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.