 Hello, hello everyone. Good afternoon or early evening and welcome to this week's SOAS Development Studies and Bloomsbury DTC seminar series. We are delighted this week to be joined by Kavita Krishnan, who I'm sure requires no introduction to most of you but I will do so anyway, and also by Alpasha from LSE. Kavita Krishnan is an Indian, Marxist, feminist and communist activist. She is Secretary of the All India Progressive Women's Association, which organizes Indian women and has led many struggles of women, most notably struggles of women workers in rural and urban India. And she is a leader of the Communist Party of India, Marxist-Leninist. Kavita has undoubtedly become one of the most influential voices on issues of women's rights, labour and social justice in India today, and her writing and speeches have been published across a wide range of media. Alpasha is Associate Professor Reader in the Department of Anthropology at the London School of Economics. She is the author of In the Shadows of the State, Indigenous Politics, Environmentalism and Insurgency in Jharkhand, India. She is currently working on a book about India's Maoist-inspired naxalite revolutionary struggle, and she is also leading a research project on inequality and poverty in India, which looks at the plights of Dalits and Adivasis over two decades after liberalization. So, without further ado, I'm going to hand over to Kavita, who will speak. Then Alpa will come in and offer comments, and then we'll open the floor to the audience. Just to let you know, for those of you who'd like to tweet about the event, the hashtag is hashtag soasdevstudies, DEV studies, or one, or, and, hashtag ESRC, who's one of our funders. So without further ado, I'll hand over to Kavita. Thank you so much, and it's a pleasure to be speaking here. So I'll start off right away, telling you what I want to speak about today. I think that there are some very high-profile, very visible, state-led campaigns, especially by the current Indian government that are underway that claim to be addressing the question of disempowerment of women. So they claim to be campaigns for women's empowerment, and they attract a lot of funding, including funding from international funding agencies. And I wanted to share with you how those of us in the feminist movement who have been addressing questions of Indian women's, questions inside the Indian women's movement for so long, who have been organizing women's struggles in India for so long, how we contend with how we see these campaigns and what the relationship is between these campaigns and our movements, our campaigns. Because very often, even in the Indian media and so on, and of course even more widely where India is looked at, very often these campaigns are looked at as a good thing. After all, India is such a backward country, women are so badly off in India. If an Indian government and an Indian prime minister are talking about women and girls and girls' education and against sex-selective abortion and so on, it must be a good thing. But I think it's worth looking a little closer at those campaigns and see what they mean. Because very often these campaigns look at some, you know, things like violence against women and sex-selective abortion and low sex ratio and lack of education for women and domestic violence and so on. And they look at these issues as disparate issues at which they have to address and achieve some outcome, some better indicator, something like that. And I think that feminist movements when they address, even while they address all these issues, their focus is on asserting women, asserting their own autonomy in their own lives, at their workplace, in their society and so on. More control over their own lives and their labour and their time and so on. So, you know, the state-led campaigns, they're framed by a political economy that requires women's availability for social reproductive functions and they also want to plant labour force and they are advertising India as a place where you can get, you know, cheap and good quality labour at a low cost and so on. And they are advertising the fact that it will be more docile labour and all of that. And so these state-led campaigns, the state itself, therefore is quite hostile to the very idea of women's autonomy, which obviously won't remain confined in some spaces. It will naturally spill over to everything else, including, you know, control over their lives in every possible sphere, including work. So these campaigns, these state-led campaigns, even though they're partnering with international funding agencies that are using the rhetoric of women's autonomy, these campaigns, however, they define, you know, women's empowerment and that's a popular term they use. But they use it in ways that reinforce and legitimise the patriarchal offensive against women's autonomy in many ways. And they also resonate with a whole lot of other political campaigns that are currently there in India that are very sharply almost defined in terms of their attack, their outright assault on women's autonomy in their lives. And so I'd like to specifically look today at two of the campaigns. One is the Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao campaign, that is the Save Your Daughters and Educate Daughters campaign. And the Swachh Bharat campaign, which is the Clean India campaign, which is a campaign for building more toilets and so on. And both these campaigns are very, you know, very visible in India today. They're backed by the Prime Minister, by the government. And the Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao campaign gets funding from the USAID and it partners with the USAID's Girl Rising campaign. And the Swachh Bharat campaign gets funding from the USAID and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. So I just wanted to begin by sharing with you some of the, you know, just to situate this discussion, you know, because very often you tend to get a lot of numbers thrown at you when you talk about India and the women's situation there. So you'll get to know, you know, so many, so many rapes. You'll get to know, you know, this is the sex ratio and so on. And just to situate those statistics and those facts and figures in a slightly different matrix, we could look at the data of the National Family Health Survey 2005, which is the latest National Family Health Survey data, as well as some of the findings of the Indian Human Development Survey 2012, which establishes specifically how denial of autonomy itself is a form of violence and discrimination that Indian women face. And, you know, it might seem like a no-brainer. It might seem like, why does this need to be said? But of course, but it's important for us to keep emphasizing this point because, as I'm sure those of you who are at all familiar with India know, state policies often prescribe and impose restrictions on women's autonomy in the name of keeping them safe from violence. So it happens all the time. So to assert that even these restrictions are themselves a form of violence and they're a form of discrimination is therefore important. So I just, you know, if you look at the Indian Human Development Survey 2012 finds that only 5% of women in India have sole control over choosing their own husbands. So over choosing their partners, over choosing what they will do with their, you know, their personal lives, their partner in life. And even something like choosing to visit a health center, you find that almost 80% of women need permission from sometimes more than one family member. So maybe their husband, maybe an older male family member or older female family member to visit a health center. And a freedom of movement according to the National Family Health Survey is curtailed quite severely for most women in India. So, you know, just one third of women are able to go out alone to the market or to the health center or anywhere outside. So this mobility outside is itself something which asserting that right to mobility is itself, you know, an important assertion. So, you know, we know that because when we go to, if you, if we go to organize, you know, if we go to hold a meeting of women in any part of India, anywhere in India, one of our concerns will be that to, you know, to keep a women's organization or a trade union active, then those women would have to assert their right to come out of their homes, to hold meetings regularly, to go out, to be part of larger campaigns outside and so on. So naturally, that becomes one of the primary areas of focus no matter what you're organizing around, no matter what the immediate issue is around which you're organizing around which there's a struggle. But this becomes part of what we do. And the National Family Health data shows that if you see the reasons that people, you know, people give for why there's such a large acceptance for domestic violence, I mean, their data shows that there's a very large acceptance among both women and men for the idea that domestic violence is okay. And they find that even among educated men and women, although the acceptance level is less, but there's a very large number, quite a majority, that feels that for one reason or the other domestic violence is justified. And the assumption, you know, they found that the violence is more likely to be justified if the behavior of the women is seen as violating their, you know, prescribed rule as wives or mothers or daughters-in-law. So they find that the data from both women and men suggests that being a respectful daughter-in-law and properly looking after the house and children are sort of essential roles. And if you don't do those, if you're not doing that, then it's all right for domestic violence to happen. And you see a lot of that because you find that you can see, you know, in all the reasons being given, so not cooking food properly and neglecting the house or children or showing disrespect for the in-laws and so on are all reasons which, you know, they're part of the rationalizations for domestic violence. And you find, therefore, that, yeah, you've already seen that. So I wanted to make this point to underline the point that even where something like domestic violence is concerned, it's also not just, I mean, the violence is there and the violence is held in place by an entire set of values and even that is not only just culture or mindset. The culture also is part of something where women's labor, women's the expectation that women will perform these domestic services and this reproductive labor is part of what holds all that in place and domestic violence is one of the ways in which women are, you know, disciplined into doing that. And you find that even where rape statistics is concerned, as I've, you know, in the data I've put up here, you find that there's a very high level of disguised violence there against women's autonomy, which often gets hidden because even in the Indian media, you know, when people speak to us from the Indian media, they'll be talking about so many rapes a minute, so many rapes a day, they'll never like to use those numbers anymore because I feel uneasy with them. I feel that they are actually, we're talking about something while we are managing to hide another kind of violence that we're not talking about, hidden in those same numbers because this researcher in the Hindu called Rukmini S, she found that she studied the cases of rape that came into delete courts for trial and she found that almost 40% of those cases are actually cases of consensual elopements that parents have called rape, which means that the woman is not saying that I have been raped, but the police is quite happy to file the rape case there and, you know, we know what a struggle it is to file a rape case where the woman is saying I have been raped, but where the parents are coming out there and saying, my daughter has been taken away by this boy or taken away by this man, then you find cases of rapes and abductions and so on being filed. So this is a violence which is an open secret in a way. It's called rape, but it's actually quite another kind of violence and it's an open secret and even the police is complicit in it and it enjoys, currently for the past couple of years in India with the current regime that we have at the centre, it also enjoys political sanction and encouragement from sort of vigilante organizations that are very close to the ruling party at the centre and that feel empowered to give a political shape to this violence, to actually go and disrupt, interfaith or intercast marriages and so on and make a political issue of them. So feminist movements in India have noted that the police and state machinery is systematically complicit in what are called honour crimes and that's not a term I'm very comfortable with but I'm using it for wider understanding here but it's like family custodial violence basically and this includes even the murders of couples who have loved across the boundaries of caste or against the dictates of caste groups and caste organizations or interfaith marriages or same sex relationships and so on. All of those are at the receiving end of this kind of violence and feminist movements have a running battle against this kind of violence. So basically I just want to say here that this kind of violence as I said earlier it's not just about culture and mindset it's also about this violence against women's autonomy and against violations of the gender roles it helps maintain the caste system and it helps maintain women's continued role in unpaid social reproductive work and so even the state and the globalised market they have an interest in maintaining this this kind of these structures as well they don't really have an interest in dismantling them at all which is the backdrop in which we look at those campaigns a little more closely. So I'll start by looking at the Beti Bachao campaign Beti Bachao, Betiparhau that means save your daughter or protect your daughter and educate your daughter. So it seems pretty it was a campaign aimed at supposedly against sex-selective abortion and for girls' education and it's a campaign that's projected as a brainchild of the Prime Minister Modi himself so he announced it in a speech of his I think in an Independence Day speech so in associated campaigns he has personally spearheaded on social media and so on campaigns as part of the Beti Bachao campaign such as the Selfie with Daughter campaign which means a campaign in which fathers especially but parents generally are encouraged to post selfies with their daughters so that campaign also got a lot of media attention and all of that. Now I wanted to look at where these campaigns really originated so these slogans of Betiparhau have various resonances which I'll come to a little later but I'll briefly mention that here but we'll go back to that little later. The Beti Bachao slogan actually predates this campaign it's a slogan, save your daughter, protect your daughter is a slogan specifically used by the Hindu right-wing groups which are close to the ruling Bharti Janta Party now, Modi's party, the Prime Minister's party and they used it specifically to formant anti-Muslim violence by saying that to Hindu parents your daughters are in danger from Muslim men so what are they in danger of? They're in danger, they say, of violation by Muslim men, violation of their honour but that's a vague term because what does it mean? Does it mean rape by Muslim men? Well, as we saw already rape and consensual sexual relationships they become interchangeable even where cases are being filed right? So in the public mind and even in the thinking of the state machinery and so on so they use this slogan quite deliberately to say that Muslim men are doing love jihad your daughter might fall in love with a Muslim and he's actually out there trying to seduce Muslim men are out there trying to seduce Hindu women and then turn them into Muslims so it's part of this demographic battle that Muslims are doing in India to change the numbers and become the majority and so on and so forth so it's part of that entire thing so they would actually pick on they pick specifically on specific instances where young women, Hindu girls and Muslim boys had run away or gotten married and all of that and they tried to say it's love jihad not a single one of those cases actually got sustained in any way because even in instances where they had managed to coerce the woman into saying that she had been raped and so on at some stage the young woman would escape from her family and the custody in which she had been held and run away and go public and say that no I actually have married this person and that's the person I want to live with so they didn't really succeed in terms of actually managing to successfully criminalize any of these relationships but they used the slogan nevertheless and they continued to use it even in the ongoing Uttar Pradesh elections now you have the BJP Modi's right hand man and the BJP president Amit Shah and the manifesto promises it to set up anti-Romeo squads so all the Juliet's can worry because the Romeo's will be punished they call it an anti-Romeo squad so the Beti Bachao slogan has that provenance that's where it comes from and when you find it in this campaign in this sort of unarguable campaign how can you argue with a campaign that says but what happens is that you're having this slogan on huge hoardings and in campaigns and in the prime minister's speeches and everywhere it's surrounding you and at the same time it's also a campaign that's being used by the Hindu vigilante right wing groups so the way in which they resound together and it's a dog whistle that's continuously blowing out there so that slogan I just wanted to put that in place then the selfie with daughter campaign if you look at where that originated that's interesting because there is in a Haryana village called Bibi Poor there was an organization called the Avivahit Purush Sangat and the unmarried men's union and it's called the unmarried men's union and it's basically because they said that the sex ratio is low and that's why we are unmarried and it's actually a strange argument because basically they are saying that we are entitled to wives and we are entitled to wives from the right caste and community and because we are not we are not getting them because the government should do something about this because they were quite serious about it they gave the slogan get us brides if you want wards and all of that and so you know this whole question of sex election and skewed sex ratio then is approached it's not approached from the point of view of women's rights and their autonomy and their lives but from the perspective of men's deprivation of entitlement to wives so that's the way in which this whole thing was approached by that organization and the idea was that men need wives to perform sexual and reproductive duties and household labour which as we saw is a very widely accepted kind of idea and if wives are in short supply in Haryana they must be sourced and bought from even bought from other states which is happening so this is the perspective that dominates in Haryana and you had this BJP leader I don't know if I have that up here you have this BJP leader O.P. Dhankar he is a farmer's leader and a prominent BJP leader there he assured this farmer's conference in Jindh during the 2014 elections that Modi won that making the BJP strong means that those youths in many villages who are roaming without brides will get one and he promised that I'll get you really good quality brides from Bihar because the Sushil Modi who was then the deputy chief minister of Bihar is a good friend of mine we'll do that for you so you see there was this acceptance that basically it's about the whole issue is being talked about in terms of fulfilling men's entitlement to wives and this is the village in which this selfie with daughter campaign started and that village it got identified as a model village and it's a model panchayat it's a model village and it got funding from the government and all of that because it was doing this it was saying that we are fighting sex selective abortion and how was it doing that was something when I read a more detailed report of what was going on in that village I found it very disturbing deeply disturbing because one of the things that that came out in reports from that village you know and quite you know positively worded reports and all of that was that they are asking older women in the village to keep surveillance on pregnant women so basically the ideas as we have already seen from there is how much restriction there is on women's mobility which means that women are already almost always under surveillance even as young girls and as young married women in their in their in law's house and all of that and what this what this panchayat was doing of this village for instance there is a 63 year old woman called Sheela Devi and she is part of a secret committee that this panchayat the head of the village set up and she is supposed to she is part of the secret committee that keeps tabs on pregnant women so and then they will they will keep telling those women that if you abort your baby then that is murder so it is kanya hathya it is the murder of a girl and it is a sin and all of that so basically those women will now be under pressure to produce sons and abort a female fetus and also under pressure by being told that basically this is a murder of a daughter and all of that and the idea that somehow women should have greater control over their own lives and their decisions is something that is lost in all of this it is just more surveillance it is more surveillance and more control over their lives rather than more control by older women and the entire panchayat keeping tabs on their lives rather than the idea that maybe you know women actually having greater control in their own lives might make a difference so you have the secret surveillance added to whatever family surveillance is already happening and it is not it is not likely to be very effective what this baby panchayat was doing because you did have studies by the kurukshetra university geography department I mean they did go into a study in the village and they did found that the you know the overall sex ratio there was not you know not very good compared even to the rest of haryana and so on but my point is that even if it were it's difficult sex ratio has to be calculated over a period of time you can't really calculate it in small windows like that anyway but the point is that you know feminism is about you know talking about women's inalienable right to their autonomy and equality and freedom from discrimination and it's about breaking patriarchal restrictions but you know paternalistic campaigns like this basically they set out to you know they may lose and or reset the restrictions they may reset the rules at some stage but they're still you know retaining the decide the right to decide how much or how how little to restrict women's freedoms so they have you know if you look at this panchayat as well as other panchayats in haryana you find some of them in haryana there's systematically a lot of violence against intercast and same gotra means within the same cast but there are different gotras so people belonging to the same gotra are considered to be brother and sister that's the understanding so if people within the same and some it can be a very large group so if people within the same gotra decide to fall in love and get married then they can you know there have been many instances of them being killed at the behest of these carp panchayats the carps are killed you know there's community basically decision making bodies community bodies basically so these but some of these bodies you know they were getting they said we don't want to be called talibanik anymore and we want to get this more modern image so they started saying we're going to fight sex selective abortion so they got a lot of pats on the back from the state government as well as the central government and all of that but you find that they continue to ban intercast marriages you know one of them for instance one of these carps in sattrol carp of hisar they decided to allow intercast marriages but you know it was with a lot of caveats and they said that we will continue to ban intercast marriages in the same and bordering villages as well as same gotra marriages so we won't allow those and you know the point is that you have the law in India special marriages act says that you know the adults can marry irrespective of caste or gotra so the idea is that these community bodies are still retaining the right to you know lay down these laws and yet they're being lauded as being you know model panchayats and they're doing these historic things for women and all of that and the same in fact this bb put panchayat they had a very well publicized women's server carp panchayat because of the carp meetings actually the meetings of the carps the meetings of these community panchayats never have women in them so the other aspect about them is that they are of these dominant caste so the Dalits in the village those of the oppressed caste in the village they don't have any say there so the carp can decide things about you know ownership of land it's supposed to be a dispute resolution mechanism but disputes over land and so on I mean they would just decide them obviously in favor of the powerful people if it's a dispute over property within a family then it will obviously be with the man against the brother against the sister and so on all these things and you had in you have in Haryana so this village set out to say that we're going to hold this and it got a lot of media attention because they said we're going to hold a women's carp panchayat so they called you know from various carps all across Haryana they hosted this women's server carp panchayat and it was all against what they call female fetus side which is self sex selective abortion but that's a term quite used quite a lot in India female fetus side so that was what they did but some women's group activists there went to the panchayat and they said that they tried to speak in the panchayat and raised the issue that since 2005 India has a law that allows daughters to inherit ancestral property including land and that that law you have several panchayats in Haryana that have passed that against that law they demanded that that law be changed and they have actually passed orders saying we will disinherit we will excommunicate a family if they give land to a daughter and all of that so when these women's rights activists these feminist activists tried to raise it in that place they were shoot off from the stage and told you can't do that here and yet this is the panchayat that the Haryana government gave 1 crore rupees to for its rights against sex selective abortion and since then the Haryana government has been claiming that because of the beti bachow campaign that has turned around out they are claiming this dramatic turn around in their sex ratio in the state and they claim that since the beti bachow campaign is since 2014 right so it's since the amorti government came to power so they are claiming that the child sex ratio in the state has improved from 34 girls to every thousand in the 2011 census to 903 girls to 1,000 in December 2015 now a lot of observers and activists have pointed out that this is a very misleading claim because sex ratio for one thing cannot be measured every day and it's not like pollution levels that you can measure it every day it's something that is measured over time and you have to track it and the changes in the sex ratio become apparent only over a certain time and the other thing is that if you look at you know what is at bottom what's the problem where is the sex ratio problem actually located is it only located in culture and tradition and mindset you have a lot of evidence that it's not that in fact those communities you know there were only some communities in India that used to do sex selection or believe in you know some preference of that kind it has spread in the past you know 20 years or so so it has actually it's not some you know culture and tradition that's ongoing forever and you're waiting for it to change the change that you've seen in the past 20 years or so of liberalization and globalization has made a sex selection and a sun preference almost ubiquitous across communities in India and it has spread with the growth of technology use of ultrasound technology for this and invariably those who can afford ultrasound technology more easily as in the you know the richer so you have more sex you have a worse sex ratio in the cities among educated people and so on and so forth so clearly this is not just about backward lack of education and therefore sex selective abortion that's not how it's going so you know what women's groups have strongly said right from the beginning when they flagged this issue way back in the 1980s was that you have to you know this is about a medical industry that is actually profiting from and you know to begin with they would openly advertise sex selection now it's been outlawed but it's still an industry that is profiting out of sex selection and clearly you know continuing to do it so the law that bans it and the law in India does not ban abortion women have a right to abortion women have a right to privacy during the pregnancy so what they do is that the sex determination by the doctor which means the doctors not supposed to tell the parents the sex of the fetus which is why abortion remains legal but sex selective abortion you know coming from sex determination is illegal so that's you know to maintain that distinction you need the doctors you need the doctors to be under watch you need the this law to be implemented properly but you don't find any of that happening the sex ratio is so bad in Haryana but still in the you know one of the studies showed that in six months before the Haryana chief minister made this declaration of a change a radical change only 58 cases had been registered under this law that bans sex determination against you know airing doctors so this is a very low number and it's not a conviction it's just cases registered so there is no evidence that the government is actually going any harder against the doctors right none at all and the other question is of course the and if you talk about what the central government is doing about this law it's very interesting because there's a powerful medical lobby in India that is saying that that wants this law gone they're saying you know people are doing it people are the ones who are backward and they are the ones who are anti women and so on it's not our fault so you should you should stop making it illegal for doctors to do sex determination so they've they've been saying you know you get rid of this law and quite some months ago you had the minister for you know women's development in India in the central government Menaka Gandhi she made a public statement exactly to this effect saying we should get rid of this law we should make sex determination necessary and then surveil you know only surveillance on watch the women who are pregnant with female fetuses so she basically was saying don't watch the doctors just watch the women you know watch the pregnant women just make sure they are not so she had to retract that statement because there was quite an outcry about it so she said why was just thinking out loud and all of that but she wasn't because there is a there is a there is a doctor's lobby that's been arguing for this it was very very well planned what she said and the larger question is whether sex selection can be addressed at all without you know just on its own like that you know that we just want a better outcome we want some better indicators so if we just you know have these older women in the village do surveillance on pregnant mothers I know and just somehow prevent you know make sure daughters are born can you really challenge it without challenging the larger you know metrics of regressive patriarchy lock stock and barrel you know so the Haryana chief minister now for instance Manohar Al Khattar all chief ministers in Haryana even the previous one from the congress government this person is from the BJP even they none of them said a word they all made appreciative noises about the carp and jites they would never open their mouths and see that the carp and jites are responsible for these you know so-called honor killings and other kind you know of dress codes on women and all of that they all did that but Khattar went even a step further Manohar Al Khattar is you know who's the chief minister now when before he became chief minister he said about a year before he became chief minister that I'll try and get that thing out yeah so this is what he said he said that the carps are great because they maintain this tradition of brother and sister and they're just making sure that a boy look at each other as brother and sister and they're not going to look at each other the wrong way and he said you know if girls dress decently if they wear skirts they're luring boys into you know sexual violence and all of that and he asked women who you know he was asked by this journalist but what about you the fact that girls are saying they want freedom so he said what's this freedom do they want the freedom to roam around naked freedom has to be limited and you know short clothes are a western influence all of that that a lot of people you know it's a quite familiar kind of victim blaming and sexism in India to say that all this is western all these concerns are western and clothes are western and so on the point is he's now chief minister and you see him hosting these beti bachow events so he's rebranding himself as a progressive chief minister who's doing things for girls and girls education and he's you know he has the US ambassador gracing these functions his functions are funded by for instance this event is a beti bachow beti bachow event the camera hasn't focused on the US ambassador sadly it's focused on someone else but you can see it says Richard Varma there that is the US ambassador to India so he's attending these events he's giving speeches there and Qatar is basically one of those events except as an advertisement for the government which is saying that here we are actually you know doing all these nice feminist sounding things that can get some international attention and funding and all of that and this is a government I also want to just underline that because this is a government which you know when sometime back last year when there was this Jart agitation for quotas and year, year and a half go the agitators pulled women down from buses and gang raped them at a place called Murthal in Haryana and there was a lot of evidence for that but the police and the government systematically denied they branded all the women complainants as liars they said none of this has happened and the chief minister himself you know he presided over this so the man who says that skirts cause rape he's the same person and he's also talking about all for women's education and women's empowerment he's somebody who's actually preventing justice in rape cases quite recently there was a Chandigarh you know I quote wrap on the knuckles for him saying that we've viewed the evidence and we are of the view that rape has occurred so they've ordered the Haryana government to make sure that cases are filed and something moves and it's being monitored by the court now but you know I'm just mentioning that to say that this is the reality when you have this government also claiming Beti Bachao and all of that at the same time so yeah and now what about the Beti but how part of it the education part of it I want to mention there that a larger and larger number of Indian families are wanting to educate girls so education itself I mean the wish to send a daughter to school and all of that is there but there are several reasons why you know even education stops at a certain point or it's difficult to continue because even in rural India you have families wanting to send their daughters to school and all of that the thing is that for one thing that schooling and education is not necessarily only seen as a way of later earning and all of that it's also to some extent seen as a degree of education and then marriage is the is the root scene but that apart I mean the thing is that you know the situation of schools in India the availability of schools the fact that government schooling tends to be of poor quality good schooling is more expensive all of these things are things that affect girls schooling in India they are not changing or touching any of that they are not really making it easier for girls to go to school so that it's basically this nice looking that sees educated daughters and you know that kind of thing but I want to raise something a little more in keeping with what I initially raised which was this concern about women's autonomy because you have students in India women students in India who are in colleges and universities for instance very loudly raising this issue that we generally in order to study outside you know we have to go to college sometimes we have to stay in hostels and all of that and our colleges and universities and if we are seeing in hostels then hostels they discriminate against us as women and they do it in the name of safety they do it in the name of keeping us safe from sexual violence whereas actually if we want to go out and file if we want to complain of sexual harassment at our college or university or anything like that then we are discouraged from doing that that is considered bad behavior and that is discouraged any movement against sexual harassment is shut down there is a crack down on it you are publicly shamed for doing that but you are told that you will be locked up for your own safety and all of that so in fact there was a UGC committee UGC team that had university grants commission that is university grants commission some in 2013 had set up this committee that had come up with the report because and several people on that committee were experienced activists both in education as well as in the women's movement and they had prepared this report and in the course of the report basically it was a recommendations for safety on campuses so they had spoken to a lot of women students on campuses and those women students had said that locking up women is not the answer in fact they said that wherever they went this was something that young women students everywhere would tell them this was a major concern they said that the custodial responsibility of the university is to make the spaces safe enough for us to live with a sense of freedom and equality and there were protests everywhere about early hostile hours when women students had to be in by 6 p.m. or hostile terraces are locked up by 6 30 or not open at all or transport between the main campus and undergraduate hostile stops at 7 p.m. or in some universities there is no transport at all or libraries are not allowed for women after a certain period and all of that so they kept stressing this that this is not the way forward and this is what the Saksham report also it was called the Saksham report so it had these recommendations unpredictably the recommendations are there but no one wants to look at them no one wants to follow them so colleges and universities and hostels in India continued to go their own sweet way and in the 2013 came in the wake of the 2012 gang rape incident and the concern about violence against women then and in that movement also if you recall one of the strongest points made by a lot of women participants in that movement was don't make us trade off our freedom in the name of our safety because this locking us up is a form of violence against us and we don't want that this was something very strongly made and the good part is that the women's movement so you have this for instance just I want to give you one example you have this pinjara toad pinjara toad movement pinjara is cage so it says break the hostile locks or break the cages pinjara toad and this is a movement feminist movement of young women students in Delhi University which has attracted a large number of participants and basically they started by saying exactly this and the hostels have to go but they have also of course raised a whole lot of other feminist issues as well and it's a very it's a growing new group a new feminist movement in India now look at the I want to show you this pinjara toad poster if you can read what that says it says no warden is protector no brother who is tough my feminist comrades are enough and they had that in several languages they had that in several languages and they have been of course attacked by the right wing groups there the one as you know the students group associated with the ruling party they've told you know they've said these are these are girls of poor character they've done silly things like throwing coins at these girls with these young women when they are marching on the street basically to say that you know they're available for money ABVP people have done ABVP is the students wing of the ruling party and they've done that and they've done that even with the students activists of the all India students association as well in several places in Lucknow as well as in Delhi so this is the kind of violence that they face now my point is that you see the states policies continue to insist on these rules and regulations and they do it in the name of doing a lot of good for women you know that that's what they say that we are creating safe structures so women can come and study but they'll be hedged around with all these discriminatory rules so discrimination is packaged as safety and it's still very common policy and now the additional it's also laced with this whole you know sort of you know Hindu right wing ideology now there's that extra lacing I'm not saying that this isn't this is a policy that has a long you know history in India but it's laced with that now because now it's also to say you know there's this overt danger out there that not just danger of violence but the danger of your women your daughter's own freedom you know there was a BJP leader supporter in Gujarat who said some years ago that your daughters you know everybody has a bomb in their house your daughter is a bomb she may explode and then your caste you know your family caste boundaries you know so you have to really police those borders of your home and your caste that's you said that in so many words so this is the you know this is the extra kind of lacing that's happening with these with these kinds of rules and regulations that women are fighting and then you have these BJP leaders who've said you know women activists and campuses have been called loose women shameless women you know women who dance naked at night and stuff like that by these you know leaders of these of these parties yeah are we running short of time? Yeah okay so I just go on to the next one quickly and then we'll end with that it's just the last bit so yeah I'll just take five or seven minutes yeah so I wanted to look at the Swachh Bharat campaign the Swachh Bharat quickly go to the Swachh Bharat campaign so yeah you know this is this is a poster of the right to P campaign in Mumbai which is a feminist campaign a lot of groups have done it basically saying that we need more public toilets in especially for women in you know in Indian cities so basically they're talking about women's right to access these public spaces more easily and you know that women's toilets in public spaces is a recognition that women are going to be out there at all hours of day and night and you need toilets for them and my own organization I took up this kind of a campaign in Delhi as well where we did surveys of how few toilets there are available not only toilets available in public spaces for women but also toilets available for instance domestic workers so women domestic workers or sanitation workers who sweep the streets and so on they will leave their house early in the morning you know using going to the toilet somewhere out on the street in some public place and the whole day they will not have any access to any toilet at all all day so one of the demands you know for toilets and so on has actually been coming from the feminist movement I wanted to put that out there because now you have this government campaign saying clean India and saying build more toilets in your homes and you know doing all this very visible campaign saying build toilets build toilets and you know the prime minister said will there be any other prime minister who will talk about toilets but I've talked about toilets and all of that because he's trying to say you know that I'm willing to actually you know talk about this thing it's not a dirty thing it's this good so he's actually seemed very progressive and modern saying all this right but I want to look at whether it has addressed this issue at all and the other aspect is the question that sanitation work in India has done hugely by Dalit workers of the most oppressed caste who are considered untouchable and so on and they have for very long been demanding an overhaul of India's sanitation systems to ensure an end to manual scavenging and more rights and dignity for sanitation workers and I just want to quickly show you some photographs of struggles of women's sanitation workers so this is a activist of the Bangalore contracts of Aikar Amchari's union it's a union which is associated with the all India central council of trade unions and you know look at their struggles I'll just show you a couple more photos so these are this is a you know if you if you go to those struggles highly vocal very well attended struggles of a very large number of women all of whom are Dalit who clean the streets of Bangalore and it's they have been demanding you know they have they've recently had a very you know their success in one of their struggles which is they managed to get their minimum wages increased from 7000 a month to you know almost double that amount plus so it's 14000 a month now plus there's a 3000 risk allowance that they managed to win and they also were demanding toilets and drinking water for themselves I mean it's ironic they're cleaning out there but they don't have anywhere in his annotation for themselves so they were demanding food during the day and all of that they were demanding basic cleaning tools as well as safety tools you know safety things like gumboots and masks a recent health survey I was in Bangalore recently at that time they've done this health survey and they found that most of the people have mouth cancer why because they chew tobacco and that's because they have to avoid drinking water because water is not available and also lures are not available so in order to you know keep the saliva coming in the mouth keep the mouth from getting too dry and they're working in dusty places all the time so they're chewing tobacco and that means that most of them have mouth cancer and they also have a lot of eye problems from dust from the dust flying into their eyes so eye injuries and so on so they've been demanding that you know these facilities in order to prevent that but the Swachh Bharat campaign is completely you know to shut it it's ears to these concerns it's as though they're not there but are they not concerned about women the Swachh Bharat clean India campaign it's most visible or audible emotional appeals are you know to women's safety and women's dignity you know women's honor for if you put it if that's the way they put it so I'll show you a couple of advertisements this is the last one just ending the end so I'll yeah so this is a campaign that this is a slogan that says bahu, betiaan, door na jaaye ghar mehi shawchale banwain so it means you know daughters and daughters in law don't go far away from the house construct a toilet in your own house remember we looked at that right in the beginning that restriction keep inside the house is something which is a form of violence that women face and this is actually speaking directly to that it's telling people construct and all the campaigns are worded like this the Swachh Bharat campaign you could find any number of examples I'll just share three with you this is one here's another that says maa ghar mein gongat tera saati fir kyo shawch khule mein jaati that means mother your veil is your companion in your home so why do you defecate in the open and so this is all about honour right keeping the gongat is the veil so the veil is about protecting your honour so if you're that honourable that you use the veil you know why you're exposing your backside going outside to the loo basically that's what it is and I remember there was an advertisement with one of the best known actresses in India Vidya Balan who did an advertisement with the Swachh Bharat campaign where she goes into a home where the mother-in-law has just she introduces her to the daughter-in-law the daughter-in-law has a gongat all the time because she's covered her face and then Vidya Balan asks the mother-in-law do you have a toilet in the house and she says no she says oh you know you might as well remove the veil because if you're going to send your daughter outside to the bathroom you might as well remove the veil so this is actually something saying that veiling your daughter-in-law is a form of honour and you are dishonouring yourself and your home and your daughter-in-law by going outside so feminist groups have flagged all of this and have said that this is the exact opposite of what needs seeing we've been asking for public toilets in order to increase mobility of women now you are asking for toilets in the home is a necessity but for hygiene reasons ending defecation in the open is necessity for health reasons but you are using this kind of messaging which is reinforcing all the patriarchal messaging and the other point which I'll make the last point is that the Clean India campaign you know Beswada Wilson who is a campaigner for the liberation of manual scavengers in India has made this point really well so I'll just share his quote right at the end where he says that he points out quite correctly that swatch means pure and the scheme is for the toilet users not for the toilet cleaners so it's talking about purity it's talking of the which is associated with the dominant caste and pollution is associated with the Dalits were the cleaners so he's making this point and I just want to you know make that last point here that this campaign is very much reinforcing both the Betty Bachao campaign and the Swachh Bharat campaign are very much framed by the dominant caste and gender framework they're also very much located in the idea of restricting women's mobility and of denying women's autonomy they also have a larger resonance with the attacks on the rights of women and Dalits in the country and yet these are campaigns that are seen from afar and even inside India as being campaigns that are feathers you know the flagship campaigns that are good things criticize the government but why do you criticize these campaigns they're good campaigns they're at least doing a good thing asking for good things to happen and all of that so I hope we can address questions after this but I'll end my talk. Thank you very much Kavita I'm going to hand over to Alpa who will act as discussant and then open the floor afterwards. Thank you so much Kavita I thought that was a really really illuminating talk you know when I first went out to India it was in 1999 and I was really interested in looking at one of these kinds of campaigns the development of women and children in rural areas which was a big UNICEF funded campaign and you know there I was set up to do this PhD looking at the impact of this of this program and I turn up in rural Jharkhand and I find that actually this program doesn't exist at all you know it's only in the books of the block development officers it doesn't exist on the ground at all and of course the entire PhD had turned into something very different but I think since those times what you are describing is we've seen certain fundamental shifts in India and what we have what you've presented to us is this kind of very heady mix of you know the spread of neoliberal capitalism combined with the kind of Hindu right wing forces that are promoting some of the processes related to this to the spread of capitalism and this kind of combination is giving us a very particular particular spread of the control of women's bodies and I remember I was thinking a lot about the work of Sylvia Federici and thinking about how what the similarities and differences are with what we are seeing in contemporary India you know her argument being that the primitive accumulation of capitalism has been based on moving women from the historical struggle for the commons and taking away women's autonomy and placing them inside the household as housewives so that their labor in reproduction basically their labor in reproducing male workers becomes like unpaid labor so increasing housewifeization of women controlling women's bodies and sexualities and of course she was talking about a very different period in European history but I think we are seeing this kind of spread of capitalism and increasing control of women's bodies in India and I wanted to ask you really a few questions about this I mean to what extent do you think what we are seeing right now is quite different to the past is quite different to what we might have seen 20 years ago what we might have seen with a different kind of government in front so I mean that's one kind of question that I had but I also wanted to ask you more specifically about something that you referred to when you were talking about you know looking at sex selection and how we can't really we can't really address just this we've got a challenge the much larger matrices of patriarchy and and of course I mean this is a question about the women's movement in general in India but to me I've had a lot of inspiration from working with women across India and it seems that you know the challenges to such forces that we're seeing in India as you described in your presentation have to come from both an ideological and a material front so you've got to have a kind of double edge challenge but also we do I was wondering to your examples were mainly from Haryana but I wonder to what extent such campaigns are actually having as great a spread or as great an appeal in many other parts of India for example those dominated in particular by Adivasis and Dalits because what we also have in India is a very different model of male-female relations especially amongst Adivasis and Dalits communities a much greater autonomy within households in both of these communities quite different ideas of femininity feminist men even I would say especially amongst Adivasis communities and I've often thought about how we have these much more positive models of gender relations which of course with upward mobility and increasing education change amongst these communities but the ways in which we may have a kind of strike back that comes from Adivasis and Dalit communities and I was you know it's quite interesting to see that the Karam Chari the Safai Karam Charis you know the union protest demanding demanding better wages is coming from Dalit women and you know we've had other campaigns like for example the Kerala women workers strikes and the tea plantations again coming from Dalit women and which have been actually greatly supported by Dalit men in those areas so we have these quite different models of what it means to be a woman of challenges to patriarchy from within those communities which are actually silenced in these overall models and I was wondering if you could tell us something about you know the more positive struggles that we're seeing the kind of fights that we can see emerging from Adivasis and Dalit communities in India yeah thanks yeah so what's different about this particular juncture I mean I'd like to say to begin with that I think most of the state led campaigns I mean even if you look at another state for instance which I've looked at closely which is Bihar which is ruled by not ruled by the Bharti Janta party it is ruled by Nitesh Kumar and his Janta Dal also speaks the language of women's empowerment and all of that in quite a big way so he said we're giving cycles to little girls to enable them to go to school and all of that but what we found even there also is that the attitude of the state is basically very paternalistic and it's also quite hostile to women's autonomy so women who are women rural women workers and so on their struggles have been dealt with quite brutally by the state you know they're not really easy or comfortable with women organizing to make demands of the state they're only comfortable with you know saying things that they are willing to do for those women but not really to respond to demands by the women and you know speak to them as such so that is something that has lost that government in fact Nitesh Kumar a considerable degree of support that he had initially from you know women health workers for instance in rural Bihar so I didn't want to say that what is specific about these campaigns I think is what I felt it's also there's this extra layer of the Hindu right wing you know resonance as well that is added to these specific campaigns so that's one thing that is that sets it apart from earlier times but I also think there's other things I think that you know the participation rates and so on are still quite low in India for women but basically you do have however newer sections of women who are coming out to work for the first time so it isn't only that they're wanting you know house wifi station alone it's that these anxieties are really sharp right now and people are out to you know anxieties about if my daughter goes out to start going out to study and to work and so on so if my daughter goes out to study and goes out to work and so on the anxiety is there about what her conduct will be what her sexual conduct will be what you know how her behavior will be what changes will happen there so I think what these campaigns do and what state policies do and what even the Hindu right wing policies and other caste groups politics and all of that they're all different ways of harnessing that anxiety in their own favor so they are looking for ways to say you can do well by your daughter but you can also control you know continue to control her you can also you know you can you can be a good you can look good you can post these selfies with your daughter basically and you know say that I have a daughter and I'm doing well by her and all of that while at the same time you know feel very comfortable and very you know the state is with you and we're all with you in all the restrictions that in fact that we will help you to impose so it's not only what they're saying to families what I'm trying to say is they're actually trying to create this constituency and play to it and the BJP is doing it of course big time and these state campaigns are you know tailored to that in some way and their overall policies towards education and so on are also tailored there even their attempts to change you know higher education and how they're looking at campuses and all is very much framed by that you know one of these aspects and their uneasiness with Dalit assertion with feminist assertion all of that is extremely clear and at the same time you also have you know one of the things which I didn't have much time to talk about I'll briefly mention it here is that you know the thing is even India and India and all of that you know now you'll have a lot of attention if there's a carp panchayat or a political leader who announces that a ban on mobile phones for girls you'll have it on prime time TV immediately but if a factory in Tamil Nadu a government factory in Tamil Nadu that's producing for global brands if it does the identical same thing with hostels in which women Dalit workers, young women Dalit workers are staying it will not be that kind of news it's done there quite routinely and women workers are you know virtually kept in bonded labour there and not allowed to use mobile phones and the you know just to tie up with the question you raised about Adivasi and Dalit women well yes and no I would say that in our experience of working in those communities as well I would say that while there are different models you know the same kinds of patriarchy are not in place but I would say that the anxiety over controlling marriage outside the community or sexual relationships outside the community is by now probably quite ubiquitous it is very strong in a lot of places it's for instance I mean we have felt that even in the work among Dalit agricultural workers in Bihar there's a lot of assertion, a lot of struggles over a lot of things but if you and if you ask them because of the history of struggles there which we've been part of there's also a lot of solidarity with Muslims and so on who are living close by but the one thing on which you still find that there is a still a lot of gap is that when you ask about you know what if your daughter falls in love with a Muslim man then they'll say that will make her a bad girl that is not a good thing that's not it's there it's very very strong it's very deep rooted and the BJP and all know this they are playing to that because they know that that is the vulnerable place and Dalit men who marry a non Dalit woman and the violence the whole community faces as a result they're all familiar with that they've been part of resistance to that but a Dalit woman who might fall in love outside the community even within Dalits I mean just marry outside the community fall in love is something which can invite a considerable degree of maybe not the same kind of organized violence kind of thing but a lot of hostility so I think that that's also there I'm not trying to flatten out the differences there but just to say that I think that even in those movements one would have to be instead of you know I think even those struggles can't afford to be among Adibasi and Dalit movements for instance can't afford to be complicit about the fact that over there also you know autonomy is not and just to end that point I mean you know the factories I mentioned these are young women in Tamil Nadu who used to be from families that did agricultural work but now they're being recruited to come and live for two or three years in these government workers factory hostels government factories in hostels and the hostels at you know the factories are advertising these kinds of restrictions to those communities in order to say these are being done so that your daughters will be quite quite safe and she won't be you know she won't be spoiled over there she will be you know she will so the point we make when we address that is that look usually when women start going out and working even in the fields or even outside somewhere then there is a degree of freedom and mobility which however uneasy a family may be with it they will eventually get used to it it will find its own level at some point but when a factory when an entire system backed by the government sort of freezes it in place it's much more hardened than the kind of patriarchy they would find at home it's much more the surveillance is of an entirely different order entirely and that is why it poses such a hostility not that you know these are some of the changes I would say we're seeing okay so we'll start taking questions I'm going to take them in rounds of three or maybe four lady back there both of us after a selfie campaign I've been actress through I've been taking work on actually I love this industry but it's been my passion lady Abbas take one more thank you these campaigns are very selective and they have their own interpretation of women empowerment and feminism they focus on only those campaigns which they think that like how we thought that there is actually a good thing and they're going to promote it I don't know what I see the main problem is this most is the implementation problem and campaigns not even if they are state led or even if they are state funded the whole problem which comes around to be is implementation and I just want to know like how you working in Ireland I'm sure it must be sometimes frustrating that it's there you know it and there are laws there international legal framework is there which for example it gets party to zero and those things but it's still not so how did you overcome these things how you make sure that they are there I'm not saying that there is no progress but for me I don't see it as a problem I feel like there is so much not more has to be done and it's not still there yeah so yeah I'll start with what you asked about you know I think in my view demands must be made of the state because the state does control the allocation of resources change is not going to happen even if you are fighting for a larger change in the very structure of the state and the structure of society you are also going to have to make demands of an existing state as well which controls resources and the allocation of them and which which holds power so I think that the argument that we basically rely on the state I think that those groups that sort of work with the state that say that we are partnering partnering with the state I think that some of the groups that do that and take funding from the state and so on I would distinguish from those and I would say that yes I see that there is a problem there but I think that largely in the women's movement especially in the kind of organizations to which I belong and similar groups which have been of a left orientation which are some of the largest groups in India I think that they have very systematically not taken any funding from the state and not taken any kind of funding from any other agencies either so the point is that even we would make demands of the state for instance we have been demanding maternity entitlements for women which the state Modi just announced it now it was accepted into law two years back but now he he didn't implement it it was announced by the previous government but he didn't implement it and now when he was facing some concerns about what people's growing disillusionment with demonetization then he announced it in his end of December speech as though that was some kind of largesque he had suddenly thought off of the top of his head people are going to harness it and hitch it to their respective political wagons and so on but that doesn't mean that we are not going to make demands of the state or expect these entitlements as entitlements so I think the struggle there is also about what we how we run our campaigns and what we make of make then of something like maternity entitlements which are extremely necessary and important thing so now that it's been announced we would be fighting to make sure it is implemented which ties up with what you're saying and how would we do that we would be doing that by organizing women to demand where they have not got the entitlements what are the structures by which those entitlements are being denied those are the things we would be exposing and demanding and the other thing is you asked about criminalization I'm not sure what I don't share that critique of it at all because I feel that to say that violence against women or not to be a crime seems to me because the state is eventually going to be the one that is going to enact those laws and that has the criminal system in its hands I think that itself is not the answer and the feminist movement has not exactly been demanding criminalization it has those laws the criminal laws exist the point is that the feminist movement is bound to be working with survivors of violence who are naturally going to approach the state missionary and so on for access to recognition of the fact that they have faced violence and then the justice process that will follow justice does not begin and end only with the criminal system but the criminal justice system is a part of it it's bound to be a part of it so I think the feminist movement has not worked as an arm of the criminal justice system it has worked often in contention with that system and how that system has betrayed survivors of violence largely so I think the changes in law for instance the rape law changes and all that feminist movement demanded we're not to say that that does not make the rape law that is passed at the end of it it's not that the feminist movement has ownership or responsibility for that law entirely there was many things we demanded that eventually did get enacted into law and there were plenty of things that got enacted into law which were the exact opposite of what we demanded and many things that are not yet recognized and I think that it's not about something about only demanding if you look at the demand for instance for recognizing the need for a law against custodial family violence on a crimes the point is that there is no recognition for it now what governments will tell you is that oh when if there's a killing you have a law for murder the violence is unleashed much before the killing and the attacks on women's autonomy is happening a lot before that so when you approach the state for support there you're told that oh this is a private sphere and we can't do anything about it this is a family work it out amongst yourselves kinds of things so I think that the demand is for a recognition that this is a problem and to that effect and to make it to hold the state accountable to actually doing its duty of upholding constitutional rights and values and that's about it so the other question which was about Shruti's aid and so on selfie with daughter campaign when she was announced Shruti also had made statements and so had I and so had several others and we've been attacked very violently abused by more of these supporters and all of that but I don't think we in the women's movement didn't actually launch a campaign against it what we did there was to during that period was to say what is happening is to talk is to organize women in many places to say that to contrast what the government is claiming with what is actually happening so for instance in many places we've held campaigns to say you're saying you're saying educate your daughter and look at how you're treating women who are seeking education you're telling them you're shameless women if you're complaining against sexual harassment stay at home and all of that so we have been that's the way in which we have been taking it on and challenging it there's of course been a lot of right wing backlash including when I criticized the selfie with daughter campaign there was a supporter of Mr. Modi on Twitter who one of the handles he follows who said to me if women are going to if a daughter is going to grow up into someone like you no wonder she's killed at birth or before she's born and so on so the idea is which basically conformed exactly what we were saying which is that we want daughters to be born in order to fulfill various functions and obey the patriarchal order but we don't want feminist daughters to be born we don't want women to be feminist or autonomous you asked about whether somebody like Jai Lalitha and whether schemes are introduced by a woman leader and so on would make a difference I would say yes and no one is I would like to remind that for instance this Tamil Nadu scheme which I mentioned under which the government workers were employed was called the Sumangali scheme and it has been there both in DMK as well as AIADMK Times Sumangali means this whole idea that workers will stay for young women workers between the ages of 18 and 2021 will stay in a hostel and get a lump sum payment at the end of the three years why because it's like they're going to be earning their dowry and the name of the scheme was called Sumangali scheme so Sumangali means in Tamil a good sort of auspicious word for a married woman so somebody whose husband is alive is a Sumangali that scheme was there even and they had to withdraw the official scheme because of these exposés over how the women were being treated there and the fact that there was a lot of bonded labour and child labour there but the bonded labour and child labour continued they withdrew the official scheme where the government was backing these recruitments but the recruitments continued and they just changed the name of the scheme and they just changed the order so that's one thing the other thing is that the Tamil Nadu has had different indicators there the Tamil Nadu has a lot of female infanticide, very high infanticide so the Jailalitha government did introduce things like the cradle baby scheme where they said someone getting rid of a little baby girl can instead leave the child in a government run shelter basically so some of those things they have had a mixed effect and there are some schemes as I said some of those schemes that were being demanded by the women's movement for instance demands for pensions for older people especially older women which have undoubtedly allowed older women to be more more independent less dependent on their sons and fathers and so on but that is there in other states as well and Jailalitha also projected herself as being it was a sort of paternalistic amma she said I am mother so you must trust me and I will take care of all of you because I am your mother and all of that so it wasn't I mean Jailalitha's government was also most uncomfortable with Dalit movements as well as women's movements it has been very very its police has been quite brutal with Dalit struggling against Tamil Nadu has seen some of the worst violence against Dalits and what was the nature of that violence I just want to flag that there that there are groups in Tamil Nadu you know of the middle caste the varniyar caste and so on who have been trying to carve out political identity separate from the AIDMK and DMK which have been basically campaigning against intercast marriage especially against marriage of our girls with Dalit men and they have unleashed violence against such marriages they have which is result and unleashed violence against the entire Dalit community where Dalit man has married into a woman of their community and all of that and all that violence never uttered a single word over there with that so I think that essentially I would say that the patriarchal framework was very much in place even though there's been a lot of eulogies about some of her welfare schemes but the point is that those welfare schemes as I said I mean it's like the maternity entitlement scheme you know people have been fighting for many of those things as an entitlement from the state whereas Dalit did implement those schemes but did it saying I'm doing it as a benevolent benevolent you know a government that is going to be a parent to its people right and the last thing you asked about implementation I don't think it's not just about things being in place and implementation I think it's a little more important to look at what is the why a state has a progressive sounding constitution and it guarantees the constitution guarantees certain rights then you have CEDAW and all of that and lots of things but then why is it that a state then does not do it it's not just because the system isn't working and we just have to get the system working it's also because the system as I said you know it also has an interest in denying women's autonomy a state would not be very comfortable or happy with a situation where women are more assertive about their autonomy they're able to come out they're able to organize unionize come out and struggle the reason why these factories and so on as you know the government is saying make in India so in a way it's not because the system isn't working that this stuff is happening but rather because the system is working and the system is actually looking towards us making sure that if you're having make in India and you want a docile workforce for instance then you will want to make sure that your factories are places where women find it harder to organize you don't want workers in general to organize but the ways in which you will discipline women workers are different because of the availability of different patriarchal tools you can use to organize their work you're invoking patriarchy there to say that well it's culture it's Tamil Nadu culture it's Indian culture that parents want their girls to be locked up safely in hostels when they're not actually at the workplace they don't want them to be having mobile phones and speaking to boyfriends and making friends with men but actually the woman with a mobile phone in her hand will of course be having friendships and relationships but she will also be organizing unionizing and so on which is effectively prevented then by the factory there is a team for wider alliances there that stops the stream because also he is professional the lady back there yes yeah yeah absolutely yeah so I think in fact your question and yours I'll take them together because they are related I think that undoubtedly I mean where especially in areas where the Aadivasis are you know in larger numbers in India those tend to be the forest areas and so on and this particular I mean this Indian state has always unleashed absolutely you know for the past several years a very concerted kind of violence there which is primarily because those are resource rich areas there are forest and mineral resources there water resources there and so on land there and basically there are laws that especially protect the rights of Aadivasis to land and resources and they have been attacking finding ways to grab that land very large corporations have an eye on those resources and land and so there have been very powerful movements in those areas undoubtedly where Aadivasis women have been at the forefront of those struggles and there's also been very severe repression there so I think that you know that is very much larger context where and this particular government in fact has really unleashed you know for instance in Jharkhand I'm sure you've been following that about the attempts to dismantle even the traditional laws the CNT and SBT acts which protect the rights of Aadivasis to land and all of that and there's been a lot of systematic and the state violence especially in the conflict areas in the country anywhere in the country but certainly where Aadivasis women are there there is state violence, violence unleashed by the police and the state machinery is also extremely common and it's become much worse in the you know in the Chhattisgarh region now in the last few years it's sharpened it's been very bad there for a long while but in recent times there was an intensification of that with this with the state virtually announcing that there is a time period that they're following a calendar and that by a certain date very soon they want to actually free that free those areas they say free those areas of the Maoists but basically it's freeing those areas of the people who live there the Aadivasis and there are corporations waiting in line to basically having their eye on those areas so some of the violence there has of course meant absolutely systematic I mean systematic sexual violence by the police and state forces they would arrest women and rape them in custody as well as do these combing operations search and raid and search operations supposedly looking for Maoists in the villages but raping women in the name of doing that so that kind of and activists working in those areas whether they are Aadivasis from Tizgar or whether they are people or trying to offer legal aid or just trying to stay there and bear witness to what's happening and you know speak about it write about it report from those areas they were all attacked and subjected to violence by vigilante groups patronized by the police and so on there's been a small sort of very small I mean small but significant there where the police officer in charge of some of the worst of these atrocities you know the state eventually found it to be a little too embarrassing because one of the activists who had been helping Aadivasis women to report these sexual crimes against them by the police to the National Human Rights Commission following you know they had already spoken about these things to the a large platform of women's groups called the Women Against Sexual Violence and State Aggression WSS and after one and a half to two years of trying then the Human Rights Commission had finally gone there and on the ground this Bela Bhatia who is a well known researcher and activist had helped these women to actually you know report you know speak to the NHRC and subsequently there was an attack by a vigilante group on Bela Bhatia's house and they threatened to burn her house down and there was a lot of violence if she did not leave so she did leave that house but she said I'm not leaving Basta and in the outcry that followed I mean women's rights activists sent texts to the police officer to say what's happening and you can't do this and he literally sent texts back saying fuck you you know and literally I mean that was those are the words used so and saying I'm going to clear Basta of Naxalites and dogs those are the words he used so he you know I think that the words and the fact that those were publicised made him a little too you know hot to hold for the government so they've sent him on medical leave they haven't taken any action against the fact that he's accused of rape and that he's accused of encouraging rape as a policy there and fake encounters and custodial killings there none of that but he has had to proceed on leave they've claimed it's medical leave but he is taking a lot of pains to keep talking about it and say he's perfectly fit and fine he's not ill and it's a victory for the Naxalites defenders so you know he's making that rather clear but it's still a very very hard struggle there undoubtedly and very difficult one so I'll talk about the PCP NDT act in Rajasthan a little later because connected with this is what Kalpana asked about which is the you know in the in the Beti Padhao scheme of things I mean all over India you have for instance and this also links up with the whole issue of Adivasi and Dalit girls and their right to education because you know we are in fact considering the need for having some kind of you know country wide study at least in several states about the homes run by various state governments and you know for Adivasi and Dalit girls okay because there have been instances of violence and organized sort of you know sexual abuse there and even killings there murders of young girls there coming out from so many states now there were reports emerging from Chhattisgarh from many of these same areas this part of Chhattisgarh but it isn't only Chhattisgarh similar reports have emerged from Maharashtra and recently in Chhattisgarh where it's a very different kind as I said it's a secular government there that says we are not like the BJP and all of that but over there also quite recently there was a young Dalit girl the daughter of agricultural labourer who is herself not educated but she was very determined that her daughter should go to school and she sent her daughter to stay in the hostel and study and over there you know the same hostel's claim to have this entire architecture of restrictions in the name of safety all that is there but at the same time you actually have a lot of systematic violence going on in there and this young girl had called her mother had made a phone call to her mother from somebody's phone to say come and get me and the mother came and said why do you want to leave school what's wrong and she said if you take me home I'm not feeling well you know tell me what's wrong what's anyone then I'll think about it and then she eventually told her mother that there was a teacher who was asking for sexual favors and offering me better marks in return and I'm afraid as a result and so her mother didn't know what to do but she thought well let me at least take her out and then think about it so she gave some other excuse to the school she said you know I'll give her some math institutions there are exams coming up so I'll just take her home for a little bit and they didn't allow her to do that they must have you know the authorities probably guessed what was happening because they you know physically flung this mother out of the school through her bag out you know through her bag across the room didn't allow her you know the bag had food for her daughter they didn't allow her to give her that and she they told her go home and her daughter called her again in the evening you know and they spoke but the next morning the daughter was found killed murdered alright and there's there's been it's been almost a month no more yeah it happened in early January January 6th I think so it's it's a month now and no one has been arrested no action has been taken against the school authorities this happened on their watch and this is an incident where there have been very powerful struggles there by including by the school girls in that school very assertive and you know fighting really brilliant struggles there but you know you get very little media attention also for those struggles and all of that so it's not been good so I think the contrast between this whole you know if Betty but how where to really mean a serious look at how our schools function you know making schooling available is not only in terms of of course it should mean addressing the question of making some of the you know it links up with what I was asked in the beginning about the demands that feminists make right the demands that we would be making would be of course to make sure that affordable good quality education is available to all children in India and especially to all girls and that that your schools everywhere should be you know you should you should have some kind of oversight in your schools to make schools and hostels to make sure that girls find you know the students can find it not only girls and schools that students should find it safe to be able to report any kind of violence or any kind of you know any kind of duress any kind of coercion any kind of abuse that is completely not there to say anything in Indian schools I mean it's such a power Iraqi there to say anything is to risk being thrown out especially if you are from a oppressed class or caste and or if you're a girl so changing that would be very much a demand we'd be making but the government is not interested in addressing any of that as part of its beti but how you know educate daughters campaign and it's not even willing to acknowledge the need for education about sexual violence in schools it happens in some schools but very selected schools there is no you know largely it's a there is this whole thing like sex education is a bad thing you shouldn't do it it's it's going to promote promiscuity and this and that the idea that you have to actually educate about sexual violence and sexual abuse among children is not accepted you know largely by the Indian government and yeah I was asked about Rajasthan and those figures I haven't closely studied the Rajasthan figures so I'm not absolutely certain but I know from activists and Rajasthan that I've been in touch with and worked with who say very clearly that you know so I can't quote the actual figures now and say you know what the thing is but they have said that actually the implementation of the PCP NDT law there the law that ban sex determination is actually it's actually been very bad it's actually been one of the worst states and so on and of course there have been efforts and initiatives by women's groups there to do this kind of thing including do to do sting operations and expose doctors who are you know so to send women as decoys and we're pregnant and seeing whether doctors are going to tell them so actually women's groups have done a lot of this the government being invested in this or really interested in this I think not at all in fact the Rajasthan government and the Vasantara Raji government has been particularly hostile to you know even the idea of accepting that you know such forms of violence against women are a bad thing alright so it's been a government that has been quite famously you know openly sexist and very very resistant to any kind of change there and any kind of response there so I don't think I would rely very much on that I'll take a look at the story that you mentioned I'll look for that and you know look at the figures that are being talked about but I'm not sure see again when I say figures no I don't know what those figures are because as I said I mean actual sex ratio figures are quite old I mean you can't really have a fresh figures right now so the fresh figures would be you know how where are those coming from no because those are not reliable the figures which one should look at and I don't know if they had those is about how many cases are registered actually against doctors you know and against if it's widespread then you should have a lot of cases being reported