In memoriam: Lotika Sarkar 1923 – 2013 #womenrights #Vaw

February 25, 2013 

Saluting Professor Lotika Sarkar who fought to make the country’s laws uphold gender justice and women’s rights

By Vibhuti Patel

Professor Lotika Sarkar who played a central role in several path-breaking and crucial legislations for gender justice and empowerment of women during 1975-2005, passed away at the age of 90 on 23rd February 2013. In the women’s rights movement, she was known as Lotikadee.

When other stalwarts of women’s studies touched our hearts with inspirational speeches in the women’s movement gatherings, Lotikadee floored us with her legal acumen. The first Indian woman to graduate from Cambridge, Dr. Lotika Sarkar was the first woman to join the law faculty at the University of Delhi. She taught Criminal law and was a mainstay of the Indian Law Institute, Delhi during 1980s and 1990s. She was a member of the Government of India’s Committee on the Status of Women in India and a founding member of several institutions—the Indian Association for Women Studies (IAWS) and the Centre for Women‘s Development Studies (CWDS).

Lotikadee was in the peak of her career, when she was asked to join Committee on Status of Women in India, 1972 that prepared Towards Equality Report, 1974. As a pioneer in the fields of law, women’s studies and human rights, she prepared the chapter on laws concerning women in the Status of Women’s Committee Report with gender sensitivity and analytical clarity to promote women’s rights.

Along with three law professors of Delhi University – Prof. Upendra Baxi, Prof. Kelkar, Dr. Vasudha Dhagamwar, Lotikadee wrote the historic Open Letter to the Chief Justice of India in 1979, challenging the judgment of the apex court on the Mathura rape case. I remember cutting stencil and making copies on our cyclostyling machine of the 4-page long letter for wider circulation. Translation of this letter into Gujarati and Hindi served as a crash course in understanding the nuances of criminal justice system, rape laws and sexual violence as the weapon to keep women in a perpetual state of terrorization, intimidation and subjugation. It resulted in birth of the first feminist group against rape in January, 1980 – Forum Against Rape.

In 1980, along with Dr. Veena Mazumdar, Lotikadee founded Centre for Women’s Development Studies. When Lotikadee came to Mumbai for the first Conference on Women’s Studies in April, 1981 at SNDT women’s University, we, young feminists were awe-struck! Ideological polarization in this conference was extremely volatile. Lotikadee’s commitment to the left movement did not prevent her from interacting meaningfully with liberals, free-thinkers and also the new-left like me. Indian Association of Women’s Studies was formed in this gathering. In the subsequent conferences, Lotikadee attracted innumerable legal luminaries to IAWS.

At the initiative of her students, Amita Dhanda and Archana Parashar, a volume of Essays, Engendering Law: in Honour of Lotika Sarkar was published in 1999 by Eastern Book Company, Delhi.

Lotikadee and her journalist husband Shri. Chanchal Sarkar were kind, generous and trusting. After her husband passed away she was under immense trauma and grief. Taking advantage of this situation, her cook and a police officer whose education she and her husband had sponsored, usurped her property and house. Her students, India’s top lawyers and judges mobilized support and signed an open letter studded with such names as Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer, Soli Sorabjee, Gopal Subramaniam and Kapila Vatsyayan. Jurists, advocates, academics, bureaucrats, journalists and human rights activists signed the open letter demanding justice for her. Finally, Lotika Sarkar’s property and assets was transferred back to her to allow her to live her life in peaceful serenity, which she so deserved. Lotikadee’s traumatic experience invited serious attention on safeguarding the rights of senior citizens by both state and civil society.

Lotikadee was a conscience keeper not only for policy makers and legal fraternity but also for the women’s studies and women’s movement activists. The most appropriate tribute to Lotikadee is to proactively pursue the mission she started with her team in 1980, to fight against rape and various forms of structural and systemic violence against women and to strive for social justice, distributive justice and gender justice. The resurgence of activism against sexual violence and feminist debate around Justice Verma Commission’s Report as well as Criminal Law (Amendment ) Ordinance, 2013 constantly reminds us of the pioneering work of Lotikadee in terms of creating a strong band of committed and legally aware feminists who are following her footsteps. Let us salute Lotikadee, torchbearer of gender justice by continuing her heroic legacy.

Vibhuti Patel is active in the women’s movement in India since 1972 and currently teaching at SNDT Women’s University, Mumbai.

original post- http://feministsindia.com/in-memoriam-lotika-sarkar-1927-2013/

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#RIP-Lotika Sarkar- Champion of #Womenrights #Vaw

 

Feb 23, 2013- Professor Lotika Sarkar  passed away this evening at around 8.30pm at home. The funeral will be held tomorrow, Sunday 24th at 1:00 pm, at the Electric Crematorium, Lodi Road, New Delhi.

She was   India‘s first woman to graduate from Cambridge and a champion of women’s rights,

Professor Lotika Sarkar was widely-known pioneer in the fields of law, women’s studies and human rights. She taught criminal law and conflict of laws at the Faculty of Law, University of Delhi and has been an active member of the Indian Law Institute. She was a member of the Government of India‘s Committee on the Status of Women in India and has been a founding member of several institutions—the Indian Association for Women Studies and the Centre for Women‘s Development Studies.

Lotika Sarkar played a crucial role in several path-breaking legislations for gender justice. A Cambridge-educated lawyer by training, she was the first woman teacher of law at the University of Delhi.

Lotika Sarkar, RIP. One of the original Painted and Dented Ladies, she and three other professors of law wrote the landmark Open Letter to the Chief Justice of India in 1979, which sharply criticised the Supreme Court’s judgement in what has come to be known as the Mathura rape case and thereby catalysed the first major campaign for changes in the laws relating to rape back in 1980. It’s so important to remember and honour pioneers like her.

Read here Writing the Women’s Movement: A Reader

 

 

#India-The Art of Fair Budgeting #Gender

Gender budgeting — by clearly allocating funds for women’s development and protecting their interests with suitable tax policies — boosts female empowerment. But in India this process is simply about the government allocating funds and doing little else. It‘s time that changed

LUBNA KABLY TIMES INSIGHT GROUP

During the run-up to the budget, discussions on tax policies tend to hog the limelight. But little is often heard about improving the lot of Indian women in such proposals or debates. Fortunately, this time around, there’s a fair bit of work going on behind the scenes to ensure that ‘gender budgeting’ is not ignored, whether its via the allocation of funds for women’s development programmes, or in ensuring that tax policies (especially via duties on essential commodities) do not adversely impact a housewife’s purse-strings.
But there are other aspects of gender budgeting to consider as well. As Janet Stotsky, advisor, office of budget and planning (in the office of the managing director), International Monetary Fund, puts it: “Gender budgeting doesn’t require any special tools or techniques, but a recognition that fiscal policies impact women and men differently.”
“Gender budgeting brings a focus towards ensuring that government policies, both on the spending and revenue side, provide greater opportunities for women, a better standard of living and a fairer distribution of income. On the spending side, it could contribute to ensuring a better allocation of funds for programs such as health care, or availability of clean water. While such expenditure typically disproportionately benefits women it also positively benefits the society as a whole,” explains Stotsky.
She adds: “On the revenue side, it could help ensure that the tax code does not discriminate against women’s work effort or products that are the core expenditures of poor families, which are disproportionately headed by women.”
STILL THE SECOND SEX HERE
Gender budgeting’s Indian odyssey is a recent one. Gender sensitivity in allocation of resources and monitoring of select schemes was first introduced during the seventh five year plan (1987-92) when India joined the ranks of as many as 50 countries which had adopted gender budgeting. But formal earmarking of funds, of at least 30 per cent, in all women related sectors both at Central and State level, began only in the ninth five year plan (1997-2002).
However, the focus here continues to be largely on the spending side.
A 2004 expert committee attempted to change that. It made various suggestions, including establishment of gender budgeting cells in all ministries and departments. Today, approximately 56 ministries and departments have set up such cells.
According to the 2011 census, there are 59 crore women in India; they account for 48.46 per cent of India’s total population. Last year’s union budget (2012-13) allocated Rs 18,500 crore to the ministry of women and child development (MWCD — one of the key ministries working for women’s welfare). This allocation was an increase of 15 per cent as against a revised estimate of Rs 16,100 crore in the previous year. In a written reply to the Lok Sabha, Krishna Tirath, minister for women and child development mentioned that the gross total allocations towards gender budget have steadily increased by 38 per cent over the last three years, from Rs 56,857.61 crore in 2009-10 to Rs 78,251.01 crore in 2011-12. Details of funds allocated and released towards various key schemes were also provided. (Refer Table)
THE TIMING’S THE THING
One may argue about the need for more funds for various programs, but what is equally important is their timely release. Schemes such as Ujjawala (where funds are released to NGOs involved in the prevention of women trafficking, rescue and rehabilitation of women) fared better than other schemes where release of funds was lagging.
In this backdrop, Vibhuti Patel, head, post graduate economics, SNDT Women’s University points out: “Very often, allocations made are not released in time — the reasons could vary from faulty design, antipathy and bureaucratic bungling. Consequently, if the funds remain unutilised, in the subsequent year the allocation is slashed and the scheme fails to meet its objectives. There should be proper monitoring of fund allocation and its utilisation. Ideally, unutilised funds should be allowed to be carried forward next year.”
She also points out that the target of 30 per cent gender allocation under all ministries has not yet been achieved and must be immediately implemented. There is a dire need of greater accountability and transparency.
Even measuring outcomes is vital. “In India, owing to comparatively weak indicators for critical goals such as reduced maternal death rates, a high rate of female literacy and increased job participation, a follow through is essential to evaluate the outcomes,” stresses Stotsky.
The draft of the 12th five year plan (2012-17) has called for improving the mechanism of gender budgeting, beginning with bringing all ministries and government departments within its coverage and tabulation of gender specific MIS data. To aid purposive gender budgeting, a new methodology and format is to be drawn up so that all policies and programs are engendered from the initial stage.
“Women groups have been demanding a review of the format of the gender budgeting statement, for quite some time. The format must cover not only 100 per cent women specific schemes, or those where 30 per cent of funds are allocated for women, but also gender neutral schemes — such as those relating to education or employment and show to what extent the same have benefited women,” states Patel.
BETTER HALF PLANNING
The draft plan also calls for ‘gender audits’, which are to be incorporated within the expenditure and performance audits conducted by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (C&AG).
Most important of all, this draft states that formal
pre-budget consultations must be undertaken by the Finance Ministry with women’s groups, as is the practice in several countries. In fact, several countries have benefitted by actively involving women groups in the entire gender budgeting process.
For instance, Philippines introduced gender budgeting in 1996. In the initial period, funds meant for women development were allocated by government agencies towards strange causes such as ballroom dancing training for its female staff. Today, aided by two NGOs the process is better understood and properly monitored. In the UK, the Women’s Budget Group , comprising largely of women academicians, plays an important role in policy formulation.
The draft plan also calls for a task force to be set up under the MWCD to review the functioning of gender budget cells and to vet all new laws, policies and programs for gender inclusiveness. “One hopes that these suggestions are adopted and that the coming Union-Budget 2013-14 with appropriate allocation of funds, introduction of suitable schemes, empower women, economically and socially,” sums up Patel.
•

MAHILA EXPRESS: Gender budgeting mechanisms work effectively only if they cover all government departments

 

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#India-A letter to young men who protested against rape #Vaw #mustread #sundayreading

TABISH KHAIR, The Hindu

Give her her space. Photo: Shiv Kumar Pushpakar

It’s good you took to the streets to protest not for yourself; still there is so much more you can do, says Tabish Khair.

It is good that you protested against a homicidal rape. I will not call it a “brutal rape”, because that would imply some rapes are not brutal. All rapes are equally brutal. It is not often that you have stopped to think of so many other rapes that take place in India (and in other countries too), but it is good you stopped to think this time. And you protested with real conviction. Let me reiterate it once more: It is good you protested for a change.

But protesting against this homicidal rape was easy. Now, before you, lie a number of acts which will prove far more difficult. For instance, you will have to learn to decline when your mother serves you food before she serves your sisters. Actually, to be honest, you will have to anticipate your mother and serve food yourself. You will need to help, equally, with the cooking, cleaning, washing up. What about the laundry? You probably have an ayah or a part-time servant, but still, you might have noticed that your mother and sisters do a lot of the domestic chores too. I won’t be so radical as to ask you to help the over-worked ayah — though that is something to consider too — but surely you need not watch TV or go off to the cricket club when your mother is putting away the dishes or stacking the clothing.

You will need to work very hard on it — not as a favour but as a habit. And believe me, such habits are not easy to cultivate when you have been brought up with decent Indian middle-class values.

But why should I target Indian values in particular? I have seen young men in places like England, Italy, France and even Denmark expecting their mothers — though less often their sisters — to take care of domestic chores. Do not, because you have grown up reading most books in English, assume that patriarchy is a problem only for India.

I recall seeing on Facebook, in the days when you were out on the streets protesting against the homicidal rape in Delhi, that you disliked the suggestion by a famous Indian writer that your passionate protests were motivated by class bias. I will not enter this complex matter here. It is sad that you have been deaf to so many rapes in remote, overlooked corners of our country, but that does not mean you do not deserve full credit for protesting this time. It is good you protested this time, at least.

But let not your protest be confined to middle class affinities. It is not true, as some of you wrote on Facebook, that the famous writer was wrong because it is middle-class women who smoke, drink and are accused of wearing sexy clothes anyway. No, middle-class women are strongly controlled by the forces of propriety in India. Some might react to this and smoke or drink, but this is very rare even in the big cities of India outside cosmopolitan circles.

Actually, it is working-class women in India who have traditionally smoked — and openly imbibed fermented drinks. You do not see them. They usually belong to the aboriginal tribes and the “scheduled castes”, and many of them have been “cured” out of such habits by missionary as well as middle-class propriety in the last few decades. But if you really look, you will still find some of them smoking bidison your streets.

You see you have fallen into the same trap as your opponents. There are frightened men (and women) who want to control women and inhibit their spaces in the name of protecting them. They say that Indian women do not smoke or drink. They are wrong: millions of Indian women have been smoking and drinking for centuries, and lakhs still do. As for “sexy clothes”, well, “sexy” is a strange word in a country where millions of women do not have enough clothes to wear. The fact is that Indian women, like Indian men, have traditionally worn a more varied assortment of clothes than the men and women of any other country!

You see, for centuries these “working” women have also been raped — by people like you, by people like me — for partly that reason. They were raped because their different lifestyles were considered a moral and social defect, which somehow “called for” such a brutal form of exploitation. They were raped because they were not given the right to say “no”.

So, yes, stand up for equal space for all women; their right to say no or yes; their right to wear saris or shorts. Do not stop your sister from going out in the evenings, if you yourself would go out in the evenings. Do not use fear as a weapon to control her. This takes effort too. Because finally, “rape” is a weapon that is brandished over the heads of all women who simply wish to have the space to live as fully as men do. Do not use it as an argument to curtail the lives of the women around you.

It was good to see you protest for women, and not just for yourself. But let it not end here. Look around you. Look into your families and do what you can there. Look into your neighbourhoods, and do what you can there. And forgive me if this sounds preachy, but I am talking from experience. It took me time to learn to iron my own clothes, wash my own dishes, and to cook for my family. It takes effort even today. I was not born with such habits. But I make an effort because I know that it is an example I can hand on to my son and, indirectly, my daughters.

Rape is the monstrous face of ordinary domestic injustices. Do not fall into the easy trap of blaming politicians for a flaw that exists in almost every home.

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#India-Towards a Decisive Victory in the Historic Battle for Women’s Rights

ML Update Editorial

The 23-year-old Delhi gang-rape victim finally succumbed to her injuries on 29 December morning after battling on bravely for 13 days. The unknown young woman will go down in history as one of India’s most memorable martyrs for the cause of justice and freedom for India’s women – freedom without the fear of violence and fetters of patriarchal domination.

If the government had thought that by transferring the 23-year-old victim of gang-rape to Singapore it would succeed in defusing the people’s anger and diluting their action and resolve, it could not have been more mistaken. The news of the courageous fighter finally succumbing to her injuries in a Singapore hospital triggered a renewed countrywide wave of collective anger and mass mourning.

The government that betrayed shameful insensitivity to the brutal incident and the agitation that erupted in its wake is now desperate to score political points. Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi, who never showed the courage and sensitivity to reach out to the protesters, were at the airport to receive the victim’s body. The funeral was held in the shadow of high level state security away from the reach of the public. And the Delhi government has now come out with the announcement of a compensation of Rs 15 lakh and a job for a family member of the victim.

But the scar inflicted by the brutal gang-rape can surely not be healed with token gestures or pious platitudes. Rape is the most violent and sordid expression of a deep-seated prejudice and structural discrimination against women that defines mainstream society and culture in India today. That a Congress MP, who also happens to be the son of the incumbent President of India, could make such a vicious comment about women participating in the ongoing anti-rape agitation and then get away with an empty apology with the party refusing to take any action against him, comes as a shocking pointer to the misogynist mindset of the ruling elite. And the Indian state, the judiciary included, has little will to combat this mindset – on the contrary, more often than not, it behaves as a custodian of this mindset. No wonder then that India has such a high incidence of custodial rapes.

It should be remembered that the two key milestones of the anti-rape agitation in the last three decades were both related to custodial rape. The well-known Mathura rape case which galvanised women’s organisations in the first frontal battle on the issue of rape was a shocking instance of a custodial rape condoned by the apex court. In fact it was the acquittal of the accused constables by the Supreme Court overturning the High Court verdict that triggered the first powerful wave of anti-rape protests in the country in 1979 and led to some stringent provisions in the anti-rape law by 1983.

The second powerful wave came in July 2004 in the wake of the rape and killing of Thangjam Manorama by the Assam Rifles regiment of the Indian Army. The women of Manipur drew the attention of the whole world with their bold protest, and this, together with the historic hunger strike of Irom Sharmila Chanu, has placed the call for the repeal of the draconian AFSPA firmly on the agenda of the democratic movement of the country. Indeed, the democratic movement has been increasingly aware of the fact that state and state-sponsored violence, from Kashmir to Gujarat to Chhattisgarh and beyond, has unfailingly been marked by the targeting of women for horrific sexual violence.

The ongoing agitation which has already galvanised the people on such an encouragingly big scale marks the third major milestone in the epic battle against violence against women in India. It is important to grasp and stress the linkages of the current phase with the previous phases in the history of the women’s movement because the government is bent upon reducing it to a passing event to be buried under the bureaucratic framework of investigative committees and token legislative changes. Changes in rape laws and other laws dealing with women’s rights, and more importantly with the mechanism of implementation and the justice delivery system, are of urgent importance and the government must be forced to adopt an inclusive and transparent democratic process in proper consultation with women’s organisations to bring about much-needed and much-awaited changes in this direction. The issue of change in rape laws can certainly not be left at the mercy of a Parliament which has been busy holding back for the last two decades a legislation for one-third reservation for women in legislative bodies.

But the impetus generated by the December upsurge in Delhi and across the country cannot and must not be allowed to be lost in a battle exclusively concerned with legal provisions for justice to rape victims. For the first time in modern India, the issue of patriarchal violence against women has occupied the centre stage of the democratic movement with great force. In 2013, we must carry forward this great momentum towards a decisive defeat of all the patriarchal ideas and forces which fetter women’s freedom and violates their dignity and democratic rights. Victory to the power of the protesting people that has begun to make its presence felt on the streets of India!

Rape Culture, Capitalism and India #AFSPA #Vaw

By Saswat Pattanayak, Kindle Magazine

2012-12-21

Looks like, rape still continues to shock virtuous people in India. Or was it just this latest one? The one that took place in Delhi? Was it because the “izzat” of India’s capital city has now become the new concern? The honorable India has to be reclaimed in all “her” full glory where the goddesses are worshipped and women assaulted?

Or is it that the unprecedented outrage in Indian society today owes to the fact that this rape was of the “more brutal” variety? Since most of us don’t do that kind of “iron rod” rapes. We are the gentler varieties?

The very fact that instead of debating about the status of women in Indian class society, we are expressing disgust at an incident of rape says the extent to which we have surrendered ourselves to corporate media agenda-settings. The rape was gruesome and a woman was tortured and probably shall not survive. But the nonplussed manner in which the Indian society at large is responding to this incident underscores the collective denial about the degraded status of women in India, if not a clear refusal on part of the suddenly agitated, to confront the social realities.

The truth is sexual violence against women is inherently a dominant feature of feudalism/capitalism, where women necessarily are objects to be owned, conquered, glorified or abused, and such treatments are by extension, because they are not meant to be equal stakeholders in the society. Whereas the indignation is rightful and the protests against rapists are steps in the right direction, the larger demands for death penalties/castration/hanging etc are only that much more a vicious reaffirmation of the existing law and order framework.

What is too often forgotten in such times of “awakenings” is that the law and order system within a capitalistic setup typically works to benefit the men over the women, since patriarchy and capitalism are inextricably paired together. Within a framework of exploited labor, women must be especially commodified as they remain the very foundational private property. And if the women belong to further oppressed groups, such as the Dalits in India or Blacks in the United States, they are counted as nothing more than mere flesh, mere statistics. Religions and dominant cultural heritages sanction rape against these “lowly creatures”. And so commonplace becomes the organized violence against them that reports of their abandonment rarely ever generates collective outrage, let alone justice.

Scripturally, all major religions in the world have treated women as second-class citizens, if not downright slaves. Women have defined roles to play, approved cultural norms to adhere to. They are systemically deprived of reproductive rights, or even of rights to enjoy their status as sexual beings. Within a political-economic setup where women are treated as objects to be controlled, they have no say in matters of marital rapes either. In fact, marital rapes – where the largest concentration of rapes are to be found – remain sanctioned by religious codes. Divorce procedures are made complex while domestic violence goes underreported.

Even when divorce processes are facilitated with ease, women continue to remain dependent on men, because of disparity in economic equality, barring isolated cases where they earn more than the men in their lives. Domestic lives and tensions are confined within families owing to fears of undesirable social repercussions, and consequent stigmatizations. In a heteronormative order, an unmarried woman, or a woman without a husband, or an unwed mother must come to terms with legitimized violence. And the expectations from men to protect the women under similar circumstances – which has become a celluloid epic in cultural extractions – goes on to cement this unequal relationship even further. Women necessarily need men because the law and order systems within capitalism are juridicaliy geared to serve male interests. Until the male “savior” surfaces, the woman must continue to suffer.

All the outrage about the Delhi incident are entirely uncalled for simply because treating rape as shocking devalues the reality. It is insulting towards women whose rape cases have been dismissed at the courts if they at all were allowed to reach there. It is absolving religions of their scriptural allowance for rape to take place to begin with. It is also undermining the roles mothers play in raising their children with religious codes of uncritical submissions. It undermines the roles – especially, educated and relatively empowered women play in tolerating their abusive husbands, their violent sons and privileged brothers.

Once domestic violence is normalized, even while remaining the largest contributor to rape culture in capitalistic setups, women get equally oppressed by their secondary masters – the national patriots, and their holy cows, the military officers. Atrocities of American military are well known. What is lesser known is the way Indian military emulates it. “Encounter” killing and rape are integral to the culture of militarism in India and aided recently by the draconian law, “Armed Forces Special Powers Act” (AFSPA). Taking recourse of this and patriotic license providing for such systemic flexibilities, military assaults and tortures of Indian women and children continue all over India, not just in North-Eastern regions or Kashmir. The latest trend is brutalizing the indigenous peoples in the name of combating Maoism in the “tribal belts”.

Demanding castrations and death penalties are the easiest ways to appear moralistic while letting the system sustain its sexist character. If righteous people are really serious about hanging the rapists, they will be surprised by the sudden decrease in the military forces of any country, once such a law is duly implemented. Which is not a bad thing at all, but it will still be striking at the consequences, rather than the roots. And eventually, such death penalty rhetoric (which would enable the rapist to not just rape, but also to kill the victim in an effort to not leave behind any evidence of crime), are dangerous distractions from the core issue – the crisis of capitalism.

Focusing on gender wars and demonizing all men as beasts and all men as potential rapists is highly regressive and counterproductive. Asking that men give up their privileges is akin to asking capitalists to give up their wealth. This is utopian at its best, and reactionary, at its worst. Blaming the victim is as bad a strategy as disempowering them. By depending on the men to change their paths is to evince faith in patriarchy, just as expecting the police to end rape culture is to assert faith in capitalistic judiciary. The reality is most rapes do not take place outside of the inner circles of the victims. The very devaluation of women – the necessary condition for capitalism to flourish – is the primary enabler of rape culture. Not only are men assured of the “availability” of women for their gratifications – be they in full-blown capitalism of commodified women, or in feudal setups ensuring arranged marriages, they also end up becoming sexual toys for the men – and conversely, their inaccessibility resulting in forcible submissions – go beyond mere morality.

Boycotting a few corporate brands and killing a few greedy men do not alter the conditions of capitalism, just as hanging a few rapists and calling men beasts do not alter patriarchy. However, challenging patriarchy or racism in all their forms is a very effective method to wage war against capitalistic status quo, precisely because sexism and racism are inherent to capitalism. But what is paramount is the critical consciousness-raising that takes into account the need for women to remain accountable as much as the men, so that the war against capitalism to put an end to patriarchy have equal stakeholders. Empowering revolutions, not sheer anarchy and disorganized/misdirected/media-driven anger can firmly end the violence against women and children – a goal that is not just desirable or ethical, but an absolute necessity for realization of a socialistic world.

When it comes to gender violence, there is nothing as a “current crisis”. Getting surprised at the Delhi Police insensitivities is also foolish, since it is then assumed that by taking on a certain position – be it that of the cop, or the officer, the gentleman or the father – the person suddenly will renounce his privilege. Clearly, it is not the responsibility of the police force to make sure that rapes do not happen. Certainly not within the same society whose basis of economic reality is itself suspect. And contrary to the prevailing outcries, rape culture is not exclusive to India. Indeed, the United States, the citadel of capitalism is deeply entrenched by rape culture. Quite naturally so, because rape culture is not merely a byproduct of cultural factors; it is primarily the culmination of exploitative economic conditions. Incidents of rape in India have witnessed an eight-fold increase over the last four decades, according to the National Crime Records Bureau. Widening economic divides among people, and especially among men and women coupled with powerlessness among the most oppressed have ensured that whereas murders have increased by 106%, incidents of rape in India have increased by 792%.

However, if some immediate measures must be taken/preached within the Indian context, they must include women’s participation more than ever. It is perhaps politically correct to say that men should be asked not to rape, but such a placard overlooks the fact that men are conditioned to be disrespectful towards women within a family culture; such attitudes do not suddenly manifest within a rape culture later on. The family units in individualistic societies are spearheaded by male patriarchs and hoodwinking divine blessings, who, in turn, are legitimized by the political-economy that forces women to remain enslaved to the system.

The necessary reforms therefore must begin with women putting a stop to their worshipping of gods – be they the husbands or be they the religious figures – both of whom benefit immensely from capital accumulations. Women must take responsibilities for their own inactions and of their reactionary stances. If children they must raise, they must not indoctrinate them with religions that eventually recycle the same societal values of patriarchy for the next generations of men. They must not demand uncritical obedience from their children towards the regressive elderly. They must not expect competitive selfish gains from the children in their quest to pride themselves as parents of success stories. While demands for harsher punishments for the rapists may be just and proper, they must not become the goals in themselves. In fact, confusing stricter laws as revolutionary victories alone allows for the oppressive ruling classes to grant concessionary justice to uphold and legitimize their status-quo, until the next incident captures media attention.

The onus lies with the working class men and women to understand revolutionary theories and practices so that they can collectively challenge and overthrow existing capitalistic status-quo that inherently sustains sexist, racist laws and benefits from patriarchal conditionings. What’s important is not to ask men for mercy or police for protection, but to form alliance with every revolutionary formations to overthrow the last vestiges of feudalism – the patterns of caste violence, the licenses to rape women in the name of religious sanctions, the sacrosanct marriages – and to organize a communistic future that will no longer depend on legal interventions from the capitalistic judiciary.

 

Cash Prizes Fuel India’s Sterilization Overdrive #Vaw #Coercion #Reproductiverights

By Swapna Majumdar

WeNews correspondent

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

Spurred by cash incentives, state workers in the state of Rajasthan offer prizes to women to undergo tubal ligation in mass sterilization drives. Critics call it a coercive process that restricts women’s right to know their contraceptive choices.

 

Women await their turn for sterilization at a primary health center in Rajasthan.

 

Credit: Swapna Majumdar

 

NEW DELHI (WOMENSENEWS)–

A few days after Rukma Devi underwent sterilization in the Rajsamand district of Rajasthan, she suffered intense pain in her abdomen. Fever and body aches followed.

Devi had registered at one of the state’s “sterilization camps,” part of the nation’s campaign to reduce the number of births. The effort is characterized by drives conducted in village primary health care clinics that aim to meet government targets of sterilizing as many women, through tube tying, as possible within a certain time span.

A few months later, when the abdominal pain still hadn’t gone away, the mother of four went to a local doctor and got some shocking news.

She was pregnant.

Rajasthan, in the north of India, has earned the dubious distinction as the state with the most failed sterilizations in 2012. Out of 2,609 failures reported so far this year, 772 were registered in Rajasthan, according to the national government’s statistics. The average number of children a woman bears in Rajasthan is 3.3, far higher than the national average of 2.6

These statistics provided the backdrop for legal and health activists to discuss ways to curb the sterilization push over a two-day meeting in New Delhi in late November.

Kerry McBroom is director of the reproductive rights unit of the Human Rights Law Network, a New Delhi-based group of lawyers that has already spurred the Supreme Court to rebuke the national and state governments for unhygienic sterilizations of poor, low-caste women in many parts of the country, including Rajasthan. She said women’s rights at sterilization camps are being violated by doctors and health facilities across the county who flout national and international ethical and procedural guidelines.

“The quality and nature of information that health workers provide women and their families to convince them to be sterilized is questionable, raising doubts about informed consent,” McBroom said.

She cited the Indian government‘s 2006 quality-assurance protocol for sterilization services as well as 2011 guidelines by the International Federation for Obstetricians and Gynecologists on female contraceptive sterilization.

Mandatory Information

Both standards say that before a woman undergoes sterilization she must be informed about other, reversible forms of family planning. She must also be counseled about possible complications and, if deciding on the sterilization option, be provided with hygienic conditions and adequate medical equipment.

Of the 225 million women aged 15 to 49 sterilized worldwide, 40 percent live in India.

Roughly 80 percent of all women in India use sterilization as their contraceptive method primarily because the government promotes sterilization as a means of family planning and population control.

But this sterilization overdrive leads to an inordinate degree of failure.

In the past three years Rajasthan has paid more than $10 million to compensate women for failed sterilizations, according to information obtained under the national Right to Information Act by Yedunath Dashanan, an activist based in Jaipur, the state capital.

The government’s reply to that application, released in September 2012, showed 4,200 failed sterilization cases in Rajasthan between 2009 and 2011. The response also showed 16 deaths due to sterilization complications. Tubal ligation is generally safe, but in parts of India such procedures are carried out in violation of prescribed safety standards, often with fatal consequences for marginalized women.

Still, the state government continues to promote female sterilization to stabilize its population and lower fertility rates. In keeping with its goal of achieving 698,604 sterilizations in 2012-13, the state medical and health department asked its health workers in July this year to sterilize 100,000 people within the fortnight coinciding with World Population Day (July 11).

To meet these targets, state health officials offer cars on a lottery basis and free cooking gas connections to promote sterilization. Each health worker who facilitates the operation also receives cash incentives, which are openly mentioned in family planning programs.

Coerced Sterilizations

Incentives such as these lead to coerced sterilization, mainly of women, said Dr. Abhijit Das, director of the Centre for Health and Social Justice, a New Delhi-based nongovernmental organization working on gender equity and health.

“India focuses on female sterilization as its main tool of family planning,” said Das. “There is a lack of choice as providers focus only on sterilization. Women accept it as the best option as no information is provided about other family planning methods.”

Das added that the lack of information violates the National Population Policy 2000, which stresses informed choice and target-free approaches in administering family planning services. State medical practitioners, he said, reveal a worrying degree of ignorance about national and international ethical guidelines on sterilizations.

About 1.7 million women in Rajasthan do not have access to contraceptives, Das said. “There is also a lack of understanding of potential adverse outcomes for sterilizations. The poor technical quality of the services provided is leading to increased deaths, increased failures and morbidities.”

In a 2010 study of 749 women who underwent these sterilizations in the Bundi district of Rajasthan, authors found 2.5 percent became pregnant, far above the international standard for pregnancy following failed sterilizations of 0.5 percent.

The study was conducted by Manjri, a nongovernmental organization based in Nainwa, Bundi district, in collaboration with the Centre for Health and Social Justice. It found that 88 percent of participants were not told about failures or complications and 27 percent received no advice about post-sterilization care.

Violations included conducting only three of the 11 mandatory physical examinations before the surgery.

Almost all the women were discharged within four hours of the operation, which involves cutting or blocking the fallopian tubes, although 7.6 percent of them were still unconscious. This too apparently violates the nation’s health standards that say a patient can be discharged four hours after the tubal ligation surgery only if her vital signs are stable, she is fully awake, has passed urine and can walk.

Swapna Majumdar is a journalist based in New Delhi and writes on gender, development and politics.

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In Memoriam: Prof. Leela Dube (1923-2012)

Renowned anthropologist and feminist scholar Leela Dube passed away at her residence in Delhi on 20 ^th May. She was 89. Fondly called Leeladee, Prof. Dube was one of the pioneers of feminist scholarship in India

By Vibhuti Patel

With the passing away of Professor Leela Dube, we have lost a stalwart who broadened the discipline of anthropology by introducing the insights of women’s studies and enriched women’s studies as a discipline by bringing in the technical expertise of an anthropologist.

A well known figure in Indian Sociological Society in the 70s, Leeladee was responsible for introducing women’s studies concerns in mainstream sociology. She played a crucial role in the 1984 World Sociological Congress in which women activists and women’s studies scholars played a dominant role through the Research Committee Women in Society (RC 32). Leeladee chaired a panel on “Declining Sex Ratio in India”, in which Dr. Ilina Sen gave a historical overview of deficit of women in India throughout history of Census of India. Prof. Vina Mazumdar passionately spoke on the finding of towards Equality Report and I spoke on “Sex Selective Abortions-An Abuse of Scientific Techniques of Amniocentesis”.

Leeladee summed up the session with her insightful comments on the tradition of son preference in India. Her greatness lay in synthesizing complex concerns and providing an analytical framework in a lucid and convincing way. In a debate on sex selective abortions carried out in EPW during 1982-1986, her contribution was immense and her predictions about direct relationship of deficit of women and increased violence against women has proved to be true in the subsequent years.

Due to team efforts of women’s studies scholars like Prof. Leela Dube, RC 32 got institutionalized in World Sociological Congress. She invited many activists for the 12thInternational Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, Zagreb, erstwhile Yugoslavia, in 1988 to present paper on “Codification of Customary Laws into Family Laws in Asia”. In the Congress, Leedadee’s speech on feminist anthropologist Eleanor Leacock provided new insights into departure of the feminist anthropologists from its colonial legacy of “Big brother watching you”. The power relations between the North and the South in construction of knowledge and the hegemonic presence of ETICapproach in academics were questioned by Leacock as well as Leeladee who propagated “dialogical approach” in anthropological and ethnographic research.

I respected her from a distance. I was too awe-struck to go close to her but always appreciated her sharp, witty comments during academic sessions and tea and lunch breaks at innumerable seminars, workshops and at Indian Association of Women’s Studies Conferences held every two years. She was appreciative of our campaign against sex selection. During 1981 and 1991, I got to listen to her speeches, deliberations and arguments as I used to be one of the rapporteurs in most of the programmes in women’s studies held in Mumbai and Delhi.

Clockwise: Vina Mazumdar, Hanna Papanek, Gail Omvedt, Neera Desai and Leela Dube in Segovia, Spain, July 1990. Photo Courtesy: Vibhuti Patel

Each time I heard her, I got more motivated to read her papers and later on her books. Her work on Lakshadweep island’s matrilineal Muslim community-Matriliny and Islam: Religion and society in the Laccadives (1969)- was an eye-opener so was her deconstruction of polyandry in Himalayan tribes in the context of women’s workload of collection of fuel, fodder, water, looking after livestock and kitchen gardening in mountainous terrain, resulting into high maternal mortality and adverse sex ratio. She showed interconnections between factors responsible for social construction of women’s sexuality, fertility and labour, rooted in the political economy.

Her highly celebrated book Anthropological Explorations in Gender: Intersecting Fields(2001) is a landmark contribution in feminist anthropology in India. It examines gender, kinship and culture by sourcing a variety of distinct and unconventional materials such as folk tales, folk songs, proverbs, legends, myths to construct ethnographic profile of feminist thoughts. She provides a nuanced understanding on socialization of girl child in a patriarchal family, “seed and soil” theory propagated by Hindu scriptures and epics symbolizing domination-subordination power relationship between men and women.

Her meticulously researched piece ‘On the Construction of Gender: Hindu Girls in Patrilineal India‘ in the Economic and Political Weekly (1988), was used by women’s groups for study circles and training programmes. The volume Women, Work, and Family (1990) in the series on Women and Households, Structures and Strategies, co-edited by Leela Dube and Rajni Palriwala was extremely useful in teaching women’s studies in Economics, Sociology, Geography, Social Work and Governance courses. Her book, Women and Kinship: Comparative Perspectives on Gender in South and South-East Asia (1997) argued that kinship systems provide an important context in which gender relations are located in personal and public arena.

The co-edited volume Visibility and Power: Essays on Women in Society and Development by Leela Dube, Eleanor Leacock and Shirley Ardener (OUP 1986) provided international perspective on the anthropology of women in the context of socio-political setting of India, Iran, Malaysia, Brazil, and Yugoslavia.

After Prof. Iravati Karve, Prof. Leela Dube was the only scholar who made a path-breaking contribution in anthropology with gender sensitivity in India. Leeladee made a mammoth contribution in bringing academic credibility to women’s studies through her scholarly endeavours.

Vibhuti Patel is active in the women’s movement in India since 1972 and currently teaching at SNDT women’s University, Mumbai.

Featured Photo by: Mukul Dube

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