Swadhina

Women’s Day 2009


India is exuberant after the feat at the recent Academy Awards, commonly called the Oscars. Everyone, young or old, an urban or slum dweller are feeling the pride of having won three Oscars. Alongside there have been criticisms galore with the questions being raised about depicting India as a poor, hapless country in the movie “Slumdog Millionaire”, the movie that has fetched us the Oscar or have given Indian actors a chance to stand at the podium of Academy Awards.

But the question is, irrespective of the movie being good or bad, are we being blind to the reality that is? Everyday we see hundreds of Jamals and Latikas around us in our local slums. A smiling Bhola or Gopal who used to attend the local school with neat uniforms everyday are today newspaper vendor and attendant in an office. The enthusiasm with which they used to dream about their future has ebbed away. Worse are their sisters; two of Bhola’s sisters who were married off early are back to their father’s house with two kids each, having been driven out by their drunkard husbands. The third sister works in a factory under utmost unhealthy conditions. Even if Bhola gets his food on time, his sisters often have to skip meals to cope up with utmost poverty. Gopal’s sister, who was a promising student, was also married off before she could complete her studies. She is now already a mother of two children at a tender age of twenty. And there are many, many more who end up being in a brothel like Latika in “Slumdog Millionaire”. Most of the girls in the slum areas share the same story….an impoverished childhood, an adolescence with sheer hard work and the rest of the life burdened with ill health, domestic violence and a selfless existence. At least Bhola or Gopal could go to school till 10th class but their sisters are often forced to give up studies even earlier, some are not even so fortunate.

Through our experience of more than 20 years we have often seen many talented girls from the slum areas ending up being confined to the obscure corner of the kitchen or extinguishing themselves by working as maid in other’s houses or even worse, as brothel inmates. Those who were excellent singers or good at handicraft as young girls have got lost in the quest of survival or have got lost in the maze of poverty. This is the universal story….it seems as if our life is guided by our destiny. If we are lucky we can become Sunita Williams or Kalpana Chawla, if we are not we end up being Latika. But practically speaking, it isn’t our luck; it is our socio-economic condition that is responsible in shaping us into what we would be.

Through constant campaigning there has definitely been a positive change in the status of women. Girls now get to go to school, take up career and sometimes even take their own decisions. They definitely have a better life than their mother or grandmother. But that is limited to those who are socially or economically better off. For those who live in abject poverty, things like education or healthcare is a ‘luxury’ that they cannot afford. And even if they do think of education, they think it in terms of educating their sons because the social system around them does not allow them to think otherwise. They can even dream of their sons becoming a helper in an office but cannot think of their daughters of ever becoming anything beyond housemaids.

So it leads us to believe that gender parity cannot be achieved until and unless we strive towards a socially and economically balanced society. The gender bias free society that we talk of today is a pseudo-system because it is not universally true for all the sections of the society. And we cannot forcefully thrust down the idea of gender parity to those who cannot think beyond two square meals a day or who have to share a one room house with ten others.

As long as we do not change the level of discrimination between rich and poor, we would never be able to achieve our goal of women’s empowerment. Before promising a better life to Bhola’s sisters we have to ensure that Bhola’s father is not out of work for most days of the year or that he stops drinking everyday, we have to ensure that Bhola’s mother does not have to do five odd jobs to support the family or to see that Bhola does not have to stand in a queue for long hours to go to toilet early in the morning…It is a long process, a tough one too but impossible is nothing. We have to convince our economists and policy makers to see beyond GDP or graphs of economic growth because that are not the real indicators of the lives of Bhola, Gopal, Jamal, Salim or Latika.

We have to ourselves strengthen the social system at the basic level- ensuring regular income opportunities for all, providing supplementary income generation facilities, good housing and sanitation facilities and an equal opportunity system in terms of education and health care. And only then we can proudly uphold the success of Women’s Day.

We have to ensure that like Jamal, even Latika gets to sit in the seat of a millionaire and not merely bask in the glory of her male counterpart and for that we have to change our mind-set and belief that even women can. Only then can we proudly proclaim -“Jai Ho!”

-SWADHINA Team


YOU ARE INVITED !

Swadhina:
Women’s Day: Programme Schedule 2009

8th March 2009 (Sunday): Women’s Meet: Ghatsila, Jharkhand
Venue: Little Angel School, Ghaisila Town,
East Singbhum, Jharkhand State
(Contact Person: Saswati Roy Phone: 09800162683/ 06585225154)


10th March 2009(Sunday): Women’s Rally & Meet: Bondih, Jharkhand
Venue: Tagore Society Auditorium
Village: Bonkuchia, via: Katin
East Singbhum, Jharkhand
(Contact Person: Prabir Sarkar Phone: 09771314915


8th March 2009 (Sunday): Women’s Rally & Meet: Garbeta, Midnapore, West Bengal
Venue: Swadhina Organic Farm
Village: Loginoari, via: Humgarh, Garbeta
Midnapore West, West Bengal
(Contact Person: Rina Acharjee Phone:09002037685)

9th March 2009(Monday): Seminar on Women: Mathicode, Kanyakumari
Venue: Mathicode CSI Church Auditorium
Colachel - Karungal Road, KK District, Tamil Nadu
(Contact Person: D.Suganthi Phone:09443186770

14th March 2009 (Saturday): Seminar on Women: Kolkata
Venue: YMCA Auditorium, (near Indian Museum)
25 Jawahar Lal Nehru Road
Kolkataa 700087
(Contact Person: Smriti Sarkar/Srichandra Phone: 9830259104/9874874688)


Please feel free to join any of our programmes mentioned nearest to you or, alternatively, attend an event organised by any other organisation near you around that date. In case you cannot make it, do share your thoughts with us through phone, e-mail or post. International Women’s Day is a day we take out some time to think about issues concerning women. We urge you to set aside some of your time for this precious cause....


Srichandra V
Convenor
Women’s Day Programme