why to have a blog of my own ? I am struggling to figure out the answer.Till I have one, here are some of my direction less thoughts .....

Tuesday, October 31, 2006

21st century women

Let me name her Kamla, because she herself does not know her name. Nobody called her by name; she was always daughter of her father, sister of her brother or wife of her husband.

She is 2nd of five daughters in the family of nine. The only male members in the family are her 4 year and 6 year old brothers. Her mother got rid off her, when she was 14 by getting her married to 29 year old Rambalak, who lost his first wife while giving birth to a child. Kamla’s mother was a daily laborer working at the agricultural land of landlord in their village. Tuberculosis took her father, who was a riksha pullar in Lucknow, when she was 11.
Kamla was married in a family where she was the only women. Apart from her husband, the family has his father and his older brother. Initially everything was going well until one day her father in law made advances on her. She resisted …then it was the turn of her brother in law. She resisted …. She was scared of telling anyone about it. What other will think of her ? But it became a regular practice. She shared with her husband. Rambalak protested against his father and brother. But they threatened to kill him. So he fled to Kanpur. Now, Kamla was all alone and was pregnant with Ram Balak’s child. She has no choice but to return to her mother. Kamla has started working as labour in the field of their landlord. She gave birth to a girl. She is subjected to frequent indecent remark by her master and other male members in the village, especially upper caste people. She has little support in her already poverty stricken community.

I am not sure what will be the future of Kamla. May be someday, some one in the village may rape her and there will be no one to protect or protest. May be she will migrate to big cities for work and may end up in brothel. She is 16 now.
( Kamla lives in a small village of Sitapur district, 90 km from Lucknow.)

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She is a mother of 3 Children. She is feeding her children by working in field for zaminder sahib. (My learned friend may argue that we have an act in our country to abolish zamindari system long back, so how can we have zaminders? I would love to tell him that we also have Dowry Prevention Act in the country, but we all know how preventive it is.). Her village is in Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh, dominated by upper caste landlords. She was a perfect client for the development worker to sell their product of women empowerment and decentralization of power etc….So they motivate her to take part in the forthcoming election of Gram Panchayat for the post of Gram Pradhan. The seat was reserved for Women from Backward communities. Everybody thought that she can be a perfect case study if she won the election. Foreign donors will be happy with Development agencies intervening in the area, taking this as perfect case for women empowerment, where a woman from backward caste is taking part in political decision making. And it was also not difficult to convince her to take part in the election. She fought the election and won. She won against the wife of Zaminder Saheb’s servant , whom the zaminder supported, so that he can control the Gram panchayat fund once his servant won. It is hell lot of money in Gram Panchayat theses days and he understands this very well. Her victory made him angry and she has to pay by loosing her job in his field. Her house was put on fire in by Zaminder. She is jobless and homeless and she has three children to support.

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

Mirage !

I was confident of my career growth, till I got a call yesterday. I am quite content with my work believing that I am exposed to a lot of experiences. I did a consultancy for one of the leading UN agency, my project was recognized as one of the best in the state, our sweet Delhi Doordarshan has made a documentary on the revolutionary changes that we brought in through our project !! I was interviewed by DD, my name has appeared in several English and Hindi Daily and already I have started feeling like a celebrity! But all my illusions were brought to an end with a simple phone call. Now I am feeling like the biggest looser on this planet. It seems like my sweet dream has ended in a nightmare. I am feeling the way R.V. Winkle must have felt when he woke up after 20 years of sleep. Everything looks unknown and difficult! Most of life was wasted on sleeping and dreaming.

My brother has been one of the biggest strength in my life. I consider him as my biggest strength because he made me stronger with his unique way of analyzing my all kind of moves regarding studies, career … His analysis has this very raw nature of coming out with a harsh truth. The truth will always make a looser out of me. But I always turned out to be the winner. I am the winner because in spite of being the biggest looser, I move on. The recent analysis has come out with the truth that in last 5 years of my working, my career growth was only 5% per anum in terms of monetary value (phew!.. I never thought of it.) So I must make a move immediately so that the growth rate can at least catch up with our inflation rate which is at higher end then my career growth. He gave me this learned insight over a phone call.

I was also thinking on this to make a move from my present job which is 3 years old to a new one. I have become stagnate and needed a change badly. But it never occurred to me that I am incurring a loss of 2%-3% every year because the inflation rate is 7%-8% and my growth rate is 5%! Here again I am the looser. But I must deserve a pat on back for my creative strength (now I know why they call the Scorpios as creative person). I loved to believe that my career was taking a good shape. It is my creativity which has designed such an illusion around me and made me happy for last couple of years!