Category: Gender

Remembering Alamelu Mangai Thayarammal and her Fight for Dravidian Identity

On this day, 108 years ago, a lone woman joined a group of 30 individuals to establish the South Indian Liberal Federation (SILF), later known as the Justice Party, which laid the foundation for the Dravidian movement in Tamil Nadu.

On this day, 108 years ago, a lone woman joined a group of 30 individuals to establish the South Indian Liberal Federation (SILF), later known as the Justice Party, which laid the foundation for the Dravidian movement in Tamil Nadu.

On November 20, 1916, a gathering of non-Brahmin leaders and dignitaries convened at the residence of advocate T. Ethirajulu Mudaliyar in Vepery, Chennai. Among the attendees were distinguished figures like Pitti Theagaraya Chettiar, Dr. T.M. Nair, P. Rajarathina Mudaliyar, Dr. C. Natesa Mudaliyar, P.M. Sivagnana Mudaliar and K. Venkata Reddy Naidu, among others. Alamelu Mangai Thayarmmal was the only woman present, marking a historic yet often overlooked moment.

Her influence paved the way for many women to join and shape the Dravidian movement in meaningful ways. From active involvement in the anti-Hindi agitations during both the first (1937-40) and the second phase (1965) to dismantling the Devadasi system and advocating for self-respect and widow remarriages, women became an indispensable part of the movement.

“Women consistently played a central role in the movement,” says A.S. Panneerselvan, senior journalist and author of Karunanidhi: A Life. “It was a Dalit woman leader, Annai Meenambal Sivaraj, who conferred the title of ‘Periyar’ on Periyar. Around 200 women were active contemporaries of Periyar.”

For a long time, Thayarammal’s origins, background or even a photograph was not available. A Google search of her name reveals only her attendance at the SILF’s inaugural meeting in 1916 and a montessori school bearing her name in Chintadripet, Chennai. “Well, she might have contributed land to the school,” says Era. Chiththaanai, project officer of the Tamil Virtual Academy, which also runs a digital library.

Chiththaanai also shared a digital version of Who’s Who in Madras, 1935 – an annual periodical that was published by Pearl Press in Cochin. This edition contains a fairly comprehensive note on Thayarammal.

“Alamelumangathayarammal, Mrs., Kalhasti, M.L.C., d. of Mr. P. Krishnaswamy Naidu. b. on 25th August 1892 at Udamalpet, Coimbatore Dt, Non-Brahmin, Hindu-Balija. Educated at U. F.C. M. Girls’ High School up to the old Matriculation. m. Mr. S.0 Narasimhalu Naidu in 1900. Was given the title of “Pandithai” by Saiva Sabha, Palamcottah, in June 1911. Honorary Presidency Magistrate; Vice-President, Honorary Magistrates’ Association; Non-Official Visitor to Senior Certified School: Member, Children’s Aid Society and Madras Society of Protection to Children, Thondiarpet; Member, Madras Dt. Educational Council; Member, Secondary Educational Council, Madras Dt. Propaganda Committee; Madras Presidency Discharged Prisoners’ Aid Society Committee, Madras; Madras Vigilance Association; South Indian National Health Association; Hony. Magistrate, Madras Juvenile Court, Member, Madras Legislative Council, Senate and Academic Council, Annamalai University; Vice-President, Vidhava Vivaha Sahayak Sabha; Supt., Saraswathi Balika Patasala; Hony. Secy. Brahmo Samaj (Ladies Section), Madras; Hony. Health Propagandist, Chingleput Dt. Board; and Joint Hony. Secretary, Gosha Fund; and Supervisor, Carnatic Stipendiaries; Publications: “Dravidian Religion” and “Women of Ancient Dravidian Land”. Has been and is a regular Contributor to Newspapers on topical subjects and matters of social general importance. Editor of “Dravidan” for some time. Add: 12, Tulasingham St., Washermanpet, Madras,” the note reads.

Also read: The Dravidian Model and Its Long History of Upholding Women’s Rights

The fact that she edited Dravidan, a journal launched shortly after the formation of the Justice Party in 1917, speaks of her significant role as a leader within the Dravidian movement. The journal was established to unite non-Brahmins and serve as a platform for the dissemination of ideas that challenged the Brahminical dominance in Tamil society.

The nearly 200-word note in the Who’s Who in Madras, 1935, accompanied by a rare photograph, is one of the few available resources on Thayarammal, a pioneer of the Dravidian movement, and highlights her diverse interests. The note also mentions Thayarammal as MLC, a member of the Madras Legislative Council, a position she had held from 1931.

The note also mentions that Thayarammal was conferred with the title Pandithai (the female form of Pandit) by the Palayamkottai Saiva Sabha in June 1911. This honour likely followed her speech on Dravida matham (Dravidian religion) at the Sabha. The speech was later published as a book in 1914, where she is credited with the title Chennai Pandithai. In 2023, writer and researcher K. Ragupathi republished the book, along with a few other essays on Hindu religion, reigniting interest in this pioneering leader after more than a century.

“Those who attended the release event mentioned that they were unaware of such a leader,” recalls Ragupathi. “There is a fundamental difference in the ways Brahmins and non-Brahmins worship. Brahmins practiced Ambal worship, where obedience was central, while non-Brahmins engaged in Amman worship, which was characterised by vigour and fervour. This difference was evident across South India. Non-Brahmin worship was marked by equality; there was no distribution of prasadam. Instead, they cooked together in the temple and shared the meal. Thayarammal had a deep understanding of religion and caste within the Indian context, an understanding that remains relevant today.”

Ragupathi says that Thayarammal recognised the distinct differences between the Aryans and the Dravidians. “Throughout the text, she emphasised how the Dravidians had everything long before the Aryans arrived, citing Tholkāppiyam and Tirukkural as evidence. While many leaders who spoke about caste did open important doors for understanding caste, their approach was grounded in the framework of the four varnas. Thayarammal, however, approached it from a Dravidian perspective. She believed that understanding the Dravidians had to begin with them. It is difficult to comprehend Dravidians from any other vantage point,” he explains.

Ragupathi was eager to republish the book because the Aryan-versus-Dravidian debate remains highly relevant today. He also points out how, over time, non-Brahmins have come to identify as Hindus, often being pitted against each other. “The fact that she delivered the speech in a Saiva Sabha was significant. At that time, debates were ongoing within Saiva organisations about whether to accept caste. Some Tamil Saivaites, too, were arguing against caste. It was perhaps in this context that she was invited to speak.”

In the blurb for the book published by Thadagam Publications, Ragupathi writes: “In the lineage of male figures like Ayothee Dasar, who revived Tamil Buddhism, Abraham Pandithar, who revived Tamil music, and Anandham Pandithar, who revived Tamil Siddha medicine, Thayarammal should be seen in the same light. She revived the idea of the Dravidian religion. Though historically Aryans and Dravidians were opposed to each other, the fact that both were eventually transformed into Hindus is a political irony.”

In her speech, Thayarammal makes a compelling case for Dravidian religion, asserting that it existed long before the Aryan invasion. She argues that Dravidian religion was opposed to caste, promoted equality and did not involve temples or idol worship, but instead centred on the worship of hero stones. She emphasises that Dravidian religion does not adhere to the concepts of heaven or hell, but instead focuses on the notions of good and bad.

Chiththaanai states that Thayarammal hailed from a “hugely rich family” in Udumalaipettai. “They owned lands in Chintadripet, which she donated to many institutions,” he added.

He also mentions that the Palayamkottai Saiva Sabha was “progressive.” Unlike many Shaiva Sabhas of that time, which granted memberships primarily to those from dominant communities, the Palayamkottai Saiva Sabha’s by-laws declared that people from any caste could become members. “That is perhaps why she was invited to speak,” Chiththaanai adds.

Towards the end of her speech, Thayarammal exhorts non-Brahmins to “rid themselves of their Aryan shackles, sacrifice the treacherous religion” and unite beyond caste. “May the Almighty enable the Dravidians to abandon the Aryan religion that honours only one class, and return to the Dravidian religion, which treats everyone with equality beyond caste and communal differences,” she concludes.

Kavitha Muralidharan is an independent journalist.

Eviction and Displacement: Fisherwomen of Chennai’s Nochikuppam Face Livelihood Crisis

The proximity of the new market to the previous location masks the violent uprooting, barricading and undermining of the community’s connection to the seashore and to other social groups.

Chennai, like many other Indian metros, has witnessed urban renewal, with the displacement of local inhabitants and their resettlement to distant places such as Kannagi Nagar between 2000 and 2010. In November 2013, street vendors of Chennai’s famous Thyagaraya Nagar were moved to Pondy Bazaar, a commercial complex. This was dysfunctional to their livelihoods but benefited large branded shops in the area. Observing such instances of relocation, including a similar eviction of the Koli community’s fish market in Mumbai, one can see how such attempts disproportionately affect women traders, who are the foundation of entire family systems. Chennai’s “Modern Fish Market,” inaugurated on August 12, follows this trend. Established with the stated purpose of clearing traffic congestion, it greatly impacts fishing women, their ability to anchor their livelihood and their agency to organise.

New market’s promise for “betterment”: from shoreline to surveillance

The Greater Chennai Corporation (GCC) released an order on October 18 to evict the Nochikuppam fish market located on Loop Road, a southward extension of Marina Beach Road, which urged the vendors to sell fish only inside the premises of the newly built market. Following this, the entire stretch of Nochikuppam seashore, once a famous fish vending zone, was completely razed with a bulldozer, leaving no evidence of its existence.

During an interview about the eviction, Anandhi*, a single mother who was just starting her first day at the new market, shared her feelings of uncertainty. “Last Sunday, as we were setting up our stalls along the seashore, officers arrived with police and informed us we couldn’t continue there,” she recounted. “They claimed we had agreed to this when we signed the document and received the token for the stall in the new market. We believed it was just to secure the new stall, not realising that it also prohibited us from using our regular spot.”

She further claimed, “When they threatened to throw away the fish if we didn’t comply, some women became agitated. However, when they warned they’d file cases against us if we didn’t leave, we had no choice but to clear out.” The narratives justifying the process of eviction and displacement are centred on claims of a better infrastructure while diluting and diverting from the most prominent question – the loss of the community’s claims over the land, thus altering the socio-spatial relations among them.

Nochikuppam fish market before and after eviction (pictures taken in June and October respectively). Photos: Lalitha M

The entire zone of Loop Road from the entry point to the market complex has been heavily patrolled by the police, displaying control over potential tensions. Compared to the number of stalls that used to be on the seashore, the new market has been  mostly unoccupied, except the front line and those in a few back rows who had hoped to get allotments in the better locations. Only a few vendors in the back rows had just begun their business and were highly disappointed and worried about the eviction and fall in their everyday business. Between the police patrol and ongoing welding works to add an extended bench and taps in each stall, some were yet to set up their stalls, some were agitated by the unfair stall allotments, and some were figuring out ways to get a better stall location. All these show an underpinning tension prevailing among the vendors in the new market area. Most vendors who disagreed with this move didn’t turn up to put up their stalls even on expectedly busy Sundays.

While the project promotes the “market” as a “facility” which would “rectify” previous problems and benefit the fishers and their wider families and businesses, the irony is that the market is now under strict control of the GCC, with newly installed CCTV cameras, regular police patrols, additional security and specific operating hours. There is also talk of implementing a monthly rental fee as a maintenance charge, though details remain unclear for many vendors. According to some, the rent may be around Rs 3,000 per month, a figure they heard from a YouTube influencer, though officials have yet to confirm this. One vendor noted that rent was waived for the first two months but anticipates that the rent would be collected eventually. “We won’t agree to pay this fee,” she stated firmly, adding that some vendors are willing to pay up only to Rs 500 if required. When asked about the rent a few months ago, another vendor assertively claimed, “They won’t charge; this sea and business belongs to us, and we belong here.”

Unoccupied stalls by the fish vendors in the back rows of the Modern Fish Market on a usually expected busy Sunday. Photo: Lalitha M

Loop Road’s construction: bifurcation between fisherwomen and the sea

The Nochikuppam timeline reveals a deeper context regarding its housing settlement, the fishing community and the later development of Loop Road. The Nochikupam fishing hamlet was resettled by the Tamil Nadu Slum Clearance Board (TNSCB) in the 1970s and it was severely affected by the 2004 tsunami. In response, TNSCB, with World Bank funding, constructed new houses in 2014 to replace the dilapidated houses around Marina.

The government had approached the Nochikuppam residents to construct a concrete loop road connecting Marina Lighthouse and Foreshore Estate, which was built between 2013 and 2015, after assuring that it wouldn’t affect the local fishers and would be helpful for their own commute. Initially, vehicles were diverted to the Loop Road only during peak evening hours to regulate the traffic flow on Santhome Road.

The entire route was shifted to the Loop Road in March, where new bus stops have now been installed. Commenting on the road extension, Suganthi*, a vendor, said that they were assured that the Loop Road would be operational only for three months until the completion of the metro works, citing an earlier assurance made that the road would be open to the public only during the morning and evening peak hours. Although theoretically a shortcut, the road doesn’t really serve as a connection between places; it serves instead to segregate fisherwomen from the sea. Construction of the road eventually led to the displacement of the fisherwomen from their land, with the common elitist labels of “hawkers” and “illegal encroachers” applied to them by the court and the GCC.

In February 2023, among the several attempts to evict the Nochikuppam fishing stalls even before the construction of the new market, the vendors had vehemently refused the forceful move and protested on the roads. On April 10, the then-acting chief justice T. Raja of the Madras high court took up a suo moto Public Interest Litigation (PIL) case to regulate the fish market along Loop Road. The special bench ordered the GCC to regulate the traffic congestion on Loop Road by evicting the fish vendors, labelling them as “encroachers” who were primarily causing traffic. A day after the order, the GCC tried to forcibly remove the stalls. After the vendors protested for days, the evictions were halted, and an agreement was reached that they would be designated a temporary place to sell fish and that they would file an appeal petition in the next hearing.

However, the construction of a new fish market commenced on the open land in Nochikuppam, which was originally designated for recreational activities. Even before the suo motu case, on January 10, 2022, the government had issued a sanction order of Rs 9.97 crores to build a “Modern Fish Market” on Loop Road. This indicates that the suo motu case only served to expedite the eviction and relocation process.

GCC warning boards: “As per the high court order, fish stalls are prohibited on the Loop roadside. Public who are coming to buy fish and seafood are requested to go to the new fish market.” Photo: Lalitha M

Modern Fish Market disconnecting fisherwomen from their livelihoods and agency

While this move of constructing the “modern” fish market was appreciated and projected as an “ideal” method of upgrading and beautifying a city’s space, in line with a “smart” city norm, the market – a sleek white-domed pavilion-like structure – shifts attention away from the real ground issues: how it has disconnected the wider fishing community, especially the women, from their livelihoods, by removing direct access to the sea. Such relocation under urban renewal spurs a politics that pitches women against women (those who got the stalls in the front rows versus those in the rear), further splitting their united voices that have till now been essential to their livelihoods and conducive to their holding a pivotal role in the community. In this situation, social welfare schemes, however well-intentioned, will remain symbolic, leading to further cynicism and future political backlash.

Even preliminary conversations reveal that the construction of a new fish market, along with the processes of allotment, eviction and displacement, all seriously threaten the livelihoods of fisherwomen in the area. There is no evidence of communication by the policymakers and their ground staff to seriously anchor any discussion with the fisherwomen. There is no fundamental evaluation of the decision of the new market complex and the possible alternative of in situ upgrading of facilities to be more viable and less damaging. Instead, it looks like the decision to build a complex had already been made, and consultations carried out after that. Such authoritarian bureaucratic actions are then whitewashed by sporadic visits to count the number of existing “legit” stalls, distribute tokens for new stalls, collect signatures and threaten those protesting against demolition attempts by the corporation with police action.

In this new building model, there is no recognition of the community’s customary ownership of the land and space that was built and occupied in a women-centric way over decades. The proximity of the new market to the previous location masks the violent uprooting, barricading and undermining of the community’s connection to the seashore and to other social groups. The agency of fisherwomen, which is deeply rooted in this location-specific economy, is now at stake under bureaucratic control, making them dependent beneficiaries or ‘illegal encroachers’ in the view of policymakers. Instead of this, it would have been better to upgrade their facilities on an “as is where is” basis, provide clean water and drains to help them maintain a sanitary environment and assign locations that provide all of them equal opportunity for sales, while providing the general public access to the fresh fish that contributes to coastal Chennai’s famous culinary and gastronomic culture.

The Portrayal of Place Through Art: Depictions and Their Disconnect

Flowing pipe leakage in between the Nochikuppam housing board blocks. Photo: Lalitha M

Ironically, around the same time as the suo moto case, as part of the GCC wall art (Chithiram Pesum) projects like in Kannagi Nagar, the lives and livelihoods of fishermen and women were portrayed on the Nochikuppam housing board walls just opposite to the then-fish market by St+Art Foundation in collaboration with Asian Paints in 2023. While the fishing community and their livelihoods are lauded by the citizens when aesthetically portrayed on walls; in real life, this same community is labelled as “illegal encroachers” and their livelihoods dismissed as “filthy practices” carried out on the seashore. Those praising the art fail to notice the leaking pipes and flowing sewage between the buildings, which the murals mask by shifting the focus away from them. While I was taking pictures of the situation, the busy fish vendors asked me to get a better picture of the leaking pipes. They shared that the pipes had been leaking for the past six months, despite their having raised several complaints about them. This attempt to beautify the city through mural paintings on the housing board walls does not benefit the local communities; instead, it renders them a threat, adding to the complications of their everyday lives.

The construction of the Loop Road, suo moto case to regulate traffic congestion, beautification of the Nochikuppam walls, eviction of the fish market and construction of the modern market are not merely a timeline; they elucidate the gradual accumulation of events in the area that have altered spatial dynamics and ultimately led to the community’s eviction. It is crucial to scrutinise this approach, under which a vision of a “modern” fish market and its developmental and beautification thrust is being imposed on local communities without engaging with them, disregarding their voices, needs and interests, and often tactically maintaining ambiguity until the very end.

*Name changed

Lalitha M is a PhD scholar in Urban Studies at IIT Madras and a Commonwealth Fellow at King’s College London.

R.G. Kar: Five Lessons From an Urban Power Struggle

In the wake of neoliberal reforms and relentless urbanisation, crime and urban insecurity have joined to become an interlinked theme overwhelming the public mind.

I

After the ghastly rape and murder of a young female junior doctor in R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital, Kolkata, on August 9 2024, the junior doctors of the city mobilised for justice. The city also erupted in fury and solidarity with the murdered doctor.

For the first week following the murder for about the next fifteen days, there was a spontaneous upsurge of emotion, grievance, fury, and a fervent desire for a new chapter in the collective life of the city which would be henceforth free of the maladies of the urban. The upsurge overwhelmed the city. Women “captured the night” of Kolkata, youth occupied roads and major junctions, and medical colleges were virtually non-functional with the entire community of junior doctors on strike. The condemnation by the city populace of the alleged negligence and incompetence of the government in preventing rape and murders of women was nearly universal.

Newspapers, established news channels, established political parties belonging to the opposition (initially included among the political activists on the roads were even cadres of the ruling populist party of West Bengal, the Trinamool Congress), do-gooders, militant feminists, and radicals for all seasons occupied the city. Holy declarations, pious wishes, determined proclamations, “hot” news produced each hour of the day with generously mixed dosages of unfounded information and specialists’ comments, and – not to be left behind – rumours in large measure, decided what was to be included and excluded from the “public sphere.”

The city had not witnessed such a mood in recent memory. 

This was the first phase of the “movement for justice.” Yet, no one knew exactly what this phrase and the rallying cry, “we demand justice” meant – legally, ethically, and politically.

To some it meant avenging the death of the murdered doctor by hanging the accused; for some it meant safety of working women; for some others improvement of the medical college and hospital environment; for still some others an end to a seemingly all-pervasive corruption in the administration; and for the determined Left and the Right parties, justice meant an immediate resignation of the chief minister and the populist government.

The phase also saw the build-up of a mix of “non-political” claims and “political” claims of the slogan for justice. Women protesters and some among the junior doctors claimed that their slogans and demands were not politically targeted against the ruling party or the government and they did not represent any political party. Left and the Right activists and leaders avowed that this was indeed a political mass movement against a government which survived on rape and murders of women, loot of money and wealth, hooliganism, and outright maladministration.

At the same time this second group said that they respected the desire of the masses to stay out of openly political claims. The ambiguity of the situation and the not unexpected ambivalence of the urban society towards “politics” helped the cry for justice to grow at a fast pace. It meant everything to everyone, or at least offered space to protesters of various kinds and dispositions to articulate their own ideas and prescriptions of justice.

The movement for justice was a classic case of “counter-conduct.” People, as if, wanted to say that they disagreed with the conduct of the government. By occupying the nights, streets, squares, coining new and innovative calls, and raising moral questions they had signalled their own ideas about conducting life.

Solidarity and the cry for justice spoke of their counter-conduct.      

A cardboard cutout of Durga at a TET protest in Kolkata. Photo: Joydeep Sarkar.

The ambivalence about the exact formulation of the demand for justice however gradually gave way to clarity from around August 25, and certainly from the first week of September, with the intervention of the Supreme Court. The second phase of the movement, crucial to lend teeth to the amorphous feelings and sentiments, had begun.

Demand for justice acquired a legal form. It had four components: (a) establishing culpability for the murder; (b) corruption of the R.G. Kar administration; (c) any possible link between rape, murder, and corruption; and (d) general lessons to be drawn in terms of legal redress of such situation in medical colleges and hospitals in the country.

Thereafter, whatever spontaneous outpouring of grief and sentiment may have followed on the street, the affective character of the movement was gradually superseded by the legal dimension of the demand for justice, and equally importantly the increasingly political character of the conflict between the urban middle classes and the lower classes of the society who suffered due to closure of public health facilities throughout the state. As if the conflict shaped and mirrored two parallel realities: aspiration and desire of the educated middle class of the city and the seeming “unconcern” of the outlying sections of urban society (and of course, the larger society beyond the urban, that is the mufossils, suburban towns, and big villages) to the issues animating the middle classes.   

By late August, the protesting doctors and, distinct from them, various other sections of youth claiming to be “independent”  had used their weaponry with telling effect – embarrassing the police, trying to “storm” the Nabanna, the administrative headquarter of the government, laying siege to the office of the health department, the Swasthya Bhavan, occupying the streets, coining new slogans, coming up regularly with new or revised charters of demand, engaging top notch lawyers in the Supreme Court, building network with the larger medical fraternity, capturing international attention, and mobilising the entire political and cultural brigades of the city – in sum, displacing the old pattern of politics with something that many imagined to be new politics – for a cleaner life, corruption-free society, and responsible government. The Left posed to be the natural contender for such a dream. But the Right was also determined not to be pushed behind. In any case, it appeared as a war between a moral populace and a thuggish populist party. Battle lines were now drawn clear.

A protest in the aftermath of the RG Kar brutality in Kolkata. Photo: X/@MinakshiMukher8

Yet, by the end of the first fortnight of September, the arsenal of the agitators and the political forces supporting them stood depleted. With the government firing not a single shot on the occupying forces, no case of lathi change except when there was an attempt to lay siege around Nabanna (August 27), the police force without fuss accepting insult by the young doctors in the form of being presented with the replica of a spine (September 3), and the political force of the populists by and large staying quiet and disciplined, the administration seemed to be recovering some of the lost ground. It stayed put, denied charges of complicity and corruption, but most importantly, took initiative for dialogue as a way out of the impasse (September 13). 

Meanwhile patients suffered, some hospital OPDs remained closed, and the parallel reality of the exclusive nature of the demands of the medical community in contrast to the latter’s loud claim of representing the society emerged as part of the undeclared social war. Gradually, the demand for justice for the murder of the young doctor lost prominence, safety and security of working women lost out totally in terms of public attention, and stoppage of health services for the poor patients was acknowledged only in a round-about way and that too when pressed for a response. 

Senior doctors, junior doctors, and legal fraternity – all focused on the righteous character of the junior doctors’ charter of demands. As doctors’ demands crystalised, clarity replaced ambiguity, and the political spirit eased out the social spirit, the battle reached a deadlock. The Supreme Court could not rescue the holy warriors, who now resorted to the last weapon left in their armoury. The fast unto death by a few representatives of junior doctors (from October 5) raised massive concern. Pressure on the medical community mounted, the government again offered a dialogue (October 19). Some demands were met. Hunger strike was withdrawn. Doctors went back to work. The third and the last phase ended in this predictable way. The city heaved a sigh of relief.    

Lesson one

It is important therefore to mark out carefully the phases of a movement, watch for the critical moments, and shape tactics accordingly. Patience is important. Though, acting on moments of conjuncture is equally necessary.            

II

Yet, we may ask, what ordained the pattern of mobilisation and its dynamics? Here class analysis is unavoidable. 

Protest in the wake of the rape and murder of a caregiver, a young lady doctor, in her workplace – a public health facility – was spontaneous and cut across social barriers. However, the protest was typically urban, which is to say that those who protested had possibly ignored similar violence against women of working classes, and the fact that the victim now was from a middle class educated family and was a doctor, a respected figure in society, had now shocked the middle classes. The general question of insecurity of working women crystallised around an “urban” figure. As indicated earlier, the murder signified all the misdeeds and calumny of the popular classes and the desire for a clean life where men and women could pursue their vocations without fear or a feeling of insecurity. The popular classes had experienced such violence on their bodies all through their histories. To them, it was a part of what we may call the daily violence on embodied lives. The regime of urban biopolitics opened up with its internal contradiction stemming from different meanings of violence in everyday life, and therefore the untold question: was this death exceptional? 

The consequential build-up of arguments meant a lot in terms of the class nature of the movement. In some sense, this was not a unique situation, for after all, classes have their respective utopias of a clean and virtuous life. The feature of this situation lay in the ambition of the articulate classes to ride on the wave of the movement to topple the government and capture power, and make society clean by getting rid of the popular classes. These popular classes by educated reasoning are involved in occupations like smuggling including cow smuggling, drawing rent-income from construction and other activities, living off chit funds, hawking, and peddling goods by occupying streets and pavements, and engaging in illegal sand mining, coal mining, tree felling, timber sale, unauthorised fisheries, and living off in the service sector by engaging in domestic work, unlicensed auto-rickshaw driving, waste disposal work, and the like. The educated class terms this as “parallel economy” and no longer thinks of this as “informal economy.” Thus, the black-market economy or the tax dodging economy is not a parallel economy anymore; or, we should not say that national debt operates in a country’s economy in the long run as a parallel economy; but these petty occupations make the “parallel economy.” (See for instance, Sekhar Mukhopadhyay, “Sankhya ki bole, kotota bole” [“What numbers tell and how far they tell”], Anandabazar Patrika, 25 October 2024).

Educated reasoning went further: There must be a correlation between incidence of rape and the extent of this parallel economy. Frustrated, unemployed, angry men rape women. If men are unemployed and still are not raping, then crime figures must be wrong. There were other variations of this sort of reasoning. Nobody said that this is exactly the way racist logic worked. If a member of the civic police force has raped a woman, then hospitals cannot have civic police as part of the protection force. In this way, a new criminal race was born in front of our eyes in the past two months. From the court to the medical fraternity to radical feminists to finally the left-liberal intelligentsia – all agreed that civic police cannot be entrusted with the duty of protecting public health facilities. No one said that we had given birth to a new underclass, a new race – the civic police or civic volunteers. The populists were universally damned. They had created a civic police force made up of lumpen youth. They had patronised rapists and murderers.  

Photo: Pratik/Nagorik.net

The urban conflict that Kolkata witnessed was thus not one as the liberal-Left would have liked us to believe between on one hand an authoritarian, murderous, and corrupt government and on the other citizens in opposition rallying in defence of life, liberty, and values. It was also not a struggle waged jointly by feminists and a community of ethical practitioners like the doctors. It was and still is a social war among groups and classes – mostly conducted underground, but at times raising its head with a ferocity that takes the society by surprise. The social war is a civil war, where the middle classes and the popular classes are arraigned against each other. This is the new twist brought in by neoliberalism to the story of class struggle. The uneducated and uncultured populists will never be respected by the middle classes, in as much as the metropolis thinks, it is self-sufficient and has no need for small towns and the vast hinterland beyond. Yet the irony is that populists and the popular classes cannot do without the middle classes who have gained most from neoliberal investment in education and health of the society. The middle classes everywhere have contributed to the deterioration of the condition of the toiling classes. Yet the latter will have to co-exist with the former and try to reorient it, in the process reorienting itself.    

Lesson two

The urban is thus at once a transcendental as well as a class story. The cleavage between the middle classes and the working classes is deep. Any popular government will have to negotiate this rift towards strengthening the popular will that has been the basis of its existence.

III

Education and health bring the social question headlong in the story of the urban and complicate the struggle. At the same time, we must not be surprised that this new twist to urban struggle has once again materialised around what historians have termed as the “women’s question.” In country after country (Afghanistan in the wake of US withdrawal and Gaza in Palestine being the two recent instances), the most conflictive moment during any major transition in this neoliberal age has been marked by the “women’s question,” particularly by issues of their education and health. Women’s security and protection have crystallised around these two issues. It will not be an exaggeration to say that biopolitics in Southern countries is taking shape around the body of the woman. For the neoliberals, women’s emancipation is the war cry. Women must be freed from obscurantists. For the liberals, developing women’s condition and ability is the ethical goal of democracy. For the Left, it is an embarrassing situation, for they cannot oppose the neoliberal twist to the issue, while they know that this “emancipation” and “development” of women hardly touch the lives of women belonging to the popular classes.

The social and the political are thus the eternal jostling duo in the liberal annal. In this scenario, the old notion of “Left” and “Right” no longer makes sense. When we analyse the politics of our time, we have a natural tendency to copy and paste the political map of our past and place it onto our time which is a different time. It is a useful shortcut on certain occasions, but not always. What was “Left” fifty years ago is not so in face of new realities and new contradictions. The social is assuming a new form. It baffles the “Left.” The “Left” persists with old politics. It has no answer to new features. In this context we may remember how the social/political dynamics played out in the colonial past. Recall the social reform legislations in early and mid-nineteenth century in India over widow burning and widow remarriage. These and other reforms strengthened the social basis of colonial rule, and these hardly touched lives of peasant women, for in low caste societies these were not the major issues of life. When the nationalist leaders were speaking of “reforms” of a caste-bound society, Ambedkar the Dalit leader spoke of “annihilation of caste.” Who were the “Left” and the “Right” in those days? 

And today, how shall we relate the question of the popular classes with women’s safety, security, education, and health? This appears to be a non-question for the “Left.” Hence, their almost total failure to comprehend the social/political dialectic and integrate the dialectic in their transformative strategy is apparent.    

Also read: R.G. Kar: An MD Thesis I Could Submit, an MD Thesis She Could Not

On the other hand, the need to decolonise the security question is more urgent than ever. Efforts are on in many countries of the South to decolonise the security question and relocate it in the context of the post-colonial societies – their problems of underdevelopment, issues of basic rights such as of food, shelter, education, work, and health. The security question in the South is entangled with issues of life – life of the nation, people, and in particular lives of the vulnerable population groups in society, who face a generalised state of insecurity of life. To look at the question of security from the biopolitical angle is to disengage it from the colonial paradigm and to decolonise the security problematic.

Remember, the traditional approach to the security issue has been unable to reflect on the massive transformation in the last few decades, consequent to the impact of globalisation on countries of the South. It has thereby failed to achieve a deeper understanding of the insecurities and vulnerabilities of marginalised people and the emerging new underclasses of society. These insecurities require attention, analysis, and call for a proper approach that is suffused with a new approach to justice. The more the macro security of State, polity, and the big institutions has been reinforced, the more it has produced micro insecurities in society, leading to clashes, spread of homeland demands, conflicts over resources, public health disasters, and not the least – mob lynching in the wake of the spread of racial, religious, community, and caste hatred. They have also resulted in making women from the impoverished classes the permanent underclass who find it particularly difficult to get out of that condition. Probably this is the question of women’s security in a post-colonial world. The issue of security is now at the crossroads of rights, justice, and vulnerabilities. 

Protests in front of RG Kar by SFI, DYFI & AIDWA. Photo: File.

In the wake of neoliberal reforms and relentless urbanisation, crime and urban insecurity have joined to become an interlinked theme overwhelming the public mind. Crime has become synonymous with the growth of the city. Urban governance structure, increasingly shaped by global governance norms, is geared towards managing and pacifying claim-makings of urban population groups with tools of surveillance and coercion. The overriding aim of urban governance is to ensure conditions of reproduction, including reproduction of an unjust urban order characterised by a growing impoverished and criminalised underclass. Cities world over have had experiences of urban governance creating mayhem in the city in the name of abolishing crime. Rudy Giuliani, the mayor of New York City (1994-2001), was not only trying to free New York City of crime. That figure of a cleaner of crimes has been part of the contemporary history of many cities of the South. And, almost everywhere the assumption has been that immigrants are the root cause of crime, or, in general the underclasses. They are the scourge. Prostitution, drugs, trade in illicit goods, corruption, trafficking, gang warfare, and mafia activities… The crime line is straight. We are told, all that a city needs is a determined and ruthless cleaner who can order his/her forces to press triggers to save the city. On the other hand, everyday life of the lower classes in the city is marked by for instance lack of safety of female commuters in public transportation system, lack of drinking water, housing, fuel, even lack of minimum sanitation facilities, various consequences of repressive approach to street vending, and insecurity associated with street level economic activities resulting in two parallel figures of the policeman and the street vendor or the sex worker – each watching the other as the typical margin of a society marked by disorder, crime, and informality, yet constantly interacting with each other. The question of security emerges at this intersection of issues of daily life. Security cameras, civil guards, anticipatory arrests, creating a race of habitual offenders, and repressive techniques of surveillance and crowd control – these are marks of an urban biopower geared towards controlling the lives and bodies of the popular classes. Not unexpectedly, several of the demands of the doctors focused on the security technology, and thus the wrangling over the number of CCTVs to be installed.

Lesson three

Urban contentions congeal the dialectic of social and the political. Migration, new frontiers of work, new boundaries, new professional classes, new subaltern groups, and new insecurities of life define the urban. Any transformative strategy must build on these new realities and new contradictions. The insecure woman of the society is the congealed figure of these new realities and contradictions.

IV

For long, the urban form had been taken as an open, liberating form of human existence. Yet this is a near-mythical history, as every incident of insecurity has been used in urban history to kill that assumed openness. Thus, civic police – the new group of rapists and dangerous people – is to be thrown out of hospitals and other institutions. They cannot be entrusted with protecting the latter. Among others this is an indication of the city taking a camp form. Like the civic volunteer or the civic police, in cities across the world immigrants or suspected immigrants have been declared as illegals. Court-inspired as in the case of civic police or administration-ordered drives, verification campaigns, etc., transform the city to a camp or an assemblage of protected places, which are camp-like existences. The camp is a form of existence always on the margins of protection, detention, and illegality. The “camp form” symbolises the always temporary, precarious, and informal zones of a city. These zones create fractures in the political, spatial, and temporal relation between citizens as legal subjects and their proper representative rulers. The insecure medical college like the R.G. Kar represents the life condition of the confined and the differentially included in the urban world. Such a place is present, like an ulcer, with which the city as an organism will have to live. It cannot be surgically separated, because in that case the city will die. Hence is the question for city rulers, namely, how can these settlements be governed? Almost everywhere the urban response has been in the form of creating the demand and riding on the crest of such demand that the insecure place in the city must be turned into a camp, a protected and securitised place. 

The conjuncture of the effect of a specific time, occupation of the space, and imponderables of a physical domain created the insecure place of R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital. In this way, a supposedly healthy district, which is to say, the place where people were nursed back to health, became morbid. As if, the physical existence of the subjects of this place must be morally purified to protect the city and the nation. The government cannot do it; the city will not trust the government; and power in these insecure places must be geographically localised to ensure the safety and purity of these contaminated places. Thus, doctors must be empowered to run the place and clean it. The government must agree to a situation of perpetual conjuncture of a geographical, physical, professional, and ethical milieu and must accept the autonomous existence of an urban populace insofar as the latter has a body and a soul, a physical and a moral existence. This is the neoliberal transformation of a city, where urban democracy will ensure urban peace. Perpetual peace will reign in the city only in this way. We shall have solved the problems of salvation, obedience, and a decriminalised human existence. Sacrifice of openness is the necessary cost towards a decriminalised world. In conventions held in solidarity with the protesting junior doctors, middle class speakers went on to denigrate public health institutions, and alleged that these institutions had completely broken down. One argued, rape in a red-light district is understandable, but in a medical college and hospital?

Middle classes spit on the same bowl from which they eat. Public institutions are unclean and insecure. They call for a big broomstick. This is the known path to privatisation of institutions and no wonder the middle class of Kolkata led the charge.    

A protest against the RG Kar incident. Photo: X/@cpimspeak

Lesson four

The desire we are speaking of here is universal. The same urban form that produces insecurity produces this desire also. Against this desire is the reality of conflicts in a city, which lives like a collection of atoms. City represents the fractured geography of human existence. The propertied, the professional communities, and cultured classes want a city secured from the hazards of precarious existences. But they need the public nature of a city to push their respective sectoral demands. Yet, that public nature must not be extended to the uncertain frontiers and outlying areas of the city. Given the predictable chorus of these groups in defence of their gated existences, as the political experiences of Kolkata in these two and half months showed, the challenge is: How can a politics of social transformation confront the various phantasmagoria that constitute the urban? How can such politics place the popular classes back to its original place as the “heart of the city”? What will be the new urban? Or, should we think of moving beyond the urban towards a politics of transformation of places?

V

As in Kolkata, populist forces run the administration in many cities such as Mumbai, Chennai, or Delhi, where populist administration represents the will of the popular classes consisting mostly of people working in informal economy, living in slums, shanty settlements, and irregular, insecure places of the city. These populist administrations have the stupendous task of managing the city in a new way. They try to turn the police into a “civil force” to be accepted by the lower classes, become accountable to the demands of the inhabitants of the “inner city,” transform the intolerable lives of the precariously surviving people into tolerable ones, indeed improve them, reach the lower classes access to education and public health, and make co-existence of the lower and middle classes possible in an urban form that will tolerate pluralities of urban life. It is easier said than done. With dreams competing in a combustible milieu, the city is often delirious. The administration must calm the frayed nerves, rising temper, and moderate class hatred that at times threatens to break apart the fragile existence called the city. It is doubly difficult because popular classes exist on the margins of legality. A substantial part of their survival practices consists of what a philosopher of the last century termed as “popular illegalism.” Populist government tolerates such “illegalism.” In a sense, the lives of the popular classes are marked by counter-conduct, counter to the prescribed norm of urban existence.

Also read: The R.G. Kar Protests Reveal a Political Vacuum

In such milieu, rape becomes to the urban citizenry a symbol of the illegal, deranged, dehumanised lower classes. Blacks, immigrants, seniors and toughs in camps, child care homes, and hospitals, and all others with no stable earning, become pervert races. They inhabit the “non-places” of a city. Think of the night of 14-15 August 2024, when a group of mostly slum dwellers attacked the R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital, vandalised, and broke furniture and equipment in one part of the facility. Where did they come from? Who were they? To whom did they pay their allegiance? What was their motive? Whom did they want to scare? They emerged from the shadows and retreated to the shadows. Observers have various explanations of the incident depending on their political views. Yet the fact is that as mysteriously they vanished as they had arrived in the first place carrying various flags and slogans. Their anger against a shut-down place of care was evident. Such incidents will keep on happening under populist administrations as the lower classes will go delirious. The lower classes will remind you of Lukka, the character played by Nasiruddin Shah in Ravindra Dharmaraj’s Chakra (1981). 

Like Delirious Naples (2018), Kolkata reminds us of a city in a delirious state. The populist government because of its intrinsic formation cannot abolish illegality, yet cannot but represent the lower classes in city life. One hundred years ago Antonio Gramsci had thought that intellectuals of Naples under the leadership of the workers of the North will transform the “Southern” city hitherto exploited by Catholic Church, banks, and the propertied classes. The permanently ambivalent attitude of the lower classes of the city to education, morality, and order will be transformed. 

But today? The task is incredibly tougher with neoliberal transformation of the educated gentry and the emergence of a technologically empowered stratum of society. For any emancipative politics, respect for the lower classes will have to be the base from which reconstruction of social life can begin. It is not a pipe dream, for the non-spaces of a city are in effect spaces of reconstruction. In the post-Lefebvre age, space is no longer natural. It is produced. It has an unbreakable relation with sociability.  It is produced through the interlinkages of geography, built-in environment, life practices, symbols, and resistance. Many spaces in a city are non-spaces to the urban, but in their own histories they carry stories of survival and possibilities of self-transformation. 

Lesson five

Events in Kolkata in the last two and half months show that only an awareness of the paradoxical nature of the transformative agenda for a southern city can make radical urban politics possible in this neoliberal age. If the rape and murder of the young doctor can impart such awareness to radical activists, which many other rapes and murders failed to convey, we shall be able to say that society has honoured the murdered doctor in the fullest meaning of the phrase, “honouring the death.” Speaking of Delirious Naples, recall Pasolini who perhaps anticipating his own death had said, “It is only at our moment of death that our life, to that point undecipherable, ambiguous, suspended, acquires a meaning.”       

Ranabir Samaddar is Distinguished Chair, Calcutta Research Group.

Net Zero Needs Women

Women do much of the hard work but have little say when it comes to strategy and decision-making.  

Recognising the leadership role of women is essential to addressing climate change across the Indo-Pacific.

Women play a critical but often overlooked role in the transition to net-zero carbon emissions.

As the world grapples with the need to shift away from fossil fuels, the urgency of confronting climate change is an imperative for governments worldwide.

But in many communities across the Indo-Pacific, there is an imbalance for women between sustainable progress and gender equality.

Women do much of the hard work but have little say when it comes to strategy and decision-making.

The lack of recognition limits their access to essential resources such as land ownership, agricultural extension services and leadership opportunities, exacerbating harmful gender inequalities.

This means decision makers do not learn from their women’s innovations, reducing opportunities to address the climate crisis.

For example, women actively contribute to improving food security in their communities. As traditional knowledge holders of ecosystems, they are at the forefront of adaptation and climate resilience, actively participating in agrifood systems and the green economy.

Their engagement spans many kinds of work – agriculture, soil management, water harvesting and livestock management, which all directly aid food security for their communities. Their knowledge is a critical resource.

With COP29 getting underway and Gender Day taking place on November 21, there is a need for decision-makers to go beyond dialogue that merely highlights the need for gender-responsive action and to identify solutions that can meaningfully tackle the barriers hindering women’s participation and recognition in climate initiatives.

As stipulated by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the World Health Organization and the UN Human Rights Council, this transition must be equitable, upholding the rights of vulnerable populations, particularly across the Global South, who are disproportionately affected by the climate crisis.

Human rights concerns are increasingly prominent in Conference of the Parties (COP) discussions.

Women and girls are often the most vulnerable to climate impacts. This is particularly true in the Indo-Pacific, where women are disproportionately affected by the socio-economic impacts of natural disasters, such as more frequent and intense cyclones, sea-level rise, rising temperatures and loss of food sources.

Following the two tropical cyclones that hit Vanuatu within three days in March 2023, up to 90 percent of crops were destroyed in some provinces, contributing to food scarcity and rising food prices.

Ni-Vanuatu women had to replant their gardens to sell produce at the market, raising funds to rebuild houses lost in the cyclones and to feed children and elderly relatives.

Women are also more likely to suffer violence in the wake of disasters. Following the tropical cyclones in Vanuatu in 2011, rates of reported domestic violence increased by 300 percent.

Despite the disproportionate impacts on women, including decreased access to education and increased gender-based violence, systemic barriers hinder their leadership and voice in the transition to sustainability, as well as access to resources.

This marginalises their essential contributions to climate resilience and sustainable development, and the protection of women and girls in policy and action.

In the face of these challenges, many women are nonetheless leading sustainable transitions across the region, often in subversive, unpaid and grassroots ways, although this is not widely seen or financially recognised – counter to the principles of a just transition, which emphasise inclusivity and leaving no one behind.

Also read: COP29 Kicks Off at Baku, Nations Agree to Carbon Credit Standards on Day 1

Women’s vital role in just transitions 

Female employment in agriculture across the Indo-Pacific region accounts for more than half the total labour force. In some countries, such as Laos, women make up more than 70 percent of the rural agricultural labour force, followed by 45 percent in Myanmar and 41 percent in Vietnam.

Beyond agriculture, women are increasingly involved in renewable energy transitions, with many working in small-scale solar and biomass energy projects that support local and rural economies, reducing dependence on fossil fuels and mitigating the impacts of environmental changes on food production and water supplies.

Yet women’s labour is often undervalued and unrecognised by governments. Their work is often viewed as an extension of unpaid care responsibilities. This includes essential caregiving roles within households, such as child care, elderly care and disability care, which are routinely overlooked and uncompensated.

Addressing these issues is crucial, as highlighted in the COP28 agenda, which emphasised the need for gender-responsive approaches to climate action, including learning from lived experience and local innovation.

Gender Action Plan at COP28

The Gender Responsive Just Transitions Climate Action Partnership, launched last year at COP28 and endorsed by 82 member states, marks a significant step towards integrating gender-responsive approaches into climate action. It emphasises that women’s leadership, participation and access to financial and social protections are key to ensuring equitable transitions that uplift entire communities.

However, global reports, such as those by UN Women, ASEAN Gender Outlook 2024 and the Food and Agriculture Organization, reveal that women are underrepresented in policy and leadership positions across sectors critical to just transitions.

Furthermore, gender-responsive climate negotiations and policy discussions can be fraught; delegates were unable to conclude discussions at the 2024 Bonn Conference, with limited commitment to gender equality demonstrated among some parties.

In the Pacific, women have played a major role in climate adaptation and a low-carbon economy, particularly with the male workforce being diverted to Australia and New Zealand as part of the Pacific Australia Labour Scheme (PALM) and the Recognised Seasonal Employer Scheme in New Zealand (RSE).

In Vanuatu, women’s networks were mobilised in the lead-up to and aftermath the 2023 twin cyclones – for example, through a women-led early warning and disaster response messaging system which alerted up to 40 percent of the population; and the widespread distribution of 17 tonnes of local food crops from resilience gardens that had been harvested by women across communities.

Indonesia’s Just Energy Transition Partnership framework, for instance, outlines a pathway for transitioning to renewable energy and highlights the importance of inclusivity, including a focus on addressing gender equality.

While fast-growing economies like Indonesia are making serious commitments in mainstreaming gender in just transitions, the framework does not yet encompass the tangible measures to address and support women’s leadership, decision-making and recognise their labour, or address the systemic barriers they face, both economically and socially.

From commitments to action 

Recognising women’s role at the forefront of just transitions and as agents of community resilience, means prioritising women’s leadership in decision-making processes and acknowledging their critical contributions to driving sustainable change, particularly as many of their livelihoods are tied to renewable and green jobs.

Women-led initiatives such as the Women I Tok Tok Tugeta (WITTT) Network in Vanuatu, one of the most climate-vulnerable countries in the world, leverages local knowledge and expertise to enhance community resilience against climate change.

By empowering women to take leadership roles in climate adaptation and mitigation strategies, the WITTT Network fosters sustainable practices, ensures that women’s voices are prioritised in decision-making processes, and promotes the implementation of effective solutions to address challenges faced by their communities, including preventing gender-based violence, improving disability rights, disaster management and safeguarding community health.

Additionally, with a focus on gender-responsive solutions, governments need to recognise women for their unpaid and largely unseen contributions by addressing women’s care role and compensating for time poverty, prioritising their access to financial and social protection programmes such as cash-plus programmes and climate insurance.

These programmes could enable women to access the resources and platforms needed to meaningfully engage in labour markets and decision making, while balancing caregiving responsibilities and sustainability leadership roles in our region.

Gabriela Fernando, based at Monash University, Indonesia, specialises in Global Health. Her research focuses on the intersections of women’s health and equity, gender equality, climate change and health, and poverty, with an emphasis on South and Southeast Asia. 

Jessica Walters is a Palawa woman and Project Coordinator of the Citarum Action Research Program (CARP) at the Monash Sustainable Development Institute. Personally involved in the agriculture, forestry and aquaculture industries, her research is at the intersection of earth and social sciences, focusing on the impacts of a changing climate on local communities. 

Susie Ho is the Academic Director in the Office of the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Student Experience) and the Designated Contact Point for the UNFCCC at Monash University. Her research explores the intersection of sustainability education and employability, aiming to cultivate future strategic leaders capable of driving social and environmental impact. 

Sarah Gosper is the Deputy Director of the Global Immersion Guarantee Program at Monash University. Her research focuses on gender and international development, with a particular emphasis on gender-based violence in the Asia-Pacific and masculinities in China.

Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.

Maharashtra’s Women Voters Take Centre Stage in Manifestos of Mahavikas Aghadi, BJP

The BJP has promised Rs 2,100 instead of the existing Rs 1,500 under the Mahayuti government’s Ladki Bahin Scheme in the state. The MVA, on the other hand, has promised Rs 3,000 for women under its Mahalaxmi Scheme.

Mumbai: The Mahavikas Aghadi and the Bhartiya Janata Party seem to be competing against each other in trying to woo the women voters in Maharashtra.

Just 10 days before the Maharashtra state goes to poll, the Bhartiya Janata Party has unveiled its 24-point manifesto, or Sankalp Patra as the party calls it, and has promised Rs 2,100 instead of the existing Rs 1,500 under the Mahayuti government’s Ladki Bahin Scheme in the state.

The Mahavikas Aghadi (MVA), on the other hand, has promised Rs 3,000 for women under its “Mahalaxmi Scheme”. 

While the Ladki Bahini scheme, modelled on the successful Ladli Behna programme in Madhya Pradesh, was launched just a few months before the elections, the Mahalaxmi is based on the Congress’s successful scheme from Karnataka. In addition to Rs 3,000, the MVA manifesto also promises free bus rides to women and girls. 

Health, period leaves, LPG

In a joint manifesto, the MVA has made 48 promises impacting the “socio-economic” landscape of Maharashtra, should the alliance come to power after the upcoming assembly election. The MVA manifesto has once again laid stress on the party’s resolve to carry out a caste census – a contentious issue that dominated the general elections too.  

The manifesto borrows from the schemes implemented in the neighbouring Karnataka, where many welfare measures were announced and later implemented after the Congress came to power in the state. Similarly, the manifesto also promises a health insurance scheme of Rs 25 lakhs – on the lines of what was started by Ashok Gehlot in Rajasthan. Free medicines to the needy has also been promised. 

The MVA manifesto also promises six cooking gas cylinders per year for women consumers at a subsidised rate of Rs 500, along with free cervical cancer vaccines for girls aged nine to 16 years, and two optional days of leave for women per month during their menstrual cycle.

Leaders of the MVA – of the Congress, Shiv Sena (Uddhav Bal Thackeray) and Nationalist Congress Party (Sharad Chandra Pawar), Samajwadi Party and Aam Aadmi Party – have collectively also promised other aid that includes Rs 4,000 as a monthly stipend for youth seeking jobs and an amount of Rs 50,000 each to farmers who repay their loans on time.

“We have envisioned Maharashtra’s progress built on five core pillars – agriculture and rural development, industry and employment, urban and city development, environment, and public welfare,” said Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, while releasing the manifesto in Mumbai. 

Water and jobs

The BJP, on the other hand, has promised to make Maharashtra “drought-free” in the next five years. A large part of the state’s Vidarbha and Marathwada region and few other rain-shadow regions in western Maharashtra have been reeling under drought for many years. The BJP has promised to redirect 167 thousand million cubic feet of water flowing in the western rivers to the drought-prone areas of Marathwada and North Maharashtra via the Godavari basin. To address the issue of water scarcity in Vidarbha region, the BJP manifesto claims that the water from the Wainganga river will be utilised. Such promises are not new to voters of Maharashtra. 

Repeating its past promises of creating jobs, the BJP has once again promised to create “one crore jobs” in the next five years. The issue of unemployment has fuelled resentment, especially among the youth in the state. 

BJP leader and state deputy chief minister Devendra Fadnavis called the manifesto a roadmap for making a “Viksit Maharashtra for Viksit Bharat”. In the manifesto, the BJP has also said efforts will be made to honour anti-caste icons Mahatma Jotiba Phule and Krantijyoti Savitribai Phule, and Hindutva idol V.D. Savarkar with the Bharat Ratna award.

What’s in a Name? Bureaucracy, Patriarchy and Identity.

If you are a woman, keeping your full name in the form you wish can turn into a tedious affair. 

I have just arrived at this piece of wisdom: if you are a woman, even a thing as simple as your name can put you on a roller coaster ride while the world can choose to be your cheerleader or your critic from the sidelines. If you are a woman, keeping your full name in the form you wish to can turn into a tedious affair. 

It all started with my son’s class 10th registration for board exams. His birth certificate carried my marital surname while all the other paper-identities that I had generated as a part of my existence and progression in this world, carried my maiden surname. I am sure Shakespeare was not aware of such ruptures of identity when he wrote ‘ What’s in a name?’. But of course, the bard was a man too. The comedy of changing names would not have impacted his life in the way it did mine. At most, he could have been an impassive observer, planning the next plot or perhaps using this as comic relief in one of his plays, giving it a role similar to Macbeth’s porter.

The crux of the matter is that the birth certificate of my son ‘inadvertently’ carried my marital surname. That document, carrying my second identity, was lying benign in a corner of the shelf that contained all other documents of the family. After an initial disgruntlement on seeing the other surname on that piece of paper proving my motherhood and my child’s entrance into this world, it got shelved under other pressing needs of a newborn and the new mother. That was more than 15 years ago.

The disgruntlement returned temporarily, after a few years, when we were planning to get the son’s passport made. But because I was the parent accompanying him and all my papers were in order, we did not face any issues. I was delighted that the error in that paper was actually a benign one and did not feel the need to pay any more attention to it. 

However, like a benign tumour suddenly turning vicious, the disgruntlement returned. The said secondary board decided to take only the birth certificate as a proof for all records. It meant that the mother’s name on his testimonials won’t carry the surname that I use, but the one his birth certificate displayed. Now I was considerably irked. It had taken a long fight to include the mother’s name in the testimonials in spite of being the primary nurturer in most cases. And now that it was achieved, I was confronting another issue of which surname to use. To add to the injury, my in-person declaration regarding my desire to retain my maiden surname was not enough; it had to be vouched by a magistrate and also recommended by the hospital where the child was born. The vouching had to be made public in two national dailies too. Generating these papers would eventually make my request valid.

Thus began a rigmarole that saw me shuttling between school, corporation, hospital and advocate. I was like a baseball player, running between bases, trying hard to retain my place. Thankfully, these days newspapers accept advertisements online. So my journey remained between these four points.

My son’s class teacher kept updating me regarding deadlines and remained supportive throughout the process. Being a woman, she must have felt my plight and her solidarity, visible through constant follow-ups, made me feel less like a solo crusader. Solidarity truly is a woman’s greatest strength, I learned.

Birth certificate is a document which is made at a time when the woman is in a state of complete vulnerability. Nine months of pregnancy and then labour leaves her physically drained and mentally fogged. At a time when she has little clue of her own body, how much can she be expected to be in charge of her surroundings? So, when this document is applied for, in most cases, she is not around to crosscheck. Negotiating the complex maze of new parenthood, a new routine and a lopsided social system which cares two pence about a woman’s identity, little details like surnames go for a toss. What takes precedence is convenience. 

Like her body, even the name becomes a site of contest. Giving a woman the legal licence to carry the identity of either of the two men in her life – her father or husband, not only gives her a choice, but also adds another dimension to it. It jeopardises her existential autonomy. If a name is the basic unit of forming one’s identity, allowing that to change also focuses on the fact that a woman’s identity is ultimately associated with a single incident of her life – her marriage. It adds a floating dimension to her identity, which the male gender does not have to go through. The surname, in any case, is a marker of patriarchy, its origin being in the name of the male progenitor of that clan. Being the identifier of a person’s race, caste or religion, the surname often becomes an instrument of marginalisation and takes on a more complex role in the case of women. 

This whole episode happened at a time when deadlines regarding my professional commitments were at a peak. Well-wishers advised me to let go. Yet the inner voice kept on prodding. There are greater issues to fight for, as women we face more sinister exploitation and abuses. Yet, this was equally important for me. The agency to decide my name should be mine alone. If a woman cannot even decide her own name, if it has to be caught in the quagmire of marital status, it comments on her social position. 

The work was eventually done and in good time. Each of the institutes associated with it cooperated to their best of abilities. Yet, it had led to a waste of time and left me anxious. No man would ever have to go through this unnecessary hassle and yet we speak of an equal society. 

In The Name of Safety: UP Commission’s Proposed Measures Will Further Restrict and Control Women’s Lives

The proposal – wrapped in righteousness to veil its misogynist bigoted core – is a perfect example of sanity-eroding wickedness posing as ‘policy.’  

Safety is a basic human need. All women want to be safe. What could be wrong with a step for women’s safety?

In India, women’s safety has always been a double-edged weapon that can be as much wielded against them as for them. The focus of policy measures in our patriarchal society is often not on solving the problem, the crime, or the issue at hand but in asking women why they must do it (go out, drive, live alone.)

I hail from central India and my grandmother did not have the right to study. My mother’s generation got educated but did not have the right to dress or marry as they pleased. We savoured more freedoms, especially the small ones, like dressing the way we liked, going to a gym because our foremothers made space for it and time was kinder to us. But the river of time is flowing backwards now.

In today’s India, women of my daughter’s age must strategise on their own how best to negotiate Delhi streets when drunk-to-gills Kaanwariyas felicitated with garlands are let loose on streets for a month every monsoon. They do that during other ‘freepass’ festivals – Holi, Navratra, college fests as well.

Conscious of the way safety works here, women continue to rely on common sense and internalised threat perception to stay safe. Surviving and staying safe on day-to-day basis make women only too aware of the danger posed by people who claimed to save us. Relying on fragile egoed fathers, brothers, husbands and busybodies whose need to preserve their own saviour image exceeds their ability to act viably, brings its own complications.

We are acutely conscious that if we were to let too much protection be inflicted on us, we would end up confined in some arid ‘protectorate’ of a permanently constricted life.

Aren’t they right to be concerned, you might ask. Yes, concern is nice – the way we are all concerned about pollution. There’s danger in breathing the polluted air, we know. But no one says not breathing is a solution.

Yes, there has been an occasional touchy-feely man in position of power over each one of us – a school master, a dentist, an uncle sitting next to us on the bus – hence we devise and contrive ways to be clear of them, because often we don’t have the means to confront them.

But a tailor?  A gym-boy?

You could decimate them in seconds. The power to bring or take away business here belongs to the woman. That gives us our safety. No woman would patronise a business that does not pamper her or bring a sense of ease.

In most cities I have lived in, from Gwalior to Bhubaneshwar to Raipur, Hyderabad and Chandigarh, not to speak of Delhi; the common knowledge of a tailor master’s tehzeeb and sharafat precedes the shohrat about his wizardry at work to a cliched degree. The best tailors are courteous if talkative gentlemen. Hence to get their time and attention is the chief problem.

Literature too, reflects this socio-cultural truth.

The focal character of Rambhakt Rangbaz which I translated into English (1990, Aramganj) is Ashiq Miyan, a Muslim tailor, who runs a popular men’s tailoring and women’s boutique in a Hindu mohalla. Ashiq Miyan is able to run a successful business with largely women clientele, only because his mere presence makes mothers and daughters and sisters feel safe as well as welcome.

A sign on the door of Ashiq’s boutique proclaims, shohdas (loafers and layabouts) are not allowed to stand on the verandah. If over-inquisitive gents tailoring customers even try craning necks to the women’s side, they get booted out. Whether they be – upper caste Didis, Mausis or Maanjis or Valmikinagar Bhabhis and Bhaujis – they all come to Ashiq Miyan not just due to his skill and his solicitousness and courtesy, but for his extraordinary ability to be genuinely empathetic.

The details and dialogues that etch Ashiq’s character echo the ethnographic of the heartland with great authenticity. A society riddled with differences yet managing to grant dialogue and co-exist.

Over the years, not just with respect to women’s safety but with regards to citizens’ safety in general, a refusal to deal with actual crimes has become the norm. At the same time the citizen’s circle of responsibility in ensuring own safety has expanded. The police keep putting up posters exhorting citizens to be responsible for their own safety, to be alert because bombs, lurking criminals, suspicious objects and people may target them.

Certain zones are labelled as accident prone/theft prone. We must mind ourselves and our belongings. When a crime or mishap occurs the legal and judicial systems spend considerable time in proving that the victims of misfortune themselves brought it forth. Alongside, there is a constricting of existing freedoms by making more and more activities unlawful by definition. The latest example comes from Uttar Pradesh.

In a state where women are found raped and hung from trees, where raped, beheaded torsos are thrown on the highway; the concern displayed by the UP Women’s Commission to save women from potentially lecherous tailors and gym instructors takes the breath away.  The proposal – wrapped in righteousness to veil its misogynist bigoted core – is a perfect example of sanity-eroding wickedness posing as ‘policy.’

It truly boggles the mind. Vile eager beavers, who never blink when unspeakable atrocities occur now run to stigmatise an everyday innocent activity like tailoring or gymming! The ones who snore on through complete mayhem suddenly turning their hypervigilant dog whistles on potential criminals of imaginary crimes!

The situation can only be summed up by Kabir’s ulatbansi in Arvind Krishna Mehotra’s lively translation (Songs of Kabir, 2011)

‘How do you…

…Patrol a city

Where frogs keep snakes

As watchdogs,

And Jackals

Go after lions?’

But something also tells us that this dissonance is by design. The logic that deems as policy something that would further restrict and control women’s lives, and the logic that controls potential crimes by outlawing ordinary activities; is the very logic that displays benign unconcern for justice for rape victims. That shows extreme tolerance towards sordid crimes and their perpetrators.

Any exercise of designating and defining ‘unsafety’—in places/groups of people— is an insidious way of defining who is legitimate or not. Once defined legitimate you get to commit crimes and be felicitated for them. While even existing becomes a crime for those deemed illegitimate. Their right to livelihood can be snatched on any imaginary pretext.

In fact, an order that sustains itself on a perpetual state of unsafety needs to grant impunity to select few and keep taking intermittent smokescreen measures to further stigmatise the designated ‘other.’ That’s the way the order keeps granting itself legitimacy.

All in the name of our safety.

Varsha Tiwary is a Delhi based writer and translator. 

UP Women’s Body Proposes Restrictions on Male Tailors and Hairdressers to Curb ‘Bad Touch’

The proposals suggest that only female tailors should take women’s measurements for stitched clothing and that CCTV cameras should be installed in tailoring shops and salons to monitor interactions.

New Delhi: The Uttar Pradesh State Women Commission has proposed a series of measures aimed at curbing potential harassment of women by restricting men from tailoring clothes for women or cutting their hair. The recommendations, presented in a meeting on October 28, are intended to protect women from unwanted advances and inappropriate physical contact.

The proposals suggest that only female tailors should take women’s measurements for clothing to be stitched and that CCTV cameras should be installed in tailoring shops and salons to monitor interactions. According to Himani Agarwal, a commission member, the initiative was introduced by the commission’s chairperson, Babita Chauhan, and received backing from other members in attendance, as per a report in the Telegraph.

Also read: ‘Completely High-Handed’: Supreme Court Chastises Adityanath Govt Over 2019 Demolition

Speaking to ANI, Chauhan said, “I just want to say that you should keep boys in the parlour too, whoever wants to, can get it done by boys. But, they have to give it in writing that I am doing this with my own will. Secondly, wherever these employees are, their police verification must be done.” She also suggested that gyms should consider gender-specific policies in their staffing, particularly in roles that require close physical interaction with female clients.

“It should only be female barbers who should attend to female customers,” Agarwal told PTI. She emphasised that the proposal arises from the commission’s concerns over instances of harassment and alleged inappropriate behaviour. “We are of the view that because of men involved in this type of profession, women are molested. They try to indulge in bad touch. The intention of some of the men is also not good,” Agarwal explained, though she clarified that not all men have ill intentions.

According to the latest National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) report, Uttar Pradesh reported the highest number of crimes against women in India for 2022, with a total of 65,743 cases. This marks an increase from 56,083 cases in 2021 and 49,385 cases in 2020, Frontline reported earlier this year.

The state led the country in incidents of kidnapping of women (14,887 cases), dowry-related deaths (2,138 cases), and cases of torture by husbands and relatives (20,371 cases). Uttar Pradesh ranked second in reported rape cases with 3,690 incidents and also recorded the highest number of “murders following gang-rape,” with 62 cases reported.

The National Commission for Women (NCW) recorded 28,811 complaints of crimes against women last year, with approximately 55% (16,109) of these cases originating from Uttar Pradesh, reported the Hindu. Many on social media have commented on how, traditionally, a gigantic section of Indian tailors are Muslims.

The commission plans to present this proposal to the state government, with the hope that these suggestions may effect future legal measures.

How Poverty Is Perpetuating Trafficking In Assam’s Tea Gardens

Low wages keep tea garden workers in a cycle of poverty, which is pushing children out of school and leading to cases of trafficking and gender-based violence.

Guwahati, Assam: The tiny courtyard of tea-garden worker Bilchand Bawri’s house in Assam’s Koilamari tea estate turns into a makeshift school every day at 4 p.m. Around 15 children, aged between five and 13, sit on plastic sheets on the ground as Bawri’s daughter, Rinku, teaches them.

Twenty-one-year-old Rinku is a graduate student at a college in North Lakhimpur town. She commutes 15 km each way by bus to attend college. When she is short on cash, she misses her classes as she can’t afford to pay her commute charges.

“Nor can I afford to stay in a hostel close to my college,” Rinku, who belongs to the Adivasi community, says. “My parents are tea-garden labourers earning Rs 250 each every day. It is not enough to run a household of seven, including my four siblings.”

Rinku’s struggle to get an education reflects the abject poverty of the Adivasi community, the backbone of Assam’s biggest revenue-generating industry.

A bitter brew: No share of profits for the poor

Assam’s tea tribe or Adivasi community is an umbrella term for people belonging to Munda, Santhal, Gonds, Oraon, Bhumij and other tribes. They comprise around 7 million of the 31.2 million people in the northeastern state.

According to the Assam government’s Industries and Commerce Department, the state produces nearly 700 million kg of tea annually, accounting for around half of India’s overall tea production. Along with gaining global fame for its high-quality tea, Assam makes big bucks from the green leaves. India earned Rs 6,386 crore by exporting tea in 2022-23 and Assam contributed to a sizeable chunk of it.

The 200-year-old industry has been built on the labour of Adivasi labourers. While men are predominantly involved in the factories, women are the primary workers in the gardens. Be it sun or rain, they are on their feet for 8 to 12 hours carefully collecting the leaf sets that consist of two leaves and a bud. Typically, workers collect 20-60 kg a day depending on the season. The price of tea begins at Rs 180 per kilogram and can go up to Rs 10,000 for some varieties.

“Our community never got any share of the profit,” says Adivasi woman leader Neha Sagar from Tinsukia district’s Beesakopie tea estate. “We have always been living on the margins. It is a classic case of capitalism where the working class is exploited to the maximum for generations.”

How denial of education makes girls vulnerable to violence

Rinku has been teaching her students for free for four years now. She fears that if these children are not helped with their lessons, they will join the long list of school dropouts residing in more than 800 major and 100,000 small tea gardens across Assam.

The lack of neighbourhood schools is a major reason for the high dropout rate. An April 2017 study, by Ruksana Saikia, a research scholar at the Gauhati University, found that educational opportunities in tea garden areas are limited to lower primary levels.

Rinku Bawri, 21, from Assam’s Koilamari tea estate teaches Adivasi children free of cost at the tiny courtyard of her house. She fears that otherwise, these children will drop out of school. Photo: Maitreyee Boruah

Activists say the high dropout rate is behind the rising cases of child trafficking and child marriage of girls in tea garden areas. “This is how the cycle of violence against Adivasi girls starts,” says Nabin Chandra Keot, vice president of Assam Chah Mazdoor Sangha (ACMS), the largest trade union body of tea garden workers in Assam.

“It continues throughout their lives. Crimes against women and girls like domestic violence, human trafficking, sexual abuse and dowry deaths are prevalent in tea gardens,” Keot says. “Unfortunately, we don’t talk about them and there is hardly any reporting of these incidents.”

Over the decades, more and more Adivasi men have started migrating outside the plantations in search of better wages. This makes the women and girl children, who are left behind, vulnerable to abuse.

Low wages perpetuate poverty, trafficking

“The tea garden workers have a giant problem – grinding poverty. Everything else gets eclipsed in front of deprivation,” says Keot in his Dibrugarh office. “It is also the cause of several problems including gender violence. Who will talk about nari nirjotona (gender-based violence) when your daily earning from a physically demanding job is between Rs 150-Rs 250?”

About 144 big tea gardens surround Dibrugarh. After a Rs 18 hike last year, Assam garden workers in Brahmaputra valley get Rs 250 a day and their counterparts in Barak valley get Rs 228. Some workers, in small tea gardens, get even less – between Rs 150 and Rs 180.

The ACMS has been demanding that the daily wage of tea workers be increased to Rs 350. In Kerala, another centre for tea cultivation, a plantation worker earns Rs 482 per day, the second highest in the country. Sikkim with only one tea garden named Temi Tea Garden pays Rs 500 per day, the highest in the country, to the workers.

Back in the Koilamari tea estate, 130 km from Dibrugarh, Milika Topno, a research scholar, says poverty and a high school dropout rate force girls to leave their homes to earn a livelihood.

“They are victims of human trafficking,” says Topno, who belongs to the tea tribe community. “The trafficked girls are employed in homes, factories and brothels. Some become child brides or organ donors. These girls are subjected to physical and sexual abuse. Many others join their mothers and grandmothers and work in tea gardens. Others get married before adulthood.”

The green view of a tea garden in Assam’s Jorhat district. Photo: Maitreyee Boruah

The Koilamari tea estate in Lakhimpur district is famous for its orthodox tea, which is processed using traditional methods. It is spread across 1,244 hectares. Around 3,000 Adivasi families stay within the estate, locals say. The verdant tea garden, on the north bank of the Brahmaputra river, has a beauty that is in striking contrast to the lives of tea garden workers and their families.

Sonali and Priyanka (name changed) are 19 years old. They are neighbours, and studied till grade VIII before they dropped out of school due to financial problems. Both girls were trafficked to Naharlagun, in neighbouring Arunachal Pradesh, in 2022.

Priyanka says an agent (trafficker) – whose name she did not want to reveal as she is scared of being targeted – took her to Naharlagun in September 2022.

“Our household finances have been bad for years,” Priyanka says. “I was sitting idle at home after leaving school. My parents’ earnings are too little for a family of six. I was told by the agent that I have to do household chores and will be paid Rs 8,000 monthly. I thought the money was good and I could send it to my parents.”

In Naharlagun, a suburb of Arunachal Pradesh’s capital Itanagar, Priyanka was made to work round the clock. “I did everything – from cleaning and cooking to attending to a baby,” Priyanka recalls. “I had no time to rest. I was verbally abused. It was a scary experience. I could not bear it and left the job in two months. Thankfully, my employers let me come home. But they did not pay me. They told me the agent took my two months’ salary (Rs 16,000). After I reached home, I tried to get in touch with the agent but he never answered my calls.”

Activists say trafficking has become industrialised in bagaans (plantations); the traffickers are often local people, and families trust them with their daughters to help them find a job.

“The trust is always broken, as many girls don’t return home and go missing or those who return have a sordid saga to narrate,” says Karisma Lakra, a community worker associated with Purva Bharati Educational Trust, an Assam-based NGO working for girls’ education in tea gardens. “These agents either run away if anyone confronts them, or threaten the girls and their parents to keep quiet. The agents sell these girls to faraway places like Delhi, Rajasthan, Mumbai and Gujarat.”

Sonali had left, with another female friend, for Naharalagun in February 2022 to work as a domestic help. “My friend worked in the house of a politician in Naharlagun. A relative of the politician hired me. I worked there for almost two years. As I started to miss my parents, I decided to come back home,” said Sonali.

Her neighbours say the teenager has probably developed some form of addiction during her stay in Naharlagun. “I have seen her consuming packet after packet of gutka (a tobacco-based substance),” says a neighbour, who did not want to be identified.

“Most of the time she sleeps,” Sonali’s mother says. “She hardly speaks to us. I fear she had some bad experience. But she insists she was treated well and paid Rs 4,000 a month. She also sent us some money for a few months.”

As the Koilamari tea estate is close to Itanagar (around 70 km), several girls from the plantation are trafficked to the neighbouring state where they work as domestic help. Across Arunachal Pradesh, Adivasi girls of Assam are employed as domestic workers. They are called “bhonti”, an Assamese term for younger sister. But in Arunachal Pradesh, it refers to a female domestic worker, almost always an Adivasi minor.

Data show the tip of the iceberg

Data shared with IndiaSpend by the Office of the Director General of Police, Itanagar, show that 14 cases of human trafficking were registered in Arunachal Pradesh from 2019 to September 2023.

The first information reports (FIRs) filed in these cases resulted in the rescue of 22 victims and the arrest of 21 traffickers. Most victims belong to the Adivasi community of Assam.

In March 2023, the Assam government told the legislative assembly that at least 481 children – 185 boys and 574 girls – were trafficked between 2017 and 2022 to different parts of the country. Moreover, 759 children have gone missing since 2017. At least 666 of them were subsequently rescued.

The latest report of the National Crime Records Bureau stated there were 204 victims in 108 cases of human trafficking registered in 2022 in Assam. In 2021, there were 379 victims of human trafficking as compared to 151 victims in 2020. Human trafficking is prohibited under Article 23(1) of the Indian Constitution.

Officials working to combat trafficking in Assam, who did not want to be named, say the state is “vulnerable because of its geographical location (it shares a porous 267.5-km border with Bangladesh), inaccessible terrain, decades of political turmoil and violence, poverty, displacement due to floods and lack of infrastructure, health facilities and educational institutions”.

IndiaSpend has reached out to the state’s department of women and child development for comment on the initiatives being undertaken to address the issue of trafficking, to improve reporting of cases, and the support being given to survivors of trafficking and gender-based violence. We will update this story when we receive a response.

Tea gardens turn trafficking hubs

“The tea gardens have become trafficking hubs because they have several vulnerability indicators. The practice has been going on forever,” says Assam-based activist Digambar Narzary, who works for the rescue and rehabilitation of trafficking victims. Narzary runs a shelter home, Nedan Foundation, for victims of trafficking in Kokrajhar.

There are 35 girls in the shelter home. More than half are Adivasi girls. “The Adivasi girls were trafficked across the country on the pretext of giving them ‘decent jobs’. Most have experienced sexual violence including rape. They are all given counselling,” adds Narzary.

Kokrajhar, one of the four districts of Assam’s Bodoland Territorial Region, has 30 major tea gardens. The region witnessed decades of Bodo militancy.

Adivasi woman leader Sagar, 25, is a first-generation graduate from her family. She stays with her parents, both tea garden workers. “We have been staying in the same house since the time of my grandparents. We don’t have any legal rights over it, as tea garden managements provide housing facilities to workers.

“Either my siblings or I have to take up my father or mother’s job after their retirement or we will lose our home. Many graduates have been forced to take up their parents’ jobs to keep a roof over their heads,” adds Sagar.

The workers stay in settlements called Lines within the tea plantations in the upper region and northern Brahmaputra belt of Assam.

Most of these settlements have a similar pattern. There are rows of pucca (concrete structures with tin roofs, mostly built during the 1950s and 1960s) and kutcha (made of clay, bamboo and straw) houses, without electricity and drinking water supply. These homes don’t have access to motorable roads or hospitals.

A view of a tea garden settlement called Lines in Kokrajhar district. Most of these settlements have rows of pucca and kutcha houses, without electricity and drinking water supply. These homes don’t have access to motorable roads or hospitals. Photo: Maitreyee Boruah

Raju Sahu, former legislator and an Adivasi leader from Tinsukia, home to around 120 big tea estates, says the tea garden workers are landless labourers.

“Less than 10% of them have land in their names,” Sahu points out. “They don’t have purchasing power. So we have been conducting protests in various tea estates seeking land rights documents (pattas) for people of the tea community.”

The situation would have been different had the community been included in the Scheduled Tribe (ST) list. It is a long-pending demand awaiting approval from the state government.

The Adivasi community falls under the Other Backward Classes or OBC in Assam, unlike their counterparts in different parts of the country who are STs.

The STs and Other Traditional Dwellers have the right to hold and live on forest land under individual or collective ownership for habitation. ST status for the Adivasis of Assam would offer them rights-based legal benefits like reservations, political representation and socio-economic subsidies.

Dowry demand, domestic violence among landless people

Women rights activists say denial of land and housing rights has led to the rise in dowry demand cases. “This in turn has increased incidences of domestic violence,” says women’s rights activist Bulbuli Gorh from Jorhat. “In a patriarchal society, women are the easiest target. When a community is denied social, political and economic rights, the burden automatically falls on women. That does not absolve Adivasi men from their greed to become rich by harassing their wives.

“We often come across incidents where Adivasi men ask for cash, houses and two-wheelers from their brides,” adds Gorh, who belongs to the tea tribe community. “When the wives can’t fulfil the material demands in their in-laws’ places, they are subjected to physical and mental torture.”

Domestic violence is widespread in tea garden settlements. “Often men come home drunk and beat their wives, mothers and daughters. The men take out their frustrations on women,” said Manisha Tanti, a social activist who works in the tea gardens of Tinsukia. “Sometimes, the victims end up in hospital. But talking about domestic violence is considered a taboo. People have become immune to such violence. They think it is a family matter and should not be discussed in public.”

Despite this, there appears to be growing awareness of the need to see domestic violence as a crime. In their academic paper published in 2022, researchers Swarna Rajagopalan and Natasha Singh Raghuvanshi note that between 2000 and 2020, reporting of violence against women has increased in Assam.

The number of cases of violence within the household and family – under the Dowry Prohibition Act, dowry deaths, cruelty by husband and relatives, and domestic violence – in 2000 was 1,057, they found. This number increased to 12,025 in 2020. Similarly, child marriage cases saw an increase from four in 2014 to 138 in 2020. Rape cases went up from 762 in 2000 to 1,639 in 2020.

Domestic violence: Shattering Adivasi women’s lives

Kanchi Gowala from Letekoojan Tea Estate in Jorhat’s Titabor got married in 2018. Within a year of her marriage, the 31-year-old gave birth to a son. “I had an arranged marriage. Before our wedding, I had told my husband I had studied till grade II. He is a graduate. At that time he was fine with it. He came across as a well-behaved person. After our marriage, he completely changed. He started verbally abusing me. He called me an illiterate ugly woman. He started beating me every day after getting drunk,” says Gowala.

Her husband started demanding money from her family. “My father died when I was a child. I did not want to burden my mother and elder brother with dowry demands. My refusal to bring money angered him more.

“Sometimes, the beatings turned very violent and left me with injuries. One day, when my son was four months old, I left my in-laws’ place and came to my mother’s house,” she says. Now, Gowala is raising her five-year-old son by working in a tea plantation.

Sonia Tanti, a social activist, accompanied Gowala to the Titabor Police Station to file a complaint against her husband. “We went to the police station four times, but nobody listened to us,” she says. “The police dissuaded us from pursuing any legal step against the husband despite the victim sustaining grave injuries.

“Finally, Mariani (another town near Titabor) police station filed an FIR under Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code (for harassment and dowry demands). But he got anticipatory bail.”

The sub-divisional magistrate of Titabor directed Gowala’s husband to pay his wife monthly compensation under the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005.

Sonia Tanti says it is rare for victims of domestic violence in tea gardens to take legal action against their husbands or in-laws.

Sonia Tanti, a social activist, works with Adivasi women labourers who are victims of violence. Photo: Maitreyee Boruah

“There are many reasons,” she says. “First, the community does not support victims taking a stand against their spouses. Second, the police are unhelpful. Most importantly, victims don’t have the finances to pursue cases. Some can’t even afford the bus fare to visit a nearby police station.”

Unlike Gowala, Sureka Ekka, 40, from Mornai Tea Estate in Kokrajhar, did not have anyone to help her approach the police after she left her husband’s house 15 years ago.

“I got married when I was 20,” Ekka said. “My five years of marriage was hell. My husband beat me black and blue frequently. One day, I decided to stand up for myself and left his house. I had no parental support. Luckily, I got work in the tea garden. Now, I stay alone. I don’t have any children.”

Who will give justice to victims of rape?

In May this year, when I visited Heeleakah Tea Estate, around 15 km from Letekoojan Tea Estate, it was cloudy. Ruma (name changed) works in the estate’s factory. The 29-year-old took a day off from work because, she told me, she wanted to gather her thoughts before speaking about “the worst day of her life”.

“I am telling my story to get justice,” Ruma said. “The incident happened on December 25, 2021. I was alone at home. My parents and siblings went out to celebrate Christmas. It was around 9 p.m. and I went to the washroom built outside the house. My attackers were waiting near the washroom. I did not notice them as it was dark.

“When I came out of the washroom, three men sexually assaulted me. I started screaming for help and then they beat me and tried to strangulate me. An aunt from the neighbourhood heard my screams and she came running. The men ran away seeing her.”

The assault left her with severe injuries in her legs and stomach. “On the same night, I was taken to the Jorhat Medical College and Hospital for treatment. I stayed there for three days,” she says.

The Mariani police station registered a case against the three accused under Section 307 (attempt to murder) and Section 354 (for assault). They were arrested and stayed behind bars for three months, but all three are out on bail now. Ruma’s family was pressured by the families of the accused to withdraw the case against them.

After the incident, Ruma developed mental health issues. “The doctors told us she had severe depression and needed to shift her base to feel better,” says her mother. “So she went to Tamil Nadu’s Tirupur to work as a garment factory worker. She was working as a tailor there. But in a few months, she came back home. We are happy she is with us.”

In the same tea garden, I met a minor rape victim. Her mother is dead, and her father has remarried. The minor was raped multiple times by her stepmother’s brother. A woman community worker who is taking care of the minor says the case was tried under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act of 2012. The accused is in jail.

After several counselling sessions, the survivor is back in school. “She wants to continue her studies by staying in a hostel. We are waiting for the government to compensate her,” says the community worker.

These are not isolated incidents – as one travels from one tea garden to another, it becomes evident that the issues of trafficking, domestic violence, and rape, are present everywhere and official figures do not capture many of them.

In a tea garden, I watch women workers hunched over between rows and rows of tea bushes, their deft fingers plucking the tender leaves and buds and tossing them into the basket strapped behind their backs.

What strikes me is the silence. The workers hardly ever talk to each other – they are not allowed to speak, as conversation might slow down the quick movements of their hands. To me, that sight served as a metaphor for the lives of Assam’s tea garden workers – they work, and they suffer, in silence.

This article was originally published on IndiaSpend, a data-driven public-interest journalism non-profit.

What Role Did Gender Play in Donald Trump’s Victory?

Concerns about women’s reproductive rights and Trump’s casual dismissal of sexualised violence seemingly gave women, young and old, a cause to embrace. But it was not enough.

Like many women, I’m having a horrible flashback. It’s 6 am on November 9, 2016 — the day after the United States presidential election that pitted Hillary Clinton against Donald Trump. I went to bed assuming Clinton had won.

I remember thinking to myself on the night of that election that there was nothing to be worried about. Americans would do the right thing and vote for the most qualified person, not the reality TV star. I came into the dining room where my partner was sitting reading the news and looked at him hopefully when he told me, still in shock: “Trump won.”

I was wrong eight years ago and I was wrong today about Vice President Kamala Harris’s chances of beating Trump.

I hoped the polls were wrong and the race was not as close as it appeared to be in the swing states. I believed women would come out in droves to protect their reproductive rights. I hoped and assumed that white women, in particular, would turn out for Harris en masse. That was a false hope.

Trump has been declared the winner of the 2024 presidential election after handily winning several swing states. He’s also on track to win the popular vote, something he failed to do in ’16. In fact, he has done better with almost all demographics in 2024 than he did in 2020.

Tight race

It was a hard-fought battle and, according to the polls, neck and neck right up until the final days of the campaign.

In hindsight, several questions have been answered that were not so clear just a day ago. Will America vote for a Black woman? No. Will Harris be able to do what Clinton couldn’t do eight years ago? No. Will she break the Oval Office glass ceiling? No.

The fact that these questions were still in play in 2024, as Harris waged a disciplined campaign against an opponent as flawed and felonious as Trump, seems revelatory about the misogyny and racism that bedevils America.

Gender played an outsized role in the election for several reasons. The overturning of Roe v Wade in June 2022 galvanized women across the U.S., especially when the deaths of several women after being refused pregnancy or miscarriage-related health care illustrated the consequences of these extreme anti-choice positions.

Concerns about women’s reproductive rights and Trump’s casual dismissal of sexualised violence seemingly gave women, young and old, a cause to embrace.

A survey in Iowa conducted by vaunted pollster Ann Selzer showed women 65 and older were voting for Harris by a two to one margin, though Trump ended up winning the state.

TikTok videos showing Trump’s infamous “grab them by the pussy” comments went viral among young TikTokers who weren’t old enough to remember when the remarks originally surfaced in 2016. They spoke of their astonishment that their fathers and anyone with daughters, sisters or mothers could vote for such a person.

But it was not enough, even though exit polls suggested a majority of women cast their ballots for Harris. Women apparently preferred Harris, but not by the margins her campaign had hoped.

Trump’s allure to men

On the other side of the gender equation are men. Trump’s appeal to young men increased as their apparent fears of being overtaken by women’s gains in equality were exploited.

This is a disturbing trend. According to a September NBC poll, women backed the Democrats 58 per cent to 37 per cent, while men supported Republicans 52 per cent to 40 per cent. Research has shown that young women have become more liberal while young men have become more conservative, perhaps because they are angry at falling behind and losing their former advantages.

The candidates themselves recognized the differences in support with their choices of podcasts and media appearances. Trump spent three hours with Joe Rogan — who subsequently endorsed him — for his podcast that skews heavily towards young men while Harris went on Call Her Daddy, a podcast directed at women under 35.

In the end, the U.S. voted for what is called “hegemonic masculinity,” a cultural valorization of stereotypical male traits, and Trump’s endless and regressive belittling of women and “feminine” men won the day.

The impact of white women

Another key factor in the campaign was race.

Exit polls suggested white women without college educations overwhelmingly voted for Trump, while white college-educated women cast their ballots for Harris.

Prior to the election, most white women said they backed the Republican Party, but suggestions their support for Trump was wavering now seem unfounded. Exit polls suggest Harris didn’t perform as well with women voters as Joe Biden did in 2020.

We don’t have the final numbers yet in terms of how white women in swing states ultimately cast their ballots, but they probably weren’t good. Democrats ran videos, one narrated by actress Julia Roberts, pointing out the obvious constitutional guarantee that women have the right to vote any way they wanted to — and that what happens in the ballot box should stay in the ballot box.

The backlash against these ads was illuminating, suggesting there are still many men who think their wives should vote the way their husbands do and that it’s a betrayal if they don’t — and perhaps Trump’s win suggests their wives agreed.

The loss of reproductive freedom was evidently not enough for white women to go against their race, their class interests — or possibly their husbands.

Black, Latino men

The other racial factor in the campaign was the perception of the dwindling support for Harris from Black and Latino men. Trump also increased his share of the Latino vote.

And according to a New York Times poll, while Obama was supported by 93 per cent of Black Americans in 2008 and Biden was supported by 90 per cent in 2020, support had fallen to 73 per cent for Harris in 2024.

Is this the result of sexism or internalized misogyny? Could Black men not bring themselves to vote for a Black woman?

Barack Obama’s plea to Black men certainly seems to suggest a problem with sexism within that cohort of voters.

After the 2016 election, the American Psychological Association coined the anxiety around the election results as election stress disorder.

That stress has returned as the world now watches what will happen as Trump, with no guardrails, no checks and balances in place and billionaires by his side, attempts to remake America in his own authoritarian image.The Conversation

Meredith Ralston, Professor of Women’s Studies and Political Studies, Mount Saint Vincent University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.