BehanVox: What Explains Karnataka’s Rush For Port Projects?
This week in BehanVox: why women gig workers struggle to unionise, Delhi's concerning sex ratio, gender pay gap, and more
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Hello and welcome to BehanVox, this week we have for you two great investigative reports. The first dives into why the rash of port projects lined up in Karnataka are leaving fishing communities distressed. And the second talks of the gender barriers that make it hard for women gig workers to unionise.
But first, we have an exciting announcement. BehanBox is partnering with Tarangini Sriraman, a Wellcome Trust-funded Research Fellow at King’s College London to produce a podcast on the relationship of gender and tech-driven work in the critical Covid years.
Tarangini is hiring two postdocs for her research. India based PhD scholars from anywhere, including India, can apply for these positions. (here and here).
Story So Far
Karnataka has been making an aggressive push for more ports along its 320km coastline. It has one big port at Mangalore and 13 minor ones stretching across three coastal districts. Add to this, there are 20 proposed projects relating to maritime projects in the state, including ports, road connectivity, extension of breakwater, and dredging. The idea, say state officials, is to drive up incomes, jobs and infrastructure.
The rush for ports does not even make business sense — some are just 40km apart from each other, some in fact in the same taluk. For instance, Keni and Belekiri ports come under Ankola taluk, while Pavinakurke and Honnavar ports are in Honnavar taluk. And 2022 data show that apart from Karwar, no minor port has shown the expected increase in the exports imports in the last five years.
More importantly, Aisiri Amin reports, the coastal infrastructure drive ignores the lives, livelihoods and concerns of the marginalised fishing communities that depend on the sea and its environs for a living. As we have reported before from Vadhwan, port projects unmindful of the needs of coastal communities and environment often lead to long drawn protests that disrupt the lives of thousands.
It is the women fishers who take the biggest impact of this disruption, Aisiri Amin reports in the first part of this two-part series on the trouble with Karnataka’s port building drive.
Read our story here.
In the first part of her indepth reportage on why gig workers are finding it hard to unionise, Saumya Kalia had reported on the many challenges that solidarity networks are facing in an economy that is scattered and ever shifting. This week, in the concluding part of the series, she takes a close look at how gender and caste add an extra dimension to this struggle.
Women workers, she finds, have to constantly negotiate for time, space and personal freedom. Caught in the merciless cycle of care work and mostly home based gig work, they simply do not have enough opportunities or places to share their concerns with each other. Often single earners in their families, they need the income desperately enough to fear reprisal.
On calls, Nisha, an organiser with the Gig and Platform Service Workers’ Union (GIPSWU), says she has heard husbands or her in-laws discouraging women audibly: “Chup chaap kaam karne ka, lafdon mein nahin padhne ka (don’t get into trouble).”
In families, where both the husband and wife are involved in platform work, the man’s participation is seen as enough. Even inside union WhatsApp groups, women are inhibited by the use of swear words, aggression or simply a lack of familiarity.
Nisha says it needs patience to cajole the women to join. She herself had to face stiff family opposition to join GIPSWU. But when women do agree to give her a hearing, she explains how commission slabs have changed post pandemic and rising product costs have shrunk their earnings.
Even today, young union movements, like their predecessors, tend to be male-dominated, shaped around men’s work, their time, their priorities. Unpaid care work, family norms, and now gendered gigs in digitally scattered platforms keep women from fully and freely participating.
“We have to rebuild the whole movement – find a way to reimagine how we organise and build narratives to challenge digital patriarchy and digital capitalism,” says Chandan Kumar, who organises with GIPSWU.
Read our story here.
Talking Point
Capital Concern: Delhi’s sex ratio fell to 920 females per 1,000 males in 2024 from 922 the year before, per the latest annual report on Registration of Births and Deaths in Delhi. The national average is much better, at 940 females per 1,000 males. In 2022, we had earlier analysed the reason why the capital, home to the second highest number of wealthy households in the country, has been unable to improve its gender equity in this respect. The answer, demography experts had told us, likely lies in its location, right in the middle of a “cultural and geographical continuum” where gender preferential practices are rampant.
Boxing Gold: Minakshi Hooda snatched an impressive 4-1 victory from Nazym Kzaibay of Kazakhstan in the finals of the Boxing World Championships at Liverpool this week. She joins an impressive line of Indian women who have dominated the lightest weight class – Nitu Ghanghas and Mary Kom are among them. Minakshi’s father, Srikrishan, is an auto driver, and the family had few means but she had the unflinching support of her coach Vijay Hooda, she says.
Poor Conviction: At a workshop organised in Trivandrum by the Centre for Public Policy Research, analysts pointed to data which indicates Kerala has the poorest conviction rate for gender crimes among all the states for 2022. “While higher reporting of cases can be seen as a positive sign of awareness amongst women in Kerala, the low conviction rate of crimes against women is highly discouraging; only 8 out of 100 women actually achieve convictions in the end,” an analyst said. It was noted that its robust legal frameworks and dedicated institutional arrangements were failing to protect women from violence.
Data Drop
123 years. That’s how long it will take to reach full equality in pay and opportunity, according to the World Economic Forum.
“…I usually save at least Rs 1-2,000. But in summer months… my son keeps asking for cold drinks and ice creams… I spend at least Rs 1,000 just on this,” Shamshad Shaikh, a domestic worker in Goa, told our reporter some time back.
As the world marked the International Equal Pay Day on September 18, we’re thinking about what “equal” really means. Wages are rarely just about hours that go into doing the work. They’re shaped by the politics of care work, on the kind of labour that is undervalued and invisible, and how caste, religious or gender identity determines the bargaining power. This pay gap is further influenced by economic currents, climate change, gendered division of work, and even the automation of jobs.
But does the current idea of ‘equal’ pay account for the unequal costs that women and gender diverse persons bear?
We would love to hear your thoughts. Write to us at contact@behanbox.com.
BehanVox Recommends
How India Sleeps: Sleep, that great luxury of our times, is also unequal and gendered. Between burden of care and the pulls of our phones, Tanay Sukumar offers data driven insights into how India sleeps.
Fuelling the AI Hype: Another industry and another promise and illusion of flexibility and boom. Marché Arends and Kathryn Cleary investigate the mass recruitment of AI tutors and trainers and the exploitative work conditions.
What’s Going On in Great Nicobar?: Watch this podcast where Pankaj Sekhsaria and M Rajshekhar break down and analyse the project, which includes a transshipment terminal, airport, and township. It also raises concerns regarding deforestation, biodiversity loss, and the inadequacy of legal protections for the island’s unique ecosystems.
The House Arab: Ismail Ibrahim’s pithy essay on being the House Arab and surviving the great liberal newsroom that he does not name (the tote is enough) and the discussions and decisions on the ongoing genocide from the start is a must read.
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