Volume 24 - Issue 25 :: Dec. 22, 2007-Jan.

04, 2008
INDIA'S NATIONAL MAGAZINE
from the publishers of THE HINDU

COVER STORY

Woman as victim

T.K. RAJALAKSHMI
in New Delhi
There has been an escalation of all forms of violence against women in India in the
past two decades.
A. MURALITHARAN

This newborn, a girl, was found abandoned in a gunny bag at Pallavaram near
Chennai in July. Luckily for her, many people came forward to take care of her.

The recently released annual Global Gender Gap Report of the World
Economic Forum (WEF) ranks India 114 in a list of 128 countries. The
last 14 countries include Nepal and Pakistan, which are ranked 125 and
126. Not surprisingly, tiny Cuba ranks 22, and Sri Lanka has done
better than its South Asian counterparts, ranking 15. The situation was
no better in 2006, when India was ranked 98 out of 115 countries.

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The data capture the magnitude of the gap between men and women
in four critical areas, namely, economic participation and opportunity,
political empowerment, educational attainment, and health and
survival. The last category includes the criteria of female life
expectancy and sex ratio at birth. The report clarifies that its
assessment was not about women’s empowerment but more about
opportunities for women. The one important variable that dragged
India down to 128 is its sex ratio at birth, which is 0.89.

On December 12, a question was raised in Parliament about India’s

dismal ranking in the report. Why has there been such a devastating
decline in the status of women in terms of entitlements and
opportunities in a country that has made great strides in economic
growth and achievement? Something has gone horribly wrong, and the
problem is still not on the political agenda of the mainstream political
parties. There has been an escalation of all forms of violence against
women and children in the past one and a half decades, with the
economically vulnerable among them bearing the brunt. The trend
does not seem to be slowing.

Replying to the query, the Minister of State for Women and Child
Development Renuka Chowdhury said the government had not
reviewed the WEF report and that women’s empowerment was a
mandate of the Ministry, which had taken up gender budgeting as a
tool to achieve gender equality. While gender budgeting definitely is an
important issue, it does not address the problem.

Take agriculture. According to Census 2001, 42.95 per cent of the rural
female population was working as agricultural labour. Women’s
oppression has always constituted a major part of social oppression
that is endemic to this sector, yet their demands have not been
addressed. According to Quarterly Employment Review of the Ministry
of Labour, of the total number of people employed in the organised
sector in 2004 only 18.7 per cent were women. According to a report of
the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector
(NCEUS, August 2007), the social composition of agricultural labour
was 46.7 per cent Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes and 33.9 per
cent Other Backward Classes, besides others. The Hindu “higher”
castes, it said, were least likely to be agricultural labourers.

The report, “Conditions of Work and Promotion of Livelihoods in the

Unorganised Sector”, said the work participation rates for women
belonging to the S.C.s and the S.T.s was significantly higher than those
for women in general. It said this was “more likely the result of
economic hardships than the availability of work opportunities”.

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The NCEUS report also observed that “working as agricultural labourers
seemed to be the last resort, given its low social status, low earnings,
irregular employment often reinforced by social oppression in the
event of assertion of rights or dignity”.

According to the National Sample Survey (NSS) 61st round (2004-05)

and the 55th round (1999-2000), the percentage of rural women
(regular) workers in the total workforce was 3.7, while that of
S.C.s/S.T.s was 3.1 per cent.

The proportion of self-employed women as a percentage of the total

workforce was 61.1 per cent; rural women constituted 63.7 per cent
and rural S.C./S.T. women 51.1 per cent. This meant that regular
employment opportunities were next to negligible and even more
remote for Dalit and S.T. women.

In the urban areas, several studies show that in the past one decade,
there has been a growth in subsidiary, self-employed, non-agricultural
activity, particularly among women.

Phenomenal rise

Crimes against women have seen a phenomenal rise in the past two
decades. In the publication titled Women and Men in India, 2006
brought out by the Central Statistical Organisation (CSO), under the
Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, there has been a
continuous rise in the total incidence of crimes committed against
women over the years. Crimes against women, it states, increased
during 2004 by 9.8 per cent over 2003 and by 13.9 per cent over 1999.

Crimes punishable under the Indian Penal Code (IPC), namely, rape,
kidnapping and abduction, homicide for dowry or dowry deaths, mental
and physical torture, molestation, sexual harassment, and trafficking of
girls under 16 years, accounted for 93 per cent of the cases reported,
while the remainder came under special and local laws.

Cruelty by the husband and his relatives accounted for the highest
number of crimes against women. This category saw an increase of
14.6 per cent in 2004 over 2003. While trafficking in girls as a
percentage of the total crime figure is low, it recorded an increase of
93.5 per cent in 2004 when compared with 2003.

What is even more revealing is that 8.9 per cent of the rape victims in
2004 were under 15 years of age, while 11 per cent were teenaged
girls in the 15- to 18-year age group. A most shocking case, in Lucknow
in 2005, was that of a 14-year-old rag-picker who was dragged into a

3
car and gang-raped by six young men, one of whom was the nephew
of a legislator from the then ruling party.

The Uttar Pradesh unit of the All India Democratic Women’s Association
(AIDWA) took up the case, and after a sustained struggle two of the
culprits were convicted. Similarly, the organisation took up the cause
of two minor girls in January 2007, who were raped inside a madrassa
by criminals in Allahabad. AIDWA’s presence ensured that no
“compromise” was arrived at and the culprits were arrested.

Between January and July 2007, 11,453 cases of crimes against women
were reported in Uttar Pradesh. Of the 3,782 recorded crimes
committed against Dalits as a whole during this seven-month period,
158 were of rape of Dalit women. Attacks on minors and adolescent
children, the increase in child rapes, the insignificant decline in child
marriages and the increased trafficking in girls are trends that point to
a connection between the declining child sex ratio and the increase in
crimes against women and children. Young girls continue to be
trafficked regularly from the poorer parts of several States to the
“women deficit” States of Punjab and Haryana, where, in many cases,
they live the life of sex slaves.

Culturally, linguistically and physically different, with no social or

emotional support to fall back on, these girls have a difficult time
adjusting and often end up enduring all kinds of indignities. While it is
argued that not all such cases result in violence against such women
and that there might be a silver lining as most of these marriages end
up being inter-caste, the sordid truth is that these girls were
“purchased” at a price. The few rights they might have enjoyed
dissipated along with their “paid for” status.

Driving force

4
P.V. SIVAKUMAR

Calling attention to the increase in atrocities against women, in Hyderabad. A file

photograph.

There is little doubt that dowry has been the driving force behind many
crimes against women and the girl child. In Delhi, which has been
labelled the crime capital by the National Crime Records Bureau
(NCRB), H.P.S. Virk, Deputy Commissioner of Police, Crime (Women’s)
Cell, told Frontline that Indian marriages had become economic
transactions between families.

Among certain communities, he said, it was an “open auction”. There

were fixed “rates” for prospective grooms depending on the area to
which the boy’s family belonged. The rate, he said, declined as one
moved away from the main city. For instance, a boy who had his family
business in a business centre like Bagh attracted much more dowry
than someone living on the nondescript outskirts of the capital. “The
boy naturally makes more money and, therefore, the demand for
dowry will be commensurate with the income he earns,” said the police
officer. Clearly, it is the affluent who are flagrantly violating the Dowry
Prohibition Act.

The Delhi Crime Cell started a helpline in 2002, which is used quite
often. The cell has so far received 13,061 calls; in 2006, it received
approximately 15 calls a day. Of the 4,907 calls finally attended to by
the cell, 71 per cent involved domestic violence, and only in about 4
per cent of the cases the police were able to broker a compromise. This
suggests that increasingly women are speaking up against domestic
violence. In 2007, the cell received 7,838 calls.

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Complaints received at the CWC have shown a rising trend. In 2004,
2005, 2006 and until November 2007, the cell received 8,349, 8,629,
9,879 and 9,166 complaints respectively. As far as the disposal of
complaints was concerned, even though the formula of “compromise”
was deployed in the majority of the cases, the number of cases
registered was gradually going up.

There were 114 (2005), 137 (2006) and 132 (up to November 30,
2007) dowry deaths in Delhi. There were 658 (2005), 623 (2006) and
560 (2007) rape cases, while the cases of molestation for the same
years were 762, 718 and 812 respectively, showing a substantial
increase in such cases over the past one year.

However, torture and cruelty accounted for the bulk of the crimes
against women in the national capital. There were 1,330 (2005), 1,739
(2006) and 1,648 (up to November 30, 2007) cases registered under
Section 498 A/ 406 of the IPC. There was an increase of almost 400
cases of torture between 2005 and 2006, the period prior to the
enactment of the Protection of Women From Domestic Violence Act,
2005 (PWDVA). An equally large number of kidnapping and abduction
cases, more than thousand, were registered in the period 2005 to
2007.

Why is the Dowry Prohibition Act not working? Primarily it is because of

the social acceptance of dowry. In the past one and a half decades of
economic reform this situation has only got worse, permeating every
section of society. H.P.S. Virk narrated the case of a maid who paid Rs.2
lakh as dowry for her daughter. The groom was an electrician. One day,
the daughter came to the police station with burn marks all over her
body.

In the majority of cases, the approach of the police is to “broker” a

compromise and dissuade the complainant from carrying on. Often the
lengthy legal process is used as a handle to “settle” the case. He said
the implementation of even the PWDVA was tardy as the police
themselves were unaware that they were empowered to help the
victims who came to the police station. “Finally, it is the police who
have to enforce the Act,” said a senior police officer.

“Staying alive”

In the very first monitoring and evaluation report on the

implementation of the PWDVA, titled “Staying Alive” (October 2007)
and brought out by Women’s Rights Initiative of Lawyers Collective, it
was stated that 7,913 cases had been filed under the Act until July 31,
2007, and that most of the proceedings were pending in court.

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All States, barring five, had appointed protection officers, the report
said. The highest number of cases (3,440) was filed in Rajasthan,
where no protection officer had been appointed. Kerala was next with
1,028 cases, while not a single case had been registered in Uttar
Pradesh, the report said.

The wide variation in the number of cases registered in the States was
attributed mainly to the degree of awareness about the law and did not
reflect the lack of domestic violence in States that reported low figures.
In Rajasthan, the study found that lawyers and civil society
organisations took the initiative to help register cases. In Kerala, the
reason could be the high degree of awareness among women.

Delhi reported only 607 cases registered under the PWDVA. Protection
officers in Delhi and Andhra Pradesh, the study found, had not been
appointed on a full-time basis. In fact, most protection officers in the
country were found overburdened. Each district had one protection
officer, who not only had to provide assistance to the complainant but
also had to comply sometimes with the directions of more than one
magistrate.

The primary users of the law, the report said, were married women,
indicating perhaps that dowry did play a big role in domestic violence.
However, only five States reported having registered service providers
and only 12 had notified medical facilities and shelter homes. There
was also a crucial need to train the police on informing women about
the Act.

Such is the pressure of dowry today that a trend has emerged of

“Sumangali jobs’ in certain parts of Tamil Nadu. In this, single women
are offered jobs and assured that they will be given a sum of money for
their dowry after a certain period of employment. The other condition
is that they are totally bound to the employer in every manner.
According to NCRB data, the numbers of dowry deaths in the country
during 2004, 2005 and 2006 was 7,026, 6,787 and 7,618 respectively.
Amendments relating to the definition of dowry as also to increasing
the penalty for dowry deaths under Section 304 B of the IPC are
pending. In the years from 2002 to 2006, a total of 2,816, 2,684, 3,592,
3,204 and 4,504 cases respectively were registered under the Dowry
Prohibition Act.

Data regarding dowry-linked suicides by women for the same period

reveal that a total of 2,378, 2,347, 2,585, 2,305 and 2,276 women
respectively committed suicide, with the largest numbers reported
from Madhya Pradesh.

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The NCRB report, “Crime in India - 2005”, observed that even though
the share of violent crimes in the total number of crimes under the IPC
had declined continuously over 2001-2005, the share of violent crimes
affecting women had increased in this period, except for a slight
decline in 2003.

If 1,157 cases of rape of Dalit women were reported in 2004, in 2005

the number was 1,172, with Madhya Pradesh accounting for 29 per
cent of them. Madhya Pradesh also accounted for 45.9 per cent of the
cases of rape of tribal women, the highest among the States.
Nationally, in 2005, as many as 640 cases of rape of tribal women were
reported, compared with 566 cases in 2004, that is, nearly a 13 per
cent increase over the previous year.

Police officials said that in most police stations complaints of violence

against women were taken up not by senior officials but often by the
lower-level staff. “Police stations are mainly concerned with
maintaining law and order. Terrorism and riots get first priority.
Women’s issues are always treated casually,” said a senior police
official in Delhi.

He said such was the insecurity among women in the capital that an
experiment to have women constables of the Central Reserve Police
Force (CRPF) on night duty on VIP routes backfired when the women
who were given SLRs (self-loading rifles) reported feeling insecure
patrolling in the late hours of the night. Finally, a male CRPF constable
was posted for every woman constable on the patrol beat.

“One would have assumed that given the constitutional framework,

things would have changed in favour of women. That has not
happened,” said Sudha Sundararaman, general secretary of AIDWA.
She said the economic reforms currently under way had not created
the conditions for the eradication of violence against women; if
anything, it had generated more violence against women.

India is a signatory to many international conventions, including the

United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination Against Women, which it ratified in 1993. The principle
of gender equality is enshrined in the Indian Constitution, which not
only grants equality to women but empowers the state and makes it
obligatory for it to adopt measures of positive discrimination in favour
of women.

It is wrong on the part of the Ministry of Women and Child

Development to assume that by merely spending more through gender
budgeting to achieve gender equality it get rid of the scourge of

8
increasing crimes against women and the girl child. The issue does not
concern just women anymore. It has to be a national and a political
priority.

COVER STORY

At the receiving end

India has not been able to make the lives of the majority of its women secure, let
alone empower them.

9
Fear of the unknown

By Lyla Bavadam in Mumbai

Violent crimes against women are on the rise in Maharashtra. Crime in

Maharashtra – 2006, the annual report on the State’s safety record by
the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), says: “It is observed that
offences against women during 2006 have increased by 6.96 per cent
as compared to the year 2005. Increase of 1,045 cases has been
reported at the State level during 2006 as compared to 2005…. The
rate of crime against women in Maharashtra (that is, number of crimes
against women per lakh of population) was 14.6 during 2006. This rate
of crime may not appear alarming at the outset, but it may be
mentioned that due to the fear of social stigma most offences against
women go unreported.”

The specific types of rising crime against women in the Sate are
maternal deaths from violence, crimes against Dalit women and sex
selection resulting in female foeticide. In his preface to the crime
report, S.P.S. Yadav, Additional Director General of Police, C.I.D., Pune,
empathetically says that the “the escalation in cases of molestation
(8%), cruelty by husband and his relatives (14%), dowry deaths (14%),
[and] sexual harassment (7%) underscores the need for awakening and
empowering women in a progressive State like Maharashtra.” It is an

10
unwitting irony that this very same report that calls for empowering
women omits maternal deaths by violence and sex selection with a
view to killing female foetuses as crimes against women.

Maternal deaths by violence

The definition of maternal mortality does not include violence as a

possible cause. ‘Too far, Too little, Too late: A community-based case
control study of maternal mortality in rural west Maharashtra, India’ by
B.R. Ganantra, K.J. Koyaji and V.N. Rao, says that verbal autopsies from
a surveillance study of all maternal deaths in over 400 villages and
seven hospitals in three districts of the State revealed that 16 per cent
of all deaths during pregnancy were from domestic violence.

Supporting the evidence is an analysis by the Tathapi Trust of Pune,

which works on issues of women and violence. Its studies show that
burns constituted the highest single cause of death in Maharashtra
among women in the reproductive age group (15–34 years),
accounting for 20 to 24 per cent of deaths in this age group. Most
cases are reported as accidents. According to Tathapi, the rate of death
of such “accidents” is much higher than from tuberculosis of the lungs
or complications in pregnancy.

Tathapi also notes a disquieting trend in the reasons for violence

against women in the past two or three years. For instance, Audrey
Fernandes of Tathapi finds there is a strong trend of shakgene –
doubting the fidelity of women – that is increasingly leading to
domestic violence. A man’s unreasonable suspicion of a woman’s
fidelity is definitely a form of control since it automatically demands
conformity from her. This, in itself, is a form of violence even if it does
not lead to physical violence.

Tathapi’s field experience notes the prevalence of shakgene “across

the board in men from Pune to tribal people in Gadchiroli”. And it is not
just aimed at women who work outside the house. Audrey Fernandes
relates the case of a woman whose husband was so obsessed with her
fidelity that he would follow his wife to the community bathroom and
wait outside until she came out. When he left for work he would lock
her in until he returned.

Tathapi is in the process of analysing fieldwork done on notions of

masculinity. In this yet-to-be-published study it delves on ‘What are the
stresses men have?’ The largest issue that caused tension related to
economic matters but the second largest contributor to stress in men
were matters relating to his family – specifically the behaviour of
women in his family. For Tathapi, this was a point of concern because if

11
a man did not approve of the way a woman behaved it could be the
tipping point for violence.

The Institute of Health Management (IHMP), Pachod, which works at

the community level and conducts training and research in women’s
health issues, also analyses the reasons for violence against women.
The IHMP’s main concern is prevention of domestic violence. It recently
published a study on what caused the onset of violence. It conducted
30 rural interviews and 30 urban interviews looking at what provoked
the violence, the societal acceptance of violence and the role of the
household environment. Two clear patterns emerged from these, and
both were linked to gender.

The IHMP dubbed its findings as the chukle concept. In Marathi, chukle
means mistake. However, what is being labelled as a mistake in these
situations of violence is actually far from the correct meaning of the
word. In the way the victims use the word, it almost means: “It is a
mistake to be born a woman”. Essentially, it means that the woman
has committed the “mistake” of stepping out of her gender boundaries
– this could be something as petty as putting less salt in the food or
something as practical as refusing intercourse with her husband
because she is pregnant (very common since 85 per cent of the
interviewees were adolescent girls who got pregnant within their first
year of marriage).

“The concept of chukle is a gender construct,” says Dr. Nandita

Kapadia-Kundu of the IHMP. “Men don’t have it. But when a woman
compromises her gender boundaries and steps out of them, she has
committed chukle… and she pays for it with violence.” Society accepts
it, the woman accepts it, and the cycle of domestic violence continues.

Interestingly, chukle does not always tip over into violence and the
IHMP realised that the factor of household standards played a part in
this. If, for instance, the in-laws are sensitive then chukle may not be
an issue at all or its boundaries may be wider. Since chukle is a locally
understood concept, the IHMP is using it as a catchword in its
programme to sensitise local populations about domestic violence.

In the sugar belt

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Perhaps the highest form of violence against women is to deny life
because of gender. Despite laws and an increase in educational and
economic levels, female foeticide is increasing in certain regions. The
fact is all the more staggering because the State was the first to pass
the Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (PNDT) Act, 1994.

In 2004, the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics in Pune was

commissioned by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare to examine
the expansion of sonography centres and its consequences. As many
as 372 sonography centres were surveyed from August to November
2004 – 69 centres owned by trained doctors or other medical
personnel, 275 centres owned by untrained persons and another 28
owned by “not properly trained/qualified persons”. While the intention
of the researchers, Sanjeevani Mulye and R. Nagarajan, both readers at
the Institute’s Population Research Centre, was not to find out the facts
about female foeticide, what emerged from their analysis was exactly
these.

There were primarily two findings. The first was that sex determination
tests were popular and were being carried out despite the PNDT Act.
The easy availability of sonography and the willingness of doctors to
misuse the technique encouraged female foeticide and caused a

13
decline in the child sex ratio. The second was that the prosperous
sugar belt of western Maharashtra accounted for the highest number
of female foeticides in the State.

In Maharashtra, the child sex ratio declined by 29 points, from 946 in

1991 to 917 in 2001. The researchers say “it is not only much lower
than the universal sex ratio at birth (943-952), it is also much lower
than those for all the four South Indian States (Kerala 963, Andhra
Pradesh 964, Karnataka 949 and Tamil Nadu 939) and Madhya Pradesh
(931).”

An interesting correlation that emerged from the study is between

prosperity and female foeticide. “The prosperous areas of Maharashtra
have the worst sex ratios, e.g., Sangli (850), Kolhapur (859), Jalgaon
(867), Aurangabad (884), Satara (884), Ahmadnagar (890), Solapur
(897), Beed (898), Mumbai (898), Pune (906) and Dhule (907). The sex
ratio of children in the entire Pune region is very unfavourable to
females (below 900). On the contrary, the backward/tribal districts like
Gadchiroli (974), Nandurbar (966), Gondiya (964) and Bhandara (958)
have higher sex ratios.”

Further evidence to prove the link comes from the distribution of

ultrasound sonography centres across the State. At the start of their
study, the researchers found that Maharashtra had 4,345 such centres.
These are unevenly distributed over 35 districts. As much as 78 per
cent of the centres are located in just 46 per cent of the districts. Just
six districts have half (49.8 per cent) of the sonography centres and all
these districts are in western Maharashtra. The researchers conclude
that this is “a clear indication of a combination of higher aspirations of
sonologists and higher capacity to pay on the part of the people. The
population share of these six districts in the State is 38 per cent. The
point is further proved by the fact that all the districts in the central
and eastern region of the State have less percentage of sonography
centres than their population share. For example, Gadchiroli district
with only five sonography centres has the highest child sex ratio.”

When the findings were presented to the Health Department, it

“defended the doctors”, said Mulye. It is inexplicable why the
government defended the illegal acts of private medical practitioners.

Audrey Fernandes draws attention to a global level critique led by the

U.S. and the Netherlands on what she says is a “dangerous theory
towards violence against women in India”. Some of these organisations
say that because of female foeticides there is an increase in men who
are young, poor and unmarried. They conjecture that these young men
have high testosterone levels and this is one of the causes of violence

14
against women. Audrey Fernandes says this argument shifts the focus
away from the real reasons why people are killing female foetuses. It
also trivialises the problem of violence against women.

Dalit women

Whether it is in the matter of education, literature or community pride,

Dalits in Maharashtra are unique. This pattern is followed even when it
comes to Dalit women. Totally aware of their rights and of the need to
fight for them, Dalit women have a reputation for speaking out... and
for paying for it. The most recent examples of this are Surekha and
Priyanka Bhotmange, the mother and daughter who were humiliated,
taunted, assaulted, raped and ultimately butchered in Khairlanji in
2006. All because they were educated, aspired for a better life and
were not in awe of their upper-caste neighbours. A minor problem over
access to land was used to kill the women and two male members of
their family. The case is in the lower court.

In his preface to the crime report, Yadav writes, “The incidence of

Khairlanji portends a worse scenario unless strenuous efforts are made
to establish communal harmony.” He confirms that there is “growing
crime against the members of Scheduled Castes and this is signified by
the rise in murder (40%), dacoity (12%), arson (29%), [and crimes
under] Prevention of Atrocities (SCs/STs) Act (35%) and Protection of
Civil Rights Act (13%).” The report notes that the percentage variation
in 2006 over 2005 of cases filed under the Scheduled Castes and
Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act was 62.07. The added
vulnerability of Dalit women makes it a fit case for crimes against them
being considered as a separate category in the State crime report.
Currently, there is no such provision in the official process to record
separately crimes against this especially vulnerable group.

At the national level too, India has a blemished record in preventing

injustices to Dalits. A report released in February 2007 by the Centre
for Human Rights and Global Justice along with Human Rights Watch
said “India had failed to uphold its international legal obligations to
ensure the fundamental human rights of Dalits”. The 113-page report,
entitled “Hidden Apartheid: caste discrimination against India’s
untouchables”, was even more hard-hitting when it came to the plight
of Dalit women.

It said, “Additionally, India has failed to address the multiple forms of

discrimination faced by Dalit women. Even as compared to Dalit men,
Dalit women do not have equal access to employment opportunities or
justice mechanisms. They must contend with threats to their personal
security, including trafficking and sexual violence. In some States in

15
India, Dalit women are forced into prostitution under the devadasi
system and are ultimately auctioned off to urban brothels. This puts
them at particular risk of contracting HIV/AIDS.”

India has ratified the International Convention on the Elimination of All

Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD), but according to the U.N.
Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), which
monitors states’ compliance with the ICERD, India’s reports do not
even mention abuses against Dalits.

Easy prey

By Sushanta Talukdar in Guwahati

ANUPAM NATH/AP

A call from the All Assam Students Union and women’s organisations for an end to
violence against women, in Guwahati on November 28.

“I promise the above mentioned firm that I will provide my service,

wherever the firm engages me, for a minimum period of consecutive
12 months and I will be liable to compensate the firm any losses which
may arise out of this.

“I promise the above mentioned firm that if I leave my work before

three months or demand anything it will become invalid…..”

This was part of the terms and conditions on a declaration and

agreement in Hindi signed by 16-year-old Bina Tanti (real name
changed to protect identity) of Paneri in northern Assam’s Darrang
district with a placement firm in Delhi (a copy of which is in the
possession of Frontline).

The same declaration and agreement also has another part filled by
Bina’s father, in which he promised: “I am agreeable to all the terms

16
and conditions. I have full consent in sending my daughter to work with
the placement firm. If my daughter does not work for 12 months then
the firm will be able to detain her for two months.” A note appended
just above his signature as witness says: “If the candidate flees
anywhere without coming to office, then the candidate herself will be
responsible, not the firm.”

In January 2007, activists of the All Adivasi Students’ Association of

Assam (AASAA) in collaboration with the Chirang-based Initiatives for
Development, Education and Alternatives (IEDA), a non-governmental
organisation (NGO) working against trafficking, rescued Mina and eight
other Adivasi boys and girls from a Delhi-bound train at Rangiya
station. They were being taken to the national capital with the promise
that they would be given jobs as domestic workers. Each of the
rescued boys and girls was carrying a copy of the agreement. The
AASAA and the IDEA took custody of the youngsters with the help of
the police at Rangiya and arranged for their return home.

Indeed, Adivasi and Bodo student bodies have often displayed this kind
of vigilance against trafficking of underprivileged women of their
communities. On July 25, 2006, the All Bodo Students’ Union (ABSU)
rescued a batch of 66 poor Bodo girls from a Gujarat-bound train at
Kokrajhar railway station. Leaders of ABSU said that the girls were
being lured away with promises of employment. They alleged that such
girls were physically abused by traffickers and that they ended up in
prostitution.

Every year, an average of 250 women and 200 girl children go missing
in Assam. The actual number of trafficked women and children might
be higher as many cases are not reported, senior officers of the
Criminal Investigation Department (CID), Assam Police, say. The police
think that the women and children are sold into sexual slavery or
forced into exploitative employment in States such as Haryana, Punjab,
Goa and Bihar and in cities such as Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and
Siliguri. They fear, too, that trafficking of women and children from
Assam is going to increase because of factors such as poverty,
structural inequalities, unemployment and intricate relations between
demand and supply in the sex market and the skewed sex ratios in
States such as Punjab and Haryana.

Traffickers find easy prey in camps of internally displaced persons,

people uprooted in clashes between Bodos and Adivasis, immigrant
settlers of Char or riverine areas and people affected by flood and
erosion. Kokrajhar district has a number of such camps. Tribal and non-
tribal girls from poor families and from broken homes and widows are
easily trapped. Promises of marriage and employment are the two

17
main ploys traffickers use to trap their victims. Some of these women
have been rescued and rehabilitated in their places of origin or
elsewhere. But many more remain vulnerable.

Tackling the problem of trafficking of women and children, however,

remains low on the list of priorities of the Assam Police. Counter-
insurgency operations and maintenance of law and order take up most
the police force’s attention. Between 2003 and 2006 (up to July), 28
girls were trafficked and sold outside Assam; 20 of them were rescued
and 15 cases were registered. However, charge-sheets were filed in
only six cases. During this period, 118 cases were registered under the
Immoral Trafficking (Prevention) Act, 1956, in Assam and 333 persons
were arrested. However, in such cases the police file cases under
Section 8 of the Act which deals with seducing or soliciting for the
purpose of prostitution. No effort is made to prosecute brothel owners,
pimps who live on the earnings from prostitution and people engaged
in trafficking.

In a media workshop in Guwahati, Ravi Kant, executive director of the

Delhi-based NGO Shakti Vahini, said trafficking of women from Assam
to Punjab and Haryana had been on the rise because of the skewed sex
ratio in the two States. In some cases, he said, minor girls in batches of
four or five, who had been trafficked from Assam, were openly put up
for sale at prices ranging from Rs.10,000 to Rs.30,000 in some
panchayats of Haryana. Such girls are known as Paros in Haryana.

Team leader of the Shillong-based Impulse NGO Network (INGON)

Hasina Kharbhih said all the eight north-eastern States were highly
vulnerable to the trafficking of children and women within the region
and the country and also across the international border. She
attributed the trend to poverty, exclusion of the poor and vulnerable
sections from basic social and economic services, rural-to-urban
migration, recurrent natural disasters, weak law enforcement
combined with corruption, absence of effective and coordinated
policies in addressing migration and human trafficking, and gender
discrimination.

Other kinds of violence against women, such as rape and molestation,

are also on the rise in Assam and the other States in the region.

“In the north-east of India, women enjoy greater mobility and visibility
than women of other communities in the country. Practices such as
dowry and bride burning are not very prevalent in the region. This is
often cited to portray a picture of equity between men and women in
the region and has given rise to the presumption that violence against
women is not a major concern in the area. A report on a study

18
conducted by North East Network, which was commissioned by the
National Commission for Women (NCW), stated that “violence against
women, particularly domestic violence, is on the rise in the north-east.”

The study, conducted in 2004, points to another study conducted by

the Law Research Institute, Guwahati, which deals with the problem of
domestic violence in Assam. This study covered police stations in the
23 districts in Assam, which reported 10,423 registered cases of
violence against women (including rape, dowry, molestation and
kidnapping) over 10 years. Between May 2001 and April 2006, as many
as 5,094 women were raped and 4,473 were molested in Assam. Of the
rape victims, 109 were minors, that is, below 18; 867 of the
molestation victims were minors.

The armed conflicts in the northeastern States have taken their toll on
women, who find themselves subjected to physical and mental abuse
and get caught in killings and clashes. The clashes affect whole
communities, but women are the hardest hit, a situation that has got a
lot to do with their position in society. In clashes between communities
and ethnic groups, violence against women of the enemy community
or group is a common tactic. Also, there has been a resurgence of
patriarchal values in the region, which has brought new restrictions on
the way women move and dress. All this is compounded by the long
social, economic and psychological trauma of armed conflict, the NEN
study report says.

About rising crimes against women in Meghalaya, the Asian Centre for
Human Rights (ACHR) says in a report that though Meghalaya has
matrilineal societies, violence against women, including rape, attempt
to rape and domestic violence, are on the rise. However, most of the
cases go unreported. “According to State government’s statistics, 132
rape cases and 39 cases of attempted rape were registered with the
police in the State capital Shillong from 2001 to 2005. Out of this, 96
cases were charge-sheeted, while 48 cases were pending investigation.
However, only one person was sentenced to two years’ rigorous
imprisonment for rape in the last five years,” says the report.

As in most other societies, women and children in Meghalaya get fewer

opportunities and are more vulnerable than their male counterparts,
said Hasina Kharbhih. She said many women from Meghalaya who got
trafficked were sold into prostitution or found themselves forced into
hard domestic labour or marriages.

In Tripura, too, various forms of crimes against women are on the rise.
In 2002 a total of 537 cases, in 2003 a total of 572 cases, and in 2004
a total of 682 cases of violence against women were registered in the

19
State. Between 1999 and 2005, there were 1,205 cases of crimes
against women in Manipur. These included 102 rape cases, 391
kidnapping cases and 174 cases of molestation. In Mizoram, 587 cases
of rape and 690 cases of outraging of modesty were reported between
1995 and 2004. Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland were no exceptions.

The rising graph of crimes against women in the region recently

prompted a group of development organisations to come together on a
common platform called NE Action to Stop Violence, which launched a
15-day campaign to mobilise civil society and improve awareness of
violence against women. Hasina Kharbhih has proposed a “Meghalaya
model”, which brings together State governments, law-enforcing
agencies, the legal fraternity, the media and civil society organisations
to check the trafficking of women and children. She said that following
a sustained campaign through a series of State-level consultations
organised by the INGON all over the region, other States had also
shown interest in adopting this model, which the Meghalaya
government had already adopted.

Tip of the iceberg

By Vidya Venkat in Chennai

N. BASHKARAN

Baby girls left behind by parents at the cradle centre of the government hospital in
Dharmapuri. An October 2, 2007 picture.

IN Tamil Nadu there seems to be considerable evidence to suggest that

women are victims of violence at all stages of their lives, from womb to
tomb. From the decline in the juvenile sex ratio (JSR) to the disturbing
trends of domestic violence-induced suicides, what emerges is a
continuous trend in which women get victimised for various socio-
economic and cultural reasons.

20
To start with, Tamil Nadu has witnessed a steady decline in the JSR (of
children aged 0-6) over the decades. K. Nagaraj, Professor at the
Madras Institute of Development Studies, says that in a “normal”
society where discrimination against women does not exist, the
juvenile sex ratio is expected to be higher than the sex ratio at birth as
female babies have better chances of survival than male babies.
Demographers estimate the universal sex ratio at birth (SRB) to be
between 943 and 952 girls for every 1,000 boys. So, with female
babies having better chances of survival, the JSR would ideally be
above 952.

However, in Tamil Nadu the JSR, which was 985 in 1961, plunged to
948 in 1991 and dropped further to 939 in 2001. Experts say this
indicates a strong discrimination against women and to sex selective
abortion, female infanticide and higher female infant mortality rates.
Which means many female babies are not born at all or do not survive
long after birth. There is, however, also underreporting of female
births, which can skew the results of surveys.

Whereas the JSR has declined sharply in urban centres in the rest of
India, in Tamil Nadu such decline is high in rural areas. Ironically, rapid
urbanisation and consequent economic prosperity in rural Tamil Nadu,
which emerged as the most urbanised State in India in the 2001
Census, has not translated into better opportunities for survival for
female babies. What it has done is to improve the access to sex-
selective technology by which parents, compelled by various socio-
economic factors, can eliminate the girl child.

The JSR in four districts, Salem, Dharmapuri, Madurai and Namakkal,

stands below 900, which is lower than the current State average of
939. These are districts that are traditionally notorious for female
infanticide. In rural Salem, the JSR increased marginally from 811 in
2001 to 872 in 2006. In rural Dharmapuri, the JSR improved from 860
in 2001 to 890 in 2006. In rural Namakkal, the JSR improved marginally
from 877 in 2001 to 887 in 2006. In rural Madurai, the JSR was perched
at 901.5 in 2006, only slightly higher than the 901 in 2001.

It is likely that more and more people are choosing sex-selective

abortion rather than female infanticide. This trend is reflected in the
rural areas of Salem and Namakkal, where the sex ratio at birth has
declined sharply over three years, indicating sex-selective abortions.
The sex ratio at birth in rural Salem was 902 in 2003 but dropped
abysmally to 887 in 2006. In rural Namakkal, the fall was even sharper,
from 901 in 2003 to 872 in 2006.

21
There are also indications that other districts are catching up on the
trend. In 2006, the SRB was found to have declined even in those
districts that had been better off earlier. For instance, in Perambalur
there was a drop from 945 in 2003 to 928 in 2006; in Tuticorin, from
985 in 2003 to 930 in 2006; in Erode, from 949 in 2003 to 927 in 2006.

To arrest female infanticides, the State government introduced the

“cradle baby scheme” in 1992, which allowed poor parents to leave
unwanted babies at government-run baby reception centres. Now
there are plans to introduce the scheme in the rest of the country
under the Eleventh Plan.

Interestingly, in Dharmapuri, which has shown some improvement in

JSR figures, there has been an increase in the number of babies
received at the “cradle points”. In November 2007, the number of
babies received at the reception centre of the Dharmapuri District
Hospital crossed the “1,000 mark” and 960 of the babies were female.
However, it is difficult to draw a conclusion on whether the two
phenomena are linked.

Between 2000 and 2007, official data show, 2,589 babies, mostly
female, were received at the “cradle points” set up by the government
in districts where the scheme was popularised. Between 1992 and
1996, the cradle points received 136 babies. The sharp increase in the
number of babies received since the scheme was launched is
perceptible. Of the babies received in 2000-07, as many as 404 babies
died, which indicates the higher risk of mortality associated with
abandoned babies. Between 2000 and 2007, 1,538 babies were given
up for adoption.

The logic in support of the “cradle baby scheme” is that it saves the
lives of unwanted babies. But P. Phavalam, convener of Campaign
against Sex Selective Abortion, says that the scheme makes destitutes
of babies born female. These babies are given up for adoption when
parents do not return to claim them within a stipulated time. The
welfare of the adopted children is not properly monitored, P. Phavalam
said.

Crime records

22
The missing little girls form only a part of the story. Data made
available by the State Crime Records Bureau (SCRB) on the period
between 2005 and October 2007 and the cases recorded under the
various sections of the Indian Penal Code for “crimes against women”
(rape, molestation, kidnapping and abduction, dowry death, cruelty by
husbands and relatives (torture), sexual harassment, dowry
prohibition) show that the safety of girls who survive to reach
adulthood is not guaranteed (see table).

The data show an increase in dowry harassment and cruelty by

husbands and their relatives. Figures available for registered crimes up
to October 2007 show that 2,166 cases under torture, dowry
prohibition (IPC 498A) and dowry deaths (IPC 304B) have been
registered this year. Cases booked under the same sections in 2006
add up to 1,516. Considering the fact that such incidents happen
within the confines of home and, therefore, may never reach official
records, what the figures reflect could be just the tip of the iceberg.

A visit to the burns ward of the Government Kilpauk Medical College in

Chennai gives a sense of how acute the problem of dowry harassment
and other marital abuses could be. Though a large number of
admissions to this ward come from within Chennai, the ward also
receives cases referred by hospitals from nearby districts such as
Vellore and Tiruvallur. Hospital staff say that most burns patients who
arrive here are married women between 20 and 40; most would have
attempted suicide or their relatives would have tried to kill them.

Invariably, the women and their relatives say that the burns were
caused by some “accident” or “stove burst”, the doctors say. So most
cases get registered as “accidents”. But many of the women who

23
survive gradually confide to the nurses attending to them about what
really happened. “Mostly it would be family problems like sustained
torture by the husband or in-laws, extra-marital affairs by husbands,
and so on,” said S. Selvarani, a nurse in the hospital.

A doctor at the hospital said that on an average 600 women died in the
burns ward in a year. A large number of the victims come from poor
working class families. “If you include the number of women who
attempt suicide by consuming poison, the figures would be
staggering,” he said.

Several fora discussing violence against women in the State have

raised the issue of increasing domestic violence being linked to the
easy availability of alcohol. At a recently held discussion on the
elimination of violence against women organised by the Tamil Nadu
Judicial Academy in conjunction with the United States Consulate in
Chennai, trade unionist Geetha Ramakrishnan, who mobilises women
workers in the unorganised sector, expressed concern over the
increase in alcohol-induced male violence within homes. Despite
enabling legislation such as the Protection of Women from Domestic
Violence Act, women from marginalised sections are unable to gain
access to justice, she said.

Citing the instance of a woman who works as a domestic help in north

Chennai, she said that when the woman approached the nearest police
station to lodge a complaint about her abusive, alcoholic husband, the
police officer merely quoted from an old Tamil film song: “Adikara kai
thaan anaikkum” (the hands that hit would embrace too). Having
“settled” the matter thus, he advised her to return home. This account
was not mentioned in newspaper reports of the discussion. That Tamil
Nadu saw the first case registered under the Protection of Women from
Domestic Violence Act, 2005, was well publicised. (In 2006, a
schoolteacher in Tirunelveli who was beaten with an umbrella by her
alcoholic husband complained to the police and the man was arrested
under the provisions of the Act.) But for every registered case of
violence against women there are several others that remain
unacknowledged and unknown.

The SCRB figures also point to increasing incidents of kidnapping and

abduction of women. Such women often end up in jobs that are
sexually or otherwise exploitative. In April 2007, a girl kidnapped from
Chennai was rescued from Puducherry, where she had been forced into
prostitution.

Trafficking

24
The National Crime Records Bureau report “Crime in India-2005” says
that Tamil Nadu accounts for 47 per cent of the cases booked under
the Immoral Traffic Prevention Act in India. The figures suggest that the
State is among the “high supply zones” for sex workers

In recent years, however, concern about the spread of AIDS has

brought about state crackdowns on sex workers. Sources in the police
said that since 2000 a large number of cases had been booked in the
drive against prostitution.

It is, however, important to mention that much of this “crackdown”

resulted in a large number of sex workers being convicted under the
Immoral Trafficking Prevention Act, whereas pimps, brothel owners and
traffickers managed to get away. V. Sithannan, Deputy Superintendent
of Police and Vigilance Officer, Chennai Corporation, acknowledged this
problem in his book Immoral Traffic and Prostitution in India published
in 2006. He accepts that most sex workers are victims themselves, not
criminals. Sithannan told Frontline that the procurement of women for
sexual exploitation from Andhra Pradesh and Kerala was high, while
women from Tamil Nadu were trafficked to States such as Maharashtra
and Goa. Sithannan warns in his book that India could well be turning
into a global transit point for immoral traffickers. Women are the chief
victims.

COVER STORY

Reinventing violence

T.K. RAJALAKSHMI
Interview with Malini Bhattacharya, member, NCW.

25
C.V. SUBRAHMANYAM

Dowry now has a new face, says Malini Bhattacharya.

THE National Commission for Women was set up in January 1992 in

response to a sustained demand from the women’s movement for a
statutory body to monitor and study the legal and constitutional
safeguards for women. The institution itself has come a long way,
adapting to the challenges that emerged in the past 15 years. NCW
member Malini Bhattacharya spoke to Frontline on the issues
confronting women today. Excerpts:

It is generally agreed that there has been an overall escalation of violence against
women. Why do you think this is happening?

I think that the very obvious increase in trends of violence against

women could be partly owing to a backlash. There are some laws in
place, awareness has increased, there are more educated women, and
many more women are going out to work. We hear voices being raised
against violence, and if voices are raised, it is a threat to patriarchal
structures. Sometimes such violence is interpreted as a breaking up of
traditional society. I would like to emphasise that this is not true.
Certain kinds of violence have always been there, the kind against
subordinate classes and castes and women who belong to these
sections. There is no use thinking that the past was golden. We thought
that with more education, with women moving out of their homes,
dowry would have come down. But what we find is that [the demand
for] dowry has gone up and there are certain new dimensions to it.

The face of dowry violence has changed. It has become associated

with the issue of property, which has come out very starkly now that
women have a right to parental property. There is a whole new
lifestyle, particularly among the upper middle classes, which is
continually encouraged by the media, the advertisers and by the whole
array of consumer goods. So the girl who is educated, who is working,
also claims that her marriage would not have a good start if she does
not have an ostentatious wedding accompanied with gifts. Most

26
television serials also promote such images. What is accepted as the
standard among the Hindu upper classes has spread to the less
affluent classes and other communities. Dowry now has a new face.

The whole question of sexual assault on women is one other aspect.

Earlier, it was said – stay indoors to be safe. But women have always
faced violence within homes. Now it is being recognised. Overall,
society also has become more violent. The corporate culture, which is
very competitive, very aggressive, is creating a culture of violence and
aggression that makes all disempowered sections its victims. If there is
violence generally in society, women are bound to get affected. So we
have violence against women as well as sexual harassment in BPOs
and in the corporate sector. Violence has always been there; it is being
reinvented.

With economic reforms, there are said to be more opportunities for women. What
then went wrong?

The whole sphere of employment itself has changed. The kind of

employment that women are getting in the new deal is mainly
contractual. When an employee is a permanent employee, he or she
gets certain benefits and protections. . The shift from permanent to
contractual employment and the opening up of opportunities, mainly of
a contractual nature, gives a different dimension to women’s
employment.

Therefore, certain things that were given as rights by employees are

no longer prevalent. At another level, in certain ways, as far as the
middle and upper middle classes are concerned, certain opportunities
have opened up and so there is a disparity. Economists describe this
not as ‘jobless development’ but as ‘job-lost development’. This means
that now employment is not available for men but for women, at more
exploitative conditions. The conditions of work for the majority of
women are not favourable. Never before has migration been so
common among the female labour force. When women who really
belong to the ranks of the dispossessed and the deprived migrate for
certain kinds of work, they become open to certain kinds of abuse. It is
very difficult to demarcate migration from trafficking. In the neoliberal
regime, freedom for migration is talked about but it is very difficult to
figure out where voluntary migration ends and trafficking begins.

The NCW has been proactive in taking up issues. Yet there is a feeling that the
impact has not been significant, for instance, in the area of the declining child sex
ratio.

27
It is part of the NCW’s mandate to propose laws, policies and
amendments in existing laws. In the past 15 years, several such
interventions have been made by the NCW. I shall highlight some of
the interventions in the past three years. We can only recommend
certain things to the government. In the past three years, we
recommended a fund or a scheme of funding for the rehabilitation of
victims of rape. We had hoped it would be included in the Eleventh
Plan, but so far it has not happened. We also had a major national
workshop on a comprehensive Bill on sexual assault. We were helped
by the All India Democratic Women’s Association, which drafted a Bill
that we had a discussion on and later adopted. We took up suggestions
on the definition of rape and on the rehabilitative aspects apart from
including special provisions on child rape and child sexual abuse. At
present there is no law to deal with that. We took the help of Lawyers
Collective to prepare a draft Bill on the prevention of sexual
harassment at the workplace. We held a national consultation and then
sent the final Bill to the government. We had hoped it would be
presented in Parliament but that has not happened. It is a long haul,
but we feel it is a necessary exercise.

The National Plan on trafficking was jointly prepared by the

Department of Women and Child Development, the NHRC [National
Human Rights Commission] and the NCW. This Plan redefines
trafficking in a much more comprehensive way. The ITPA [Immoral
Trafficking Prevention Act] is concerned only with brothel-based
trafficking. We have emphasised the aspect of rescue and
rehabilitation. Now this has been finalised and is lying with the
government. The other area of intervention was the PCPNDT Act [Pre-
Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex
Selection) Act], where we suggested modifications to make it more
effective.

Yes, the declining child sex ratio is creating havoc both from a
demographic and from a social point of view. There is one argument
that says that women’s value will increase if there are fewer women.
This is preposterous as lesser numbers will only result in greater
exploitation. This is a demographic disaster. The other concern
articulated is: how would the wives, mothers and daughters come up?
But even this is not the main issue. It is a matter of great concern that
after so many years of the women’s movement, after all these years of
independence, we find that women are so devalued that their birth
itself must be prevented.

Why is it so difficult to get women’s issues to become a national priority? There is

also a lot of cynicism that the legal system has not really worked favourably for
women.

28
We feel that these are social issues; but somehow, in the social sector
the government’s intervention has become minimised as a result of its
neoliberal policies. It is not that women’s issues are not accepted as a
priority at the policy level. For example, under the PCPNDT Act the use
of certain medical technologies are required to be regulated. But in a
scenario where both the service provider and the service seekers are
attuned to a particular ethos, the government abdicates responsibility.
Do we need all these medical technologies in the first place? It is
difficult to bring in any regulation as the prevailing trend is that one
has to allow freedom of choice to the service seeker and the freedom
to sell by the service provider.

Another example is of that of the Legal Service Authorities. According

to this, Dalits, Scheduled Tribes, poor men and women should get free
legal aid. We have been unable to implement it. Where there is an
overall atmosphere of making profit, it is difficult to get people to do
social service. The poor have every right to be disenchanted with laws.
The existing laws just do not work for them. We are a hierarchical,
class- and caste-driven society and we cannot expect that the law
would be above the socio-economic structures. It has its own
patriarchal, elitist, class components. But if the laws had not been
there, it would seem that we were endorsing crimes against women.

For example, we know that the anti-dowry Act has not been effective,
but if it had not been there at all, it would be as if we were endorsing
dowry. Laws have a different use altogether; it lies more in a formal
recognition that certain things are not acceptable.

COVER STORY

Lacunae in law

V. VENKATESAN
India’s legal response to violence against women has by and large been characterised
by the absence of sympathy for the victim.

29
 RAJESH KUMAR SINGH/AP

At a rally in Allahabad on December 8 to create awareness about the Domestic

Violence Act.

The World Human Rights Conference in Vienna recognised gender-

based violence as a human rights violation in 1993. In the same year,
the United Nations, through a declaration, defined violence against
women as any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely
to result in, physical, sexual, or psychological harm or suffering to a
woman, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary
deprivations of liberty, whether occurring in public or private life.

In 1995, the U.N.’s Special Report on Violence Against Women added

“violence perpetrated or condoned by the State” to this definition.
Because of the social group to which she belongs, in times of war, riots
and ethnic, caste or class violence, a woman may be raped or
brutalised as a means of humiliating the community to which she
belongs. Male perception of the female sex and women as the property
of men contributes to this extreme form of gender violence.

30
It may be worthwhile to look at India’s legal response to the first two of
these three major forms of violence, namely, violence against women
in the private and public domains, and discern what many observers
have noted as the absence of attitudes sympathetic to women among
those enforcing or interpreting these laws.

Section 375 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), which defines the rape of a
woman by a man, has an important exception: sexual intercourse by a
man with his wife, the wife not being under 15 years of age, is not
rape. Thus “marital rape” as an offence is outside the purview of Indian
criminal law.

The introduction of Section 376A in the IPC somewhat limits this

exception. Under this Section, a man who has sexual intercourse with
his wife who is living separately from him under a decree of separation
or under any custom or usage, without her consent shall be punished
with imprisonment up to two years and shall also be liable to pay a
fine.

Comparison with the punishments prescribed in the IPC for other

categories of rape brings out starkly the bias in the law in favour of
judicially separated men. The IPC prescribes a minimum sentence of
seven years for those convicted in non-custodial rape cases and 10
years in the case of custodial rapes.

The Law Commission has rejected proposals to repeal the marital rape
exception on the grounds that it would amount to “excessive
interference with the marital relationship” (Review of Rape Laws,
172nd Report, 2000, Chapter 3, page 14).

Clearly, some of the ingredients of Section 375 apply also to marital

rape. These include the commission of the offence by the man against
the victim’s will and without her consent. The assumption that a
woman forsakes her right to refuse consent for sexual intercourse with
her husband as long as the marriage persists has been questioned by
many feminist scholars. Such an assumption would inevitably mean
that the law treats women as the property of their husbands.

In R v. R (Rape: Marital Exemption) (1991), the House of Lords widened

the scope of criminal liability by declaring that a husband could be
charged as the principal offender in the rape of his wife. This decision
obliterated the protection of the husband from such prosecution under
the doctrine of marital exemption. The wife was supposed to have
given a general consent to her husband as a natural implication of the
marriage. This has now become an outmoded view of marriage in the
U.K.

31
Cruelty by husband

Section 498A – inserted into the IPC in 1983 – is a major legislative

measure to tackle cruelty by a husband or relatives of the husband.
Under it the offender could be punished with imprisonment for up to
three years and also be liable to pay a fine. The Amendment Act, which
introduced this Section in the IPC, had the objective of combating the
menace of dowry deaths. Section 498A covers both physical and
mental abuse. It is felt that Section 498A’s scope is limited as it is
silent on other kinds of cruelties involving psychological, economic and
sexual abuses. The Section defines cruelty as any act that drives a
woman to commit suicide or cause grave injury or danger to life.

The same Act also introduced Section 113A to the Indian Evidence Act
to raise a presumption regarding the abetment of suicide by a married
woman, if the suicide took place within seven years of her marriage.
Her husband or such relative of her husband would be presumed to
have abetted her suicide in such a case.

In 1986, the Dowry Prohibition (Amendment) Act introduced Section

304-B in the IPC to define dowry death. The court shall presume that
an accused person caused a dowry death if the death of the woman is
an unnatural one and it happened within seven years from the date of
marriage. The woman must have been subjected to cruelty, relating to
a demand for dowry, in the immediate period before her death.

The Domestic Violence Act, enacted in October 2006, provides for,

among other significant reliefs, the right to residence in the shared
household, the right to protection orders, and the mandated return of
Stree-dhan (dowry), besides giving courts the power to restrain the
alienation of assets. It defines violence in all its dimensions, from the
physical to the sexual and the economic. This definition was taken from
the U.N. Model Code on domestic violence and from the Convention on
the Elimination of All Forms of Violence Against Women, to which India
is a party. It applies to not only married women but also women in live-
in relationships and daughters/mothers facing violence in domestic
relationships.

One year on, the Act is not exactly a success story. Lawyers Collective,
a non-governmental organisation (NGO), which was largely involved
with this law in its formative stages, undertook the task of evaluating
enforcement using available data. Its report shows that the main users
of this law are women in matrimonial relationships. A few widows have
used it to prevent dispossession, and some young girls have prevented
forcible marriages by fathers.

32
The major breakthrough the law achieved was the declaration of the
right to reside in the shared household. The law makes a clear
distinction between the ownership of the shared household and the
right to reside in it. What the law does is to grant the right to reside
and not to be dispossessed, except by authority of law.

Indira Jaising of Lawyers Collective wrote in an article published in

Indian Express on October 26: “This provision suffered a major setback
at the hands of the judiciary. The Supreme Court, even before the ink
on the Act was dry, declared in a judgment (S.R. Batra v. Taruna Batra)
that a woman could claim this right only in relation to a household
owned/rented by her husband. This means that if her husband lives
with his parents and she has her matrimonial residence there, she
cannot claim right to residence there. The judgment not only overlooks
the law itself, it also overlooks the existing social reality of the joint
family, which continues to be the predominant pattern.”

The report prepared by Lawyers Collective documents how several

courts have refused relief to women on the basis of this judgment. It
demonstrates that in India women have lesser protection than tenants,
who cannot be evicted except by the procedure established by law.

Anti-rape law

Under Section 375 of the IPC, a man is said to commit rape if he has
sexual intercourse with a woman under any of the six specified
circumstances. They are: i) it should be against her will; ii) without her
consent; iii) when her consent has been obtained by putting in her, or
in any person whom she is interested in, the fear of death or of hurt;
iv) when she consents believing that he is her husband, whereas he is
not; v) when she consents by reason of unsoundness of mind or
intoxication or administration of stupefying substance; or, vi) when she
is under 16 years of age. The provision also says that penetration is
sufficient to constitute the sexual intercourse necessary for the offence
of rape.

Researchers have found serious gaps in using this provision to secure

the conviction of alleged rapists. Pratiksha Baxi says in her article in
the book The Violence of Normal Times (edited by Kalpana Kannabiran,
Women Unlimited, New Delhi, 2005), that the popular perception that
women commonly lie about being raped inflects medical jurisprudence
and in the testimony to rape.

She points to one of the medico-legal propositions that acquires an

axiomatic status that an able-bodied adult woman cannot be raped by
an unarmed man. According to her, in the trial courts, the view is that

33
women have the natural ability to resist rape by crossing their legs.
Here, she says, the male body is not thought of as a weapon, and
women’s ability to resist is seen as given in nature.

When she conducted interviews with experts at the Forensic Science

Laboratory, she found that the practice of using lie-detection tests on
raped women was common. She added that medico-legal textbooks
did not prescribe the use of lie-detection tests on raped women, and to
the best of her knowledge the documentation regarding such tests did
not enter at the trial or appellate level.

For the victim, the process of testifying itself adds to her trauma.
Pratiksha Baxi notes that it makes her relive the rape and humiliates
her. Trial court Judges, she finds, recognise emotional distress produced
by the testimony not as a sign of suffering but as a sign of complicity in
a lie.

She adds: “The cross-examination of the victim itself produces trauma.

It attacks the reputation and veracity of the victim. It makes her relive
the rape and humiliates her. The production of trauma by the law itself
is a serious issue that severely compromises the mental health of rape
survivors.”

Another issue in establishing rape is the ethics of the two-finger test.

The test was evolved as an answer to the medico-legal problem that in
some cases the hymen might remain intact (especially in female
children) despite repeated instances of penile penetration. The answer
was found in partial penetration, which denoted penile penetration of
the vaginal orifice irrespective of whether the hymen was ruptured or
not.

The test is performed by a technique that is in a mimetic relationship

to the act of penile penetration. The test replaces the notion that the
presence or absence of the hymen can by itself signify virginity or its
absence. It is a technique that verifies whether the hymen is broken or
not, and whether it is distensible or not.

The substitution of the erect penis, Baxi points out, rests on the
precarious desexualisation of the clinical practice. She adds:

“The line between the two-finger test (as if it were a surgical

procedure) and assault is a thin one, which is determined by whether
the medical examination is carried out with or without the consent of
the patient. Medical jurists have been aware of the mimesis in their
emphatic recommendation that doctors must secure the patient’s

34
consent for this test. Consent then converts assault into a medical
test.”

Baxi further asks: “The issue of consent is constitutive, for to refuse

the test is interpreted as evidence of a false complaint. It is not clear
what this consent entails. Did it imply consent to allow the medical
jurist to penetrate her with her consent or is it consent towards
allowing the state to produce signs of her own subjection?”

And, how are the results of the test interpreted? When two or more
fingers are easily admissible in the vagina, the patient might be
characterised as being “used to sex” or “habituated to sex”. The word
habituated, Baxi says, lies in the realm of interpretation, deriving its
meaning from the medico-legal domain, for the word does not appear
in any statute. The words “habituated”, “habitual, or “used to sexual
intercourse” continue to appear in appellate judgments and animate
the legal discourse in trial courts.

Baxi argues that if the hymen acts as a sign it does so retrospectively

after the technique is deployed on the victim’s body. Thus while the
“natural” state of the hymen is not reliable, it is a technique which
allows for a verification of the actual by substituting the penis with two
fingers.

The interpretation of the findings of the two-finger test provided in the

medico-legal certificate of the victim is transcribed as “habituated to
sex” or “used to sex”. If a victim is categorised as habituated, it is
assumed that she must have experienced regular sexual intercourse
and this sexual intercourse must have been consensual.

Baxi quotes a defence lawyer who had been practising criminal law in
the trial court as saying that if doctors give a certificate saying no sign
of injury and write that she is habituated, the advantage of this goes to
the accused.

Thus, medico-legal techniques such as the two-finger test result in

symbolic re-rape of victims. The phallocentric law insists on doing
mimetically to the victim what the accused rapist did to her, in order to
know that rape was real.

Outraging modesty

Section 354 of the IPC provides for a punishment of up to two years

with fine to anyone who assaults or uses criminal force on any woman,
intending to outrage her modesty. But the provision does not define
modesty.

35
The Supreme Court, in a recent judgment, defined modesty in this
Section as follows: “Modesty is an attribute associated with female
human beings as a class. It is a virtue which attaches to a female
owing to her sex. The act of pulling a woman, removing her sari,
coupled with a request for sexual intercourse, is such as would be an
outrage to the modesty of a woman; and knowledge, that modesty is
likely to be outraged, is sufficient to constitute the offence without any
deliberate intention having such outrage alone for its object.”

As rape is constituted, only penetration is present. In cases where

sexual assault does not lead to penetration, the prosecution is inclined
to invoke Section 354 against the accused, which results in milder
punishment.

Section 511 of the IPC deals with punishment for attempting to commit
offences that are punishable with imprisonment for life or other forms
of imprisonment. It provides that when an offence is attempted to be
committed for which no specific punishment has been provided for in
the code, an offender will be punishable with half the longest term of
punishment that is prescribed for committing the respective offence.

In other words, a court can convict the accused for attempted rape. Yet
courts have in general been reluctant to do so even when the accused
has been caught while attempting rape. Ranjana Kaul, a member of the
Delhi Commission for Women, points out in an article that they often
rely upon the technicality of the absence of penetration to rule out
attempt and have invariably imposed on the accused the relatively
minor punishment of imprisonment up to two years for molestation.

"The emergence of sexual harassment as a wrong and a form of

discrimination against women has been articulated exclusively by the
Indian courts, and has not been enacted into any statute," says Ratna
Kapur, in her book, Erotic Justice.

Sexual harassment

The inability of Section 354 of the IPC to address adequately the claims
of sexual harassment ultimately led to the filing of a class action
petition in 1997 in the Supreme Court. The petition was brought by
certain social activists and NGOs to assist in finding suitable methods
for the realisation of the true concept of “gender equality” and to
prevent sexual harassment of women in all workplaces through judicial
process, to fill the vacuum in the existing legislation.

The Supreme Court held in this case (Visakha v. State of Rajasthan)

that sexual harassment is a clear violation of the rights under Articles

36
14, 15 and 21 of Constitution. One of the logical consequences of such
an incident is also the violation of the victim’s fundamental right under
Article 19(1)(g) “to practise any profession or to carry out any
occupation, trade or business”. Such violations attract the remedy
under Article 32 for the enforcement of these fundamental rights of
women.

The court defined sexual harassment to include such unwelcome

sexually determined behaviour (whether directly or by implication) as:
a) physical contact and advances; b) a demand or request for sexual
favours; c) sexually coloured remarks; d) showing pornography; or e)
any other unwelcome physical verbal or non-verbal conduct of a sexual
nature.

The court directed all employers or persons in charge of the workplace,

whether in the public or private sector, to take appropriate steps to
prevent sexual harassment, and create mechanisms for the settlement
or prosecution of complaints. It laid down 12 guidelines in this regard
and declared that these would constitute the law of the land until the
legislature took further action.

Ironically, Parliament took almost 10 years after the Vishaka judgment

to prepare a draft Bill on sexual harassment. The draft Bill, the
Protection of Women Against Sexual Harassment at Workplace Bill,
2007, is yet to be introduced in Parliament.

REFERENCES

1. Ratna Kapur, `Erotic Justice'; Permanent Black, New Delhi, 2005.

2. Kalpana Kannabiran (ed.), `The Violence of Normal Times'; Women

Unlimited, New Delhi, 2005.

ONLINE

http://www.cflr.org/

http://www.idrc.ca/uploads/user-
S/10286562430Violence_Against_Women_in_India_By_Sheela_Saravana
n_(ISST)_.pdf</A?< P>

http://pib.nic.in/release/release.asp?relid=33866

http://www.judis.nic.in/supremecourt/qrydisp.aspx?filename=13856

37
http://prsindia.org/docs/draft/draft_sexual_harassment_bill.pdf

COVER STORY

‘Women not part of political agendas’

T.K. RAJALAKSHMI
Interview with Brinda Karat, Communist Party of India (Marxist) member of the
Rajya Sabha.
S. SUBRAMANIUM

Brinda Karat: “We have moved forward in the resistance to domestic violence.”

Brinda Karat, national vice-president of the All India Democratic

Women’s Association (AIDWA) and Rajya Sabha member of the
Communist Party of India (Marxist), has been one of the leading voices
in the campaign on violence against women for the past three
decades. In her view, the neoliberal phase of the Indian economy
ushered in myriad forms of violence against women, which, despite its
seriousness and spread, is far from becoming a priority issue to be
addressed. Excerpts from an interview:

38
There is a broad agreement that violence against women has gone up in both
general and specific terms. How is the situation today different from that in the
1980s, which was characterised by campaigns on violence against women.

Firstly, there are a much larger number of women coming out in

protest against different kinds of violence, particularly in urban India.
In many cases, there is also more social reaction. In smaller towns also,
one finds a growing resistance by women to violence. That is the most
positive thing. The second aspect is that violence against women is
being recognised as a form of violence. In the 1970s and the 1980s, it
was a big struggle just to get it out from the private sphere on to the
public sphere and to say that if a woman is being beaten within the
four walls of the home that does not make it any less of a crime.

Dominant cultures are still very prevalent in large parts of the country.
The trivialisation of wife-beating and different aspects of domestic
violence is rooted in the notion that “this is bound to happen”. It is
believed that women have to adjust and that modern women just do
not want to adjust. This attitude is very prevalent. However, there is a
greater feeling, especially among younger women, that one has to
challenge these cultures prevailing in the name of tradition. We are
observing a lot of social reaction from the younger generation
particularly against sexual harassment. Young women are able to
speak out much more as compared to 20 or 30 years ago.

I will not say that the efforts of women’s organisations have gone in
vain. But now the issue is whether this is enough. This is a context
where there is a huge increase in violence along with some
contradictory trends. This whole concept of India’s development sans
social justice and social reform lies at the crux of it. We have a pattern
of development that really does not challenge unjust cultures. The way
politics is developing in the Indian context, for example, increasing
caste identity politics and the tendency to use religion, religious
symbols and religious tradition for political mobilisation, we find that
the position of women is somehow located at the bottom of the ladder.
Their status is intrinsic to these structures.

Consider the notion that Indian tradition respects women. It may

respect women but she is respected if she remains within the four
walls of the house and is the mother of a son. But it changes the
minute she is a working woman or a woman who steps out on the
street. I recall reading in the journal Organiser a few years ago where a
sevika [a woman volunteer of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh] was
quoted as saying that women should work only if there is an economic
necessity. This kind of an approach is problematic and when there is

39
political mobilisation around this mode of thought, it automatically acts
as a brake on the advancement of women.

On the one hand there is the modernisation of the economy and, on

the other, there is acute economic distress. All of this exists with the
notion of Indian culture. In the Indian context, while fighting violence
against women, one has to fight the caste structures as well as the
cultural conceptualisations of what a woman’s role should be while
earning the respect of society. We are in a sense in a cultural prism,
which seems to justify violence as soon as the woman steps out of the
so-called “Lakshman rekha.” The concept of punishment for breaking a
social norm is still part of this dynamic of violence against women.

There are more women visible now in the public sphere and many more are working
as well, mainly in the unorganised sector, but the ways of seeing women have not
changed in a very fundamental sense.

The utter failure of our system to punish the perpetrators of violence is

one aspect. Unless there is a much quicker, speedier process of justice
which is taken seriously, and there is an enabling environment for
women to speak, the feeling is that one can get away with it. The low
rate of convictions in almost all cases of violence against women is
absolutely appalling. When people think that they can get away with it,
they end up getting away with it.

There is now a growing recognition that there are newer forms of violence against
women that are on the rise – domestic violence, communal violence and honour
killings. With nearly two decades of economic reforms one would have expected that
women would be better off as compared to the 1970s and the 1980s.

40
 NISSAR AHMAD

A migrant woman from Bihar collecting garbage in Srinagar. A file photo.

We have moved forward in the resistance to domestic violence. For as

many women who are beaten, there are an equal number of women
who refuse to be beaten. It wasn’t that domestic violence was not
there. It is only that it is being recognised as a form of violence. But
caste and caste structures are a greater impediment to women’s
mobility and freedom. There is a strong reaction to women
transgressing caste norms, which should have no place in a civilised
society. Honour killings are still not recognised as a serious crime.
There are numerous instances of couples who may not face exact
violence but face discrimination, economic and social isolation.

Apart from the obvious savage brutality faced by Dalit women – one of
the worst forms of caste violence against women, which is not
acknowledged – in today’s neoliberal world, characterised by
fragmented work, casual labour and insecurity of work conditions,
women are more vulnerable to violence. For instance, NSS [National
Sample Survey] data show that women’s participation in agriculture
has gone down, while their participation in self-employed forms of work
has gone up. And this is the core of increasing violence against Dalit
women. She [the Dalit woman] is putting herself at risk every day
because of the conditions of work.

Food insecurity also leads to added vulnerabilities. There is violence in

the form of abusive language that attacks the very dignity of a human
being. We have seen in our work in rural areas that there has been a

41
phenomenal increase in crimes against Dalit women. The conditions of
work have worsened for women in rural India. The violence that
emanates due to economic vulnerability is not documented anywhere.
There is no record of what crores of rural women face.

In our right-to-food campaigns in several States, we observed that

women had internalised such violence and had deemed it as intrinsic
to their daily lives. They never reported it. I think that the levels of
such violence have grown in the past 20 years along with the levels of
agrarian distress. What these poor women go through is totally
invisible to human eyes. Today, when women’s organisations, political
parties or lawmakers talk about violence, they have to talk about these
conditions as well and make it a part of political agendas. The big
tragedy is that women still do not figure as part of political agendas.

The other aspect which is so cruel about globalisation is this huge

increase in the organised trafficking of young girls. The trade has such
powerful backers. The demand for young girls is shocking. This kind of
violence involves a large number of adolescent girls. What kind of
society do we have which produces no alternative and young girls are
forced into a position when there is then a subsequent demand to
legalise the trade. It is so contradictory. As a reality, there are so many
different aspects to this, and poverty is a determinant of increasing
violence against women, including trafficking.

Poverty and dowry are both determinants of trafficking. There has to

be major intervention at the source centres of trafficking, where
poverty exists. The focus on violence has to shift. There are a large
number of women who are part of the unorganised sector workforce
who face violence on a daily basis, but this problem is not addressed.
Violence against women has to be a national issue and not just a
matter to be taken up by women’s organisations. How can we even
discuss development in such a scenario?

There is the other aspect of politics and violence against women. We

have seen increasing insecurity against minority women, and this is
directly linked to aggressive Hindutva. Women are also victims of
various kinds of fundamentalisms. For instance, in the name of Islam,
various kinds of injustices, such as fatwas, are passed on women. But
the good part is that women themselves are resisting it. Muslim women
become particularly vulnerable as they are targeted not only by
Hindutva forces but by the forces of fundamentalism within their own
community as well. It is important for political agendas to support
reform within communities.

42
The women’s movement conducted many successful campaigns against dowry in the
1980s. There is a resurgence seen in the system of dowry, which has become the
main reason for domestic violence and other forms of violence against women and
the girl child.

Dowry, I would say, is the main engine driving different forms of

violence against women. For example, sex-determination tests and
sex-selective abortions, child marriage, trafficking and domestic
violence are all manifestations [of the problem]. The most unfortunate
thing is that there is so much social sanction for this practice. If it is not
dowry, then it is opulence, lavish expenditure at weddings. The
understanding is that if one has wealth, it should be flaunted. The
worth and status of a person is determined by the amount he or she
can spend and not by the quality of the individual.

The worst practices of the rich trickle down and have some of the most
devastating consequences on poor people. These practices are
promoted by the media and by advertisements. It is appalling to see
the Barbie culture being highly prevalent among six-year-olds in some
of the private schools in Delhi. It is not that it is everywhere, but it is
still the dominant trend.

There is also this huge hiatus between the laws and their implementation.

I don’t agree that we can do away with laws and only deal with social
reform. It is important to recognise a crime as a social crime and as a
crime under the law. It is true that the framing of laws is full of
loopholes. The Domestic Violence Act and the PNDT [Pre-Natal
Diagnostic Techniques] Act are examples where there is so much of
bureaucratisation that makes it so difficult for the victim to get access
to the law.

The other aspect concerns the implementing authorities, where I would

fault the police and large sections of our judiciary. It seems
extraordinary that even in cases of child sexual abuse, it should take
10 to 15 years for a conviction. The victim is victimised all over. It is
another thing that we do not even have a proper and comprehensive
law to deal with sexual assault.

The attitude of the police is also very discouraging. They do not

encourage filing of complaints. Instead they [the police] convince the
complainants that by filing the complaint, they would face social
ostracism and may have difficulties in getting the girls [victims]
married, etc. If someone has a daughter, it becomes very difficult for
them to pursue the matter to get justice. It is the height of cruelty. We
have fast-track courts, special courts, women courts, but it is not

43
working. There has to be a time-bound system to deal with rape,
assault as well as child sexual abuse.

The system should not look at the victim as a victim but in a way that
strengthens gender justice. Unfortunately, mainstream political
agendas are far removed from gender issues. When there are debates
in Parliament on the PNDT Act or even the Domestic Violence Act, the
presence of parliamentarians is minimal. It is not that women issues
are neglected deliberately. If one simply adds up all the victims of
terrorist attacks, the figure would be much less than [that for] crimes
committed against women in this country. It is a question of making it
a political priority.

COVER STORY

Structures of insecurity

JAYATI GHOSH
It is important to recognise and trace the economic roots of violence against women.

44
 SAVITA KIRLOSKAR/REUTERS

Miss Universe Lara Dutta, Miss World Priyanka Chopra and Miss Asia Pacific Diya
Mirza on a hoarding in Mumbai. A file photograph. The majority of the world’s
working women have no use for the glamour of beauty pageants and successful
models selling the beauty myth.

IT is of course well known that violence against women has deeply

systemic roots and that there is a “normalisation” of such violence
where the economic and social status of women is already low. It is
also increasingly recognised that such violence takes many forms. In

45
addition to the overt physical violence there are what could be called
“structural” forms of violence through economic, social and cultural
processes.

Economic violence ranges from denial of property to women, use of

their unpaid labour as a norm in households, denial of equal access to
education and discrimination in labour markets, unequal access to
credit and other markets to practices such as dowry. Social violence
includes not only various forms of discrimination and curbs on
women’s mobility and freedom, but also practices such as early
marriage, pressure to bear male children, disparities in access to
nutrition and health, as well as to education. Cultural norms that
oppress women and girls often have a strong psychological element to
them, as patterns of objectification and subjugation can lead to self-
oppression and low self-esteem.

In addition, of course, the many forms of direct physical violence

against women also tend to have strong links with economic, social
and material processes. This operates throughout the life-cycle of
women. Thus, pre-natal sex selection and female infanticide are much
more common where female progeny is seen as an economic or social
burden. Sexual abuse, including in its worst form of rape, can reflect
not only patriarchal desires for control and punishment but also the
lack of economic protection of the victims.

Violence associated with practices such as dowry, as in dowry deaths,

has a very obvious material link. But even domestic and marital abuse
is made more possible when women have fewer options for escape out
of such oppressive relationships because of lack of assets or economic
security in the form of gainful occupations. So lack of economic
security becomes a deterrent to complaint or resistance by women
victims. Even apparently non-economic atrocities such as “honour
killings” have often been found to have underlying economic
motivations, such as the desire to restrict control of land and other
assets within particular communities and prevent inheritance by
children of “mixed” marriages.

Trafficking of women and girl children, in turn, has strong material

underpinnings. The association of trafficking with poverty is obvious
and well known. But there needs to be more appreciation of the fact
that in many cases, as Radhika Coomaraswamy, United Nations Special
Rapporteur on Violence against Women, has pointed out, “trafficking is
really abuse of the desire to migrate”, which essentially reflects poor
material conditions and oppressive social constraints in the place of
origin.

46
Even violence against older women, and particularly widows, often has
a strong economic basis – either in the need of the perpetrators to
control the family property or in the wish to avoid expenditure on the
consumption of someone who is less able to provide unpaid labour for
the household.

So there is a strong though complex relationship between violence

against women and economic processes. This means that the evidence
of increasing violence against women in India in the past decade must
have something to do with the very rapid economic changes that have
also been so apparent over this period.

Market processes

Over the past two decades, the Indian economy has been thrown open
to market processes more than ever before, and these market
processes have been regional, national and international. This period
has been associated with a tendency towards privatisation of state
assets, reduction in crucial government investment, especially in
infrastructure areas, reduced per capita public spending on health,
reduced public expenditure in the rural areas generally, deregulation
and a number of tax benefits and other sops provided to large
domestic and multinational capital, trade liberalisation which has
affected the viability of small-scale manufacturing units and
agriculturalists, even as it has created more export possibilities for
textiles and information technology-enabled services (ITes).

All this, in turn, has created both very rapid growth in some sectors
and stagnation or worse in other sectors and regions. Economic
inequalities have increased quite substantially, both spatially and
within regions, and material insecurities have increased, not only for
the poor but even for more prosperous groups.

The most significant feature that affects the lives of people is

employment and the conditions of livelihood. This is where the past
decade has created growing insecurity. The difficulty of finding
remunerative work opportunities has become the single most
important problem for large sections of the population. Wage
employment of all kinds has fallen as a share of total employment, and
self-employment has emerged as the fastest growing form even in non-
agriculture, now accounting for around half of the workforce. But the
self-employed, especially those engaged in relatively less skilled and
less productive occupations, face daily problems of survival, which
creates additional tensions.

47
Agriculturalists continue to face huge problems of viability as
cultivators because of the combination of threats from highly
subsidised imports which are keeping prices down, and rising costs
because of withdrawal of subsidies. It is striking to note that the crisis
in agriculture, which is especially marked in some pockets of rain-fed
cultivation, has continued even as international prices of crops have
increased in the past few years, suggesting that domestic policy and
institutional failures have been significant factors in this.

In urban areas, the rate of overall employment generation has been

slightly better, but not in the formal sector, where employment has
barely grown at all. There has been some growth in services
employment, and especially in ITes that has reduced the rate of
educated unemployment. But even in the urban areas, the problem of
lack of sufficient employment for all those who need to work remains
significant. For less skilled workers, and especially women, the problem
of access to productive work is acute.

Women are being drawn into the paid labour force in some more
regressive ways, in the form of home-based work as part of large
chains of production organised by large capitalists, or as low-paid and
exploited service sector workers. The largest increase in regular
employment of urban women (amounting to around 3 million new
workers) between 1999-2000 and 2004-05 was as domestic servants.

In addition, there is the problem of reduced security of work and of

incomes generally. Of course this is most marked for wage workers in
less skilled and more unstable occupations. That is why the National
Sample Survey of 2004-05 could find that 80 per cent of workers in
India earn less than Rs.20 a day. But it is ironically true that even in the
higher ends of the job spectrum, employment has become more
volatile and fragile, and the earlier security that was implicit in formal
sector employment has all but disappeared in the new contracts. In
addition, even non-wage incomes are now less secure and more
volatile simply because many markets, and the income accruing from
them, fluctuate much more wildly than they did in the past.

Material insecurity has been increasingly expressed in other negative

features, most notably food consumption. Food insecurity has once
again become an important national issue, not only for traditionally
deprived groups, but in the aggregate. Foodgrain availability per head
of population for the economy as a whole has been lower on average in
the past few years than even 30 years ago. Per capita calorie
consumption, even for the poorest 40 per cent of the population, has
also declined.

48
There have also been evident declines in the availability of basic public
services in the areas of health and sanitation. The decline in public
expenditure investment has not only meant that the rate of expansion
of much-needed health facilities has declined but also that
maintenance and repair of such facilities, as well as basic running
expenditures, are not provided, so that the actual quality of and access
to public health and sanitation facilities has declined.

This has affected both preventive and curative health care in the public
sector, which in turn means that even poor households are forced to
spend heavily on private health care, even when this cuts into the
incomes necessary for sheer physical survival. Naturally, this tends to
affect women and girl children more adversely and compounds the
effects of gender discrimination in nutrition as well. There are even
some States where the rates of child immunisation have actually
worsened in recent years, and this includes apparently “fast-growing”
States such as Gujarat.

Along with this, the growing emphasis on markets has implied the
commoditisation of many aspects of life that were earlier seen as
either naturally provided by states and communities or simply not
subject to market transaction and property relations. Thus, the inability
or refusal of the government to provide safe drinking water has led to
the explosive growth of a bottled water industry. A whole range of
previously state-owned services and utilities such as power distribution
and telecommunications have been privatised. Even the growing
recognition accorded to intellectual property rights marks the entry of
markets into ever newer spheres.

Beauty contests

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 MOHAMMED YOUSUF

Women often find themselves trapped in unpaid domestic labour or poorly paid
labour in other people’s homes. This photograph was taken in Hyderabad on the
International Day for the Eradication of Poverty on October 17, 2006.

Of course, markets imply marketing and drawing more and more

consumers into the web of purchase through advertising and attempts
to manipulate people’s tastes and choices. In this effort, advertising
companies have notoriously used women as objects to purvey their
products. The dual relationship with women, as objects to be used in
selling goods, and as a huge potential market for goods, creates a
peculiar process whereby women are encouraged and persuaded to
participate actively in their own objectification. The huge media
attention given to beauty contests, “successful” models, and the like,
all feed into the rapidly expanding beauty industry, which includes not
only cosmetics and beauty aids, but slimming agents, beauty parlours
and weight loss clinics. Many of these contribute to the most
undesirable and backward attitudes to both women and their
appearance, such as the advertisements for fairness cream that
emphasise that it is necessary to be fair to make a “good” marriage,
which is in turn seen as the basic goal of a woman.

All this seems plausible enough, but many would argue that the link
between all this and violence against women is not all that obvious.
But there are identifiable mechanisms for this. The most basic
mechanism comes from the sheer fact of greater material insecurity.
As ordinary life becomes more volatile, insecure and unpredictable in
various ways, people search for security in whatever ways they can
muster. Precisely because some degree of certainty is seen as a
comfort, often the more rigid a system is (whether it is a set of

50
intellectual and spiritual beliefs, or a religious order, or a relatively
close grouping claiming a particular special social identity) the more
attractive it perversely becomes. (This may explain why some of the
more rigidly structured and sectarian religious and social groups that
strongly emphasise patriarchy have attracted a growing following in
recent times.)

And there is a strong undercurrent of violence in all this. The tendency

towards violence of various sorts – towards other “communities” or
caste groups, and especially towards women – can be seen as another
reflection and result of the economic and social processes outlined
earlier. The greater insecurity and sheer difficulty of ordinary life, the
complications and worries involved in providing for basic needs, all
make for much greater levels of everyday irritation in people. This can
only rarely find an outlet in places of work, and requires other means of
expression.

In addition, the massive increase in inequality, the growth of rampant

consumerism, and the explosion of new media that brings all the lavish
new lifestyles into open public view, all serve to add to the resentment
and frustration of have-nots. The gap between aspiration and reality
becomes ever wider, and this creates a strong urge to somehow get at
those who are seen as “responsible”. Of course, the real agents of
these processes – the unresponsive government, the large companies
and multinationals, the foreign investors – are all too large, too distant
and too powerful to be touched. How much easier, then, to direct one’s
ire against those who are seen as more easily attacked – minority
communities or lower caste groups, women within and outside the
household, and so on. The substantial increase in violence against
women is not just because of higher reporting of incidents, but
because of this process, which results in an actual increase in the
number of such crimes.

Individualism

The other philosophy that is invoked and sought to be spread is that

which lies at the heart of the reliance on markets – individualism. The
“competitive spirit” is unleashed and used to make people feel that it
is each man or woman for himself or herself, and that individuals can
succeed in making gains at the expense of others in their own social
group. This has two significant effects that further aggravate problems
of violence: it makes each act that of an individual and it reduces the
possibility of solidarity among victims and possibilities of collective
action.

51
That is why it is so important to recognise and trace the economic
roots of violence against women. It is essential not only to mobilise for
policies that shape the state and societal response to individual acts of
violence, but also to change the processes of liberalisation and
corporate globalisation that have indirectly aided such violence in
general.

COVER STORY

Voice of silence

VIDYA VENKAT
Interview with Shamita Das Dasgupta, co-founder of Manavi.
SAPTARSHI DAS

Shamita Das Dasgupta’s organisation helps an average of 300 victims of domestic

violence every year.

TWENTY-TWO years ago, six young Indian women living in the United
States – Radha Sharma Hegde, Shashi Jain, Rashmi Jaipal, Vibha Jha,
Shamita Das Dasgupta and Kavery Dutta – founded Manavi to support
victims of domestic violence. They were jolted into action after the
story of Amita Vadlamudi, a battered Indian immigrant woman who
killed her husband unable to tolerate his abuse, brought the issue of
violence within homes out in the open. When Manavi was born in 1985,
it became the first South Asian women’s organisation seeking to
address this issue in the U.S. Based in New Jersey, the non-profit and
non-governmental organisation (NGO) handles the cases of an average
of 300 women victims of domestic violence annually.

Frontline caught up with Shamita Das Dasgupta recently while she was
on a visit to India. Quoting from a study, she described the disturbing
pattern of domestic violence in the nearly two-million-strong Indian
immigrant community in the U.S. The study, conducted among 160
highly educated South Asian women by A. Raj and J. Silverman and
published in the Journal of American Medical Women’s Association in
2002 showed that 40.8 per cent of the respondents had been

52
physically and/or sexually abused in some way by their current male
partners; 36.9 per cent of this number reported that the victimisation
happened one year before the study. However, only 3.1 per cent of the
abused South Asian women in the study had ever obtained a
restraining order against an abusive partner. The study says this rate is
substantially lower than that reported in a study of women in
Massachusetts, in which over 33 per cent of women who reported
intimate partner violence in the past five years had obtained a
restraining order. Excerpts from Shamita Das Dasgupta’s conversation
with Frontline:

When I started working among women victims of violence in the U.S.

independently some 30 years ago, there was almost no one working in
this area. The main reason for violence is the gender discrepancy of
power. Most immigrants seem to carry with them their native cultural
prejudices…they attempt to keep their dominance through violence.
Also, among immigrant women there is this extraordinary tendency to
keep the marriage intact regardless of the cost. Women tolerate
violence. The social customs that approve endurance perpetuate the
violence.

From hostility to awareness

When we started work in 1985, we got so many calls from so many

battered women that it surprised us. Initially, we faced only hostility
from the community and disbelief from the victims, as if there was no
hope. But now women’s awareness of laws is improving and with help
in hand more and more women are reporting such instances of
violence to the police or to NGOs. The awareness generation done by
Manavi and other similar organisations has proved useful. We must
acknowledge, however, that there are still those among the Indian
diaspora who are not aware of their rights. When it comes to women
standing up to violence, community responses such as “this is not
necessary” and “why wash dirty linen in public?” are common. But
over the years, these responses have dwindled. At Manavi, we conduct
visible community events such as marches and campaigns to generate
awareness. Our organisation has also been featured in newspapers
such as The New York Times and in radio talk shows. Our success has
inspired several members of the South Asian diaspora to take up the
cause of battered women. But we have come a long way.

Next year [in 2008], Manavi will conduct its third National Conference,
urging South Asian Women to rise up against violence. Our short-stay
home, Ashraya, provides shelter to battered women, whom we later
refer to government homes if they need help.

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Role of the American state
STAN HONDA/AFP

Immigrants in the U.S. hang on to their culture in a very strong way because of the
constant fear of losing their identity in a foreign land. At a store in New York.

The U.S. government has played an important role in assisting NGOs to

tackle the issue. During the 1970s, there was a significant women’s
movement in the U.S. which held the state responsible for the welfare
of women. A model under the Coordinated Community Response was
developed to bring together state agencies and NGOs. NGOs get
grants to run shelter networks. The Violence Against Women Act, 1994,
has addressed the issue of domestic violence adequately. Also there
are common torture and harassment laws that address issues of abuse.
Many American States have adopted practices such as mandatory
arrests and no-drop prosecution to ensure that victims of violence get
justice.

Speedy justice

Speedy justice is a remarkable feature of U.S. courts. For instance, an

Order for Protection can be issued overnight to victims to prevent
violent or threatening acts – including stalking – harassment, and
contact or communication from the abusive spouse. It can be either a
criminal or a civil order. However, no verification is necessary under
Federal law to issue an Order of Protection. Federal law requires that all
valid Orders for Protection of any jurisdiction be enforced to protect
victims wherever violation has occurred. Immediate action is taken by

54
the police when protection orders are violated. Initiation of criminal
procedure and arrest is quick. Though the police are trained to handle
cases of domestic violence sensitively, much more remains to be done
in this field as the problem is widespread. Also, there are issues such
as contradictory legal systems, conflicts related to cultural issues such
as stree-dhan – dowry and mehr – distrust of law enforcement, racism
and xenophobia; language issues and perceptions of credibility pose
problems.

Cultural assumptions

Immigrants hang on to their culture in a very strong way because of

the constant fear of losing their identity in a foreign land – even to the
extent that they hang on to an imaginary culture… These cultural
notions often get distorted. For instance, several women I have dealt
with assume that Indian culture accepts violence against women,
which I think is a tremendous distortion. I ask the victims: Why ignore
the empowering aspects of our culture? We urge these women to wake
up and ask who benefits from perceived cultural notions?

I remember the case of this particular young woman from India who
had two children and was physically abused and starved in her in-laws’
place in the U.S. When she came to us she couldn’t even speak proper
English. We helped her to separate from her husband. She found
herself a job in a hotel and was determined to bring up her children on
her own. Today she is independent, drives a car and her children are
doing well too. It is this resilience and courage of women that
encourages us to keep going.

Today, thanks to the support system made available to battered

women, several of them are able to stay aboard and find a job. We help
them find these jobs, provide training, if need be. And most of them
manage to survive on their own. Several women seek divorce from
abusive husbands and carry on with their lives with dignity. But the
problem of domestic violence is very much there and I feel the struggle
has to go on.

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