Panel No. 16

Panel Title: Gender and the local state in South Asia

Convenor: Patricia Jeffery, Department of Sociology, School of Social and Political Studies, Edinburgh, UK

    Tuesday 6 July, 13–18, and Wednesday 7 July, 13–17

Panel Abstract: Conventionally, ‘the state’ has tended to be treated as an object that is rather distant from the everyday lives of ordinary people in South Asia. Recently, some scholars—notably historians and anthropologists—have taken an increasing interest in ‘the local state’ and its everyday relationships with the civilian population, how the local state and civil society interpenetrate one another, how the local state acts on civilians, how civilians try to influence the local state, and so forth. To date, little of this work has focused on the gendered dimensions of these processes, for instance on the work practices of female and male state employees (e.g. in health, education, village councils, agriculture, police), or on how male and female civilians negotiate more or less successfully with different parts of the local state (e.g. to obtain widows’ pensions or contraception, to prevent police brutality or obtain government employment). This panel seeks contributions that will examine issues such as these, either historically or in relation to contemporary South Asia.

Papers accepted for presentation in the panel:

Paper Giver 1: Siobhan Lambert-Hurley, Department of International Studies, Nottingham Trent University, UK

Paper 1 Title: Muslims, Medicine and Motherhood: Reforming Women’s Health in Bhopal State in the Early Twentieth Century

Paper Abstract: This paper will focus on the issue of women’s health reforms in relation to the princely state of Bhopal in central India in the early twentieth century. This historical context provides a unique location in which to explore the relationship between gender and the local state in South Asia in that Bhopal was ruled by a succession of Muslim women throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The last of these Nawab Begams, Sultan Jahan (1858-1930; ruled 1901-1926), was renowned throughout India and beyond for her dedication to the cause of female education, yet she also wrote extensively on health issues and patronised a myriad of women’s health projects. An analysis of these activities draws attention to three main themes. The first is the process of professionalisation that was undertaken in this period with regard to female health practitioners and medical institutions. Not only did the Begam of Bhopal maintain women’s hospitals and dispensaries in her state, but she also introduced training programmes for nurses, midwives and health visitors. Also relevant to this process was her attempts to revitalise Yunani medicine by consolidating it with modern science. A second theme relates to the education of mothers in the basic elements of childbirth, first aid and home nursing in order to better prepare them to bear and raise strong and healthy children for the ‘nation’. A project that deserves mention in this connection was the ruling Begam’s establishment of a ‘School for Mothers’ as part of the Princess of Wales’ Ladies’ Club in Bhopal, as well as her involvement with the maternity and child welfare projects of the era’s health conscious vicereines. Yet, unlike her colonial mentors, Sultan Jahan Begam did not equate women’s health issues exclusively with reforming childbirth. Instead, a third theme to emerge is the emphasis on sanitation and hygiene measures as a means of improving the health of poor women in particular. This study is, thus, important for giving insight into elite women’s engagement with their less fortunate ‘sisters’. It also highlights the way in which the first generation of Muslim female reformers built on Islamic norms in order to introduce incremental change.

      Full paper to be downloaded (as a pdf-file)

Paper 2 Title: The Wives of Dead Men: Debates on ‘Re’marriage of Widows in Late Nineteenth Century Bengal

Paper Abstract: My paper deals with the new constructions of marriage and widowhood being formulated and written about during and after the debates on the Widow Remarriage Act of 1856. Widows emerged as a significant social category in nineteenth century Bengal across an increasingly wider social spectrum. Hindu widows, as ‘widows’ gained importance, as it became accepted that Hinduism, by precept and custom, forbade remarriage to a woman whose husband was dead. A widow, if remarried, ceased to be a ‘widow’. This paper underscores the crux of the nineteenth century ‘widow problem’ which lay in this paradox. Widows, with the significata of ‘marriage removed’, represented yet another facet of Hindu marriage. The concern with widowhood in the nineteenth century, I shall argue, was the flip side of the preoccupation with marriage and conjugal relationships. The paper will examine how central Hindu marriage and conjugality were in the renaissance, reformist and proto-nationalist discourses of nineteenth century Bengal. Marriage, already the key to Hindu patriarchal family, acquired obsessive preoccupation—both within new colonial legal codes and structures and within the discourses of the indigenous urban elite. Vidyasagar’s agenda on widow remarriage was based, to a large extent, on brahminic patriarchal valorization of marriage as the most legitimate instrument of social control. Marriage was posited as the chief instrument of controlling female sexuality to generational production. Was this notion of female sexuality drawn from older brahminic ideologies, construed as dangerous and disruptive, unless brought under male control, i.e. within marriage? Did it reflect a new commitment to extend the regime of marriage? This paper will attempt to answer these questions and will raise a few more. Since marriage was the only legitimate locus for the Hindu woman’s identity, widows were a problem. Hence, the solution lay in ‘re’ marriage. But this was a reformist solution. To the revivalists the brahminic notion of marriage was a sacrament, normatively universal and rigidly monogamous for women. Devotion to one’s husband was extended beyond death. It was the man who came to rule over the body of his widow, which symbolized that marriage was for eternity. The reformist ‘solution’, they feared that induction of widows into marriage would weaken the mystique and power of marriage. As widows fell part of the marriage regimen, because they derived their claims and identities from marriage, as wives of dead men. My paper maps out the trajectory of the sacramental rigidification of Hindu marriage, which ran parallel with the resistance to widow remarriage. The emergence of nationalism pushed a group of male elite, more self-consciously ‘Hindu’ than ever before, to resist any marriage reform with renewed vigour, investing Hindu marriage with unprecedented gravity. They re-disciplined the narrative of marriage. In the reformist narrative on conjugality, the only resolution to the ‘widow problem’ could have been re-marriage, i.e., a re-entry into conjugal relations. In the nationalist narrative on motherhood, the widowed mother acquired a new valence, the mother-son relationship unhindered by a paternal presence. Widows were reified as the mother-nation, which closed forever the chance of remarriage of the wives of dead men.

Paper Giver 3: Shubhra Sharma, PhD Candidate, Department of Anthropology, University of Texas at Austin, USA

Paper 3 Title: Context and the Making of Education Policy in Nineteenth Century Colonial India

Paper Abstract: This paper examines the process through which the colonial policy on education was formalized in the nineteenth century in India. In the context of increasing military and economic control of the British over India, the issue of governance was sharply foregrounded. Governance, as different from conquest, required the consent of the governed. It required their willing, rather than forced, participation in their own transformation. Therefore, the consent of the governed was now to be manufactured through socio-cultural projects, including education. Nineteenth century was marked with the battle of ideas regarding the nature and content of education! . While the Anglicists argued for English as the only means of schooling in India, the Orientalists wanted English to coexist with indigenous systems of instruction. Such ideas were expressed in and circulated through reports, minutes, personal diaries, and petitions. Political resoluteness that had teetered in 17th and 18th century, evolved into a clear statement of purpose of the government (for being and doing) in mid-nineteenth century. In other words, effectiveness of colonial governmentality in the nineteenth century was made possible through policy as a definitive statement of the problem and its solution. This paper explains, as it exposes, the process of policy-making vis-à-vis education in colonial India and around which the power of modern governmentality came to be premised.

      Full paper to be downloaded (as a pdf-file)

Paper Giver 4: Karuna Morarji, PhD Candidate. Department of Sociology, Cornell University, USA

Paper 4 Title: Education as state-formation in rural India

Paper Abstract: My project looks at relationships between schooling, development and marginality in the Garhwal Himalaya. Theoretical discussions will revolve around two empirical cases: school textbooks from a range of educational boards in terms of their depictions and prescriptions for moral and material existence in urban and rural settings; and experience of working with an NGO providing 'alternative' primary education in remote villages in the Garhwal Himalaya. I see local forms of 'the state' as reflected in the production and consumption of school textbooks, as well as in the many and complex ways in which the NGO is implicated in local politics and governance structures as educational institution of authority. Similarly, an analysis of the gendered implications of moral and material orderings of both dominant and alternative educational practices in marginalized rural areas is essential to my project.

      Full paper to be downloaded (as a pdf-file)

Paper Giver 5: Monica Erwér, Department of Peace and Development Research, Centre for Global Gender Studies, Göteborg University, Sweden

Paper 5 Title: The Kerala Women’s Commissions: Voices on the institutionalisation of women’s interests

Paper Abstract: Institutionalising women’s interests by creating accountable state machineries is a core strategy in gender mainstreaming advocated since the Beijing conference in 1995. This paper discusses possibilities and limitations in the process of institutionalising women’s interests in the state of Kerala, South India. The Kerala Women’s Commission (KWC) was established in 1996. It is represented both at state and local level within Kerala. The Commission plays an important new role as a state actor in directly engaging with issues concerning women rights. KWC has both an investigating role of unfair practices directed against women as well as responsibility for promoting women’s rights. It has, however, been overwhelmed with cases reported on violence against women placing the other tasks of the KWC in the background. This paper will address the following three questions: the role and functioning of KWC; the intersection between party politics and women’s interests as it plays out in the function of the KWC; how the autonomous women’s network engage with and critique the KWC as a vehicle to promote a feminist agenda. The paper is based on parts of my Ph.D. where in-depth interviews were conducted during fieldwork on three occasions between 1999 and 2001.

Paper Giver 6: Stefanie Strulik, Dept. of Sociology, University of Bielefeld, Germany

Paper 6 Title: Women-Panchayat-electives at the interface of state and village politics: Gendered Structuration of the Political Space

Paper Abstract: This paper considers gram panchayat councils as an interface of the local village community with the state. Gram panchayat councils are bodies of self-governance at the village level in India and constitute the lowest tier of the reformed and re-institutionalized Panchayati Raj System. After the 73rd and 74th constitutional Amendments in the early 1990s and their attempts to democratize the existing political and administrative structures by prescribing, amongst many other reforms and reservations, a 1/3rd women’s-quota for all Panchayati Raj bodies and offices, a great number of women made inroads into the local, hitherto almost exclusively male political arena. Based on empirical fieldwork of almost two years, this paper will look into the changes brought upon the local political arena by the political participation of women. Thereby it will focus particularly on the subtle changes in gendered structuration of the political space. It will be argued that by women’s political participation, i.e. women’s prioritizations and agenda setting, women’s working styles or ways of “doing politics”, gendered knowledge-systems and gendered support-systems, as well as gendered modes of interaction - the political space gets transformed. However, the new meanings and the feminization of the political space are highly contested and have to be again and again negotiated and defended not only vis-à-vis state authorities and other members of the panchayat system, but also within the village community. The paper will give special emphasis to the role state officials’ support or non-cooperation, governmental guidelines, available governmental schemes or regulations and governmental training programs play concerning the women-electives’ appropriation and transformation of the political space and thus eventually with regard to changing gender relations.

      Full paper to be downloaded (as a pdf-file)

Paper Givers 7: Mary Matilda and B. Mohanan, Department of Political Science and Development Administration Gandhigram University, Tamilnadu, India

Paper 7 Title: Legal Status of Women in the Indian State of Kerala

Paper Abstract: Gender relations, living conditions and processes are defined in terms of the socio-cultural belief, values and customs. It has its influence on the status of women in various spheres of life-social, political, economic and legal. The legal status of women is interrelated to their socio-political and economic status. The patriarchal sources of women’s powerlessness and subordination are widely present in Kerala society also, which was previously a predominantly matrilineal one. The status of Kerala women cannot be measured with socio-demographic development indicators. Individualistic parameters and problems that emerged out of social transformation also have to be taken into account.Women are deprived of their legal rights mainly due to values of male domination and its perpetuation in the legal system also. However gender justice has attained a high place in Indian jurisprudence as a result of social demand. The law reform has been pursued with a view to women’s substantive equality. Still, the patriarchal control of the state, defects in the legal system, lack of expertise and sincerity, ignorance about law, outdated laws, etc make women disadvantaged even in Kerala. In the context of the trend of politicizing violence against women mobilization and sensitization of women are needed through legal literacy and by creative use of law as a source of struggle for women’s rights, by voluntary or women’s organizations from the grass root level itself. Law cannot change the situation, but law can be used as an effective weapon for social change. Improving women’s legal status depends partially on women’s changing psyche also i.e. empowerment of the self.

Paper Giver 8: Anna Lindberg, Department of History, University of Lund, Sweden

Paper 8 Title: Modernization and Effeminization in India: Kerala Cashew Workers since 1930

Paper Abstract: The South Indian state of Kerala is well known for its progressive policy, high social indicators, and comparatively high women’s status. Processes of
modernization, however, have had an ambiguous impact on women. This paper traces changes since the 1930s in gender relations among low-caste men and women by examining processes of modernization in the organization of work, trade union activities, and ideologies regarding marriage and family life. Female cashew workers, who number something between 200,000 and 400,000, form the majority of the factory workers in the state; most of them have been organized into trade unions since the 1940s or 50s; they are literate; and throughout their history they have been very militant – if we measure militancy in person days lost due to strikes. They seem to contrast strongly with “Third World Women”, who are often portrayed as illiterate, ignorant, and tradition-bound victims. Although those female workers have obtained better absolute conditions at work and in society, the power discrepancy between low-caste men and women has increased
in favor of men because low-caste women are now seen as weaker and more dependent on men than in earlier decades. “Modernization”, intensified capitalism, and various ideologies and discourses – whether emanating from the West or constructed locally—have increased the distance between masculinity and femininity. The concept effeminization of women is here introduced to denominate this process, which is discernable at different levels in the productive and reproductive spheres. In contrast to feminization, the notion of effeminization is qualitative, ideological, and discursive.

      Full paper to be downloaded (as a pdf-file)

Paper Giver 9: Yutaka Sato, PhD Candidate, Centre for the Study of Social Systems, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India

Paper 9 Title: Urban Poverty, Women’s Empowerment and the Local State:The Case of Public-private Collaborated Community Development in Ahmedabad

Paper Abstract: Based on the data of my fieldwork in Ahmedabad, India, this paper attempts to examine the processes of women’s empowerment at the intersection of local community-based activities of women’s organisations and individual interests and needs. The case discussed in this paper is poor women’s participation in community-based organisations (CBOs) under a local government-NGO collaborated slum improvement scheme: the Slum Networking Project (SNP). First, the paper gives a theoretical overview of the local state, and tries to apply the concept to the issues of gender and development, in the context of an increasing incorporation of NGOs into government development projects in urban India. Second, it deals with the issues of women’s empowerment in development in Indian context. It further argues that how NGOs as intermediaries are seen vital for social transformation amongst poor women, yet increasingly appear vulnerable in their ideologies when it comes to the activities at local community level. Third, it analyses the data and examines whether the development discourse exerted by the concerned NGOs in the SNP fits into poor women’s interests in their view. Finally, the paper concludes that along with the institutionalisation of hitherto progressive NGOs, non-transformative organisations, often populist in nature, appear to have gained spaces in capturing vulnerable sections of the society.

      Full paper to be downloaded (as a pdf-file)

Paper Giver 10: W. M. S. Mangalika Kumari, PhD Candidate, Department of Peace and Development Research, Göteborg University, Sweden

Paper 10 Title: How successful is the Participatory Development Strategy in Empowering Women to Contribute to Rural Development in Sri Lanka? An analysis of the Change Agent Program

Paper Abstract: Community has been given much priority than other aspects in planning for development almost in all the countries in the present world. This is also common to the developing countries in South Asia. This priority has been given as more than 80% of the population consists of rural community in these countries. So that if they are forgotten in the development plans, their purposes cannot be achieved well. Therefore recently scholars have paid much attention on the necessity of people’s participation in development plans. So it can be indicated that the outstanding features of the present development plans and poverty alleviation programs understand community development programs through community’s participation, planning according to the community’s needs, implementation by the community itself and gaining the plans etc. Thus, here the flow of implementation of plans is from top to bottom.When the plans of rural poverty alleviation of governmental and non-governmental organizations of Sri Lanka for achieving the above purposes are concerned, the most outstanding feature of them is higher women’s participation. For many countries higher women’s participation is a basic characteristic of development programs which are succeeded well. There are 20, 00,000 members in the banking system of Bangladesh and 94% of them are women. In the program ‘Service’ which is a successful one is 100% women participated. This feature can also be seen in the poverty alleviation programs in South America, Africa and Eastern Asian countries. In Sri Lanka, this can be seen in the women’s association in Habanthota, Samurdhi program, Social Agent program and Change Agent programs (Mithraratne, 1998). In this study, it is expected to evaluate the Change Agent Program in Sri Lanka. Here, the way, how the rural women’s participation have related to the Change Agent Program, which has been recognized as the prior in participation development programs is mainly studied. How is women’s participation in the program and how far this program has affected rural women’s empowerment are concerned in the study. In addition to these, it is expected to refer the facts such as whether changes have been made by the program in women’s position in the society and in the family, and whether the program has been able to form a women’s voice in the society. Here, it is also expected to study how far the Change Agent program has been implemented and how far the program has been succeeded.

      Full paper to be downloaded (as a pdf-file)

Paper Giver 11: Nandita Singh, Department of Land and Water Resources Engineering, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden

Paper 11 Title: Gender Concern in Water Resources Management: Rethinking gender initiatives in India

Paper Abstract: Gender concern in water resources management is globally seen as instrumental in achieving greater efficiency, effectiveness and equity in the sector. Working within the global framework, in recent years, the state in India has drafted and designed gender-based initiatives in the sector at policy as well as program levels. Most of these concern the water users in local communities, primarily the women. Beginning with a concern for women as ‘beneficiaries’, the state’s initiatives have been expanded to enhance the scope of their participation in the sector as ‘actors’. This is reflected in the initial designing of water supply programs aiming at unburdening women in the task of water procurement, to be succeeded by formulation of new interventions promoting their participation in decision-making within domestic as well as irrigation water management arenas. The paper seeks to analyse the effectiveness of these gender-based initiatives in India, looking for the situational factors influencing the achievement of the underlying goals. It argues that the localised social and cultural context interplay in the process of effective implementation of the interventions. The conceptualisation of the gender, gender needs, gender roles and relationships with respect to water resources management within the local context may not necessarily match the constructions underlying the gender initiatives designed and promoted by the state. Consequently, the paper argues for the need to rethink the content and strategy of these initiatives so that the aspirations of the local community and its members are fulfilled in a way that buffers the state’s interests and efforts.

      Full paper to be downloaded (as a pdf-file)

Paper Giver 12: Sayani Das, PhD Candidate, Centre for Asia Pacific Social Transformation Studies (CAPSTRANS), Faculty of Arts, University of Wollongong, Australia

Paper 12 Title: Gender Deconstruction and Reconstruction of Eco-development Approach: the case of Sundarban in India

Paper Abstract: In this paper, my focus will be to explore the gender relations between Sundarban Biosphere Reserve protectors and local villagers in practicing eco-development approach for protected area conservation. Sundarban (located on the inter-tidal deltaic region of the Bay of Bengal, very close to the eastern Indian metropolitan city of Calcutta) is the world’s last largest surviving mangrove forest identified by UNESCO in 1989 as a World Heritage Site in need of immediate conservation. This resource rich region is but a development poor area. The resultant neo ‘eco-development approach’ adopted by the state with the support from the centre and international agencies for the conservation of Sundarban biodiversity is the point of departure for my field-based paper. Eco-development approach is based on the improvement of protected area management by addressing needs of local people in and around protected area and involving them in protection. Sundarban Biosphere Reserve is populated with 1060 villages in its buffer zone, where exploitation of natural resources is allowed with restriction and enforced by the state protectors under everyday vigilance. Sundarban case study is distinctive, whereby the state authority is constantly represented in the daily lives of the people, who are struggling to survive under protectionism in this region. The struggle for survival is more critical for the women folks, whose livelihoods mostly depend on the forest products and on-shore fishing, both of which are restrictive activities under the protected area regime. In this context, the paper will seek to explore two interrelated critical issues: gender ownership of local knowledge of biodiversity in a fringe village; and, gender inequity in the so-called local partnership approach of eco-development in Sundarban. More specifically, I will attempt to answer: How women struggle with the state authorities in order to maintain access to Sundarban natural resources for community livelihood? To what extent gender role is considered in the state implemented eco-development approach to Sundarban? What Sundarban women can offer in terms of knowledge and practices concerning the sustainable development of the fringe livelihood and the protected area? What are the common and uncommon aspects of local knowledge and experience between Sundarban women and men? Whether the incorporation of feminine knowledge and experience into eco-development approach can negotiate reduction of the existing conflict between protected area managers and villagers?