THE QUIET CURIOSITY

This was in one of the villages near Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala in late 2004. Some of us, that included some people from Andhra Pradesh working with the state government , were visiting women’s groups supported under the Government of Kerala’s highly acclaimed programme, the Kudumbashree programme. These groups had engaged in various activities for their economic development. The group we were visiting belonged to the Dalit community. An interaction with them had been organized in the rather spacious and well maintained panchayat building.

At the appointed time, a group of about 15 women assembled in the hall. They were all neatly dressed. From their physical appearance, no one could possibly believe that they were poor. But their sense of self-esteem was striking. Each one had a note pad and a pen, ready to take notes on any useful points that may emerge from the discussions. They needed only a one-way translation. While the visitors asked questions in English which they could easily follow, they replied in Malayalam which I translated into English for the visiting group.

After a series of questions from the visitors which were very articulately responded to, one of the visitors said, “It is quite impressive to know that you all are well educated, in spite of your poverty. You dress so well that it’s so difficult for us to even think about yourselves as being poor. You are able to communicate very well. But there is one difference between you and the rural women of Andhra Pradesh. The poor women there do indeed look poor, are not able to communicate in any language other than Telugu and are not able to dress as well as you do. But they are certainly much more vocal that you are. You are a much quieter lot, responding only to the questions we ask”.

The women giggled. They found the comparison quite amusing. One of them, Geetha, who seemed to be one of the youngest in the group, then said, “Sir, we do have questions and we would have been more vocal. But we were told that you have limited time and that we should spend time in explaining to you our programme. Hence we didn’t ask you anything. But if you have the time, we would like to ask you a few questions”. Our friend from Andhra Pradesh beamed. He was happy that he had been able to get them to participate more actively. “Sure, go ahead. We can certainly spend more time talking to you”. What followed then was a volley of questions that took us all by surprise. Some of the questions were :

“What is the role of information technology in economic development of your state”?
“How have the rural poor, and especially women, benefited from the Information Technology boom that is so often mentioned in the context of Andhra Pradesh”?
“We hear that farmers in Andhra Pradesh commit suicides. If your state is developing so well, why are farmers being affected”?
“How do you ensure that rural producers are able to benefit from the market, which normally is controlled by the rich”?

We were taken by surprise, to say the least. The level of education and awareness was reflected so clearly through the sharp questions they had raised. So what if they were Dalits or if they were poor ? They had kept themselves abreast of developments in other parts of the country. Needless to mention, our group did find it difficult to answer these questions to their satisfaction. But as hosts, the women were gracious enough not to grill us too much !