Essays on emancipation
Sakuntala Narasimhan
But for seeing the communist-socialist pattern as the remedy for all ills, the
author is articulate and argues her points convincingly
Survival and Emancipation
Notes from Indian Women’s Struggles
by Brinda Karat
Published by Three Essays Collective,
Palam Vihar, Gurgaon, Haryana, 122017
This book offers 38 essays on various subjects pertaining to gender empowerment–
ranging from globalisation and its effects, the women’s reservation bill, dowry
related violence and sex determination tests, to coercive family planning,
gender budgeting and honour killings.
Ms Karat is articulate and argues her points convincingly. Whether it is to
point out that the uniform civil code should not be reduced to a set of personal
laws that seek to equate women of all religions, without addressing the issue of
gender justice in terms of equality between men and women (uniformity between
not only communities but also between the sexes) or pointing out that the rise
of a western-oriented consumerist lifestyle contributes to the perpetuation of
women’s devaluation as individuals.
The essays on globalisation and women’s survival issues describe how structural
adjustment policies have worsened the lifestyles of women in several developing
countries of Asia and Africa.
Women in these regions, especially in the rural sector, end up actually
subsidising the family in the poorer sections, getting pushed further down
themselves, in terms of deprivations in the process.
One of the best essays is on the criminal fraud that goes on in the name of
subsidised food supplies for those below the poverty line.
She rightly condemns the obscenity of millions of tonnes of food grain rotting
in the godowns of the food corporation while hunger has actually grown among the
poor. The ‘food for work’ programme, hailed as a pro-poor initiative, also
penalises females because most of the ‘work’ undertaken under this project is
heavy, manual, earth moving and digging.
She makes a strong case for women activists’ involvement in politics, believing
that class and gender struggles are part of the same movement against
oppression, and that only political change in the structure of governance can
deliver meaningful social equity. However, whether the communist-socialist
pattern is the only one that can bring about women’s emancipation as the author
believes, is a moot point.
As a long-serving general secretary of the All Indian Democratic Women’s
Association (AIDWA, affiliated to the Marxist communist party) her loyalties are
understandably with leftist ideologies, yet to aver that only in West Bengal
(and Kerala, states where communist governments have been in power) women have
it good, or that only the left parties have supported the women’s reservation
bill, or that the situation of women and children worsened in the former Soviet
bloc after the break-up of the communist regimes only because of the rise of
capitalistic lifestyles, is perhaps to stretch a point about communism as
panacea too far.
“Melavalavu (casteist clashes targeting dalits) would not have occurred in West
Bengal” she declares. Has that state not seen clashes where the powerful punish
the dispossessed, whether male or female? “Only socialist countries have evolved
gender-just codes” she declares. The Scandinavian countries come immediately to
mind.
Nonetheless, this is a readable collection of writings on gender issues by
someone who has been active in the Indian socio-political movement.
The book gives dates to say when each essay was written, but does not give
details of whether they were published and where. One essay (on family planning)
is dated 1993 but includes sex ratio data from the census of 2001.
The last essay, a personal recollection of her college days, seems oddly out of
place in this collection, because the rest of the collection maintains an
objectivity that is not part of the personal reminiscences.
[Deccan Herald: Sunday, July 10, 2005]
http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/jul102005/books192332200578.asp