WUNRN
Women's Feature Service
India - New Delhi
By Ranjana Padhi
Bhatinda (Women's Feature Service) - For the widows of farmers of Punjab who took their lives when caught in the vicious cycle of agrarian debt and misery, the ubiquitous picture of the content and smiling Punjabi farmer, seen on many a calendar, seems like a cruel joke. The ground reality reveals depression, alienation and suicide.
After her
husband committed suicide Kuldeep Kaur from Kot
Shameer in Bathinda block has educated her two children, daughter
Mandeep and son Amandeep, by working at the loom and rearing
buffaloes. (Credit: Nirupama Dutt\WFS)
Measures undertaken to shore up the production of foodgrain during the Green Revolution have now led to the deterioration of the soil, an increased demand for expensive pesticides and chemical fertilisers, and a network of institutional funding that has spread its tentacles to non-institutional sources too, putting the farming community in the vicious grip of indebtedness.
A study by
Each peasant suicide in the state,
known for its 'prosperity', is an indicator of the plight of millions of the
rural poor. And it is the peasant women who suffer the most from the grave
situation threatening to engulf their lives, as the preliminary findings of the
study reveal.
According to interviews conducted
between November 2008 and July 2009 with peasant women of affected families in
47 villages across 10 districts - Ferozepur, Muktsar, Bhatinda, Moga, Mansa,
Sangrur, Patiala, Ludhiana, Barnala and Faridkot - 80 per cent of those who
committed suicide were between 21 and 50 years of age. Approximately 40 per
cent of the victims were dalit (downtrodden) landless agricultural labourers.
There were also four suicide cases involving women. In some instances there
were two or three suicide occurrences on a single day. In 70 per cent of the
cases, consumption of pesticide emerged as the mode of suicide.
Since agriculture is based on family
labour with the household's economic activity being an integral part of the
agricultural economy, the total number of those affected by these suicides
would be around five times their number, with dependents - those below 18 and
above 60 - comprising 55 per cent of the affected.
It is the adult women who have to bear
the huge burden of managing the demands of fatherless families. The price the
pay is immense and takes the form of depression and other health problems
caused by the overwhelming psychological pressure of grinding poverty. Even the
paltry widow's pension of Rs 250 (US$1=Rs 46.6) per month given by the
Housework, childcare and nursing of the
elderly become more arduous in this context, as women are left with the
traditional responsibilities of marriage and family without a semblance of the
protection that it may bring them. Yet, sadly, women's economic activities in
tending to livestock, collecting fodder, and doing all kinds of work within the
home to make ends meet, are still not accorded the status of 'labour' by
society.
Traditional restrictions on women's
mobility make it impossible for Jat Sikh women to take up wage labour. It is
only women from the lower castes - like Majhabi, Ramdasia and Ravidasia Sikhs -
who largely work on daily wages and even seem proud of doing so. As one Jat
Sikh woman in Mansa district observed, "The day I step out to work, no one
will talk to me in the village. Even if we have 'namak' (salt) and chutney with
'roti', we cannot do wage work." But there were instances of women forced
by circumstance to defy caste norms. For instance a 65-year-old Jat Sikh woman
resorted to picking cow dung for Rs 450 a month, but only when there was no
earning member left in her family. While seasonal labour like picking potatoes,
carrots and radish or cotton does fetch around Rs 50 a day, such work is
available for just two or three months a year.
So what do the women do to make ends
meet? Over 65 per cent women in the sample interviews are engaged in
maintaining livestock and fodder collection with household expenses met by the
sale of milk to local shops or to large dairy concerns like Nestle's or Verka's
in some areas. These women are able to make Rs 1,000 to Rs 2,000 a month. Over
94 per cent of the women are engaged in intense domestic labour and 54 per cent
in caring and nursing of the elderly and this incapacitates their ability to
earn. A 35-year-old woman in Bhatinda district revealed that she could barely
visit her mother to gain some comfort and relief from grief. "I look after
the house, my mother-in-law, the children and the buffaloes, too. I help my
father-in-law with agricultural work. How can I ever travel to my mother in
Sangrur district?" she sighed.
When the men fail their families, it is
the labour of women that keeps home fires burning. And that's when a huge
paradox presents itself: Despite the vital contribution of women to the family,
the social devaluation of women in
The sex ratio indicates a strong son
preference and, of course, the fact that girls are viewed as a liability
because of the dowry system - which is, incidentally, another factor for
suicides. Tragically, even families in which suicides have occurred are not
spared the custom of dowry. The minimum dowry expectation is Rs 2,00,000 among
Jat Sikhs; and over Rs 60,000 amongst landless dalits.
The cruel patriarchal practice of dowry
places the heaviest burden on the most vulnerable sections with 89 per cent of
the 46 per cent of families who resorted to loans for dowry and marriage, being
either landless labourers or small and marginal farmers.
The future appears bleak for great many
in
The burden of these realities end up ultimately on the women of the household, especially those left behind to fend for themselves and their families after their husbands have died or committed suicide. A 55-year-old woman in Sangrur district eloquently summed up the stress that farm widows routinely experience, "The doctor tells me not to worry and sleep more. But how can I? I worry through the night, every night."
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Author Ranjana Padhi is a feminist
activist based in
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