anita discusses womens movement with freind

Anita worked as a free lancer as a journalist, writer, taking on assignments generally on women, development………. Things that interested her. In college, she had gone to a village as part of a student team to help an NGO and that had got her hooked to development and rural issues. Of and on she also worked as a consultant with research agencies . She often used these research projects as a topic that she could write on… but sex selection…… it was a topic that immediately raised a churning feeling in her…. How people could be doing this, she wondered, and the problem was growing …. Despite a decade of the quote unquote feminist movement, and ads and serials….could this have contributed to this trend insead of arresting it? Hmmmmmmmm.. and she let the thought sink in…. made herself a fresh cup of tea… and after seeing Kailash off, with a hu and a peck on the cheek, called Kiran, her collegue and college friend.
Anita: Good morning. Hari Om. Good time to talk? Or should I call later.
(Kiran is in a nighty, with a cup of coffee sitting in the living room reading the paper. The house is a lived in place, with papers, books pencils all over the table, a couple of cups from morning tea, on the floor are some toys thrown around. Kiran is carefree and relaxed in her living space. She is reading the paper, smoking .
Kiran: Good time. Everyones gone…. Let me just get a cup of coffee..
A: Yokay. Me too.
Coffee in hand, Anita curled on her lounge chair on the terrace.
K : Mornings….onr big round of activities…. Sending kids to school. Sending hubby to work, every day… honestly I’m so bored….
A: You telling me…. But whats the point of complaining…. Guess we need to do something to bring some of the excitement back to life…. Like when we were in college….but called up for something else….. Kailash is having this meeting to thrash out a proposal on doing research on the declining sex ratio, and I’m just having this thought, that how come after a decade of the so called womens movement in India, with campaigns on so many topics, more and more women working, getting an income and often looking after families, why is it that the sex ratio is declining? All the activities were to raise the status of women, wasn’t it? Well, could it be that everything was so misdirected, that all did not lead to increased status for women, but to her devaluation. In other words, could what has been done be a contributing cause for this decline? Question mark.
K:(twirling her hair with her index finger, her thinking stance) Hmm….. lets see. When we were in the movement what were the issues we highlighted.. …. First it was rape. We campaigned on a change of law, and the media covered rape rape rape…..so even though the law was changed, could it be that all the coverage and talk about rape got more people aware that this is occuring in society and gave the impression that this was happening a lot in the society and therefore raised the fear level of the general population … and in turn increased the fear that having a girl child had problems that they had not thought about before. Interesting…. Never thought of it like that.
A: And then there was dowry and dowry deaths ( Anita excited because Kiran had not laughed at her thought but had given it a consideration)……. Where we highlighted dowry deaths … and the inaction of the police….. I mean, it was as if every woman and every marriage in India had the knife over it with the possibility of murder and death.
K: Sure it was happening, but not everywhere. The media was great we thought in covering every small mocha we were taking out, but could this have led to a generalised increased fear that girls mean problems, that dowry was a looming issue , so better not to have a girl and to face all these problems. I can remember conversations like this in the home of my cousins, at that time I just thought it was unaware girls and boys talking but the tone of the conversation was certainly one that said girls are problems.
A: See, am getting to feel that the intentions of activists let me call them do gooders, what their intentions are and what the result in society is could be quite different. I got this idea from what I was reading some time back,where I don’t remember. But it was talking about the British campaign about Don’t use drugs – which was heavily propogated through bill boards, TV radio, pamhlets, etc. The aim was to reduce youth from trying out drugs. But six months after the campaign, the use of drugs was going higher, not lower. Brits being brits wondered why? And they carried out research amongst the youth and found that the ads had actually increased the awareness of all the youth that such things that mind altering drugs exist, and if the government was saying its bad there must be something interesting about it… so lets give it a try/ ultimtely it is a small group of youth who were taking drugs, and others were largely unware about what aking drugs was all about. Through all the ads the awareness levels increased and it was cool to go against the gvernment…. So net result the exact opposite of what was intended, Interesting no?
K: (Laughing)….Very. Activists. You know I left because it was so obvious, the intentions of the main activists… it was to get recognition, power, it had nothing to do with really helping people, or women. I remember when some of us raised the issue of wether it was correct to go into an area and have morchas on rape, we used to more or less force ourselves onto communities, as if we had the moral right … and most often the womans life became more miserable…. It was after one of these morchas, when 2 of us went back - that was something else. We never went back to see what was happening, what we could do to help… it was a one time act and it was for publicity… when we went back the mother shouted as we were coming in, don’t come in here , you have done enough damage in our lives. I wish that you had ever come. When we brought this up at the meeting saying we need to discuss it, it was amazing… no one wanted to discuss anything…. It was more tht our agenda is to do this , organise more of the same.
A: This is so contra to what people think they are doing…. And if you try and even get some of the people who are funding various researches, writings, actions, you get a response which says what the hell are you talking about.
K: So what are you going to do at this meeting today?
A: What do you think?
K: Whose proposal? Whose funding?
A: Who else. One of those UN agencies based in Delhi.
K: I really wonder, why is it that all these agencies… like UN, and all these agencies are so interested and why are they so keen to do something about this. Same question also of AIDS. I mean, why are they spending zillions of dollars on this? Why are they so concerned? Is it still part of this colonial attitude that only sees and talks about the ills and problems in third world countires? Why not give indians money –as much money as they spend here – and we will study their socieities and their problems. What we as Indians see as their problems, their extrememly atomised lives and come up with interventions to solve them Ha. . You know Im totally against all these friangees who have hazaar moneys…..all of them talk holier than thou… and all these people who suck up to them.
A: Hey, got to run… late as usual… great talking to you … have a great day