Women’s contribution to political economy, then and now
Abstract
I. Introduction: Indian Political Economy
Normally the presence of women in leadership is described in terms of
percentage of participation in political structures or holding of high public offices. It
is also normal to assess the liveliness and strength of “women”, by looking at the
breadth and length of the women’s movement, the causes it espouses and its visibility.
In the development landscape, it is also normal to assess the power of the women’s
lobby, by the budgetary allocation to women’s projects, to the engendering process.
In this essay, I try to place the contribution of women in the context of
political economy. I compare the 1990s with the post-independence (1950s to
1960/70) years. I adopt the concept of ‘Political Economy’, instead of ‘Development’
as one, which makes explicit the political elements in the direction of the economy.
Such a concept satisfies one view, namely, that it is only through political
negotiations, political restructuring and politically “guided” institutions, that
economies can grow with justice.1To illustrate, the development economist Paul
Streeten, in an essay titled ‘The Political Economy of Fighting Poverty: HDR 1997’
says, “The lack of political commitment, not of financial, fiscal, economic or
technical resources is the real cause of human neglect.”2. He points out that it is
important for an economist to be aware of the political pulls and pressures behind
making of a policy, because “Incorrect macro-economic policies can undo much of
the good done for the poor by micro-measures.”3
The history of India’s political economy is perhaps unique in the
world. Pre-colonisation, the country had a fairly sophisticated base in manufacture
and trade. The Cambridge Economic History of India describing the mid-EighteenthCentury Background has this to say: “The possibility of very considerable growth is,
however, suggested strongly by all related sources of information.” 4
During colonisation it went through the conventional direction of all colonial
or colonised political economies, namely, directed towards the colonisers’ gains.
“During the colonial era, government’s economic policies in India
were concerned more with protecting and promoting British
institutions than with advancing the welfare of the Indian population.
Ref. Jain, Devaki (1997). Women’s Political Presence and Political Rights in India. International
Development Conference. Washington. 13-15th January.
Also see, Jain, D. The poverty thing (or this thing called ‘poverty’). Presented at a special event
organised by UNDP, New York. May 20th, 1997. Forthcoming publication by UNDP.
2
Paul Streeten. The Political Economy of Fighting Poverty. HDR 1997. Page 1-2
3
Ibid. Page 6
4
Dharma Kumar and Meghnad Desai (Eds.). The Cambridge Economic History of India Volume 2 : c.
1757 - c. 1970. Orient Longman in association with Cambridge University Press. 1982. Page 22-23.
1
1
The administration’s primary preoccupation was with maintaining
law and order, tax collection and defence.”5
2. Gandhi’s Political Economy
However, what made the Indian political economy unique is the Gandhian
touch. This touch, which can be called a form of liberation theology, was grounded in
a deep intolerance of disparity and deprivation, directly affecting the conscience of
society by its moral and spiritual overtones. It put India’s path to economic evolution
on to a uniqueness from which India still has not been able to jump off. 6 Gandhi
politicised the society around poverty and inequality, by constantly mounting political
action and economic security for the poor.
Gandhi’s appeal to the moral sense of Indian society, whether it was to the
rich or to the poor, the twice born or the “untouchables”, men or women, to Jinnah or
to Nehru, was irresistible as it was embodied in an unquestionably saintly body, with
a gentleness and self-lessness that was tangible. Thus, once he began to embarrass all
by his own exemplary behaviour, whether through the clothes he wore or the
fearlessness, especially of death, that he displayed, the sense of shame and guilt
pervaded the better side of human nature and India’s people have still not been able to
completely recover from this embarrassment. Emma Tarlo 7, in her book on Gandhi
and clothing, writes:
One who is eager to dress himself in khadi from head to foot should begin with
the head straight away. The khadi cap can be used by all, the rich and the poor... the
idea that all should have the same kind of cap on their heads is well worth
considering. (CWMG, vol 20: 386)”8
The ethic of simplicity bordering on austerity has a special power in visibly
poor, unequal societies like India. It not only provides a demonstrative identification
with the poor, but also allows a more even spread of scarce resources. As Gandhi saw
it, it was also ahimsa - as there was less open aggression through less aggrandizement
by the few, of scarce resources. The importance of this package is that the masses of
Indian women - the poor and the traditional - could assimilate it. It springs from
values they understood.9
Hence we see even today, the “talking” of the village, of the poor, of the
household and artisan sector. We see those who want to lead, showing themselves as
“Indian” through their white homespun clothes. The inhibition against public display
of ostentation, general sankocham10 to display gross consumption, the extolling of the
hand made and so on.
5
Ibid. Page 947
Ref. Jain, Devaki. (1996). Minds, Bodies and Exemplars. British Council Division.
7
Emma Tarlo. Clothing Matters: Gandhi and the Recreation of Indian Dress. Hurst and Co. 1997.
8
Ref. to the review of the book by Emma Tarlo. Clothing Matters: Gandhi and the Recreation of
Indian Dress. Hurst and Company, 360 Pages. in The Asian Age 21.7.1997.
9
Ref. Jain, Devaki. (1985) Indian Women: Today and Tomorrow. Padmaja Naidu Lecture. Nehru
Memorial Museum and Library; Teen Murti House; New Delhi. Page 35
10
“Sankocham” - a form of cultural shyness or graceful, conscious, reluctance.
6
2
However, about false-clothing Gandhi said:
“Anyone who wears khadi out of ignorance, by way of imitating others or
out of hypocrisy, will not be regarded as having taken the vow of khadi,
despite the fact that he wears it. Such fashionable khadi wearers could
not be regarded as advancing the sentiment of khadi.11
Gandhi evolved and practiced what could be called a political economy of the
poor.
While orthodox socialism addresses itself to inequality based on ownership of
means of production, Gandhi focused on inequality in consumption. His argument or
his advocacy for austerity, simplicity in life style was based on developing in Indians,
a consciousness of the problems of the poor. To consume much food or own many
clothes or display many clothes, when the neighbourhood was filled with those who
could neither eat or clothe themselves, was a form of violence. There is a beautiful
story of how a child living near the Sabarmati Ashram asked Gandhi why he only
wore a dhoti and no shirt. The child offered to bring Gandhi a shirt. Gandhi is
supposed to have said that he will wear a shirt when all the millions of shirtless
Indians could also afford a shirt. Thus the practice of simplicity was in some sense an
attempt to emulate or imitate the life of those who did not have enough and thereby
release resources to be able to provide for those who did not have enough.
Gandhi offers a discriminating tool or norm that he calls his "Talisman".
According to this line of reasoning, the criterion by which any political choice for
economic changes is made, should consider whether it improves the condition of the
poorest person. If we deal with the removal of poverty first, then the rest of the
economic policies follow.
To quote Gandhi and his Talisman:
'Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much with you, apply
the following test: Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man whom you may
have seen and ask yourself if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to
him......”.12
If in the last 50 years of Independence, every Indian administrator, politician,
businessmen, educated person, every citizen had used the talisman, our entire goals of
growth and progress would have been totally different. India could have held her
head high. The poor and poverty eradication would have provided the best engine of
growth, as pushing them out of poverty would have been the input from us - ‘the
decision-makers’ and the momentum that would have been generated in pushing them
out of poverty would have been the most powerful engine of growth. For, as they
push themselves out of poverty, they would have not only generated income and
11
12
Ref. Bakshi, S.R. 1987; 89. Gandhi in “Gandhi and the Ideology of Swadeshi”
Ref. Jain, Devaki. (1996) op.cit. Page 8
3
purchasing power, but would also have provided the most valuable of the factors of
development - a less unequal society, made up of healthy, educated, skilled “labour”.
I suggest that Gandhi’s touch has also made India’s political economy move
zig-zag : zig towards globalisation with all the technological change and the layering
of benefits; zag to the strengthening of livelihoods, the removal of every tear from
every eye. The ghost of Daridranarayana stalks the Indian conscience and therefore
twists every attempt to have a “clean” move to the so-called fast track of economic
reform towards the thoughts and practices left by Gandhi; the jiminy cricket,
conscience of India.
Thus Indian political economy, the politics, the power structures and the
power allocations behind the economy, are always shaded or shadowed by this
inhibition about consumption, about social discrimination and the claims of the poor.
I suggest also that Gandhi’s ideas for political economy are now returning as
the “new paradigm” for example, today’s vanguard in development speaks of
‘discrimination’, of ‘morals’, of ‘restrained consumption’, of ‘poverty eradication’
and of the importance of ‘building institutions which mediate justice - both economic
and social’, it admits that economics is about politics.
To take one illustration, the Human Development Report (HDR-1997) of the
UNDP recognises that poverty is a political and not merely an economic issue. It
includes a gender perspective to poverty and sees women - using Paul Streeten’s
phrase - as the ‘Constituency of Reform’. The report also builds on consumption
inequality as key to “experienced” crucial inequality.
The HDR, 1996, juxtaposed growth, equity and well being and argued that
growth neither builds equity, nor brings well being. That social disparity within and
across nations was often increasing during periods of accelerated growth. Coming
back to the notion that equity building and dealing with the human condition need to
be goals, prior to, economic growth: the Gandhian view.
3. The context: post independence India:
The issues as well as the currents running through the Indian sub continent, as it
moved towards defining nation hood and citizenship, pre 1947, were not only many
but highly contentious, with strong players, staking claims on very divergent and
complex perceptions of identity and imagery. There were a variety of movements
against the divisive expressions of caste, religion and class. ( Periyar, EV Ramaswami
Naicker, Phule, Ambedkar, Gandhi, Narayana Guru and so on.).g*
Ref. Baroda Conference: “ The Early Years of Indian Independence: Women’s Perspectives”, Seminar Organised by IAWS,
August 9-11, 1997. Baroda.
g*
4
All of these currents had in their forefront, men, who were often in conflict with each
other not only on the method and substance of the transformation that was desired but
the premises on which those ideas were rested as well as the very bona fides of their
leadership.
Common to all the strands of political expression, however, was Nation as Mother:
though perceptions of what was the attribute of this Mother-hood, and of women
within that concept, varied widely. Women’s rights and location in these major sites
of dispute and anxiety, was also tossed about with assorted and often contradictory
imagery. Women spoke from within these movements, - from within the anti Brahmin
movement of Periyar, or the Marxist revolutionary armed struggles, the INA, the
Gandhian organisations, the Congress, and the Socialist parties.h* Looking back there
seems to be a unity amongst these women in their articulation, challenging the various
locations and images that the men were creating for them. They were able to perceive
and accommodate a multiplicity of identities and roles for themselves, they flourished
in fluid and flexible contexts of social relations - challenging the mono typing and
rigidity that was and is so much a part of male rationality.i*
Gandhi’s method of linking revolutionary action, which is a one time public action
struggle, with constructive work, a mundane down to earth sustained social and
development work, - providing livelihoods an d sanitation for example through Khadi,
gave a continuity. Further, his approach - that working with organizations,
institutions out-side of the state, what in today’s language is called self help groups, is
more important than being in government, - enabled men and women to move
smoothly from struggle work to development work but outside and often against the
state. Thus many men and women, notably women, did not join government, even
when posts were offered to them as (for example to Kamaladevi,) and chose to build
their work into national reconstruction and rehabilitation. They made their locations
in alternative power but financially supported by the state. Many All-India
organizations were created by women whose speed and efficacy claimed the attention
of those in power.
When Independence came and the preoccupation was with political power,
Kamaladevi said her “true vocation” lay in “... the sidelines of creative and
constructive work, through performing arts and crafts.”
She turned down political positions (cabinet as well as constituent Assembly) to
embark upon a mission to “ preserve and maintain India’s myriad cultural forms and
hues”.
She was dismayed by the fact that “development in the post independence era was
devoid of all cultural elements. Their revival of the cultural aspects was essential to
sharpen and accelerate social development. ”
h*
Ref. Periar Movement and Women by V. Geetha in Baroda Conference: “ The Early Years of Indian Independence: Women’s
Perspectives”, Seminar Organised by IAWS, August 9-11,1997. Baroda
i*
Ref. Vina Majumdar’s Key Note Address presented at the Baroda Conference August 9-11,1997..... Seminar Organised by
IAWS, “ The Early Years of Indian Independence: Women’s Perspectives”.
5
One of the most dramatic, if not traumatic interventions in the transition of India from
colony to a free country was Partition - the division of India into Pakistan and India and the holocaust of bloodshed, violence, and the displacement of people that it
generated. As always women were specially vicitimised - raped, abducted, recovered,
suffered separation and loss of children, citizenship, even legitimacy. This event and
its aftermath was the most vivid, urgent social and political presence in the country in
the period 47 - 56, and cried for attention. “ The women on both sides suffered so
much,” says Sheila Sen Gupta, a social worker of that time. “We talk about all the
property lost. Nobody talks about the plight of the women”. The best figures available
suggest that about 100,000 women were abducted, mainly in Punjab. How many more
were raped and killed, or casually cast aside, God only knows. And what befell such
women? “Many of them were raped,” says Urvashi Butalia. “Some were killed. Some
were sold into prostitution. Some were sold hand-to-hand. Some were taken as wives
and married after conversion. And some just disappeared.j*
It is worth noting that once again it was women who both challenged the actions taken
by the male leadership on the abduction recovery issue, as well as plunged into
refugee relief and rehabilitation work, which in a sense became the experience that
directed their further contributions to Indian political economy, as we shall see.
For example, as early as 1949, Rameshwari Nehru, honorary advisor to the
government in the Ministry of Relief and Rehabilitation, resigned in protest against a
policy that she believed worked against women. In a memorandum to the Ministry of
Relief and Rehabilitation, dated June 1949 she said, “It is well known that a very
large proportion of the women recovered in India were unwilling to go to Pakistan.
Many of them, even after months of detention in our transit homes, had relations
among whom they appeared to be happy and well settled... but I regret to say that
their protests, their hunger strikes, their pathetic and heart-rending cries of distress,
widely witnessed by both workers and outsiders, were of avail, for they were
eventually sent away to Pakistan... we must admit that we have sent away these
unwilling and helpless women to a future they can neither control nor choose.”
She recommended that recoveries be discontinued altogether because she was
“convinced that we have not achieved our purpose... By sending women away, we
have brought about grief and dislocation of their accepted family life without in the
least promoting human happiness.”k*
Against this boundary and discourse, how do the contributions of women to India’s
political economy - then (in the early post-independence years) and now (in the
1990s) - emerge?
In this essay we limit our attention to only the issue of planning and development
j*
Andrew Whitehead : “ Brutalised and Humiliated”
k*
Ref. Reproducing the Legitimate Community Secularity, Sexuality and the State in Post-Partition India. Ritu Menon &
Kamla Bhasin
6
and draw on two illustrations : Women planning for Women - a 1940 exercise and a
1996 exercise; and the work and thoughts of the two women who were engaged in
Development in the early 50s and how their ideas and involvement appears through a
1997 lens. By describing some of the most meaningful mobilisations of the current
period of 1995-97 and placing it in juxtaposition with the lives of two of the many
women who were actively engaged in national development in the 50s and 60s Durgabai Deshmukh and Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay - we try to address the broader
question of valuating contribution or valuating performance of movements like the
women’s movement in different eras.
We suggest that the idiom and entry points, the organisational structures and
articulations were contextually inspired and located, for example in the prevailing
turbulence of post partition upheavals, of strong affirmative differences on tough
issues like caste and community. Their participation, their visible interventions were
present but not expressed either in the numbers of diverse women’s collective
agencies, as it is to day nor in the size and financial allocations of government
departments and agencies and schemes for women, as is the mode to day.
We would argue that the earliest political demand of women - namely for self
determination, for the right to vote as well as the right to access birth control (Annie
Besant, Margaret Cousins, Marie Stopes etc.) is the mode today, in that women want
to have autonomy, control over their bodies, they want to have political rights and
they want to participate in decision making.
We suggest that these modern ideas and actions were the very ideas that were
generated and acted upon by some of the women leaders in the immediate postindependence period. It is interesting to find that their priorities and their language
resembles the priorities and language of the women’s movements and the radical
movements of late 90s
Have we come full circle? Could it be argued that during the early post-independence
years women were central to the evolution of the political economy of
“reconstruction” of independent India; that they were drawing attention to rights,
including right to work? That the middle years to 1975 and 1995 were unfortunately
convoluted by the United Nations decade messages of equality between “men and
women” and an orientation to making women “objects” of development: to drawing
them through current development engines, and through focal points in government,
national machineries and other such requirements of international governance? Could
the period 75 to 95 be called a watershed? And that the 90s are reviving the old, in
reviving the old issues of rights and self-determination and coalitions, and
strengthening of opinion and organisation outside of government which can hold
government responsible?
4. Two plans for women by women - then and now.
Then: In 1938, a National Planning Committee (NPC) was set up to chart the
course of future planning in India, a sub-committee on women called Women’s Role in
7
Planned Economy (WPRE), was established in 1939 to examine and make
recommendations on women’s role in the planned economy.13
The interim report of the Sub-Committee was presented on the 25th of April 1940 and
the final report was presented on the 31st of August 1940.14 The report covered seven
areas: civic rights, economic rights, property rights, education, marriage, family and
miscellaneous issues like widowhood, caste, prostitution etc
“The Report of the WPRE is worth our notice,” says Nirmala Banerjee in a paper “if
only because of its historical relevance: it shows that, even then, Indian women were by
no means the icons awaiting male handouts as has been visualised by many scholars. In
the final report, they did demonstrate a clear understanding of the issues at stake and an
ability to put them in the framework of contemporary national and international thinking.
They could also set up a net work of working groups in different parts of the country in
order to get region wise inputs.”
.
The Sub Committee insisted that the traditional vision of the man in front carving out
new paths, and the woman trailing behind with the child in her arms, must be changed to
“man and woman, comrades of the road, going forward together, the child joyously
shared by both.”15
In each section, there were many recommendations, some of the key ones are
summarised briefly below16:
1)
Civic rights - the report endorsed the principle of equality, both in status and
opportunities, as declared in the Karachi Congress of the Indian national Congress in
1931. Within this sphere, several rights to be given by the state were advocated.
a)
The right to franchise, to represent and to hold public office.
b)
Right to health, which among other recommendations, entails the need for a
universal scheme of social insurance including maternity benefits, childcare etc.
c)
Right to leisure for all women including those in the home.
d)
Rights of the child to education, health and also protection of the child from
abuse and exploitation. A Children's Charter on these issues was to be drawn up and
implemented.
The Sub-Committee to discuss women’s role in the planned economy was formed on 16th June 1939 to
“deal with the place of woman in the planned economy...” ranging from family life, employment, education
and social customs that prevent women’s participation in the economy. Ref. to K.T. Shah’s Introduction,
(pg. 27) of “Woman’s role in Planned Economy”. Report of the Sub-Committee, National Planning
Committee series. Bombay: Vora & Co. Publishers, 1947. The chairperson of the Committee was Rani
Lakshmibai Rajwade, and the committee included prominent women of that time : Sarla Devi,
Vijaylakshmi Pandit, Begum Zarina Currimbhoy, Sarojini Naidu, Durgabai Joshi and Dr (Smt)
Muthulakshmi Reddy.
14
Ibid. - p.225.
15
Ibid. Introduction, p.33., emphasis added.
16
Ref. Interim Report of the Sub-Committee dated 25th April 1940. Reprinted by CWDS.
13
8
2)
Economic rights - the most striking recommendation here is the need to
recognise women's labour, both on the land and in the home. Other major suggestions
indicate the role of the state in: provision of equal opportunities, ensuring equal wage for
equal work, and protection from dangers in employment (for instance, the threat of
violence).
To quote Nirmala Banerjee, “WPRE stated categorically that a worker woman should
have full control over her earnings. It condemned the practice of throwing women out
of their jobs when they got married and pointed out that, ‘to be free, an independent
income is a necessity’ (p.52). With regard to night work and work on many
occupations which are often considered as unfit for women, the WRPE strongly
suggested that, instead of barring women from the work, its organisation should be so
altered that women can safely work there (p.550). There was a strong
recommendation that ‘what is meant to safeguard a worker should not act to her
detriment’.”
The WRPE was obviously very much against the tradition of making the
family a unit of economic activities because it recognised that this made women the
subsidiary or secondary earners. They felt that it also acted as a justification for the
relatively lower earnings of women.
Perhaps the most radical recommendation of the WRPE concerned women’s
unpaid labour both in the family’s economic activities and in the household. . About
the first kind, the WPRE recommended that the economic value of the work must be
recognised and, in lieu of payment, “ she should have the right to claim all facilities
given by the state to other workers” (e.g. medical help, crèches, training etc. p. 103).
As compensation for work at home- mainly housework- the women should get
absolute control over a part of the family income, and also an inalienable right to a
share in the husband’s property. And the husband should pay on her behalf, the
contribution necessary for my social insurance scheme for workers that the state may
introduce. There was also a mention that men should learn and practice household
skills.
3)
Property Rights - A uniform civil code is required so that irrespective of religion,
women will be entitled to inheritance as daughters, as wives, and also be entitled to
maintain as separate, any property which she possessed at the time of marriage.
However, any property or income made or acquired during "overture" will be jointly
shared by husband and wife.
4)
Education - The state should adopt a well-defined education policy, there should
be no discrimination on the basis of sex, and universal primary education should be
provided to all girls and boys. Secondary education should include scope for vocational
training. The importance of providing adult education for women was mentioned.
5)
Family - equality of status and responsibility in family life is required. Also, the
guardianship of the child should be joint, and the mother's guardianship should not be
subsumed. In the event of divorce, the custody of the child should be given to the
mother, except in cases when the mother is of an undesirable character.
9
6)
Marriage - A uniform civil code should govern laws relating to marriage.
Marriage should also be a monogamous contract under an all India civil marriage act.
Unfortunately, most of these issues and recommendations by the Committee
were not incorporated into the first plan, and the women's role was considered only as a
'social' and 'welfare ' issue. Nor was this oversight corrected in the later plans.17
But as this story unfolds, we will see how women of that era set this “lapse”
18
right.
Now: In 1996,a Working group was set up by the Planning Commission to draw
up an approach to the 9th Plan (1997-2002).19 Some of the similarities between the two
documents are striking. The Ninth Plan seeks a convergence of all sectoral services to
benefit women. The sub-committee 1940 had recognised this in their report when they
mentioned that the terms of reference for women in planning touches all aspects of life,
since women are a part of any scheme and in equal terms as men. They also frequently
refer to their recommendations to be considered by the Labour Sub-Committee, the
Education Sub-Committee and so on. That is, the plans for women are constantly being
made within a general framework for each sector. In the economic sphere, the Ninth
plan 1996 touches on issues like legal safeguards for women to ensure equal pay for
equal work, special assistance in the form of maternity benefits, child care, hostels,
promotion of family responsibilities between men and women etc., all of which have
been mentioned in the 1940 report.
Does this mean that women are “thinking” in the same way - in 1940 and
1996? Or that the same recommendations are valid still, since the earlier ideas were
not incorporated? Or if they were acted upon, they did not bring the change intended?
Or does it mean that even in 1940 these women, who did not have the benefit of 20
years “1975 - 1995” of women and development experience, its theory and practice
and the exposure to four world conferences on women20 - had the brilliance, the indepth understanding to put forth ideas and structures which are up-to date? Does it
also suggest that the ‘local’ national experience of women, their participation in
personal struggles as women21, as well as public struggles like the freedom
movement, provides as wise, as radical, as informed a proposal for and from women
as all this 75-95 experience? This is worth pondering.
Further, the Report of the Working Group on Women’s Development for the
Ninth Five-year Plan, proposes earmarking of funds - a sub-plan for women,
supported from the “outside” by a National Policy Statement on Women’s
Empowerment.
Ref. Ninth Five Year Plan: Report of the Working Group on Women’s Development. Department of
Women and Child Development. Ministry of Human Resource Development. Government of India.
New Delhi. 1996. Pg.2
18
See Page 11
19
Approach paper to the Ninth Five Year Plan (1997-2002), Planning Commission, Govternment of
India, 1996
20
Mexico - 1975; Copenhagen - 1980; Nairobi - 1985; Beijing - 1995.
21
See section on life of Durgabai Deshmukh
17
10
The fault line in the Mahila Plan, as it is called, is the accommodation of
women within the current plans instead of women challenging the current plans, its
goals and the methods. While women are seen as vital to the economy and society,
when it comes to translating this information into strategy, the approach in the
‘Mahila Plan’ and the ‘Policy Document’ treats women as “objects”. Consulting
woman as “subjects”, as reasoned agencies transforms the very substance of public
policy. Women are interested in detail. If nutrition is required as a basic precondition
of health, they will have advice on land use; they will draw attention to the role of
commodity prices etc., which may raise costs. In the context of girls’ education, they
would assert the need for piped water and gas since girls cannot go to school because
water needs to be collected and fuel needs to be gathered and the need for security
against rape, for girls need to walk across fields to school and so on.
The power of design and implementation has been left to the departments of
the state and central government i.e. the official delivery systems, the line ministries,
almost entirely bypassing the elected local bodies that have been mandated as a means
to empower women, and generate people designed development.22 To Quote :
“The responsibility for identifying, earmarking and maintaining
the Mahila Plan component for each scheme / programme should be that
of:
(a)
The concerned Central Ministry / Department and the centrally
funded non-Plan scheme / programmes.23
(b)
The state Governments / Union Territory Administrations in
respect of State Plan and State funded non-plan schemes / programmes.
The Mahila Plan component, however, may be implemented / monitored
by appropriate agencies including the IMY.
Once the Mahila Plan component takes shape, the Planning
Commission and the Programme Implementation Department should also
monitor the actual performance of the component.
The approach to convergence will have both inter-departmental
and intra-departmental dimensions.
Indira Mahila Kendras will be the instrument of convergence at
the point of delivery of services - including training and information - the
source of cognitive assimilation of all relevant information and its
propagation will have at the top of the information pyramid a National
Resource Centre.24
22
See Devaki Jain, Gripping Development. SID Journal
and “Towards a more efficient Social Development in Karnataka” KSPB, 1994.
23
Ninth Five - Year Plan (1997 - 2002). Report of the Working Group on Women’s Development.
Department of Women and Child Development. Ministry of Human Resource Development.
Government of India. New Delhi. 1996.
24
Ibid. Page 21
11
It is, therefore, proposed to earmark the women’s component in
every central and centrally sponsored scheme from the first year of the
IXth Plan. The monitoring of these funds will be undertaken through the
Indira Mahila Yojana. Similarly, from the first year of the Ixth Plan, a
separate women’s component will be insisted upon in the states plan as
well.
Indira Mahila Yojana will be an instrument in this direction and
through this scheme, the women will be organised into groups, they will
articulate their felt needs and prioritize these needs which will
subsequently become the district level women’s sub-plan. It is very urgent,
therefore, that Indira Mahila Yojana follows the Panchayati Raj process
in every state.” 25
The local bodies and the women are mentioned much later with the suggestion
that the IMY (Indira Mahila Yojana) setup and the Kendras “will mobilise women
into groups - including the elected women - in order to ensure convergence of
services.”
The basic concept of the 73rd and the 74th Amendment is one, which not only
wishes to devolve, design, implement and monitor powers to the elected bodies, but
also presumes that the services will converge with the local bodies who will recast the
funds using the methodology of area planning rather than sectoral planning. In fact in
the main document called the Approach to the Ninth Plan - Area Plans starting from
Gram Sabha to District Level - are mandatory and a District Planning Committee is
supposed to invite area plans and then reallocate funds accordingly. The Mahila Plan
however, runs exactly counter to this approach by asking for earmarking within
allocations rather than enabling women’s participation to set the agenda for the area.
Secondly, it treats the elected women, who in fact are to be empowered, merely as
one component of what they call mobilising local women’s groups. It puts the power
of implementation and monitoring squarely on the shoulders of the functionaries at
the local level that have been appointed by the various development sectors.
Considering that the emphasis of the feminist movement has been for peoplecentered, community-designed, user-oriented service - whether they are talking about
health or natural resources - considering that the experience of sub planning for the
tribes had been evaluated as not having been successful, by the Planning Commission,
the working group’s advice as incorporated in the 9th plan is unfortunate, if not
outdated.
It could be suggested that this approach (1996) is, in some elements, less
resonating of women’s viewpoint and political consciousness than the 1940 plan, the
post-Independence influence of women on development and the current feminist
perspectives / approaches.
To illustrate, the 1940 document is couched in the language of rights - of
equality. Today’s feminist language is the language of rights - whether it is
25
Ibid. Page 22
12
reproductive rights, rights to land and other natural resources, and the right to protest,
the right to leadership and the right to information etc.
Today’s discourse on growth and development especially by the
constituencies of the poor and of women is to reject the paths, approaches and built-in
ideologies of the current dominant “paradigm”. For instance, the Chairperson of the
Gender Commission of South Africa, Ms. Thenjiwe Mtintso who was critiquing the
“women’s budget” undertaken in South Africa, argued that women do not support the
budgetary framework and goals, since getting it ‘engendered’ was a form of cooption. Women wish to recast these exercises, existing forms of governance and their
agendas. They are dissatisfied with what it has yielded26. They want to transform it
through their leadership. But the Working Group Report of 1996 is tethered into
“earmarked” funds.
Women who are engaged in the struggle against displacement due to the
building of the dams; struggle against licensing of liquor shops as in the anti-arrack
movement; struggle against encroachment on fisher people’s rights; struggle for
drinking water; would argue that the machinery for delivering women from injustice,
oppression and discrimination does not lie in further expanding or intensifying the
machinery within the government. They would perhaps suggest that facilitating
arrangements must be such that the women occupying spaces, representing diverse
interests, have an opportunity to articulate their ideas. They feel that the government
and its bureaus should advocate and facilitate the women’s cause from inside.
Further, there cannot be a policy on women (they are not an object like
potatoes); but there can be policy by women, being the subjects who lead, construct
and speak to policy. Instead of a document called ‘The National Policy on Women’,
there could be a ‘Women’s Policy on National Reconstruction’ or a ‘Women’s Idea
for a Just and Peaceful Society’.
It is debatable whether in the 70s, 80s and 90s - the women’s movement or
women leaders or women-driven organisations like the National Commission for
Women have been able to make any infusion into the state policies. In fact, the
converse would be more close to the real picture. Whether it is the global or national
anxiety and protest of women in relation to economic reform; or NEP (New
Economic Policy); or the increasing violence especially against young girls; the
encroachment on poor women’s territories in terms of forests / rivers / lakes / ponds
there has been no “response” from the state. The state has no “countervailing”
authority, led by women that it needs to take notice of. Women are not directing
political economy.
In pre-independent India and immediate post-independence India, the
women’s movement was aware of the front-line, ground level political issues being
debated within the political parties. Women argued for broadening the base of
education, health, and legal services. They argued for human rights, workers’ rights,
and women’s rights. They argued for a shift in focus from preoccupation with
material change to well-being of family and household. During elections they lobbied
for voters’ registration, women’s education and consumer vigilance.
26
DAWN “ Challenging the Given” and other publications
13
Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay used to recall the extraordinary unity
amongst the pro-women women of that era, on these issues. She points out in one of
her chronicles on Indian women’s battle for freedom, an important divergence of
views between men and women in the delegation which had gone to London to
negotiate. The women protested against the British proposal for separate personal
laws based on religious identity - even though the men in the Indian delegation
accepted this proposal. In other words, they objected to the Hindu Code Bill and
wanted a uniform civil code for all communities.
5.
Another then and now - two profiles
Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay and Durgabai Deshmukh
Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay was perhaps the most effective, exemplary
constructive worker that was thrown up by the pre-independence decades. It is
conventional to suggest that she was influenced by Gandhi. The Gandhian touch or
Gandhian political economy was certainly the mode of the era; but she was not one of
those who directly took the mantra or initiation from Gandhi. Durgabai did hers was
the strength of personal struggle and of course the ‘inheritance’ of the spirit of
revolution and rebellion that her mother inculcated into her.27
Born in Mangalore in 1903, Kamaladevi was married and widowed while still
a child. She continued her studies and joined college. Later she married Harindranath
Chattopadhyay and presented an example of inter-caste, inter-provincial remarriage.28
Durgabai was born on 15 July 1909 at Rajhamundry, Andhra Pradesh. She
was married at the age of eight, but at the age of eleven she took the courageous
decision to announce that such a marriage was not for her. a* This experience
propelled her into dedicating her life to working for the uplift of women. After
Independence, while a member of the Planning Commission, she met and married
Chintaman Deshmukh in 1953, marking the beginning of a long, productive
partnership in institution building and shaping ideas for the building of India.
Thus we see that both Kamaladevi and Durgabai were married early - one was
a child widow; the other walked away from the man. Both then received education, in
steps with large gaps, nurtured by other leaders like Margaret Cousins in the case of
Kamaladevi and Pt. Madan Mohan Malviya for Durgabai. Women’s education had
become a flagship as both had received education at a late age - as a form of
rehabilitation after the blow of child widowhood.
Both of them set up structures - outside of the government - but with
government support, which became focal points of power, guiding national policies
and budgets. Both brought to policy and programme, their personal life experience 27
See her biography, Inner Recesses, Outer Spaces. Page 41
Ref. Dr. Usha Bala and Anshu Sharma. “Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay (freedom Fighter from
Mangalore). in Indian Women Freedom Fighters 1857-1947. Manohar 1986. Page 115.
B.N. Ganguli (ed) : social Development : Essays in honour of Durgabai Deshmukh” p.5.
28
a*
14
of exclusion as well as skills. Durgabai’s design of social development included
condensed courses for women where girl drop-outs from school could pass the SSLC
later in life by taking these courses in voluntary agencies; Hostels for girls, special
schools for girls; mahila sabhas; reform in laws and each idea came from a personal
gain, a personal exclusion. Kamaladevi brought to her design of development the
interest in theatre and craft that was part of her mother’s household.
Durgabai’s most significant bequest to the nation was in founding the Central
Social Welfare Board (CSWB). While today, involvement of the voluntary sector in
development is an oft-repeated statement, at a time when this was not recognised, she
created an institution that facilitated such participation. The Board was founded in
1953 to promote welfare through voluntary agencies. Durgabai recognised that
increasing welfare and better status for women would not be possible without
budgetary provisions for them, and so, she mooted the idea of such a Board.29 In a
definition that would not be out of place in any development document in the 90s,
CSWB defined social welfare as a “truly cooperative venture between the state and
the people”.30
To found such an institution when social welfare was not even included in the
First Plan speaks volumes for her influence. As Dr. C.D. Deshmukh says, “ Durgabai
lost no time in conceiving a Central Social Welfare Board and persuading me as
Finance Minister to agree to an allotment of Rs. 4 crores in the plan for the two years
left of the Plan period. Social Welfare had been nobody’s child till then”.31 She also
managed to procure 22.4% outlay for social services, the highest proportion of
investment in any plan.32
Kamaladevi built the All India Handicrafts Board (AIHB), Indian Cooperative
Union (ICU), All India Women’s Conference (AIWC) and National Theatre Centre.
She organised refugees and established townships for them near Faridabad; was a
member of National Committee for Perspective Planning for Education; National
Advisory Board for Industries; was the Chairperson of National Centre for Cultural
Resources & Training; Children’s Book Trust; and Dolls Museum, and the VicePresident of India International Centre.33
To Kamladevi and Durgabai, the notion of directing development mean the
building of strong institutional arrangements, drawing on the commitment and
expertise of voluntary action - but supported by the government. They abhorred
“departmental” programmes and deliveries: a mode that crept in the 70s and 80s and
which has taken away the alternative centers of power that these women constructed.
To Quote Kamala Devi:
“Both Faridabad and Cottage Industries Emporium were deflowered when
they were blossoming, through a kind of, to my sensitivities, vandalism,
Deshmukh, Durgabai. “Chintaman and I”. Allied Publishers : New Delhi. (1980). Page 62.
Ganguli, B.N. (ed.). 1977. “Social development : Essays in honour of Smt. Durgabai Deshmukh.
New Delhi. Sterling. Page 253
31
Ganguli (ed.). op.cit. Page 218.
32
Encyclopaedia of Social Work. Page 187
33
Bannerjee, Syrene R. (ed.) Who’s Who in India 1985. A Business Press Publication. Page 76.
29
30
15
under the title of ‘Development’. Faridabad was made into a big
industrial area, completely destroying its original character of a compact
small town.. The Emporium was stripped of its independent character, and
made a subordinate unit. Delhi’s rapid urbanisation did the same to the
farms close to the city for the city’s rich moved on to them and made them
the weekend holiday resorts.” 34
Kamaladevi and Durgabai gifted India with practical instruments for
development. The value of those instruments, however, lay in not in their ‘bricks’ but
their principles. They demanded a severity bordering on harshness, an almost
unattractive distaste for the elite culture of leisure, protocol, and personal indulgence.
Kamaladevi lived all her life out of two tin trunks and vehemently protested against
titles and honours as being symbolic of a return to the British Raj. Durgabai is known
for her militant puritanism.
They are impossible values for us to accept. Severity towards elite culture of
leisure is seen amongst today’s professionals as autocratic, an encroachment on
individual freedom. Sacrifice; reaching out to the oppressed is seen as patronising.
Classical theories of revolution take away the responsibility for change from self to
“others” - be they classes, castes or other groupings.
Yet, this distance from austerity, from severity over self, and folk aesthetics is
only the elites’ experience. For those who live with hands and feet, for the artisan
surrounded by beautiful objects, it is not a difficult way of life. These women
commanded attention by their distance from the state but they directed the state
through evolving a “new style” - reconstruction and rehabilitation of organisations again the Gandhian touch as Gandhi was a great believer in institutions to generate
people’s power to determine their future. These women gave content, as Gandhi did,
to India’s political economy in the post-Independence era. The significant
contribution of the autonomous boards they governed and the principles and practices
they stood for gave them a political power, a presence that had to be contended with,
by the leaders.
In their twilight period, namely the 70’s and 80’s each of these women were
made to feel like demanding, difficult relics. This rejection and marginalising evoked
not bitterness, as it would in male leaders but doubt and puzzlement, pain and
withdrawal, typical of women. What has to be remembered is that, as women, they
needed to be doubly creative, doubly strong, to be able to bring so much to India’s
National Development. During their lifespan itself these women were killed by the
rejection of their personal ethics and lifestyles and methods.
.
Today: The issue of gender justice has moved a great deal in the last 50 years,
from being seen as a legal issue to a development assistance issue requiring gender
focused programming, gender sensitisation and training, to an issue of power and
leadership. It is now suggested that women’s leadership - of the state - through
34
Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay. Inner Recesses, Outer Spaces. Page 322
16
women’s experience as citizens, would both transform the functioning of state and
also shift the political issues and platforms.
It is always debatable as to what are ‘women’s issues’ and how women’s
struggles direct policy. Women’s struggles have tended to be against policy, sometimes
against development, but women have rarely been able to translate their struggles into a
political platform, namely into a government’s policy. However very recently in the
1995-97 period there have been several actions by women. Two of these described
both to draw threads from the past and to look ahead.
The anti-arrack agitation of Nellore District has been one of the most significant
women’s agitations in the last decade in India.35 What makes the agitation unique is that
it was spontaneous, local and spread like wild fire convulsing the entire state of Andhra
Pradesh for three years. It was historic in the sense that agrarian women confronted the
state and emerged victorious in forcing the state to make a definite policy change, with
the declaration of prohibition by the Telugu Desam government.
The struggle has instilled women with confidence and triggered off other
changes in these villages. For example, the arrack struggle has been followed by an
effective thrift programme which is self managed. It has also been followed by effective
social action by women in groups, against social crimes such as the use of female child
labour, child marriage, rape and other forms of violence against women, revealing that
women’s collective struggles against arrack has a greater value and a wider value than
the elimination of liquor from households. It removes or reduces violence; it also builds
the self-confidence and strength of women to take collective action against those who
treat them with violence.
Poor women in India are also revealing extraordinary clarity in defining the
kind of laws, economic policy and political arrangements they want at the macro and
governance level.36
Women in the hilly regions of Uttar Pradesh have been agitating against men’s
drinking habits for several decades. Recently, the Hilly districts have been agitating
for a separate state called Uttarakhand; a separatist movement - and women have been
in the forefront of the movement. This political movement has provided a strong new
platform for women to press their points, as they demand not only an Uttarakhand
free from domination by the plains people, but also Uttarakhand as a liquor-free
region.
They have used the word mukti (freedom) from Sharab (liquor). Now they
want a total ban on sale of liquor and a more severe criminal law to punish violence;
full rights over village land, trees and water. These resources are now being misused
Jain, D “For Women to Lead...Ideas and Experiences from Asia - A study On the Legal and Political
Impediments To Gender Equality in Governance” Paper presented at the Asia Minesterial Conference
On Governance for Sustainable Growth: A Vision for the 21st Century,Lahore, 1996; See also
“Reworking Gender Relations Redefining Politics- nellore women against Arrack” Anveshi Team
report,Economic and Political Weekly, January 16-23,1993
35
36
September 6th meeting of Mahila Manch, Dehradun, Uttarakhand.
17
for “export” from the region. They could have been used for livelihood. They want
50% of the places on the agencies that control forest land (van panchayats) as well as
forest corporations and development agencies. If women were to be in-charge of
afforestation - they would choose to grow trees that were useful for their own
economy - not only for export, they would also use the tree for their livelihoods.37
They demand women must be put in charge of developing the tourist industry
in the Himalayas - as tourism today threatens women’s security, it brings with it
liquor and prostitution. So, if women developed tourism, they would pay attention to
enhancing natural resource beauty; local crafts sales, etc. and use it for livelihoods
and conservation and not for sex tourism. They demand that women must be given the
Plan funds to make the 5-year plans for their region, they say. They would invest in
providing piped water supply and cooking-gas to the households in the hills where
women spend 8-10 hours fetching fuel and fodder.
Women Workers
The recently announced ILO convention on home-based workers is a
revolutionary step in many ways. It is of immense significance for the majority of
workers in developing countries, organisations engaged in the eradication of poverty,
whether they are non-governmental organisations, academic institutions or the
government. Getting this Convention passed by the International Labour Organisation
was an odyssey of about 15 years or more for organisations, particularly women’s
organisations working with women workers like SEWA. It is an extremely illuminating
example of how micro experience; the understanding of an issue that comes at the local
level can be slowly and determinedly through public education, taken all the way up to a
global forum. It reveals the importance of what is called international networking and
the ultimate in what can be called lobbying.
It required knowledge, information, at an expert level to overcome the
conceptual obstacles. This required marshaling together facts about the various forms or
modes of work and relationships with ‘employers’ that was experienced by home based
workers, North and South. It meant reviewing various other forms of laws like contract
law and seeing their limitations apart from their diversity.
The other ‘mobilisation’ that was required was to gradually spread the idea
through the networks of unions all over the world. A Melbourne conference of the
International Federation of Trade Unions (ICFTU), a Canadian conference elsewhere.
Each of these gatherings of unions became a space for lobbying for the home-based
worker and a very determined group of women worldwide whether they were
Australians, Canadians, Malaysians, and Indians etc. took it up as their flag. It was this
consolidation of power within the national and international unions that gradually got
translated into a vanguard of the trade union movement.
37
Jain, Devaki. (1997) Gender, Equity and Gender Justice. Lecture at the National Foundation of India
in February, New Delhi.
See also, Jain, Devaki. (1983) Development as if Women Mattered - Can Women Build a new
Paradigm? OECD, Paris, ISST.
18
A law like that of the new ILO convention, which mandates governments,
labour ministries, now, to protect the worker, can be a tremendous lever for
unionisation - and it is known that without unionisation, whether it is along sectors,
products or along gender lines, the efforts to insist on a right or guarantee of work,
and on a fair wage apart from all the other protective laws such as against accident or
other betrayals of contract, can never be implemented.
Threads
Reviewing the illustration that we have drawn upon, namely two plans and
two women as well as some current exemplary initiatives by women the question does
arise whether the post-independence era, especially the first 20 years were “the silent
years” for the women’s movement as has sometimes been suggested or whether it was
more influential even if less “identifiable”. It is interesting to note that Kamala
There can be a variety of perceptions when evaluating contributions over time. Like
the Japanese film Rashomon, the same event may appear differently depending on the
location not only in space, but the social, political and personal “context” of the
viewer.
Thus we see that while pre-Independence women in leadership were engaged in
planning exercises, in the design of the legal framework, in the shaping of nation and
citizenship - we see them plunge into rehabilitation - which experience becomes a
direction into all areas of their work.
The perception, that women of that time were more into seeing themselves both as
objects of social welfare as well as primarily social workers who extend their families
into the public domain, is to ignore if not misjudge the power of that idiom and
experience guided action of that time b*. Close association with the rehabilitation
work once again brought women to head on collisions with male leadership on almost
every aspect of development direction. . For example Kamla Devi’s constant
argument and anger with Nehru over the handling of the cooperative movement,
keeping it as a self-help institution and out of the hands of bureaucratic control. When
in 1949, she was engaged in refugee rehabilitation, she found that the administration
was giving land to those refugees who were landlords and offering them refugees who
came as labourers, to labour for them! She held a public meeting, made an outcry
against this policy, and got Nehru to change this procedure, insisted that land be given
to those who were agricultural labourers, and began the process of cooperative
farming.c* Similarly she & Durgabai strived for keeping the control and management
of large scale development programmes such as handicrafts and handlooms, so central
to women’s non farm employment., the budget for women’s education for child care
centres, in the hands of social activists and those who were expert in these fields, by
civic organisations, not by the state. However disputed may be the place and view
points of national organisatons like the All India Women’s Conference or the Family
b*
* Nirmala Banerjee Paper ...... Whatever happened To the Dreams of Modernity ? The Nehruvian Era.
Paper Presented at the Baroda Conference of IAWS 9-11 August 1997.... “ The Early Years of Indian Independence : Women’s
Perspectives”.
c*
See Lakshmi Jain and Karen Coelho, “In the Wake of Freedom, India’s Tryst with Cooperatives ”.
Concept, 1996.
19
Planning Association of India, they and their leaders became the focal points for
women’s issues, and had a place in the political landscape as lobbies for women.
Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, recalling the period of struggle remarks that the
accounts of social reform often ignore the efforts of heroic women who strove against
all deterents, towards their betterment.
“ In the Indian scene today, where social work has become just a profession or
at the most a leisure hour past time for the affluent class women, it is difficult to
visualise the crusaders of long ago, working with passion, pursuing a goal
labororiously, seeking nothing for themselves. There were no grants to feed such
activites, no awards , titles , national recognition, no press publicity - instead a lot of
abuse ... patience and forbearance were combined with wisdom and action so as to
not outrage and kill an oppurtunity ”.
While there is concern and a question that despite all this, the position of women in
the decades following independence steadily declined, and therefore an argument that
this suggests the inadequacy of the women’s activism of that time, it is also the case
that despite the more vivid and more scattered local specific women’s - organisations
type-of-landscape in the 70’s and 80’s, the position and condition of women has not
improved. In fact, it continues to deteriorate into deeper and more intense violence
against women as a frustrated and disoriented society watches the nation’s political
economy plunge into the abyss of a contorted notion of globalisation and
liberalisation .
Whether it is the macro situation of the Nehruvian Model or post reform Manmohan
economics there is a steady decline. Bina Aggarwal reviewing the period offers this
comment.
“ Gender inequality did not emerge just 50 years ago, nor did the attempts to
challenge it. But Independence brought new opportunities for transformation. What
have we accomplished? Too little”.
Of course, there have been some improvements, as in women’s life expectancy,
literacy legal rights and political space. And a growing number are challenging their
lot individually and through the women’s movement. But sex ratios remain below
parity, except in Kerala. Gender violence is rampant. Women constitue the bulk of
India’s illiterate and poor. Most of all women remain largely propertyless, especially
landless.
These disparities don’t just affect women; they are major bottlenecks to the
country’s development and to eradicating overall human poverty. And they will not
simply vanish through general economic growth. Haryana has among the highest and
fastest growing per capita incomes in India but among the worst records of gender
equality; Kerala with a much lower per capita income has the best record. For
improving women’s situation on many counts (including socially) the single most
important need is their economic empowerment.
20
Land reforms, community cooperation joint farming - these were the mantras
of development in the 1950s,today we need to revive them, but in a radically new
form by centering them on women38 ”
Much of the most radical of feminist articulation world-wide today
concentrates not only on rights but also on domestic violence. Many of the heroines
today, applauded by all shades of the movement, are those whose personal life is
revealed in the punishment of patriarchy and various types of fundamentalism. Their
public and political work arises out of the “personal” - as in the case of Kamaladevi
Chattopadhyay and Durgabai Deshmukh. The new mode of articulation and advocacy
is public hearing on crimes against women, “witnessing”, “testimonies”, by asking
those who experienced discrimination and oppression, basically by patriarchy and
other conservative forces, to speak it themselves: an illustration that the personal is
political. Every one has a story that reveals this form of violence, oppression,
suppression or discrimination. Women’s identity across the conventional divides of
class, ethnicity, caste, colour and age is affirmed through these testimonies.
When we reflect on the lives and the work of Kamaladevi and Durgabai, we
notice that this is their mode too. Their own lives of exclusion, from which they
fought, then became spokespersons for programmes and policies that would prevent
other women from experiencing similar victimisation, is an illustration of the personal
becoming/being political.
When we see the return of interest in social security, a broader concept of
social welfare, the importance given to organisations outside of government, to public
action, the building of institutions, including cooperatives and trade unions as centres,
both of self empowerment as well as redressal and representation, their inclusion in
theory as social capital,e* it does give another dimension in measuring women’s
contribution in the 50s and 60s to the direction of the political economy. It could be
argued that if the Gandhian touch and the women’s touch of that era had been
sustained, then modern India would have seen a more just and humane society, and
the indicators used by Bina Aggarwal, or the Human Development and other global
comparative development reports could have reported differently on India.
When we see the modern demand for coalitions across movements and struggles from
workers to women, environment, indigenous peoples and human rights as the need of
the hour - namely broad basing the movement for justice - we notice that in the postindependence period, women leaders were also speaking for broad basing the fight for
justice moving across from opposing religious fundamentalism, all the way to
domestic oppression. When we see the articulation, that women have to lead, and be
in the decision-making process because they do not want to become beneficiaries,
namely objects but subjects, and in that framework, examine the advice given by the
women of the 1950s and women in the 1990s it suggests that perhaps we have come
full circle.
38
Women still poor and without powerBy Bina AgarwalTimes of India Dt. August 14, 1997
d* Women still poor and without power By Bina Agarwal/Times of India Dt. August 14,1997
e*
Ref. Seminar 456, August 1997, “ The Problem”, by Bishnu. N. Mohapatra
21
REFERENCES
1. Pappu, Rekha (1997). Rethinking legal Justice for Women.
Political Weekly. (May 10-160
Economic and
2. Agnihotri, Indu and Veena Mazumdar (1995). Changing Terms of Political
Discourse: Women’s Movement in India 1970s - 1990s. Economic and Political
Weekly (July 22)
3. Sangari, Kumkum (1995), Politics of Diversity: Religious Communities and
Multiple Patriarchies. Economic and Political Weekly. (December 23 and 30)
4. Jain, Devaki (1996). Women’s Opinion on National Issues : Need of the Hour.
Indian Express. (January 11, 1990).
5. Kannabiran, Vasanth and Kalpana Kannabiran (1997). From Social Action to
Political Action: Women and 81st Amendment. Economic and Political Weekly.
(February 11-12).
6. Jain, Devaki (1997). Women’s Political Presence and Political Rights in India.
International Development Conference. Washington. 13-15th January.
7. Jain, Devaki (1989). Economic Programmes in National Perspective Plan for
Women: 1988-2000 - some comments. Conference on Women and Child
Development. Jaipur, February 11-12.
8. Jain, Devaki (1988).
(November 3).
Remembering Kamaladevi.
The Indian Express.
9. Jain, Devaki, (1985). Voluntary Agencies and their Role. Financial Express.
(July 1).
10. Jain, Devaki (1990). Development Theory and Practice: Ideas Emerging from
Women’s Experience. Economic and Political Weekly (July 7).
11. Jain, Devaki (1990). New Insights, New Action. The Indian Express.
12. Jain, Devaki (1996). Drafting a Policy. Indian Express. (January 7)
22
13. Jain, Devaki (1997). Placing Reproductive Rights in a framework of Overall
Rights and Political Restructuring of Development. Seminar on Reproductive
Health and Reproductive Rights in India. Organised by CARE.
14. Streeten, Paul (1996). The Political Economy of Fighting Poverty. HDR 1997
15. Jain, Devaki and Vasundhara Kumaran. Can Women be a Political Force?
Seminar on Strengthening Civil Society: Voluntary Action and Government
Response: Reservation for Women and Political Reforms. 18-20th July 1997.
16. Sen, Gita (1997). Empowerment as an Approach to Poverty, Background Paper to
HDR-1997.
17. UNDP. Preventing and Eradicating Poverty: Report on the experts meeting on
‘Poverty alleviation and Sustainable Livelihoods in the Arab States’. Damascus
Syrian Arab Republic, February 28 - 29 1996.
18. UNDP Human Development Report 1997. New York; Oxford University Press
19. Jain, Devaki (1997). The Poverty Thing (Or This Thing Called Poverty)
Presentation at a special event organised by UNDP New York, May 20th.
20. Dharma Kumar and Meghnad Desai (Eds.). The Cambridge Economic History of
India Volume 2: c. 1757 - c. 1970. Orient Longman in association with
Cambridge University Press. 1982.
21. Jain, Devaki. (1985) Indian Women: Today and Tomorrow. Padmaja Naidu
Lecture. Nehru Memorial Museum and Library; Teen Murti House; New Delhi.
22. Mernissi, Fatima. (1986). Feminity as Subversion: Reflection on the Muslim
Concept of Nushtuz. In Devaki Jain and Diana Eck (eds.) Speaking of Faith Cross Cultural Perspectives on Women , Religion and Social Change. Kali for
Women; New Delhi.
23. Amoah, Elizabeth. Women, Witches and Social Change in Ghana. In Devaki
Jain and Diana Eck (eds.) Speaking of Faith - Cross Cultural Perspectives on
Women , Religion and Social Change. Kali for Women; New Delhi.
24. Topley and Marjorie (1975). Marriage Resistance in Rural Kwantung in Margery
Wolfe and Roxanne Witke (eds.) Women in Chinese Society. Stanford University
Press.
25. Jain, Devaki. (1996). Minds, Bodies and Exemplars. British Council Division.
New Delhi.
26. UNDP 1996. Poverty: Preventing and eradicating: a report on the experts meeting
on ‘Poverty Alleviation and Sustainable Livelihoods in the Arab States’.
Damascus Syrian Arab Republic February 28-29. 1996 Regional Bureau for Arab
States, UNDP; New York.
23
27. Jain, Devaki (1996). Minds, bodies and Exemplars: Reflections at Beijing and
Beyond. British Council Division, British High Commission, New Delhi.
28. Jain, Devaki. (1989) The Culture of the Poor: Is Equitable Development Possible?
in K. M. Braganza and S. Peeradina (ed.) Cultural Forces Shaping India.
Macmillan India; New Delhi.
29. Ministry of Human Resource Development, Department of Women and child
Development. (1996). Ninth Five-Year Plan (1997-2002): Report of the Working
Group on Women’s Development.
30. “Woman’s role in Planned Economy”. Report of the Sub-Committee, National
Planning Committee series. Bombay : Vora & Co. Publishers, 1947.
31. Jain, Devaki, “Statement and Critique of Dr. Praveen Visaria’s Draft National
Population Policy: Perspective from the Women’s Movement, Centre for
Women’s Development Studies, New Delhi, Feb. 1997.
32. Germain, Adrienne & Kyte Rachel. The Cairo Consensus: The Right Agenda for
the Right Time. International Women’s Health Coalition, New York, 1995.
33. Shivdasani, Menaka. In the Line of Fire. Hindu - Business Line. Telebuiseness.
(First Week of April)
34. Voices for Change, Madhyam Communications, Bangalore, Vol.1, No.1, 1997.
(The Journal is under process registration)
35. Asmita Conference (Tapes), Dr M. Krishna Raj, Srilata Batliwala.
36. Streeten, Paul. Strategies for Human Development: Global Poverty and
Unemployment, Delshojskolens Forlag, London, 1994.
37. Chattopadhyay, Kamla Devi. Inner Recesses, Outer Spaces
38. Chattopadhyay, Kamla Devi. Indian Women’s Strugle for Freedom
39. Durgabai Deshmukh, The Stone Speaketh.
40. Jain, Devaki. (1997) Daughters of the House. Telegraph. (March 22).
41. Devaki Jain. Panchayati Raj: Women Changing Governance.. Gender in
Development Monograph Series # 5. Published by UNDP. New York.
42. Bella Abzug and Devaki Jain. Women’s Leadership and the Ethics of
Development. Gender in Development Monograph Series #4. Published by
UNDP.
43. Jain, Devaki. (1989) The Culture of the Poor: Is Equitable Development Possible?
in K. M. Braganza and S. Peeradina (ed.) Cultural Forces Shaping India.
Macmillan India; New Delhi.
24
44. Haq, Mahboob-ul. (1997) Human Development in South Asia. Oxford University
Press; Pakistan. Page 27.
45. Crocker, David (1997). The Ethics of Consumption. The UNDP 1997 Report also
wishes to build its measures of inequality and Poverty through the consumption expenditure variable.
46. Jain, Devaki. (1997) Gender, Equity and Gender Justice. Lecture at the National
Foundation of India in February, New Delhi.
47. See also, Jain, Devaki. (1983) Development as if Women Mattered - Can Women
Build a New Paradigm? OECD, Paris, ISST.
48. A Cap for the Nation. The Indian Express (21.7.97)
49. Towards Khadi. The Asian Age . (22.7.97)
50. Subrahmaniam, Vidya. 1997. Khadi: From Empire to Emporia. Times of India.
(May 25)
51. Western Influence. The Asian Age ( 15.7.97)
52. Half-Naked Fakir. The Asian Age ( 18.7.97)
53. Evolution of the Cap. The Asian Age ( 19.7.97)
54. Gandhi Hoped to Cleanse the Nation with Khadi. Dated 23.7.97
55. Dr. Usha Bala and Anshu Sharma. “Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay (freedom Fighter
from Mangalore). In Indian Women Freedom Fighters 1857-1947. Manohar
1986.
56. Dossier No. 6. A Study of Women’s Development Corporations in India.
Institute of Social Studies Trust. Women’s Studies Resource Centre. 1995
57. Dossier No. 5. Employment Opportunities for Women in Village Industries.
Institute of Social Studies Trust. Women’s Studies Resource Centre. 1995
58. Dossier No. 1. Institutional Mechanism for Women’s Advancement. Institute of
Social Studies Trust. Women’s Studies Resource Centre. 1995
59. Bhatt, Ahalya S., Indira Hirway, Devaki Jain and others. (1997). Gender Audit at
District Level : Report on a Collective Exercise in Eight Districts Undertaken by a
Team. Karnataka Women’s Information and Resource Centre.
60. Complaint, Prelitigation and Counselling Cells.
Women.
National Commission for
25
61. (1966) Urban Governance: Why Gender Matters. Gender in Development Series
No.1. UNDP.
62. Fourth World Conference on Women: Action for Equality, Development and
Peace. Beijing, September 1995. Post-Beijing Information Sharing Seminar. 30331st October 1995 at British Council Division. New Delhi.
63. Batliwala, Srilatha. (1993) Empowerment of Women in South-Asia: Concepts
and Practices. Sponsored by Asian - South Pacific Bureau of Adult Education and
FAO’s Freedom From Hunger Campaign/Action for Development.
64. Participation of Women in Panchayati Raj: A Status Report. National Conference
on Women and Panchayati Raj. April 23-24 1995. Institute of Social Sciences.
New Delhi.
65. Mohanty, Dr. Bidyut. Women and Panchayati Raj: Some Issues. National
Conference on Women and Panchayati Raj. April 23-24 1995. Institute of Social
Sciences. New Delhi.
66. Strengthening Role and Participation of Women Members in Panchayats. Report
of the National Workshop at Panthanivas, Bhubaneswar, May 19-21, 1994.
Institute for Socio-Economic Development.
67. Women Towards Beijing : Voices From India. Lokayan Bulletin. July - October
1995. 12.1 / 2
68. Deshmukh, Durgabai. Chintaman and I. Allied Publishers : New Delhi. (1980).
69. Ganguli, B.N. (ed.). 1977. Social development: Essays in honour of Smt.
Durgabai Deshmukh. New Delhi. Sterling. Page 253
70. Bannerjee, Syrene R. (ed.) Who’s Who in India 1985.
Publication. Page 76.
A Business Press
71. Jain, D. “For Women to Lead...Ideas and Experiences from Asia - A study On the
Legal and Political Impediments To Gender Equality in Governance” Paper
presented at the Asia Minesterial Conference On Governance for Sustainable
Growth: A Vision for the 21st Century,Lahore, 1996;
72. “Reworking Gender Relations Redefining Politics- Nellore Women Against
Arrack” Anveshi Team report, Economic and Political Weekly.(January 16-23,
1993)
26