BehanVox: What Cash Transfers For Women Can (And Can’t) Do
This week in BehanVox: protests and detentions of Noida workers, Vijay’s stardom in Tamil Nadu, and more
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Hello and welcome to BehanVox! At 92%, West Bengal logged the highest ever voter turnout this week in the first phase of its assembly election. And Tamil Nadu also voted a record 85%. This could mean, analysts say, either – a massive mandate against the incumbent leadership or a forceful show of support for it. Does it mean overwhelming dismay with the Mamata government or fury at the disruptive SIR exercise? A shock win for Vijay or a vote for conventional Dravidian politics? There is only one outcome that can be guaranteed – there will be no hung house in these elections.
That women remained at the centre of the electoral slugfest this month is telling. If it was not the BJP’s promise of a new cash transfer to women in West Bengal it was the possibility of an increase in an old scheme in Tamil Nadu and Bengal. And when it was neither, it was the furore over the Women’s Reservation Bill being linked to the delimitation exercise bang in the middle of the poll season. We could be cynical about the manipulative nature of it all but we think that it is that political parties are – even in their hamhanded, often misguided and patriarchal way – putting women at the centre of their poll plans. Not all of the women-centric election news was great – as we reported women and the queer community were disproportionately impacted by the SIR exercise in West Bengal, the most stringent anywhere in India so far.
This week we bring you an extensive analysis of what a cash transfer scheme that acknowledges carework means to different women and different schools of economic thought.
Story So Far
A sum of Rs 1,000, no strings attached, dropping into their spare bank account every month can mean different things to different women grappling with financial distress every single day.
Valarmathi, a domestic worker in Tiruvannamalai, is the only reliable earner in her family. Her husband is an alcoholic so Rs 10,000 she earns working three homes is spent entirely on running her home and feeding her family of five, three of them small children. So, the Rs 1,000, she says, offers her the little buffer that helps her family “survive another day”.
In Viji’s home in Semmancherry in Chennai, the Rs 1000 seems to disappear even before it is credited. She and her family of four have been struggling to get through the day ever since her husband armtwisted her to leave her nursing job. The family needs at least a bag and a half of 25-kg rice at Rs 1,900.
In Chengalpattu, Rekha and her sisters said the Rs 1,000 helps with their mother’s treatment of an injury incurred at work. The extra money gives them a small but necessary cushion. In a village near Thoothukudi, it allows Muthammal, 34, to pay her debt collector because it arrives promptly by 8 am on the 15th of every month.
Tamil Nadu’s KMUT, makes for an interesting case study for unconditional cash transfers to women, an idea that has caught on widely in India over the last few years and especially in the months and days leading up to elections. For one, it positions the money as urimai, a right and not a dole as other such schemes across India do. This links to the self respect movement that underlined the early Dravidian movement. It is also the first and only transfer aimed at partially recompensing women for carework.
It also sparks many debates, grounded in feminism, development economics and of course politics. That it should not give the state government the clutch to take their feet off the pedal on development. That it bolsters the idea of only women being responsible for carework or of not encouraging them to take on paid work. And that it is nowhere close to paying for what carework delivers.
Prabha Kotiswaran, professor of law at Kings College London (KCL), however, views these transfers as a pragmatic redistributive measure within existing inequalities and constraints of hetero-patriarchal marriage – such as limited inheritance rights and lack of access to marital property – that can recognise unpaid work, strengthen women’s bargaining power within households, and enable greater control over their time and labour.
Varna Sri Raman and Aishwarya Govindarajan examine in a deeply argued article in the backdrop of the state elections in Tamil Nadu.
Read the story here.
Talking Point
‘Illegal’ Crackdown: The crackdown against workers who protested their work and wage conditions in Noida on April 13 was “illegal” and “extrajudicial”, it has been alleged by activists and advocates. They maintained that those arrested have been denied their legal rights and lawyers who went to meet them were also detained. After the protest, the police apprehended over 350 workers, and alleged that “external elements” instigated the campaign through social media and provoked violence. The police also alleged that the protestors had links with “political parties and even had links with Pakistan”.
Women Casualties Most: Of the 25 killed in the explosion while they were handling explosive material at a firecracker factory in Virudhunagar in Tamil Nadu 22 were women. The factory was supposed to be closed but about 50 workers were inside at the time, officials said. An analysis points out that small-sector hazardous industries tend to employ women and children at paltry pay and no cover for the risk they undertake. It is also reported that the workers were sitting too close to each other as they handled the explosive material. This despite the safety measures that are supposed to be in place given the history of such disasters in this sector. We had reported on the material conditions of women workers in factories here during the last elections in the state.
Sports Snafu: Pakistan’s women’s football team will not be participating in the South Asian women’s football tournament hosted in Goa between May 25 and June 7. The team was not given clearance to travel due to the tensions between the two countries, Pakistani football officials told Al Jazeera. This is not the first time that sporting events between India and Pakistan have been hit. Cricket has been particularly impacted hard, as also hockey.
Room To Write: In the face of strident backlash against feminism especially from younger men, South Korea’s women are engaging more enthusiastically than ever before with literature. BBC reports that this year Korean women swept all the six categories in the country’s most prestigious literary prize – the Yi Sang Awards. “Book talks, and reading and writing rooms called guelbang, have sprung up, offering time and space for women to gather and – crucially, they emphasise – grow as a community,” the report says.
BehanVox Recommends
Vijay and Cinema Stardom in Tamil Nadu: A superstar, a duopoly, and a formidable challenge to the old political guard. What can come next? Actor Vijay is the latest figure in Tamil Nadu’s cinema-politics nexus, intent on translating his cinematic fame into a durable political machinery. But stardom might not be enough to flip the script, writes scholar Vignesh Karthik KR in Himal.
Censusnama: If you’re wondering how India plans to count 1.4 billion people – their migration, lifestyles, languages, castes – there’s no better place to start than the past. This splendid archive chronicles censusmaking from medieval periods and Mughal empire to colonial India. Look closely and one may find traces and makings of modern India.
Get a Hobby: As glorious and self-fulfilling it is to have a hobby, the idea itself is riddled with histories of capital, gender, and power. Why do hobbies become jobs, what does capitalism have to do with it, how do women find pastimes, and the ultimate conundrum: are hobbies a capitalist byproduct or the utopia one needs to find oneself? Tune into Novara FM’s history (and if you’re still bored, their companion piece on boredom).
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