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On the 8th March 2002, women all over the world gathered together to celebrate the 25th International Women’s Day. The day was held in honour of women’s movements dating back to the early 1900’s when women in New York marched against poor working conditions in the textiles industry. They rallied for shorter work hours, better pay, an end to child labour and the right to vote. Sound familiar? The fact is that many of these issues are still pertinent in developing countries today. Women and children all over the world are still subject to pathetic working conditions and they are still exploited. Many are completely excluded from decision-making processes, on all scales from village to international, democratic or otherwise. Today, global policies and decisions are working to the detriment of women. The last issue of Global Awakening explored how rich companies are stealing knowledge from local indigenous farmers on the Sub-Continent. It’s mainly women who are involved in rearing and growing crops to provide for their families. Subsequently, it’s the women who are affected by the hijacking of agriculture by the rich and wealthy. It is also women who are involved in domestic activities such as child rearing and providing for the basic needs of their family. The present global economy attaches no value to these vital tasks. Women in developing countries are custodians of the environment. They, more than anyone depend on forests, rivers and fertile fields for their survival. The present global economy gives no value to the protection of the environment by women, and it is women who suffer the most when their environment is plundered for economic gain. International Women’s Day is a day of solidarity amongst women. It shows that women can join together and make a difference. In this issue we look at several women’s movements in India who are doing just that. |
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Sunanda Kumar (Executive Secretary of AID India) comments on the changing attitudes towards women in one of most marginal regions of Northern India. We reached the non-descript village ‘Raxi’ in the Garwha district of Jharkhand State after a long and bumpy ride. The majority of Garwha district has little in the way of roads, safe water provision and electricity. The feudalistic society that prevails lays a taboo on any type of social interaction for women. It is forbidden for them venture out of their homes to talk to outsiders or male members other than family members in their village. However, there is a new social change developing quietly in the villages of Garwha. A welcome change brought about by the dedicated work of local AID officers. At least sixty-eight women had assembled under the tree and were discussing their strategies for the upcoming panchayat (local village council) elections. Gathering even three women and drawing them outside their homes could not be thought of seven years before. Some striking facts about women in Garwha
So how did these women break free of the social restrictions imposed upon them and participate in a political process that will decide the future of their village’s development? In fact, the road to achieving this process has been very long and arduous. When AID first set upon a plan seven years ago to empower the women in the region the response was very cold and unwelcoming. Moreover, the women themselves felt that it would be impossible for them to come out of their homes to talk about their problems and find solutions. Finding a woman who had attained even primary school education was near on impossible, however a young girl called Suryamukhi who had just completed her schooling in the region was identified. She was 18 years old and it was difficult to gauge whether the senior women would listen to her in the first instance. But the sheer grit and determination of Suryamukhi brought about a huge change in the region. AID trained Suryamukhi to pass on information relating to reproductive issues such as spacing childbirth. Her role was to form a women’s self help group and use the group to motivate other women to limit the amount of children they had in accordance with their health and economic situations. Initially, she was laughed at and rebuked. Women didn’t want to co-operate with her. Whenever she raised these subjects other women would highlight the fact that she wasn’t married and therefore not in a position to pass on advice about child spacing and family planning to anyone else, let alone her seniors. But now, after her continuous efforts other women have realised the potential of the group. They now feel that in their region the women’s group is the first priority for the development of the village. The situation has progressed to the stage where women are prepared to openly stand in local elections themselves, sometimes even opposing their own male family members! Women fighting failings in the system… Presently, there are thirty-eight self-help groups in the region, which cover around one thousand two hundred women. The groups are focusing on common issues concerning the village communities:
Empowered women’s groups taking a lead in saving bonded children from the carpet industry. Many children in the district are working as child labourers within the carpet industry. The region is flooded with carpet looms and parents bank upon their children’s wages. Many of the children are ‘bonded’ to their jobs - that is they are working to pay off debts accumulated by their parents. Debt bondage basically amounts to a form of slavery. Nasseruddin is a 10-year-old victim of debt bondage. He was beaten mercilessly and denied food for two days for a mistake he made whilst weaving an intricate carpet pattern. His parents stood mute and helpless, they did not have the money to pay off their loan and take back their child. The Mahila Sanghathan (women’s group) in the region decided not to be a mute spectator. They grouped together their savings and advanced money to the parents to enable them to pay off the debt and retrieve their child from bondage. This has been a big step in the history of the carpet weaving and bondage in the region. There have been a number of similar situations in the district where other victims like Nasserudin have been allowed to leave their life of bondage due to the bold and timely decisions made by women’s groups. Little Naseruddin is now back in his village and attending a school set up by AID. He is yet to recover from the trauma he underwent, but is slowly getting back into his groove.
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STORIES FROM EAST SINGHBHUM |
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The dedication of Sabita improved Sarla’s quality of life. Sarla Mahato was born deaf and dumb and was neglected by her parents. The village where she lives, Kenduwa is a very remote village located in the East Singhbhum district of Jharkhand. The village is lacking in facilities for treating even minor ailments such as fever and diarrhoea, so there was no question of Sarla getting any medical or external assistance for her disability. The opening of an education and health centre for adolescent girls by AID definitely made a difference in her life. A young and energetic volunteer, Sabita Mahato who had been trained to take care of the health centre activities in the village saw the need for extending her scope to the most disadvantaged members of her village. Sabita identified hard-to-reach cases like Sarla and brought her into the fold of the centre activities in spite of being dissuaded by other villagers, who said that she couldn’t tackle the case. Sabita took the case of Sarla as a challenge and started devoting special time to her. They communicated through signs and gestures made through hands and eye expressions. She trained Sarla to recognize the alphabets and to write in Hindi. Now Sarla always carries a pencil and notebook with her wherever she goes. Sarla’s parents are overwhelmed at the achievement of their daughter and are full of praise for Sabita, who took extreme pains to educate their daughter - something they had not attempted. The need for medical care and counselling for women in rural India. Banumathi Murmu is a woman in her early fifties who lives in Harina, a village located in the East Singhbhum district of Jharkhand. Recently, Banumathi noticed that her periods had stopped for two months. Thinking she was pregnant, she panicked and went to the witchcraft doctor to ask him to abort her foetus. Bunumathi was already a grandmother to four and the prospect of having a baby at this point in her life was very frightening. Moreover, she was afraid that other villagers would shun and ridicule her. The witch doctor told her that she wasn’t pregnant and that she had stopped menstruating and was experiencing menopause (a natural occurrence to women in that age group). However, she was unwilling to believe him and persisted in persuading him to destroy her foetus. The witchdoctor tried to convince her but in the end saw the opportunity for earning money; he gave her herbal concoctions and made her undergo the entire abortion procedure in an unsafe and unhygienic manner. The health workers in the region have tried to convince her about proven scientific and medical facts. She has now become a woman of great ridicule in the village and is laughed at for her perceptions. Yet it is a dangerous signal when women do not understand their own bodily functions.
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WOMEN IN TAMIL NADU CELEBRATE THE IDEALS OF SHRI JAYAPRAKASH NARAYAN |
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In the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu, a federation of four-hundred and twenty women’s groups decided to celebrate International Women’s Day in remembrance of Shri Jayaprakash Narayan, at whose behest AID emerged. JP Narayan was a great socialist leader; he called for ‘total revolution’ in India. He was inspired by Gandhiji and devoted his life striving for the Gandhian principles of freedom, democracy and a secular state. The groups in Tamil Nadu initially emerged out of the need for total transformation for women in the region. Like many other parts of India, women were besieged with social problems such as female infanticide, isolation, destitution, early marriage, dowry, domestic violence and economic deprivation. Women from different backgrounds came together and formed twenty groups. The movements proved a great success in tackling social issues; they managed to secure small business loans from banks and gained the backing of the government. Over the last twelve years, membership has multiplied resulting in over four hundred groups covering at least fifteen thousand women. The groups are organised into district and state level bodies; the latter represents the different interests of women from all over the state. They discuss and decide on policy issues, lobby with the government and plan for programs in their region. This International Women’s Day was very special to them as it coincided with the centenary celebrations of JP Narayan. They felt that the occasion should be used to highlight how they have wedded his ideals to their everyday life, in particular to show the democratic nature of their groups. It was also important to remember the bitter and sweet experiences over the last twelve years and to demonstrate the progression they have made resulting in the mass base they have today. Numbers had to be limited to just ten representatives from each group; yet over 3750 still participated. The event was a cultural extravaganza with different tribal indigenous dances and drum music on display - a welcome change from film industry songs that have completely saturated village culture. Several confident women took to the stage to talk about major achievements that their groups had made. These included stories of girls being saved from infanticide, the restoration of abandoned girls to their families, and tackling cases of deserted women. Overall, the groups had succeeded in giving women their due rights and making 8500 women economically independent. It also became evident that the women’s groups had played a major part in tackling debt bondage by providing families with money to pay off debts. The tables were turned at this event. In a unique twist, the bankers and government officials for once were silent; it was the women who were doing all the talking! The entire show was managed and staged by women’s federations using money raised from individual groups. The programme was a huge success and ended with all the women taking a pledge to carry on their crusade against social injustices for the betterment of all women in the region.
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AID collaborated with Bordesley Green Girls’ School on a classroom project where students were asked to explore ‘the role of women in development’. The project was carried out with two year 9 Geography classes over the course of a term. The girls were encouraged to think deeply about the role of women in development whilst also challenging their own cultural and traditional views on the role of women in today’s society. Students looked at several case studies from the Sub-Continent, including the Chipko Movement, where peasant women banded together and forced a government ban on deforestation in the Himalayas. The lessons were developed to be as interesting and ‘hands-on’ as possible and at the same time to challenge the girl’s preconceptions of development in poorer countries. For example, the Chipko case study effectively illustrated that there are always conflicting interests in issues of development and the students were forced to think about the different interests of actors from corporate to grass roots levels. The project allowed students to explore situations where women have used their key skills and attributes to bring about real change in the struggle for independence and development in the Sub Continent. They were also encouraged to think about how these key skills and attributes could be used to bring about change in modern western countries. Particularly impressive was how the girls conducted themselves in group debates and role-plays based on women’s rights in the UK, where opposing groups were debating for and against women attaining top jobs. Digby Horlock (Head of Humanities at the school) worked with AID in developing and implementing project ideas. He had some encouraging words to say, ‘Shiv from AID made informal contact with us about an area which is totally relevant to our curriculum at Bordesley Green Girls’ School. So we jumped at the opportunity and through collaboration on the materials, we developed a teaching unit which effectively brought issues effecting women in India into the context and perspective of Asian community life here in the UK.’ If you are a teacher or a youth worker and would like to find out more about AID’s Development Education work, please don’t hesitate to contact Shiv at the AID office.
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In the UK, AID has been working to raise awareness of global issues amongst the South Asian community with a view to getting more Asian people to participate in global development. Asian families keep strong links to their ancestral homes in the Sub-Continent - this gives them a unique insight, one that isn’t really taken into account by present local to global development and development education thinking. Global Awakening was the start of a process which we hope will encourage more people from the South Asian community in the UK to get involved in local to global development. Much of AID’s development education work is done from a South Asian perspective. This is particularly important when working with the Asian community in the UK as we are using a language that comes from our own cultural reference point and case studies that they can relate to. This is illustrated by the fact that event’s name ‘Global Awakening’ is a rough translation of ‘Vikas Ki Liya Jagrati’ – which in turn is the Hindi equivalent of ‘development education’. The event was attended by around 250 people. Local young Asian groups such as Gujarati language schools and youth groups were asked to contribute to the day rather than just participate. The emphasis of Global Awakening was more to do with hands-on activities rather than round table debates and this was reflected in the activities that took place on the day. One group of children decided to recreate an Indian village classroom and asked other participants to sit in on the class and soak up the atmosphere which included singing and creative storytelling. A millennium volunteers group from the National Coalition Building Institute (NCBI), brought along a poverty tree on which participants were invited to attach their own positive and negative images of the Indian Sub-Continent. A youth group from Leicester brought along some Djing equipment and budding future MC’s created lyrics and raps around global issues. Some young volunteers decided to take a video camera and interviewed participants with the aim of getting some consensus on what Asian people thought their own role was in fighting poverty. Discussions were also held at intervals during the day. The outcome from the practical activities means that we now have illustrative and creative images of how South Asians in the UK perceive poverty and development on the Indian Sub-Continent. These examples will be used in future events and are definitely something to build upon. The most important concrete outcome was that everyone (young and old) left the event with an idea of how they can help less fortunate people on the Indian Sub-Continent in a positive way. The event is a promising start of a long process of getting more South Asian involvement in local and global issues.
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This years India Republic Day celebrations were held at the Gujarat Arya Association Hall in Leicester. The event was a huge success, with over £2500 being raised for Child Labour projects in India. The festivities included music, dance and plenty to eat. Over 300 people attended and all had a great night. The event was organised by AID Leicester Network, a committed group of volunteer. On behalf of AID and all those unfortunate children in India, we would like to say big THANKYOU!
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A European
Seminar on Immigration and Development: |
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AID will be organising a series of seminars in Birmingham to look at how members of ethnic minority communities living in Europe are contributing towards development in their own ‘mother countries’. For example, Asian cultural groups and religious institutions often raise money in the UK and donate to good causes in South Asia. This constitutes a large portion of the funds received by development organisations in South Asia. Therefore, it can be said that the South Asian community in the UK has the potential to play a more active role in international development issues. The seminars are being held as part of a Europe-wide project that is looking to research and publicise the added values that ethnic minority and migrant communities bring to local and global development. The project itself is a partnership of Development and Ethnic Minority led organisations from all over Europe and organisations, researchers and journalists from all over Europe will participating in the seminars. AID is looking for South Asian organisations in the UK who are involved in local-global development and would like to participate in the seminars. By participating, organisations will be able to share their experiences and raise awareness of their work on a European platform. It will also be a good opportunity to learn about the experiences of Ethnic Minority groups from other European countries. If you or your organisation is interested in participating or want more details about the project, please contact us!
Alternative For
India Development |
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