accompanied with labels like ‘powerless,’ ‘exploited,’ and ‘sexually harassed’ [ibid].
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Mohanty finds these labels dangerous because they encourage scholars to find many
cases of ‘powerless’ among different groups of women and proving that women as a
unit are powerless [ibid]. Instead, Mohanty believes we should uncover why a
particular group of women are ‘powerless’ in a specific context [ibid].
Mohanty calls out other scholars for their tendency to generalize all women, deemphasizing the differences in women’s situations. For example, in Lindsay’s work on
Third World Feminism, Lindsay finds that although linguistic and cultural differences
exist between Vietnamese and African American women, “both groups are victims of
race, sex, and class” (Lindsay 1983: 306). Mohanty argues that Lindsay’s work is
problematic because it concludes that women are defined by their status as victims
(Mohanty 1988). According to Mohanty, “To treat them as a unified group,
characterized by the fact of their ‘exchange’ between male kin, is to deny the
specificities of their daily existence, and the differential value attached to their
exchange before and after their initiation” (Mohanty 1988: 69).
Mohanty questions how scholars can produce books with sweeping titles like
Women of Palestine, Indian Women in Struggle, and Women in Arab Society: “… Omvedt
can talk about ‘Indian Women’ while referring to a particular group of women in the
State of Maharashtra, Cutrufelli about ‘Women of Africa’ and Minces about ‘Arab
Women’ as if these groups have some sort of obvious cultural cohesion…” (Mohanty
1988: 78). This writing assumes that the position of women has a fixed place within
religious, economic, familial and religious structures, which is not the case.
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Mohanty’s writing is extremely pertinent to the work of the NGO that I observed,
as the NGO had identified rural women whose husbands migrate for work as vulnerable
and wanted to see them remake their lives in a particular way. However, differences in
background between the two parties introduced some challenges. During the NGO
meetings, the NGO staff members talked at the rural women, and the women were
quiet and submissive.
Conclusion
As Mohanty explains, “Sisterhood cannot be assumed on the basis of gender,”
(Mohanty 1988: 67). While the NGO operated under the assumption that all women
could come together for the purpose of women’s empowerment, that model had many
cracks. As addressed in third wave feminism, various obstacles exist in coalition building
across different backgrounds, socio-economic classes, and other identities. Toward that
end, I argue that a stronger engagement with third wave feminist scholarship is
necessary for NGOs to effectively run their organizations and mitigate the differing
situations of NGO leaders and their clients.
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Chapter Four
Neighborliness
During a walk around the village with my translator, we approached a group of
four women talking together. A middle-aged woman named Krishna called me over.
“I’ve heard that you are staying with Kriti and I want to meet you,” she said.
I was impressed how word of mouth could transport village news like my
homestay with Kriti and her family so quickly among the women in the community.
After I told Krishna about my research project, she told me that her husband was a
migrant worker in Ahmedabad and she would like to be interviewed. I did not need to
find another interviewee that day; Krishna practically recruited me!
“How often does your husband return home from Ahmedabad?” I asked her.
“About every three months,” she replied with a huge grin. “Talking about my
husband makes me excited!” she announced in a peppy, high-pitched voice.
Krishna laughed wildly and fell forward into the lap of my translator, Shilpa. The
women gathered around her were in hysterics.
“She sees him everyday… in her dreams!” joked her sister-in-law.
The whole group exploded in uncontrollable laughter. Their reactions were so
infectious that I couldn’t help but laugh myself, even though I did not understand
anything that had been said until after my translator filled me in, and even then I did not
fully grasp why the women were laughing so much. I guessed the jokes had a sexual
undertone, but it was unclear.
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“So tell me a little bit about what your life is like being away from your
husband,” I asked.
“I am able to fill up my day taking care of the house, the buffalo, and the farm.
It’s not difficult to keep busy during the daytime,” said Krishna.
The women started to talk among themselves.
Shilpa turned to me and joked in English, “I have to wonder how she gets on
during the nighttime.” Shilpa was nearly brought to tears.
Fighting back tears of my own, I tried to return to my line of questioning.
“So, was there ever a time when you and your husband lived together in the
village?” I inquired.
“Yes, we were married for five years before he began working in Ahmedabad.
Now he usually comes for seven to ten days at a time. I miss him a lot.”
“That’s why he comes home so often!” another women teased.
The women erupted in laughter.
The humor and candidness of Krishna and her neighbors made this evening one
of my favorite moments in the field. I wondered, though, how the dynamic of this
gathering of women would have differed if the NGO staff were present. As I described
in Chapter Three of this thesis, the NGO workers dominated the NGO meetings I
observed. The village women listened subserviently and there was hardly any dialogue
back-and-forth. The overarching theme illustrated by my interview with Krishna,
however, was the power of support from women experiencing similar circumstances.
Throughout my fieldwork, I observed many similar friendships among neighbors. In this
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chapter, I argue that the informal social groups among rural women with similar
backgrounds support the wellbeing of women whose husbands migrate for work.
Having close relationships to neighbors is of course a double-edged sword, however, as
knowing a lot about each other’s business can lead to judgment and control. Still, the
relationships among female neighbors seem to be appreciated by women overall.
Unlike NGOs, which are often led by staff members from privileged backgrounds,
and urban rural women seemed to be far more comfortable and forthcoming in settings
among village women like themselves. In order for village women to achieve greater
freedoms in a patriarchal society, the changes should be driven by the women
themselves. From my observations, there are many signs that the women have begun
that process.
Migration as a Point of Solidarity
The fact that Krishna knew about my presence in the village before I met her was
a testament to the tight-knit nature of her community. Throughout my fieldwork, it was
easy to meet people connected to migration because of the closeness of migrant
families. Krishna’s village was a stark contrast from villages just outside of Udaipur I
visited where most of the men were not migrant workers but rather day laborers in
Udaipur who returned to their homes every night. My study abroad program brought
me to a couple of these villages at the beginning of my stay in India on an “experimental
day” where we first practiced working with our translators and tried out different
interview techniques. I tried to engage the local women in one of the suggested
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activities, a community map. I gave interviewees a blank poster and markers and asked
them to draw the homes in their community and label where facilities like water pumps,
schools, and roads are located. The women struggled with the activity. At first, I
thought this was just because they were uncomfortable drawing, which was indeed one
factor, but I also realized through talking with them that they were not very
knowledgeable about their neighbors. As two sisters explained to me, “We usually keep
to ourselves. We don’t really have friends in village besides our own family members.”
It appeared that each family was autonomous and the villages seemed to lack a sense of
community.
In contrast, throughout villages like Krishna’s where long-distance migration to
cities like Ahmedabad and Mumbai is prevalent, families had very detailed knowledge
about their community members (at least within their caste group). After I would finish
one interview, women eagerly recommended a list of other villagers I could ask to
participate in my research and told me where they lived. At times, they were perhaps
too forthcoming with information. During a conversation with a couple women about
family planning and government sponsored sterilization programs, for example, one
woman asked me, “Would you like to know the names of everyone who has been
sterilized?” In Krishna’s village and the villages near her, I found that the women were
heavily involved in one another’s lives and also willing to share their own lives and
involvements with others. Just as many of the husbands travelled together to cities like
Ahmedabad, the wives supported each other at home.
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Cohen theorizes the way communities are formed and maintained through the
concept of boundaries: “the members of a group of people (a) have something in
common with each other, which (b) distinguishes them in a significant way from the
members of other punitive groups. ‘Community’ thus seems to imply simultaneously
both similarity and difference” (Cohen 1985: 12). Cohn argues that boundaries can be
physical like a river or road, but they can also be ideological: “They may be thought of,
rather, as existing in the minds of the beholders” (Cohen 1985: 12). In my field site,
communities were formed around the commonality of migration. The community
boundaries were created around lines of caste and background (the NGO workers were
generally excluded from this community).
Migration creates a similar set of experiences, challenges, and fears that women
can unite around. Although few women missed their husbands to the same extent that
Krishna did, many women expressed similar emotions and anxieties. During an
interview with a woman named Heena, she told me that her own safety living alone at
night is a concern as her husband is away as a migrant worker, but her main worry is her
husband. Her husband has been vague about what type of work he does, but she has
heard him say the word “powder” when they talk over cell phones so she believes he is
working with chemical powders. This makes her anxious because she feels his life is in
danger if this powder got into his nose or eyes. Mothers are especially worrisome about
their young sons who migrate. Neha, mother of a teenage migrant she estimates is age
17 or 18, said the happiest moments in her life are whenever her son is home. She
rattled off a laundry list of thoughts that constantly consume her: “How is he? I hope
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he’s fine. I hope he’s not hurt. What if he fractures something? What if there’s a
robbery?”
Fortunately, the women do not have to face their stressors alone. Many women
expressed that it is helpful to have so many other women in the community going
through the same experience. According to Ankita’s perceptions, 99% of families
around her migrate, which means she has many women to talk to. Like Krishna and her
neighbors, many women also maintained a sense of humor in light of their situation.
Many of my interviewees even joked with me:
“Do you like it here?” Neha asked me.
“Yes, I really like it here!” I replied.
“I don’t like it here,” said Neha.
“Where would you want to live?” I asked, hoping it might spark a conversation
about migration.
“Anywhere! Maybe I’ll go with you in America,” Neha started. “I’m just kidding,
I’m very happy here!”
Geeta, who lived behind my host family, played a similar game with me. I spent
most of my evenings running around with her youngest grandchildren. Her grandson
was a bit of a handful and loved to repeat the one English word he knew over and over
to me, “Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi!”
“Do you like my grandchildren?” Geeta asked me one day.
“I do. They are a lot of fun.” I replied.
“Good! Take them back to America with you,” she said, smiling and laughing.
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These women’s dynamic sense humor is cultivated through many conversations
like the one I experienced with Krishna and her neighbors. The women chat about their
lives, what their husbands do, and gossip about how much each of their husbands are
earning. Krishna said she gets together with her neighbors and female in-laws for
conversation and gossip up to ten times a day. “It happens informally whenever we see
each other outside,” she explained.
Gossip
Gluckman theorizes gossip as a social glue. He challenges the stigma that society
attaches to gossip: “…every single day, and for a large part of each day, most of us are
engaged in gossiping. …Nevertheless, popular comments about gossip tend to treat it as
something chance and haphazard and often something to be disapproved of”
(Gluckman 1963: 308). Instead, Gluckman argues that gossip, and even scandal, have
positive virtues. He uses the upper circles of the nineteenth century England
countryside, written about by Jane Austen, as one example: “These were people living
on land, rents and gilt-edged shares, marking themselves off from others by talking
about one another. And talking about one another was what helped maintain them as a
group— an elite— in the wider society in which they lived” (Gluckman 1963: 308). I
agree with Gluckman that gossip can serve to unite individuals, establish community
values, and maintain a level of exclusiveness in a group. However, in my opinion,
Gluckman does not take into consideration the negative implications of gossip.
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Gossip can present many challenges. Aarti, one of the NGO staff members, told
me that the panchayat members (village government leaders) in the village consider her
work, which includes informing women how to apply for employment and encouraging
them to speak out against domestic violence, as a major threat. “They spread rumors
accusing me of being a pimp and getting women involved in sex work!” Aarti told me.
Although I did not hear anyone else mention this rumor and am unsure of its actual
reach, it is possible that the stigma it insinuated towards the NGO discouraged some
women from coming to the NGO meetings. Regardless, the rumor illustrates that the
panchayat men recognized that gossip could be a powerful intimidation tactic, in this
case against a woman trying to support other women.
For the village women, gossip can be restrictive and oppressive. During my
interview with Kangna, she spoke about how gossip exacerbates the restraints placed on
women by her caste community: “Rajput women cannot remarry. When their
husbands die, they cannot wear make-up or bangles and must look very simple. This is
because these things should only be done for a husband, and people will question who
the widow is trying to dressing up for [if her husband is diseased]. They cannot speak to
other men or people will gossip and wonder what’s going on between them. They
cannot even go to [the nearby town] or people will talk and say they are having an
affair.” Kriti, my host mother, was also in the room during this interview. She and
Kangna are friends and belong to the same caste. Kriti could speak to implications of
gossip for widows from personal experience, as she is a widow herself. Her husband
was a migrant worker who died in Ahmedabad. Kriti explained the pressures placed on
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her by Rajput society: “If you are a widow, even if you are dying of hunger, you should
not work. Even your brother shouldn’t help you.” Kangna and Kriti’s testimonies
revealed the downside to gossip. While close-knit communities can be comforting and
supportive at times, they can be equally judgmental and harmful.
I asked Kangna and Kriti if they foresaw any changes to the treatment of women.
“The gossip is something that cannot be stopped,” Kangna explained. “However one
change is that widows are working anyways in spite of the rules. What are they
supposed to do?” After her husband died, Kriti ignored one of the expectations for
widows and took a job to support her three children. Facing a great deal of
discrimination from her community for doing so, however, Kriti attempted suicide on
two occasions. “I took pills and banged my head against a wall, but my attempts didn’t
work.” She became very emotional, and understandably so.
Although Kriti and Kangna were thoughtful and defiant about how Rajput
women should behave on a small scare, it did not seem to me like their ideas could
produce many systematic changes. I left these conversations feeling dismayed for rural
women who cannot create “actual change” (whatever that means!) and can only talk
about their problems. I now recognize that the fact that the women were able to
articulate their problems and have these conversations in the first place is noteworthy
and exciting in itself. Although the conditions Kangna and Kriti described were highly
undesirable, at least they were challenging the system in their own ways.
Lila Abu-Lughod writes about the relationship between resistance and
power. She argues, "Despite the theoretical sophistication of many anthropological and
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historical studies of everyday resistance, there remains a tendency to romanticize it …
[and] to read all forms of resistance as signs of the ineffectiveness of systems of power
and of the resiliency and creativity of the human spirit in its refusal to be dominated. By
reading resistance in this way, we collapse distinctions between forms of resistance and
foreclose certain questions about the workings of power" (Abu-Lughod 1990: 41). AbuLughod contends that we should use resistance as a diagnostic of power. She draws
from the work of Foucault, who made the assertion, "Where there is power, there is
resistance" (Foucault 1978: 95-96). Abu-Lughod inverts this statement to read, "where
there is resistance, there is power" (Abu-Lughod 1990: 42). She argues that this
revised statement can be an effective tool for ethnographic analysis, as it encouragers
the study of power, which can often be abstract, to focus on specific situations in the
field. In the case of her research on Bedouin women in Egypt, Abu-Lughod finds that
Bedouin women's resistance can take many forms in their everyday life. These
occasions include women's protests to marriages that have been arranged for them,
jokes in which women poke fun of men and manhood, and women's irreverence for
masculinity in certain situations [ibid]. Abu-Loghod argues that all of these things are
situated in changing relations of power in the Egyptian state and economy. Further, she
tasks academics with learning to read everyday resistances alongside a wide range of
strategies and structures of power.
Abu-Lughod’s writing forces me to ask myself an important question: Who
determines what constitutes progress for rural women in Rajasthan? I struggled with
this question as I sensed that the women would not identify their own actions as forms
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of agency and power. Meenal, a Rajput woman, told me that women do not have much
input in community-wide decisions, and they can only talk about their lives and issues in
the community amongst themselves. “That’s about all we can do,” she told me, sighing.
To my interviewees, they did not hold much power, yet in my mind they were showing
resistance, and as Abu-Lughod says, "where there is resistance, there is power."
Verbalization and Consciousness
Although it would be far more ideal if the women could have a broader
influence, the women’s conscious critique of societal norms is a sign of progress in my
opinion. Mies (1982) writes about the contradictory elements in women’s
consciousness as an important step in women’s liberation. In her book on lace makers
in the Indian city of Narsapur, she argues that although exploitative and patriarchal
practices exist, the women she studies cannot be viewed as mere victims because they
resist and challenge this system at certain moments (Mies 1982):
“In particular, the Kapu women said that they had never gone out of their
houses, that women of their community could not do any other work than
housework and lack work etc. but in spite of the fact that most of them still
subscribed to the patriarchal norms of the gosha women, there were also
contradictory elements in their consciousness. Thus, although they looked down
with contempt upon the women who were able to work outside the house— like
the untouchable Mala and Madiga women or women of lower castes, they could
not ignore the fact that these women were earning more money precisely
because they were not respectable housewives but workers. At one discussion,
they even admitted that it would be better if they could also go out and do
coolie work. And when they were asked whether they would be ready to come
out of their houses and work in one place in some sort of a factory, they said
they would do that. This shows how the purdah and housewife ideology,
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although still fully internalized, already had some cracks, because it has been
confronted with several contradictory realities” (Mies 1982: 157).
Mie’s explanation of contradictory elements in women’s consciousness takes me back
to my interview with Kangna and Kriti. They, too, were well-versed in the different
beliefs and freedoms that exist in other communities: “Other castes can remarry.
Muslims can marry anyone. I have friends from other castes, and they tell me my
caste’s beliefs are wrong,” Kriti explained. They were also disapproving of other castes
deemed even more extremist and antiquated: “Some very backward castes believe in
satti pratha—you should die with your husband. That doesn’t happen here.” Kangna
added.
With that, I return to my discussion from Chapter Three about third wave
feminism’s implications for my field site. According to Heywood and Drake, a defining
feature of third wave feminism is “hybridity”: “The lived messiness characteristic of the
third wave is what defines it: girls who want to be boys, boys who want to be girls, boys
and girls who insist they are both, whites who want to be black, blacks who to or refuse
to be white, people who are white and black, gay and straight, masculine and feminine,
or who are finding ways to be and name none of the above” (Heywood and Drake 1997:
8). This generation of feminists celebrates the contradictions that people draw, or
“lived messiness” as Heywood and Drake put it, as a sign of progress.
In my fieldwork, I observed a situation in which the village people dealt with a
“messy” gender issue. The family who lived directly behind my host family had a young
child— about four years old— named Bindu. I thought Bindu was a boy when I first met
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him. However, the family informed me that Bindu was born a girl but insists he is a boy
(I will use the pronoun that Bindu prefers to be called in this paper). I was pleasantly
surprised that the family allowed Bindu to dress in jeans and t-shirts like his brother
does, as opposed to the dresses I saw young girls wearing. The family told me that
Bindu refuses to cry, saying, “Boys don’t cry.” To demonstrate this to me, the older
sister playfully gave Bindu a slap on the face, and then smiled as Bindu did not flinch, let
alone cry. Bindu’s grandmother said that Bindu told the family that he will only attend
school if he can have a sex change operation, which I thought was pretty significant for
such a young child to say.
I asked my translator, Shilpa, if transgender children were common in India, but
she dismissed my question. “She’s just going through a phase where she wants to be
like her brother,” Shilpa told me (using her opinion, not what the family said). Shilpa did
not translate my follow-up question to the family about which gender the child will be
raised as. I trusted Shilpa’s judgment here that this question might be perceived as
offensive. I then wrote about this situation in a class assignment for my study abroad
program. My professor, an Udaipur native who instructs at Duke University, sided with
Shilpa. He advised me to avoid asking further questions about Bindu as I was
approaching a taboo territory.
Still, it seemed to me that the village people were more progressive than the
well-educated, urbanites like Shilpa and my professor. The family accepted Bindu the
way he was, explaining Bindu’s situation very openly with me while I would have easily
mistook him for a boy. They seemed to take pride in Bindu, showing off the traits in him
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they perceived as masculine. Shilpa and my professor seemed to be the only ones
uncomfortable with this topic. This situation reveals how the village people are able to
construct their own ideas of modernity. Moreover, the village people are best suited to
handle their own issues, and support from outsiders can be misguided.
The Anganwadi Model
One community program that worked particularly well to support local women is
the anganwadi. Anganwadis are facilities set up in villages where women and young
children can receive basic healthcare and health education, nutritional supplements,
and pre-school childcare. Anganwadis were established by the Indian government in
1975 through the Integrated Child Development Service program to combat child
hunger and malnutrition in rural India. Anganwadi workers (AWWs) are health workers
chosen from the community and given training in health, nutrition, and childcare.
My host mother Kriti Ji happened to be one of these workers. Her anganwadi is
located in a neighboring village consisting of primarily Scheduled Tribe (ST) households.
This anganwadi is unique because it is makeshift, housed in the home of a woman
named Champa. While the village never had a formal anganwadi, there was previously
a nutritional supplement distribution station behind Champa’s house that collapsed one
monsoon season, which concerned Champa: “I noticed dogs were eating the food. No
one was doing anything about it, so I brought the food to my house so that people could
eat it instead of the dogs.” Champa volunteered her own home as the new space and
created a full-service anganwadi with a daycare for toddlers. Unfortunately, Champa
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does not receive any funding from the government for rent. She applied for funding
many times, but it was never granted. Nevertheless, Champa contributes her small, two
room home out of the kindness of her heart. Champa exemplifies the care that many
village women have for one another. The anganwadi staff members receive small
stipends for their work, but the facility itself is very under-resourced. When I was first
introduced to Champa, three toddlers were sitting on her porch idly. They had no toys
or activities. Still, the fact that Champa and the other local women who serve as staff
were able to identify a need in their community and take initiative demonstrates that
the village women are highly capable of organizing themselves.
Further, the anganwadi created a source of community for women in my field
site. I spent one afternoon in Champa’s anganwadi attempting to conduct short
interviews with the crowd of women sitting on the floor as they waited for the
anganwadi staff to weigh their infants and distribute a nutritional supplement. These
interviews had the typical pauses it requires for Shilpa to translate the interviewee’s
response to me. During one of those pauses, however, an interviewee was reeled into
another conversation with the women around her and lost interest in talking to me. I
was frustrated after I cut several interviews short for the exact same reason. In time,
however, I realized those moments were extremely pertinent to my research, and I
learned to observe and embrace these occurrences. The women talked about anything
and everything: from their families, to other villagers, to a politician responsible for a
program that incentivizes families who give birth in hospitals instead of at home.
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The friendships fostered through the anganwadi created an effective space to
advance women’s issues. My host mother, Kriti, credits the work she and the other
anganwadi staff are doing for ending child marriage in the community: “Everyone in this
village is intelligent and can understand the pros and cons. I remind them that child
marriage is illegal and unhealthy for children’s wellbeing and health.” I believe NGOs
should take note of the anganwadi model and the influence that local community
figures can have over their peers.
Conclusion
I was extremely impressed by the ways women coped with migration and
assisted one another. Thinking back to my interview with Krishna, there was such a
range of emotions in the conversation— from missing her husband and son in
Ahmedabad, to uncontrollable laughter with the group of women, to longing for her
elder daughter who is married and lives far away, to more joking. Above all, Krishna has
her neighbors to laugh with and make it through the tough times. Nevertheless, the
close-knit community formed around migrant families does present some challenges as
rumors and gossip can be inhibiting. Still, the women benefit from this closeness
overall, in my opinion. The connections afforded by migration fosters a support system
of neighbors and friends whose shared experiences and conversations encourage
women to consider their own desires in resistance to the status quo.
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Conclusion
I would to return to the vignette I opened with in my Introduction where all of
the women in town for the wedding were gathered around my bed. We watched a film
of a wedding ceremony together and Kangna examined the bride, then asked, “Why is
she smiling so much?” I loved this moment so much that I decided to include it within
the title of my thesis. For me, Kangna’s question embodies an active woman who is
looking at the freedoms and experiences that other women enjoy, comparing them to
her own situation, and thinking about what her own desires might be. When I think
about ideas like “empowerment” and “modernity,” it is women like Kangna who are
taking these concepts and defining them on their own terms.
Of course, progress happens with a great deal of unevenness. In India,
sometimes taking one step forward results in taking two steps backwards.
Technologies like cell phones may seem like a sign of advancement, but in the case of
the migrant families in my field site, they can facilitate the control and surveillance of
husbands despite the physical absence of the men. Women in rural Rajasthan face
tremendous pressure to uphold the status quo, and are generally barred from
participating in institutions like the panchayat, despite official policies like the
reservation of seats for women under the 73rd constitutional amendment. At other
times, women make a conscious choice to sacrifice their own empowerment in the
hopes that the incomes from their migrant husbands’ can create a better life for their
daughters in the next generation.
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I opened this thesis with a call to broaden our understanding of migration from
the physical movement of people and things (in this case men), to include other
people/places/ideas/cultural systems, etc. which are immobile, but are deeply tied to
migration. The experience of the women who stay behind is a perspective that must
continue to be included in all studies of “male” migration.
While I initially sought to find out how women were impacted by migration, as I
considered my own ethnographic material, I struggled to find a clear narrative I could
present in this paper. I ended up rejecting the category of women entirely. I now
recognize that migration positions women in all types of ways, and these positionalities
create an entire spectrum of experiences and aspirations. The concept of patriarchy
assumes men have power over women, but some of my ethnographic moments pointed
to women’s power over other women or women’s affection for their husbands. If I
could offer one takeaway for the reader, it would simply be that migration, gender, and
culture are all incredibly complicated and enmeshed in one another.
As MaryCarol Hopkins wrote, “At best an ethnography can only be a still photo of
an opera” (Hopkins 1994, pg. ix). This statement resonates with me as I feel there is so
much material missing from this thesis and so many things I could have done differently.
So here I am, left to contemplate these “shoulda, coulda, wouldas”— stories and events
from my fieldwork that I did not mention in my paper, questions I should have asked my
interviewees, perspectives I should have included, theories I should have engaged with,
questions and ideas I was never able to resolve. Yet, if someone were to finish reading
my thesis and feel completely satisfied with what she read and the argument I
109
presented, it would mean I had done a poor job as an anthropologist. Among my true
regrets, however, is not including more male interviewees. I would strongly encourage
other researchers to explore men’s perceptions of women’s empowerment in India.
This study might best be conducted by a male researcher.
Although the current situation in Rajasthan leaves much to be desired for
women whose husbands migrate for work, I am optimistic about their future. The closeknit relationships and friendships among rural women are the most promising and
compelling sources for their advancement. One of my goals in writing this thesis was for
it to have a practical application and perhaps influence policymakers or NGO leaders. I
found that NGOs engaged in “women’s empowerment” often have a power differential
that is difficult to overcome. I wonder, then, how can we maximize on the existing
relationships among the women whose husbands migrate for work? The anganwadi
model was one counterexample to the NGO that seemed to work well. Further research
on informal and small-scale support groups (see Rhine 2009) is highly encouraged.
110
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