Friday 25 September 2009

A SILENT REVOLUTION

It is experiences like these that convince me that a silent revolution is sweeping by the countryside, in rural areas, in far flung hamlets and villages. I was once visiting some villages in the Jalaun district of Uttar Pradesh, the most populous state of India, in mid-2003. This is a district which continues to mirror the typical characteristics of a feudal era, where land holding is skewed, where repression of dalits and women is marked and which has an adversely skewed gender ratio, low rates of education especially among the women and high rates of morbidity and mortality.

The women I met were members of a self-help group. They had initially started off 4-5 years ago by saving small amounts so that they could collect a small fund to meet their various needs. Gradually, these evolved as forums for women to look at issues affecting them. They started discussing issues of domestic violence, of sexual harassment while working on the farms of the rich and influential landlords, of the low level of education among the girl children. They started taking part in various village level planning exercises. Some even stood for and got elected into the panchayat (local government). They had started insisting on getting their daughters educated. They had negotiated with their men folk to enable women to access more opportunities.

As their work grew, and as the visible impact of their work grew, the men too started taking notice. The men had realized that their women needed to spend more time outside their homes, to visit the block development officer’s office, to go to the District Collector’s office to press for their demands, to visit the bank in the neighbouring town to deposit their savings etc. They had started getting convinced that these would help them and their villages. As a result, they had started to even undertake domestic chores – taking care of their children, cooking, fetching water and fuelwood etc. The women had also seen the advantage of getting their sons engaged in domestic chores, earlier restricted to the girl children.

While we were discussing these issues, I noticed that many women still had their faces covered. The system of purdah was still quite prevalent. I asked them about this custom and whether they thought this practice was going to change. “There have been lot of changes over the past 5 years of so. We have started taking various responsibilities and representing the needs of our village with the block and district officials. This never happened before. We have been transacting with the bank. More and more girls are getting educated. We have regular meetings. We speak up in meetings even when our menfolk are around. These are major changes for us. Yes, we still tend to cover our faces when there are other men around. But then, this too, is a matter of time. In a few years from now, even this will disappear”, they said emphatically.

I have seen such changes sweeping through many other parts of the country. Our mainstream media, especially our films and television serials, may still be stereotyping our women and glorifying their traditional roles to counter the trends of increased opportunities that women are increasingly seeking, our corporate sector may still be raking in the big bucks by continuing to project women as objects of desire, our cities may be reeling under various atrocities against women, even in the so-called middle and upper class strata, with various forms of domestic violence, our labour markets may still pay much less to women for the same kind of work - even, in some cases, in the case of skilled and professional workers, our urban educational institutions and work places may still be a melting pot of sexual harassment ……. but these belie a quiet, but significant change that is sweeping across our countryside, nothing short of a silent revolution and hopes for a lasting change, even if that's going to take a long time ……!!!