commitment

to seize the moment,
live it
let it course through
my being
and
let it go
to sail free
denying it anchor
to be secure
in its transience
to savour
the morning after

to be selfish
and not want to feel so

What Women Really Want

A shorter version of this appeared in The Indian Express on 10 October 2008.

http://www.indianexpress.com/news/What-women-really-want/371539

There is a key difference between Plato’s ideal state as described in the Republic and the second best state in Laws. In the former, Plato abolished marriage and family for the ‘guardian classes’( i.e. the rulers) through what is called the communism of wives (not husbands!) and property, removed child rearing and education from the realm of the family and made it the all important task of the state. Alongside, he argues that women have the capacity for reason and hence should be trained like men to participate fully in all aspects of public life, including war and governance. In the Laws, Plato reintroduces marriage, family (male-headed of course) and private property for the guardian classes and this has significant implications for the nature of public life he offers women. Their duties, apart from household work, are confined to low ranking, child oriented and domestic tasks and restrictions are placed on movement, military service, and education. The central idea that emerges from this comparison is that for a woman, marriage/family, motherhood and domesticity cannot co-exist with public life, it is in the nature of an either/or choice.

While the Indian state has not explicitly kept women away from public life in terms of political participation and especially paid employment (indeed they cannot do so, as the masses of women have to work if their families have to survive) they have steadfastly adhered to two ideas- that a woman is primarily defined by motherhood and domesticity, and that child rearing is exclusively a mother’s responsibility. This viewing of women (across class differences) through the lens of motherhood and the model of the housewife is reflected in almost all state policies aimed at ‘welfare of women’, often clubbed with ‘child development’. The recommendations of the 6^th pay commission and the eventual action taken on it by the central government is only the most recent manifestation of this perspective.

The pay commission recommended increase in maternity leave from 135 to 180 days, and more significantly additional paid ‘child care’ leave upto 2 years for women to take care of minor children, not just during infancy, especially for examinations and sickness (both accepted) and flexible working hours for married women to meet the dual demands of home and work (not accepted). All these measures come under ‘allowances’ and get termed ‘gender-sensitive’ provisions, ‘keeping in view the dual responsibilities of the working women and increasing practical difficulties in balancing work and family responsibilities’ as reported in most papers.

Likewise, announcements regarding mid-day meal schemes routinely made by governments are accompanied by exhortations that mothers monitor these schemes to ensure the well being of the child. The Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) meant to combat malnutrition and infant mortality as well as act as pre-school centres proclaim that ‘No programme on Early Childhood Care and Education can succeed unless mothers are also brought within its ambit as it is in the lap of the mother that human beings learn the first lessons in life’. It is another matter that the government pays scant attention to the service conditions of the anganwadi workers who are the backbone of the ICDS scheme. These workers, often women from poor families, are paid a pittance as ‘honararium’ as their work is considered voluntary, despite the fact that their services are used for implementing a whole range of government activities at the local level. As they are not regular government employees they do not get covered by any pay commission.

The other side of glorifying motherhood is the absence of the father in the entire discourse. While the 5^th pay commission had introduced paternity leave, it is for a grand total of 15 days. Those who avail of it often make news, as a web search would show. The 6^th pay commission goes a step further by placing not just early child care but care for the entire duration of childhood on the mother. That the male employee is also most likely a father and that fathers can (leave aside that they ought to) take care of children during sickness or help in exams appears beyond the comprehension of the state. One news report pointed out that these provisions discriminated against single fathers, thus reinforcing the exceptional nature of a father’s child care responsibilities.

That motherhood would ‘rightfully’ encroach on a woman’s employed life is deeply internalised in society even as work participation rates among women continue to rise. If the masses of women have always worked, either in the family’s economic activities or more often as paid workers, among the middle class too, the older debate of whether a woman should work or not after marriage has been eclipsed by the near acceptance of the need to work. Notwithstanding the fact that ‘saas-bahu’ serials continue to vilify the working woman, employability is a much sought out qualification in the marriage market, as evidenced in the matrimonial advertisements.

However, increasing work participation of women has not meant any effective change in the distribution of roles and responsibilities within the household on gender lines, despite what the glossies say on the changing Indian family and the new age man. What happens as the pay packet increases is the reallocation of household responsibilities to servants often under the supervision of the mother/mother-in-law.This internalisation explains the near absence of any discussion or analysis on these recommendations of the pay commission in the past 6 months even as almost all other aspects have been subject to intense scrutiny and debate.

At another level, it is important to note the absolute disconnect between the state’s policies and the demands of women themselves. Various studies and reports brought out by women employee’s associations and federations, the women’s and health movement and organisations working on issues of child and maternal health have consistently demanded the provision of day care and crèche facilities in or near the workplace. In India, there is a near absence of safe and reliable day care provisions in the government and the private sector, even as just a few private enterprises have begun experimenting with in house crèches (and have noted the positive impact on employees- male and female). This despite the fact the existing anganwadi infrastructure can easily be expanded to include this vital need. Most studies of the NREGA implementation note the failure to provide day care, despite the Act providing for it.

Moreover is it not vital to ensure easily accessible crèches if we were to succeed in the UNICEF mission (of which India is a signatory) to attain exclusive breast-feeding for the first six months of a child’s life. And yet, the breast feeding campaigns in India focus only on ‘awareness raising’ and not on enabling workplace environments.

Surely, it makes more economic sense (apart from being a sign of a caring state/employer) to provide day care facilities rather than dole out extra leaves. Which woman employee would choose a year extra leave over assured day care though out childhood near her workplace? That the state finds it easier to dispense with employees for long periods points to both the concentration of women employees in the lower levels of the bureaucracy and its lack of will to recognise childcare as an ‘economic right’ of its employees.

We do not have to abolish the family, like Plato did, in order to socialise child care or ensure gender equality; but surely we can recognise that child rearing is both the shared responsibility of the partners and the collective responsibility of society and that only equal and happy families will result from a state genuinely interested in the welfare of its citizens- women, men and children.

Hear Evil, Read No Evil?

I dont have a tv. Most of the time, especially when important events happen like bomb blasts or police encounters, I am very glad I dont. I shall live longer perhaps. But when I am in delhi, I catch up with my older avatar- the channel surfing, remote control freak one. And I try and familiarise myself with 'popular culture' as they call it. Yesterday I even saw quite a bit of Balika Badhu, the latest soap in town. ya ya there was a moral in the end, but for what i saw they seem to actually celebrate child marriage.

Anyway what spurred this post was actually the movie I saw on HBO this evening. Though our regular Hollywood fare, it had the subtitles on and this is how the translation/transliteration happened.

we dint have , did we
if you are keeping away because we had , then you can rest on that account
i dont remember the last time i cried after so i am overwhelmed
you look very

and so on. yes! you can hear it but cant see/read the word. there wasnt even the --- or **** to tell you a (shhh) bad word was being used.

I guess the subtitles were for us, the poor desi audience, but was the censorship for us as well? Surely this is self-censorship, for I think even Balika Badhu may very likely use it soon. I can almost read out the moral -' kachi umar main sexual relationship bachpan ko khatam kar deta hai' probably after a scene where the kids have explored sexuality.

I remember gay and lesbian kisses being edited out of sitcoms in Star and Zee channels, and even then it was self-censorship, but this takes the cake. So why? And why only in print? And you cant even say 'you look sexy?'. Long long ago some filmmaker had to re-record the song 'sexy sexy sexy mujhe log bole' because the censor board asked for THE word to be replaced. The songs doing the rounds these days (and unlike tv i am very updated on those thanks to radio) have phrases like 'saiya saiya sexy lage hai mujhe' and 'I am craving for your body now'. Not to add that one of our lyricists' most favourite words 'shava' means sexual passion. My friend who has been dealing with urdu and persian words made this startling discovery and i have been scandalising people ever since. But we can put that down to ignorance.

So whats next? Lets activate our imagination and outpace them. Meanwhile I shall go catch some old episodes of and the city.