The Washington Post had an in-depth piece on Indian women’s status. It starts off discussing ‘eve-teasing’, i.e. harrassment, but then delves into the whole range of issues from dowry to sex-selective abortion:

For India’s middle-class urban women, the past decade has brought unprecedented opportunities to advance in a social order long dominated by men. But a powerful male backlash has accompanied the women’s revolution, an upwelling of resentment that has expressed itself in sexual violence and harassment.

At the same time, however, the number of reported instances of domestic violence, rape and dowry killings is spiking in South Asian cities, according to women’s groups, demographers and sociologists.

Violence against women is the fastest-growing crime in India, a recent study concluded. Every 26 minutes a woman is molested, every 34 minutes a rape takes place, and every 43 minutes a woman is kidnapped, according to the Home Ministry’s National Crime Records Bureau.

Novellist and commentator Shobhaa De is quoted as saying:

“The latest statistics are terrifying. And it clearly points to male rage. Underneath our incredible social change, the Indian male is experiencing nothing short of a psychological frenzy.”

The article highlights the Smile Foundation for its attempts to address the issues through “self-respect and self-esteem sessions” and street theater.

It’s worth noting that while India ranks fifth highest in reported rapes, the United States ranks highest in the world. Yet I don’t think an article discussing gender dynamics in the US is likely to be covered by the WashPo in a similar manner.

Dr Meera Patodia, a gynaecologist of the Meera Hospital in the city has been charged with conducting an abortion without the consent of the mother in connivance with her in-laws.

The victim Renu Khediya in her complaint to the Mahila police station (East) on May 5 2006 had charged her husband Bhupendra Singh and in-laws Rahuraj Singh, Manohar Kaur and sister-in-law Anita of dowry harassment under Sections 498A and 406 of IPC for cruelty and dowry harassment. She said her in-laws took her to hospital surreptitiously and charged the doctor with conniving with her in-laws in carrying out the inhuman act.

In my own city of Jaipur, a case of forced abortion. I wonder how the procedure could have been performed though, without the patient being aware. I can hardly imagine what that would have been like. The article doesn’t mention it, but it must have been a case of sex-selective abortion (i.e. female foeticide). Rajasthan is notorious for women’s limited reproductive rights, and still has a very high rate of population growth.

The BBC has an in-depth piece on sex-selective abortion, and gender bias in India, with a short video clip from the film that shows tonight at 7:30pm.

What would you do if your husband’s family did not want you to have daughters – and insisted you took steps to make sure it did not happen?

Would you walk out or would you stay on and take a chance?

What if the bias against girls is reflected across society? Would that mean you could not make it on your own?

Vaijanti is an Indian woman who says she faces this dilemma.

Vaijanti has taken her husband to court, saying he and his family insisted that she have an abortion because a scan showed she was expecting a girl.

Having already had one daughter, she says the pressure to abort the second child was intense.

So Vaijanti moved out of the marital home and now lives apart from her husband – with her two girls.

As Vaijanti had never travelled beyond Agra, director Nupur Basu took her on a whistle-stop tour of India.

‘Grave situation’

We wanted to make this film after a leading development expert, Kevin Watkins, suggested India had a curiously ambivalent role in the globalisation debate.

Its booming economy is cause for hope, and the government is clearly concerned about both gender and economic inequality.

But if huge swathes of the populace do not share the increasing wealth, the whole Indian model of development may be called into question.

A photo campaign / internet-driven advocacy mission by Social Geographic on Flickr.

Sanjukta has posted about India Together’s innovative project to promote dowry-free weddings through their Say no to dowry pledge drive. They provide free invitations in an electronic catalogue, with the logo you see in the bottom right corner.

She ponders,

I wonder how many people know about it and even if they know will they ever have the good sense to actually say NO to dowry. I have noticed the affluent educated class in India have been inventing new ways to give and take dowry. True they don’t call it a ‘dowry’. For eg. the other day I heard, the groom’s family did all the arrangements of the wedding and asked the bride’s parents to simply pay up their share in cash. Not a dowry, since you are not spending anything in the wedding its just your share of the usual wedding expenses, fair play eh?

I’m also curious to know how they have publicised their initiative–is it only among their readership, or a wider audience? It’s true that the dowry issue is still alive and kicking, albeit in different forms. I hope India Together will be sharing the results of this initiative with us! Their dowry page is pretty outdated, but this article on ‘Why Dowry Won’t Die‘ is definitely worth a read.

Dowry is a symptom of a deeper disease that relates to how our society values women. The original concept of streedhan was based on providing a newly wed girl with some things that she could cherish and call her own. Today this concept has been vulgarised to symbolise all the things that not even the bridegroom, but his family want to have as their own.

Customs like dowry can end only when the people involved, the young men and women, decide to go against the tide, demand simpler weddings and say a firm “no” to the vulgar demands that constitute a dowry. Marriages may not be made in heaven, but they should not end up sending people into the hellhole of lifelong debt and misery.

After centuries of living confined behind the veil, the so-called ‘weaker sex’ has finally come out in the open and conquered the world.

Just because the article is about three female executives, does not give the author the right to proclaim that Indian women have finally ‘arrived.’

If this were the case, articles like this would not be necessary, describing how Renuka Chowdhury is proposing that the government pay a stipend to poor families to raise girls instead of killing them before they’re born, just after birth or not feeding them properly so they die on their own, etc… I wonder if, as she says, the money will encourage families to educate girls and change their mindsets–or if they’ll just use the money for something else, like dowry. How will the government track how the money is spent?

Dr Ahoojapatel observes that the slow and inequitable socio-economic development of the countries, specially those of the South, has been due, on the one hand, to gender-biased definitions and methodologies used for measuring economic growth and development, and on the other, the exclusion of socio-cultural factors in defining the indices of growth.

Dr Ahoojapatel illustrates, with rich data and examples, how mere economic indices of development do not nccessarily reduce gender inequalities. The two northern States of Haryana and Punjab—where despite a high rate of economic growth, women’s work participation rates are very low, dowry rates are high and female foeticede the highest—give an indication of the low status of women.

While economic growth may be beneficial in some aspects, certainly it is not a panacea to all the problems humans face. We must be attuned to not only inequalities in income, which is becoming a big issue in this era of globalisation, but the corresponding social and gender inequalities that persist despite economic growth. Many development programmes are now focusing on how to help women gain more from the trade liberalisation which accompanies globalisation, yet the same policies which promote trade may also act to undermine these projects of sustainable development.

So, don’t be fooled by headlines that India is an upcoming world superpower, and that it’s raging ahead on the path of ‘progress’ because of it’s 9% growth. Think twice before equating the rhetoric with improved lives for women.

The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) reports that in 2006 (forget the time lag!), on an average at least 18 women in the country were victimised–and the numbers are increasing. That is, those numbers which are actually reported to the police by victims, and that the police actually count as numbers. So in 2008, we should at least have passed 30, no?

Kiran Bedi, former outspoken police chief (see here for a post on her), blames the rise on the widespread loss of ethics and values.

“We are losing our values. When a man goes and molests a woman, he forgets that he has a sister and mother back home,” she said releasing the ASSOCHAM’s study ‘Women Top in Education Why Miss Top Position’.

“The problem starts from the family and education system. May be we are not instilling proper values in our children,” she said.

I find it interesting that she plays on the sense of Indian values, deeply rooted to the coherence of the family unit. Many conservatives would advocate traditional roles for women. Nevertheless, women, as mothers and sisters (but not wives?!) need to be respected. But is it that values are being lost, or that they were never there in the first place? Where in the structures of family and education is respect towards women missing? Or perhaps the proper question is: where is it not missing?! On another note, perhaps she should instead be asking, “Maybe we are not adequately discussing sex with our children”!
Bedi also notes the problems of data collection and believing in statistics.

“Police says that the crime statistics are dropping but we know that it is not true. Hiding the data will not improve situation but revealing it will. This way we will be able to know where we lag behind,” said Bedi.

Expressing unhappiness over the non-registration of cases by the police, she said many cases were not being registered as the police wanted to show less number of cases.

“Non-registration of cases leads to more such offences. Why hide behind the fair statistics. The police department should come out with the true numbers. Then only we will be able to focus on the problems and lack of proper infrastructure,” she added.

The difficulties that women face are not for the lack of laws, however. For example, the anti-dowry law 498A seeks to protect women from harassment by their in-laws, yet the deterrent effect of the law does not seem to have had any positive influence.

“We already have too many good policies but the problem is that they are not being implemented as they should.”

If the proposal goes through, the stiff anti-dowry laws, which seek to protect brides against greedy husbands and in-laws, will extend the current seven-year window for registration of a “dowry death” case to lifetime — this means that an offence against the husband or in-laws can be made out at any point during married life.

The Women and Child Development Ministry is examining the recommendations of the National Commission for Women and is of the view that given a “rising trend of dowry cases”, there is need for stricter provisions and longer jail terms.

I don’t deny that this law has been misused against men, but think of how many more women have been harrassed and abused for dowry. I am not a lawyer and don’t know what the answer is in terms of writing a better law, but surely some law needs to be in place to protect these women. Given the state of the legal apparatus here, though, this is a tricky situation.

]]> http://beckyblab.com/anti-dowry-act-controversy/177/feed/ 5 http://beckyblab.com/same-old-song/117/ http://beckyblab.com/same-old-song/117/#comments Mon, 24 Sep 2007 12:52:16 +0000 bexband http://beckyblab.com/same-old-song/117/ There may be the odd case of abuse of the law meant to protect women, but according to a recent TOI survey a majority of people think that anti-dowry laws are biased against men. Apparently it’s the women doing the harrassing and not the men and their families. It would be interesting to see the number of people surveyed and the breakdown of genders.

There is even a group/website dedicated to raising awareness among Indians about ‘the rampant misuse of IPC – 498a by unscrupulous women to extort money and harass their husband’s family.’ Thanks to Amit for the link.

The government is in the process of amending about 40 laws to make them more effective, among which are: the Commission of Sati (Prevention) Act, 1987, the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955, the Maternity Benefit Act, 1961, the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, 1971, the Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961, and a sexual harassment at the workplace bill. The amendment on dowry seeks even to limit marriage expenses to 20% of the bride’s parents’ annual income!

See this article in the Telegraph for an in-depth explanation and critique of the pending initiatives. I agree with those interviewed that if these changes take place, provisions must be made to educate the public about the new laws, and to ensure adequate monitoring and implementation.